Dave Eggers - A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

It’s been at least six years since I was first recommended this book. At the time it could still have been considered contemporary; now it’s at the top tier to describe the popular memoir genre popular circa Y2K. Not unlike stumbling across Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential amidst a random stand at Printer’s Row Lit Fest, a cosmic event considering the time his show has recently consumed in my life, so too did I find this book, at the same exact stand. Ok, fine. I’ll finally give it a shot. 

The first chapter involves his mother living with cancer. 

I immediately feel another cosmic event. Well, not really. But it’s an astounding coincidence that piques my interest and I’m hooked. It becomes less personally relatable from then on, but the self-conscious writing style is right up my alley. The breaking of character dialogue, his younger brother becoming more poignant than himself, acting as the voice inside himself, the beyond honest (post-honest?) style of writing, the vulgar language, the overall…ok, this book pretty much hits all of my buttons (let’s call this style “me(ta)moir”). In particular, it’s the honesty. That one trait that will hold me back from being a good or even decent writer. I don’t anticipate writing novels (my attention span has unfortunately become Twitterized) but I want to at least write a fucking blog post, which only five people will even read, and just. be. honest. 

06.18.11

My Saturday night recounted by three letters.

Dear Rooftop, 

You let me touch the sky. You let me look down on fellow urbanites with contempt, with an air of superiority, if you will. A friend calls from one of the six corners and I look down on him. Our cell phones are modern walkie-talkies    over. The train roars nearby and will soon deescalate underground. And we get higher. 

There is not a bad Rooftop in the city. The concept can never get tiresome. Every Rooftop is the same as any Rooftop you’ve ever been on; every Rooftop is entirely different from any Rooftop you’ve ever been on. A roof hop would be tops; a flower pot for luck. Would I could have stayed the night, but to a new Odyssey I was destined. 

Love, 

The Earth Program

06.17.11

I told myself tonight is a quiet night. The next three days are stacked. I was reading. I considered the similarities between me and other staggering geniuses. I put on a film I had been meaning to see since my brother took me to see Murder by Numbers in theaters when I was underage. Y Tu Mama Tambien. I found the title comical, titillating back then. Five minutes in, the door opens. Shit. He’s drunk. He mentions something about a piecepipe. His reference was to the sixer of Leffe Blonde he picked out just for me.

“This is Hertzberg’s favorite,” he tells the liquor store owner. The owner suggests picking out one of the cold ones in the fridge, a concept that never occurred to my roommate, who’d been eating well and drinking better for the past six hours. He regales of his tales Zellas and then Lottie’s. Having sense enough to go home, he stopped by a liquor store, thought of what little beer we housed in our apartment, thought of me and what I liked. He walked in with this six-pack, one that I’ve been fond of all week, and my first thought was: “shit. I’m not watching this movie tonight.”

06.14.11

The night began innocently enough. Along with Jackie, Tessa, Gene and a slough of new UPChicago cohorts, we started off at Innjoy with $1 PBR's ($5 pitchers). We got all of the introductions and businessy stuff out of the way, finished our drinks and moved next door to Small Bar. There was apparently some sort of sporting match of the international football variety. Already failing in my pledge to pay more attention to the sport after the World Cup last year, the significance of this game was entirely lost on me. Alas, I had to leave before the first half even ended. In a hurry to other dinner reservations, I slammed my Lagunitas Pilsner, picked up a sixer of Leffe Blonde at a nearby liquor store, withdrew a lot (a lot) of cash and headed to Schwa.

Schwa. That tiny hole in the wall, infamously lower case 'f' fine dining gem hidden in plain sight on Ashland Avenue on the edge of Wicker Park. The meal: incredible, and the details will be revealed elsewhere soon enough. But a curious thing happened at the end. As they had Max's credit card in the back, and after we were greeted by Mr. Carlson himself (after devouring our Lou Malnati's gift), the server asked one final time what we thought of the meal. Now, some people aren't familiar with my brand of sarcasm. It's so...incessant, ubiquitous, sinister...it's very delinquency is so absurd that I should almost never be taken seriously in casual, social banter. And I get it: it's hard to for some people to grasp that such extreme abuse of this lingual form can exist and that they have to be confronted with it. So when I insinuated the meal (the nine course, $115 meal) was on par with a cheeseburger I ate earlier (which I never even did for the record), it's understandable that someone after a long night or serving and drinking, taking care of us for three hours, might misconstrue the comment.

Vinyl

Wrote this one a couple months ago. Apparently I find value in writing short prose pieces. Meaning in the temporary and fractured thoughts and all that. So it goes:

 

 

(credit)

Life is like vinyl records. You are born already with so few caring about your existence. But it is relevant to the few who matter. As life goes on, there are more pops and hisses in your life, cracks and chips, but there is still a group of dedicated people to you, who want to maintain your longevity. Despite all the cracks, you still have your groove. The majority of the world doesn’t care about you, but it is because they are impatient; they are not clever enough to see your side B. To be sure, how well you perform depends on the care of others. Sometimes you get stacked improperly, with the weight of other records above you. It wasn’t your fault but it is your fate. If the needle isn’t properly maintained, you will wear out sooner than you should have. Change your needles, change your minds. Shop local and buy records.

Nueva Vida

A few weeks ago I created a Tumblr account. Already writing for blogs under Blogger and Wordpress, figured I might as well bow to the triumvirate. When I went to post my first piece, I realized it was fucking impossible (or unjustifiably confusing) to justify text and center photos. HTML wasn't updating, and this shit is just too easy in Blogger. Although Tumblr makes it easier to post to other social network sites, I must succumb to the ease of what I know and delay any new beginnings. I figured a new site would help my write more, that I would find inspiration in tabula rasa. Alas, I'm back here. So let's do this.

Met Erin Phillips, general manager of the Aviary last night at the Map Room. She was super drunk and thought we (Craig and Andy) were trying to get beef on her to blog about. I don't really know much about the joint, but want to check it out at some point. Just posting because Erin kept saying we would blog shit about her. Here's hoping I can still get a res there.

Book Report: Patti Smith - Just Kids

Whenever I read anything even remotely relating to the New York punk scene in the 70s, I get an immediate rush of inspiration. It’s not even always to create something or be proactive, but just to read about people’s lives in the time is so fascinating. I feel truly lucky to be living in a time of such proximity so as to be able to learn about such an explosive era of modern culture. And even though I own no albums by Patti Smith, nor have beyond a vague introduction to Robert Mapplethorpe’s photography, the former’s account of their relationship is simply just too interesting to put down. CBGB’s is nothing more than a hiccup in this book, a break from digesting their dynamic time together. In an oddly voyeuristic stance, I yearned to feel as close to anyone as they did to each other. The key component of this work is the brilliance of Smith’s writing. And despite perhaps an overuse of the word ‘talisman’ (although overused for a reason), I hanged on every word as poor Robert hung on to every last blood cell.