Just Be Happy I Wrote Something

I'm writing today to tell you a handful of things:

1) I haven't slowed down my writing on this site because I'm "giving up" or anything of the sort; basically, I'm used to having much, much, much more free time than I have. Yes, I know: boo hoo hoo for me. Anyway, I'd rather use the free time I have these days to relax and to work on things that, unlike this website, might actually lead somewhere. I've said it all before a good dozen times, but I'm hoping that this time it sticks.

2) I made a delivery to white rap sensation Everlast's modest suburban home today. It took a series of phone calls to rouse him out of bed at 11:30, and when he answered the door, he was wearing only his boxers. It turns out that he's fat ann, if this occassion is anything to go by, groggy.

3) Later in the day, I was waiting for an elevator in West LA. A half dozen other people were also waiting. As soon as it arrived, some guy listening to an Ipod who got there after everyone else walked right in first. I spent the entire trip up to the 23rd floor fantasizing about flicking him in the earpiece or slamming his face into the wall. On the way down, I was alone in the elevator when it stopped and a middle-aged woman got on. Like I had done moments before, she pushed the Lobby button and, like me, noticed that it did not light up. I made some vague joke about it making the trip more like an adventure, to which she replied with an agressively disinterested, "Whatever," pronouncing the h. I came very close to hitting her.

4) Shortly after that, I was driving on Bundy, and I pulled over to let a fire engine pass. As I started to pull back out, this elderly woman tried to cut me off, but I bullied through, and she honked angrily at me. I gave her the finger, and she looked like she was going to cry, which made me feel bad.

5) Nearing home at the end of the day, I saw an old Korean woman walking down the street with a small bag of groceries resting atop her head. I'm still not sure h0ow this made me feel.

Come for the Laughs, Stay for the Class Warfare

So much has happened since I last bothered to write something. The Pope, Johnny Cochran, Mitch Hedberg, Frank Perdue, Saul Bellow, Prince Ranier, and presumably several less famous people all passed into the great beyond. And let's not forget Terri Schiavo finally getting what was coming to her. Somehow, though, none of these events moved me to write anything. Neither have the day-to-day details of my decreasingly fulfilling (but increasingly lucrative) job. There was this one exchange I overheard in an elevator at the Virgin Megacenter, in which this shrill, unpleasant young woman told her relatively pleasant young friend that the reason she was going to see Fever Pitch was because she "literally used to live a block from Fenway Park," to which I nearly responded, "That's funny, because I figuratively used to live a block from Fenway Park," but I said nothing, because what would have been the point?

Shit. One paragraph in, and I'm already out of material. I could force it and probably come up with something good in the process, but, again, what would be the fucking point? This blogging shit is for the birds. That's right, I said it. Somebody had to. For the birds. Seriously, what can I hope to get out of it? I've been doing this nearly three years, and my greatest success has been a brief mention in a sports column in the Palm Beach Post. The people don't want art, they want mundane opinions and hipster name-checks. They want cookie-cutter politics. They want breaking news on the cultural icons of the moment. They want to know what Tiffany fucking Stone ate for breakfast. Most of all, they want other people to write what they are thinking, because familiarity equals comfort and comfort equals complacency and complacency equals living in a bland, middle-class rut, to be jarred into brief moments of consciousness by the occassional passing crisis.

Am I bitter? Oddly, no. But I am starting to feel like I'm wasting my time. I imagine that's a good thing, but I'll withhold judgement 'til I see where it gets me.

Mother Love, of course, said it best: