Wax On, Wax AAAAAAFFF

So I’m heading to Tucson and figure I might be getting some swimming time in, so I’m going through the whole modern male clean up process.

I am of Italian decent, southern Italy none the less, which means I am one of those animals that tends to run on the furry side. On a 1-10 scale, I’ll rate Robin Williams and Sasquatch at 10 and one of those people with "no hair" disease at 1. I fall into about a 5 category (yes ladies you may now be repulsed). Personally I dig the chest hair thing. It makes me feel grown up even though I act out like a third grader a lot.

So I hop on down to the Rite-Aid to pick up some removal cream. Now, I’ve done it in the past and this is not a fun chore. So I’m reading over a couple of products to find something new and preferably longer lasting. I garb a box of stuff that claims to be non-burning, all natural, blah, blah, blah.

I get home open it up and fuck me if it’s not a type of wax. Spatula, cloth strips the whole deal. Not what I wanted and no indication of it being listed as such on the box. But, I just shelled over the cash, so I’ll give it a shot.

If you have ever applied stuco to a wall, this is worse. The shit sticks to everything, it hurts going on and it’s impossible to get a decent spread, so you’re doing small areas at a time. Simple directions, apply with the grain of the hair, smooth down strip, quickly remove strip against the grain. Guaranteed no burning. There is that fucking no burning again. Yeah, thanks pal, I doubt burning is the problem I’m going to have here.

Count down, 3…2…1…YANK!

MUTHER FUKER!!!!!!!

Done! No more! I’ll blow the cash and go with the burning. This green gel strip of cloth is holding a patch of chest hair and you can actually see the ball at the end of the follicle that has been forced out of it’s home. My chest is bright red and I’ve got a couple of blood splots. It’s that “40 Year Old Virgin” scene and I don’t even have a little old asian lady to scream at.

Luckily I did it over my chest ink, so you can’t see the missing patch too clearly.

Vanity is not my friend.

Crazy Train

So my head has been all over the place the last few days and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Lots up anger, lots of frustration. I’ve been keeping it in check, but really just haywire in my skull. I’ve been doing all of the things that I do to help figure out what the problem is.

It’s the 21st, so that means there are potentially sobriety date issues involved. Going back and forth on caffeine and trying to limit smoking that could be part of it. There is the subconscious turning 35 that might be involved. I may also have another kidney stone, which never helps. It has this way of sending the system in every possible direction.

Then there is the lack of exercise. I think, that my body has gotten so used to it that now I have to keep going in order help stay balanced. I’m sure my brain would go back to its slothful ways over a week or so, but it really seems to be fighting something.

I don’t think I’m having any real psych issues. (At least none that I am consciously aware of.) I’m fine on the money for now, I have a potential job, the show is a little stressful, but I’m finding answers to problems.

It’s probably a little of everything and I need to find the center again. It’s a lot like those little puzzles with the bee-bees inside. You’ve got to keep re-evaluating and make adjustments to try and get it in the clowns nose. It’s always just a fraction off and grows frustrating and you toss it across the room. My life is cardboard clown’s face with my sanity a little bee-bee. I’d toss myself across the room, but we’ve got hardwood floors and I’m wearing shorts. I hate skinned up knees…unless there is crazy sex involved.

35 Up

So I’m officially 35. Holy shit!

It’s actually a good day so far. Conversation with a beautiful woman, bought a couple of DVD’s. Gabe decided to tell everyone it’s my birthday, so I’m getting “old fart” e-mails. Look’s like Gabe needs another beating. You’d think he would have learned after the first one I gave him for being Hispanic.

I’ve only been feeling one piece of trauma and that’s going to the gym. I’m blowing it off today and going crazy eating In-N-Out and El Compadres for dinner. Plus there was a Twix and a bag of Smart Food I’ll tear into tonight when I’m watching one of my flicks.

The gym thing is simple. Whenever I get on the treadmill it asks for all sorts of info. Duration of walk/run, weight, age, incline. It’s the age thing that’s odd. I’ve spent the last year entering 34 and watching me decrease the weight info. Now I have to up the age. It is actually stressing me out a little. I want the machine to flash a message through its LED’s telling me that 35 is the new 25 or something. So tomorrow I’ll face my biggest challenge.

I’ve also had a couple thoughts about stopping the podcast. I realized it was because I’m afraid of the challenge. It comes bubbling up into my brain as boredom, but I realize I’m just scared of finding the challenge of making the episode better. So I stepped up and started looking for new things to try. I’m enjoying the process of strengthening these problem-solving powers. It’s a necessary thing to do if you want to create and it’s a very important thing to do as you get older, keep learning and stretching.

Example: Clint Eastwood. This guy could have still been making mediocre movies and starring across an orangutan if he wanted. Instead he sets his political beliefs aside and starts looking at the world with fresh eyes. He could have stopped and simply made “Flags Of Our Fathers”, but when given the inspiration of making a companion film from the Japanese perspective, he dove right in and made a really great film that far surpasses it’s predecessor. This guy is in his late 70’s early 80’s (I think) and just doing remarkable work.

I should take a page from good ol’ Clint’s book and just keep growing. I’d rather keep moving in that direction than wondering how much longer my dick is going to work.

Oh man, how much longer is my dick going to work?

Give A Little Bit pt. 2

You are right anonymous reader. I did cheat you and basically shit all over it with my empty pimping of the podcast.

So I’m here to apologize.

I will no longer use the podcast in any more entries unless it is organic.

So that being said I will tell you a black out story that has nothing to do with electricity.

My good friend Jack was living with me for a while and we were drinking buddies. Now jack drinks, but I DRINK…DRANK.

So one night we picked up a bottle of Whiskey from the local Safeway. It was some cheap shit that had a deer on the label and the catch phrase, “Master Of All He Surveys”. Yeah, good stuff. And you do feel like you are master of all you survey after finishing off a bottle of it with some pills and a couple of joints. As a matter of fact you see double of all that you survey. That’s a lot to master!

All right, we drive back to the house after drinking by the bay and our roommate (not to be named) and her boyfriend are home. Jack and I are smashed and we’re loud and all that crap. We’re burning disks of each other's music, talking film, relationships and all the other stuff you do when you are drunk and not in the back of a police car.

At some point I say I’m going to get something from my room and as soon as I see the bed, it’s nighty-night for John-O.

I wake up the next morning around 8ish and feel like garbage. Dragging myself out to the kitchen, I start the day with a six-pack and I’m feeling good again. Jack wakes up at about 10 and unnamable roommate and boyfriend had left before I got up.

Jack asks if I heard the roomie and beau banging away in the middle of the night. I slept right through it. Now let me preface this by saying that the unnamable were not an attractive couple. When I say unattractive, I mean fucking ugly. Like one gene away from Elephant men… All right not that bad, but not attractive, accept to each other. Jack launches into the story of the screaming and shouting and verbal stuff that I have thankfully blocked out. I do believe at one point the phrase, “hammer down” was used, but I can’t be sure.

So I was then and am now very grateful to have been blacked out during those festivities. It would have been one of those visuals that would scar me for life.

And in a way this story wraps back around to last night’s entry of love, sex and black outs.

Fine, so it doesn't, but it does have all the elements of sex, drugs and rock & roll.

Give A Little Bit

So, I’ve been having a lot of “love” coincidences recently. This isn’t about my love life or anything sappy, just some very bizarre moments that have made me think about the subject of love.

Incident #1: I was given a book to read called KILLING YOURSELF TO LIVE by Chuck Klosterman. It’s a "kind of" true story about this reporter from Spin magazine traveling across the country visiting locations where famous rock stars have died. He spends most of it contemplating the women in his life and what they have meant to him. He ponders love and all that it entails. I had just finished the chapter where that giant black out happened in NYC and instead of riots or crazy shit happening, every one just danced and partied and enjoyed each other. This lead directly into…

Incident #2: I spent the rest of the evening watching SHORTBUS. It’s the John Cameron Mitchell movie that has real sex in it. It’s main focus is on the balancing of emotional and physical love. A good movie, not great, but well worth the time (if you can deal with guys swallowing their own jizm.) Now the climax of the film, (pun intended) is when everyone’s lives have gone nuts and things are at there lowest, the NYC black out happens.

“Huh”, I say to myself, “That’s some pretty weird coincidental psycho-nutsy- stuff happening.” Two things both dealing with love, relationships and the NYC black out are tossed at me on the same day.

So where do I stand on this. I know love is a human creation, designed to represent emotions that make us feel hopeful and strong. The feelings that keep us going versus the feelings that tear our brain from our skulls when we know we are just spots of dust on the edge of the void. Love is a good thing. Love heals… kind of.

So I walk out to the living room thinking about these two things that have happened and all of this pondering I am doing about the nature of love when I turn on the tv and what is on?

Incident #3: 2046 by Wong Kar-Wai. Kar-Wai is the most romantic filmmaker in the world. He doesn't make, "hope-filled-gooey-ain’t-love-grand-full of fluffy-bunnies" crap. He makes films about love that deal with the great ups and all of the frustrating messy parts that are a part of any relationship. It’s awesome, because you feel so much for the good times and completely understand the arguments and why people can’t say what they feel; because they might not understand those feelings yet.

It was the embodiment of everything that had been passing through my skull that night, after all of this philosophizing that had been tossed on me. All of this in a four-hour period, just nuts, right?

Love is great, love sucks, love is messy and convoluted and you can’t live without it. Well you can, but then life gets kind of boring.

Now I’m going to screw this up by going all shallow on you.
Check out the Film Geek Primer podcast. This week we talk about Russ Meyer. Nothing about love in it, but it does have boobs. And who doesn’t love boobs?

And Now For Something Completely Typical

I think I am one of those people who do better on the phone or through e-mail than I do in real life.

Maybe I’m underestimating myself. Yeah, I’m underestimating myself. Change of topic.

Have I ever cheated on a girlfriend? Yes. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Like I’m supposed to lie here. It had nothing to do with that, "stuck with the same person" shtick that you get with so many people having an affair. I wanted the rush and that’s what I got. This is truly the sign of a person with an addictive personality. I’ll say that because I don’t think I’m one of those “X-treme” types of guys. I don’t need to jump out of a hot air balloon with a bungee-chord velcroed to my balls to get a thrill. Hmmm, well I might try it once.

Why am I bringing this up? I dunno, why not.

Have I ever used a needle? No. Does that leave a lot of things open that I have done? Yes. Are there a lot of things I’ve done that nobody knows about? Kind of. It’s parsed amongst several people who would never be in the same room together. Friends, relatives, ex’s, drunks and junkies (both practicing and clean) put them all together and they could tell you all about me. But that would never happen.

Did I ever tell you about Helen? She was my crack whore neighbor. No? Nice lady, a little out of it, crazy as a cockroach on raid. Once after we’d smoked a couple of bowls and downed some silver bullets, she tried to give my roommate Billy a lap dance. Helen was about four foot six and three hundred plus pounds. Billy was five-eleven and maybe one-forty. It was not pretty, to say the least.

One time I was interviewing Helen with my video camera, for posterity. We were talking about misadventures and the embolism that almost killed her. I got up to go grab some more beer. Actually it was malt liquor that day. Steel Reserve, give it a try, it’s awful. So I’m in the kitchen, come back out and we resume the idle chat. I’m watching the tape later and I hit the spot where Helen was alone and I’m speeding through it but she starts talking to the camera. I rewind to check this out. Her face gets serious and her neck gets frighteningly long as she stretches her head towards the camera. Then with one of the truest threats I have ever heard, she says, “And you will never take my John away from me, Christina Aguilera!”

Huh? I’m not sure where that came from. There was never any talk about Ms. Aguilera or any kind of clue as to why this statement was necessary. For some reason in Helen’s head, a video camera was somehow a link to the pop star and just in case Christina were out there watching this somehow, Helen wanted to make it very clear that I was not going to be hers. My three hundred pound crack whore, keeping me safe from the floozies of the world.

Though I would have liked to have seen that fight. Hair extensions would have flown that day, I tell you.

Specific Thoughts About Nothing

Can’t sleep, feeling random. I think it was the sugar that did it. I haven’t had processed sugar in a couple of weeks and tonight I loaded up on Snickers and Twix. Why? Because I could; So shove that existentialist point of view up your snout.

When you’re a straight guy and you get to spend time talking to a woman. That’s a good thing, makes you feel a little better about yourself.

When you are used to spending weekends cutting shows together and for the first time in several weeks you have nothing to cut. It’s an odd feeling; like something is missing and you can’t quite place your finger on it.

When you throw a grenade into a friend’s car because you have to kill him for fear that he’s going to rat you out to Forest Whitaker; you know you’ve been watching a lot of The Shield.

When you think about someone who you haven’t been in contact with for over ten years, but the thought of them makes you smile; you know they were a special person to you.

When you wonder why there are more questions to life then answers, you know you’re truly growing.

When you find yourself jerking off more than three times a day, you need to find a better hobby.

When you’re a kid on the playground and the other kids wont play with you, wait until high school and slit their tires.

When your boss is a true asshole and you want out of the job, don’t forget to empty the register on your way out the door.

When you’re bored and get tired of surfing the net, go re-watch Film Geek Primer.

When your last “when” is about plugging your own podcast, it’s time to hang it up and try to go to sleep again.

Right after I go slit the tires of this douche bag across the street.

Busy, Busy, Busy…And Not Making A Dime

That’s how it goes in the world today, I guess. Anything you want to do, you do for free. Anything you have to do, there’s a possible paycheck involved.

It’s been an odd past few days. Someone has decided to be me and charge their medical bills to my checking account. Since someone is impersonating me, it makes me wonder what I am stricken with. Maybe I have meta-polio or meta-herpes.

Life is a lot easier when you can add meta to the front of it. Think of the worst thing possible and then add meta to it. Meta-cancer, meta-AIDS, meta-overdue bills, meta-kick to the crotch. No big deal, right? It’s all “play it as it lays” in the metaverse.

So my other me is out there right now buying artificial limbs or prescription drugs with my cash, real cash not meta-cash, and I get to revel in the fact that my medical problems are just meta. This makes me feel a little better about this violation of my bank account. It’ll all get fixed and I’ll get my money back. My doppelganger will be happy with his or her new quad-cane and the only people who end up screwed is the medical company who didn’t check for id. I guess it could be tough to ask for a guy’s wallet when he has no arms and you’re holding his prosthetics in a bag waiting for his card to be approved.

All right, back to life. Screw that, I’m going back to my meta-life. Tonight I’m going to get meta-laid after making some major meta-cash and hit Nico Nico for some awesome meta-sushi.

Actually sushi sounds good…Oh, right no real money.