Best Of 2009 Part 3...

September 04, 2009
Chan Marshall...

I am in love with. Been in love ever since I first heard her song. I was trying to explain this to the girl who was taking me to The Greek to see her tonight. Hadn't been to the Greek all summer - best venue I've ever known, just exquisite. Anyway, when she first waltzed out onto that stage and started that raspy soul sucking shit, I felt like I was falling into the floor. I wanted to meet her, tell her she wooed me, that she should be honored and that so few actually do. I felt like I was saying all of this out loud to my company - possibly foreshadowing lightly of what was to come between the two of us in real life. See, I had been seeing this girl long enough - or better...had enough of a connection and enough respect for her to know we had to talk. We were moving in separate directions and I could feel it. She was absolutely moving into the direction she should have been moving - towards me - and I was...well, standing still. I just wrote an e-mail saying something like, I've only gone on 4+ dates with 2 girls in the 5 years I've been in Los Angeles and loved both of them...before deleting it, as if it was supposed to be some form of consolation for my ending the night with words that led her into slamming my door and starting intentions of not behaving normally around me for the next 3 weeks. I was lucky to be with her. Absolutely and still...this is just how I behave.

September 18, 2009
Adventureland...

Great movie. And it's not because I spent the summer after my freshman year of college working at a Six Flags in Jackson, New Jersey. I lived in a company house with 8 other baseball players from all over the country. We'd have bonfires of garbage because nobody ever came to pick it up and rave dance parties with the European kids who came over to work for the summer. To get let in, I'd ask them to bring their free park passes, given to any employee after they accumulated a certain number of hours on the job. We'd get blacked out and fuck this house like you wouldn't believe. There was a Czech girl Ieva, beautiful blonde, who was always begging me to have sex with her...to save her from the arranged marriage that was waiting for her back home. I never did...told over over and over that I was in love with some faraway girl named Clark. One morning after a banner party, I stood outside the McDonalds by the park entrance, right off the highway and made 600 dollars selling the Euro kids' passes to suspicious Garden State natives.

October 29, 2009
Muse - Berlin O2 Arena - 10/29/09...

I ordered house made penne with prawns in a lobster cream sauce and a small margherita pizza and a Warsteiner. Half-way through the beer I started to feel my guts, shooting - like all that I was going to be was coming to life. It would have happened without the drugs, sure...I just don't know to what extent, and I don't know how exhaustion would have played its hand. The night was too big to leave things up to chance so I didn't. By the time the food came, I was rolling and starving and all I wanted to do was devour it so I did. Incredible. One of the better meals I have ever had - absolute comfort. I was reading the map and memorizing the subways and squares and parks like a machine and the waitresses were softening to me because I am who I am. I started to ask them how to say things in German, maybe telling them I loved them for teaching me, for bringing me along, for giving me such incredible hospitality while all the while thinking I'm on drugs I'm on drugs I'm on drugs. They sat down at my table and we talked because it was slow and because I am who I am and I promised them I would return. Of course I would return. Of course I would never forget them. Of course. The more oncoming of the two told me I could walk to the O2 and that made me very excited, crossing town in 20 minutes while relying entirely on myself and my feet and my toes, knees, heart, eyes...my brewing fucking insanity.

October 29, 2009
Sometime After 5 AM...

After going to bed at 1 and feeling like I had slept perfectly for days, I got up and went for a run. Today, I went west and went for 6 songs and then turned back, all Killers, set on shuffle. I shot steam with every exhale and in spite of things I've been through over the past few days, my legs felt strong, voracious. My breath was easy. I felt unstoppable and this is how it has to happen for the rest of my life. The TV doesn't work so I read books. I have no friends so I talk and wander and explore. I have no fear so I am fearless. There's an energy charging through me now, in this new city...in every new city from now until I no longer have the urge to do this. I am growing, exponentially when I chase these things and knew this when I booked the ticket a month ago, knew of its coming necessity - of all the reminder a trip like this provides. I need adventure to survive. I need growth to survive. It's easy to forget, to get comfortable and stable in the lives we live. To tuck away and be safe and just fucking hang on. There's a bloody red tattoo inked onto this right wrist of mine - reminding me to suffer, suffer in my pursuits - reminding me I don't need to be understood by anyone but myself.

October 30, 2009
John Durban Arrives...

Today he sent me a text and I told him not to because it's expensive when bouncing from the states and through whatever provider is swiping me out here. I told him to write me in an e-mail, not thinking about who I was dealing with...

H / i / B / u / r / n (slashes denote separate texts)
Are you serious? Stop
Yeah, okay / I didn't make it / are you there? / please don't ignore me / I'm fragile
Motherfucker!
I read / It looked good / Those boys can play / Sorry / Again
Alright cocksucker text me. Drinks on you.
Drinks always on me
You're coming?
don't know
Alright dude...
tone! that's a tone. why do you have a tone?
You should come.
You should talk
Halloween. I met a girl on the flight from NYC.
what's she do?
Fashion, runway.
Yeah?
Has 6 friends, same bill, edge beauty the cast type.
My type
They want to get righteous for Halloween.
Coincidence! so the fuck do I!!
You coming?
I always was. For you not them. Though I look a little false now.
Your MO. When?
7, already in the cab.
Alright.
Do you really think we need another chapter?
Yes. Maybe 2. One more push and they'll publish.
Let's make her famous / the city / maybe a pair of dames, too...

November 01, 2009
Amsterdam...

It's almost midnight. I have five hours to kill. At least. At least. Smoking doesn't work on me - even in Amsterdam. I'm not going to buy mushrooms and get on a 14 hour plane ride - probably wouldn't do it anyway. I'm not going to pick up some girl so I can share her bed for a few hours - it's not really my style. Sex echoes too much in me. There are candles in front of me - candles everywhere in this part of the world. I'm still trying to reel in everything that has happened over the last few days, can't believe it's a Sunday and I'm sitting with 3 drunks in a bar in Amsterdam, on my computer, about to be told to move along.

November 20, 2009

To place true value upon anything but that which is internal is at best a fickle fight, and at worst absolute self-destruction. I refuse to participate. Something will be done...

November 20, 2009
Ah, Berlin Through The Eyes of My JFK to Tegel Journeybeauty...

A couple weeks back, I think when I was flying home and then maybe even in recent stretches, this girl got me thinking about the psychology of attraction and why we work or why we don't...why we're inspired or why we're not. We sat next to each other on an airplane from New York to the much aforementioned German city and things happened. Most were real, some were probably invented, but things happened. We traded info and were going to paint town at some point and then it never really happened. I think she sent me an e-mail about Halloween and I sent one back and then didn't hear anything. I was out to dinner one night before I went out and I sent her a text to come meet me and didn't hear anything and something appeared in me. I say this without hubris and in full truth - I don't often get rejected. Usually it's me and apologies and some beautiful thing disclosing herself on the corner of a busy street and my uttering incapabilities and apologies over and over and over. Some of them shed a tear there or when they leave, or slam doors, or tell me to grow up and fuck myself in no particular order. I'm not making fun of any of this - I know how dire the straights of love are to navigate, and I think it's why I so, so rarely even think of fucking with that kind of force. But this girl was different - or maybe what was different about her was that it and she would have been my ideal in that moment - a foreign city and beautiful girl for 4 days and then lots of these: ???????? Maybe that's not universally appealing, and that's something I'm learning too - that everything universally appealing to me isn't necessarily universally appealing. Anyway, the point - it's obvious I'm still learning to move through it with grace...life and rejection. Looking back, I'm not sure where the attraction fell, in the girl or in her refusal of my advance. In her case, it felt like an 80/20 - because she was as curious in the first 6-8 hours as any girl I've met.

December 09, 2009
Time To Put This Down...

I posted a picture on November 20th with a title that said something exactly like Trouble Coming. There was a picture of a boat in blue water. I had Google searched something like Thailand Beaches and it seemed like the best one to fit what was in my head. I used it as a flag, something of a nod to myself to mark the moment I decided that this coming April, when my lease in LA expires, I'm buying a one way ticket to live in Thailand for a bit of time. It's not an I've had enough or an expat thing, quite the contrary. In my mind, the one life I want to live sounds exactly like this: see the world, place your voice in that world, give it life. I've always had this notion of selling a script or getting an advance on a book and using it to wipe away the 10,000 I owe in debt and then escape to the world and live somewhere where I don't have to worry about that shit and just create. Bleeding artist, I know, but if you know any truth to me, you know that's my heart. That's what I've got to stay true to. Something happened to me recently, some sort of epiphany I always knew was there. I'm a slave. The job I work runs me in circles just to support me and allow me time to write and create from Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles - there's nowhere like it...and I live a good life, I do. My complaints are so petty but still, this notion that's echoing, and it is, is saying something like what the fuck are you waiting for what the fuck are you waiting for what the fuck are you waiting for? Maybe I would feel more chained if I didn't have an escape, but the truth and my great fortune is that I have a golden ticket - a piece of paper that could remove my debt and get me where I want to go - a land where I can rent a shanty on a cliff on a beach for 5 dollars a day, where I can eat all I need for 2, where I could stretch one thousand dollars forever if I needed to. What the fuck am I waiting for? I'm not anymore. I'm gone.

This Monday, I met with a book manager that Team Burn set me up with. We had drinks in Culver City and he said something like I read everything...fucking everything from unpublished authors and this is the best thing I've read in a long time. Then he said these two magic words that went exactly like this, maybe ever. Then he told me we were going to sell it in the new year, to be ready to storm New York in February. Two days prior, the Bestselling NY Times Titan I got the book to sent me an e-mail apologizing for the wait, but that he was nearly done and that it was exactly, really...really good...very impressive. Then he told me to check back in two weeks. I didn't tell him I close strong, that if I had him early, I'll most certainly have him late. In both cases, I don't know what I felt. I've always had belief. Maybe at some point, I thought some form of validation would come but now I don't think it ever will. None of this matters. It can't matter so I'm glad it doesn't. Whether I sell this thing or whether it gets published matters but can't. If my work never sniffs a screen or a hardcover matters but can't. I was in a pure place on November 20th, alone, me and my pen and what we came up with, me and my pen, was something exactly like, we know exactly what this next book is going to be about...we know what we want to say...write it...do it...make it happen. It's in Thailand, life and my story after the work that remains in-between. I find myself often taking breaths and thinking about that and it fixes anything in the world that could possibly ail me. What else could be the path if there is one...

Best Of 2009 Part 2...

May 10, 2009
Girl, Girl, Girl...

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about what it was that I was looking for -- about what in a girl and chase appealed to me right now. I told him I was after someone above me, someone with only a touch of time for me, someone who adored and respected me and at the same time, may or may not be off fucking someone else's prince in a faraway country. He said I was out of my mind and I told him I'd long ago given up on trying to abide by the ever changing definitions of world sanity. I told him that my desire for her potential indiscretions weren't due to a lack of self-respect. Actually, quite the contrary - I have a great deal of respect for myself. Maybe, instead, it has something to do with self-preservation...that's what I said. But I think in the end, all I'm interested in right now is honesty. That was me being honest, I said. I don't know if he believed me...or if anyone ever believes me anymore and I don't know exactly when that happened.

May 24, 2009
26.2 Coming...

I've been burning on nerves all weekend. Saturday, I was driving down Olympic, on my way to pick up bib "#706 - Burn" for the Los Angeles marathon and I could feel a turning in my stomach. Over my head, somewhere East of Vermont, a banner was tied on two ends and blowing in the wind. It read, "Mile 23." On my I-Pod, The Killers' "Dustland Fairytale" was just getting going and Brandon Flowers was saying something exactly like, "I saw the devil wrappin' up his hands, he's getting' ready for the showdown," and I thought that to be about right...my chase of 26.2 miles under 3:11:00.

May 26, 2009
So I'm Not Okay With This...

I'm sitting here now and I can feel this tightening in my body...this tightening in my mind, this need to find and lock onto the weaknesses in my life so that I can destroy them. Maybe this is obsession, maybe not. I'm proud of the time I ran yesterday, sure, and the fight I put in...because I fucking bled myself out on that course, I did...but not enough. Something's missing. I can tell you what I am proud of...this reaction, what's happening to me right now, the parts of me that are holding onto the disappointment of 14 minutes. I can't handle that. Because this isn't just about running. Truth, it probably has nothing to do with running. It's about settling for 3:25 or saying fuck that...I'm better than that...and I'm not going to celebrate a fucking drop until I get exactly what I want. And maybe I'll never get that. Maybe 3:11 makes way for 3:05 makes way for 2:55 makes way for me grinding myself into the ground. Maybe...but I'm ready for that. I'm prepared for that.

June 01, 2009
The Day I Finished...

My horoscope in the Chicago Tribune said exactly...

"If you're going to write a story about your adventures, give it a good ending. Have the hero emerge enormously successful."

July 12, 2009
Let Me Tell You Why I'm Single...

I was leaving a party tonight, on a Sunday with this girl who I had earlier traded numbers with. She liked me, maybe quite a bit, and went out of her way to make that known before things came to an end at the end of the night. I'm superficial. I liked her too. Remember Diddy's white party - she was there, hired to hang out. We said goodbye and went our separate ways and I told her I would call her or that we would hang out but I hadn't yet decided if it was truth, not whether I wanted to...only if it was truth. I remember thinking as I was walking away something like dear oh dear...my dear you have no idea. And I think all people who think they're difficult and complex like to say things like that in their mind. I certainly do. I was getting into my car when she drove by and asked me if I wanted to hear her favorite song. I smiled and got inside and we didn't listen long before she put her seat down and back and things began to happen. Not much, but things. She spoke some words between action and I smiled and laughed and thought it to be a perfect cap to the evening, listening to Radiohead and then some in some pretty girl's car. She was playing games I thought, very sweet but semi rehearsed and maybe calculated but I was okay with that because I was just there. There were moments between where we'd have short conversations and I don't remember what she was saying, only that I was thinking we were crossing the point I'd crossed with past girls and told them how messy and awful I am, warning them of how messy and awful I might turn out to be, immediately and always laying down jagged and holed roads. But I didn't, and felt like I was over that sort of behavior...actually felt growth in the moment of my realization. Instead, I just smiled...or laughed, and all I was thinking of was how maniacal I felt, knowing she must have been thinking of how sweet and cute I seemed to be. I wasn't interested in telling her I didn't much live for a tomorrow girl or any girl unless she spits acid and scares the shit from me - thus insinuating she did neither. But still...something had pulled me into that car. At some point, when the crossroads came, I gave her a shot at the crown, because Kings Road wasn't far and because for whatever reason, I felt so rarely inclined. I knew what was coming. She balked, as if the invitation were laced with such scandal. Then she surrounded the word tomorrow with a series of other unimportant words. I think I'm supposed to call her.

July 27, 2009
Madison Reese...

Every now and again, I get reader e-mail. This one turned my head for a handful of reasons, and since I'm a glutton for fodder, perhaps it's best we discuss it here...because I'm a firm believer that with smoke comes fire...because fires need to either be fed or extinguished. I'm not sure which I'm doing here. The only thing I'm taking out will be potentially identifiable characteristics. I haven't a clue who this...but someone might. So...

...

Your Blog...

So here is the thing….I have debated for months on whether to write you or not….you came into my world in the fall of 2008----I took you spinning class at equinox---no I wasn’t one of the ******* ** ***** * *** * ***** ** **** ******* *** ******* huffing and puffing and trying not to get ass sweat (sexy I know). I thought you were gay….dont be offended being a ******* girl I think most men in LA are gay…unless they tell me otherwise. You never noticed me. You never looked in my direction…but I took your class a couple more times listened to you guide us with your cosmic energy watched as you pushed the girls (and lets be honest most of the guys) with your charm and your playlist….heavy on Kings of Leon and Radiohead….I could tell you were a lover, a manipulator, and man with a story. It wasn’t until 5 months ago when I began reading your blog that I began to put your life together…extremely confident, somewhat talented, and the most passionate person I have ever known (seen/read/been aware of). I guess to say I know you would be wrong. I know the point of your blog is to put your thoughts out there I don’t know if its for peace of mind or the hopes that your true love will read it or someone in the industry namely Danny McBride (I asked BJ-his asst---he hasn’t heard anything about it) would stumble upon your yearning to write for EAD. You make me happy and angry all at once. You are so confident, almost cocky, we have mutual friends, I respect you for some, I question you for others. I admire your commitment to health (this shouldn’t mean much I mainly eat my feelings---mostly mcdonalds---and rarely exercising---it’s a form of self loathing). I think you are a great hustler in a town of hustlers---you have waited on me before----I was with * *********---a ****** *****----you barely looked at me---instead you told a story of baseball and Illinois---and made quips---you thought were charming----I thought were annoying. You have magnetism---and you know it. You are very self aware---and to be honest you are a great writer---I wonder if you have a small dick---I get that you have huge balls---but where are the faults??? You say all these women hit on you---I do not doubt it----but no self deprecating humor---no questioning---every time I read your blog I buy into the bullshit---ive read it in its entirety---I have a lot of a sleepless nights---im **********---ok to be honest ive never really been ********---living off of * ***** and hating every minute---we are beyond different---our problems are never the same---so I guess the reason I am writing is to find out----is it real??? Are you this person or are you projecting?? Have you had the successes with your specs and scripts or are you moonlighting as someone on the verge of success??? Do you believe in happily ever after??? I don’t know what answers I am looking for I don’t even know why I am writing ----just give me something---another letter will come again---when my thoughts are more clear----until then…..

Ps I used no punctuation and bad grammar to piss you off??? Did it work?? Do you get mad about stuff like that???

My name isnt madison reese----it isnt even close----im too much of a coward to reveal my identity---too scared you wont respond

pps this is by far the creepiest thing i have EVER done

Madison

...

I wrote back saying this is the kind of thing I would do, writing someone like this. I'm the kind of guy who has dozens of unsent e-mails sitting in his outbox, addressed to guess who(s), never having any intention of sending them. So I get it, and the whole art of expression through words. I don't know why exactly, but I felt like this one needs to be taken on here. This is not creepy. Or, if it is...then I'm creepy too and fuck the world. I'm right, they're wrong.

I got this e-mail as I was leaving to drive to San Francisco on friday and it moved me through some self-reflection, which is essentially what this entire blog is. It's selfish and self stroking and now this letter is a part of that, because to be honest, it got me off...and I don't think that was the intention. Sure, there are some digs and it might make you wonder if, say, my confidence is compensation for having a small dick, but in full disclosure, it's an ego feeder. So thank you, sweet Madison. Now, this may be a one time thing and I'll be over it tomorrow, but if you write a blog in this world and people get invested...so much that they come at you...I think you owe them something. So, let's begin...

- Not Gay.
- Somewhat talented? Please.
- Peace of mind.
- My true love (word choice) will never have to read my blog.
- No agency is going to give a spec episode of EBD to Danny McBride, too much hustle too little money.
- Hustler? I could have fucked my way out of the service industry a long time ago. I work.
- I make quips behind the bars I work. I am charming. You probably weren't THAT annoyed. I know what I'm doing.
- I am very self aware, hyper sensitive. Sometimes, I have a hard time dealing because of it.
- No.
- My blog, so far, is essentially about my failure to be the two things in this world I desire to be - a lover and a writer. I've never put a term on that before, because that's not the kind of thing I do, but if I had to pick a term, what would it be more than self-deprecation?
- I've had "success" as a writer. You're writing me, aren't you? Truth, no...not really. After all, I still work in a restaurant and have made that pretty clear. People like me don't choose to work in a restaurant. In terms of EBD...all that stuff is either true or a large handful of industry people are conspiring to fuck with me. It's 30 pages, it's a great script. I can write. I played baseball. As you know, I have something of an ego. I know recreational drug abuse. Clearly, you know the show. Do the math.
- Did my last spec get love then get blasted in studio coverage? Yes. Did it get me signed? Yes. Am I on the verge of success? By world definition...I believe so. Could I be wrong? No.
- Happily ever after? I think you're asking about two lovers and I don't know that. If I died tomorrow and someone were writing my story, they could say I lived happily ever after. And I'm alone. Right now, I've everything I need. So yes.
- Bad grammar pisses me off. Spelling is worse.

Is this me? Am I this?

Yes.

July 31, 2009
My Mother...

I've always had the sort of parents that have been game for anything. When I showed up with my first tattoo as a 12 year old, they said okay. The first time I was arrested, they said okay (not so much on the subsequent and escalating ones). When I wanted to play baseball for a living, they said okay. When I wanted to move to Hollywood and try to write movies and later books and television shows for a living, they said okay. When I packed my bags and left to blindly tour the world, they said okay. We've always had something of an understanding that life was mine and that I could do with it what I wanted. Amazing concept - I don't think everyone grows up with. Anyway, I talk a lot of shit on here and in life about my personal pursuits and recently, my old man (who is actually closer to 22) asked if I'd send him a copy of the Eastbound and Down I wrote. I sent it about a week ago and knew he printed it up and that it was sitting somewhere in my Lake Forest home when I got this text from my mother today, quoting...

"Only pussies, assholes and/or fags off themselves with pills."

How lucky can one guy be? Honestly.

August 07, 2009
Ladies And Gentlemen I Present To You The Hands Of A Girl I Once Loved...

I hadn't seen them in over a year, or spoken to the mouth above them in over a year because things didn't end so pretty for the two of us. There was a point in the relationship - which by world standards was brief, and she was quick to point this out - where I fell for something I originally promised not to fall for. Soon after, we fell out and I spent the next 2-4 months dealing with the sort of things someone deals with when these things happen. It was a fine period in my life, and if one were so inclined, they could literally go back on here, back to last July until November and see the process of my driving a speeding car, seatbelt off and knives pointing out from the steering wheel, straight into a brick wall. I haven't looked back, but someday I will...and I'll thank her in a note, saying something like, thank you...you amazing bitch...thank you.

I sat down and we talked about the things we were chasing, the worlds we were occupying and the people we were fucking. Right away she said something like okay we're going to talk about that and then we're going to talk about how crazy you are. Then she smiled. From that smile on, within moments of my sitting down, everything was light and easy, the way it should be...the way it should have been but never could have been until today. We talked about my faults and hers, taking turns calling out and then defending each other, trading apologies and inabilities we both hoped to one day separately conquer. We sat there for close to 2 hours and she held me that entire time, and I never once worried about the thousand things I had to do or the thousand and one worlds I had to conquer. I was there and could have stayed there forever, honestly...that kind of girl.

When she got up to go to the bathroom, I found myself thinking back to times long ago, back to a brief stretch when we were wild about each other. I remember telling her I thought she was rarity, that she stood me up like no one I had ever experienced, that no matter what happened...even if things got bad between us...we had to fight to keep a friendly fragment of what we had intact...and not just because I thought I might always want to bed this girl. Then I remembered another conversation that went something like, when this ends it's gonna end bad, before we laughed about it and fucking dared each other to break it off...constantly. We were madly wrong and right for each other - a total floating disaster, covered in gasoline, pissing on an open flame.

One year and change later, today, we were walking to our cars on the sidewalk of Highland. She said she was sorry that I got hurt, that she cried too for the same reasons, my getting hurt, and I told her to stop. I didn't know what we were apologizing for...the shit we're made of that made us fall, then fall apart - the shit that allowed us as strangers to spit fire and laughter for two hours at some coffee shop in Hollywood - the shit that's going to carry us with grace through the remains of our lives? Fuck that. I'm sorry it took us a year to speak, sure, but I'm not sorry that I flipped out and picked a raw fight and she's not sorry that she responded by hanging me out...and we both admitted this and then laughed about it. That was us...we're still all that. If we weren't all those things, we never would have known any of this. I'll take that. I think she would too.

August 21, 2009
70,446...

And every single word that survived survived a fucking war. I don't know what I feel right now. I wrote Durban and he said he didn't know what to say, only that he felt light and that if he felt light, that I should allow myself the same. Today, I did the last 4,000 words. I don't know what I feel right now, only that I'm spinning. The last thing he asked me was if he could tell people what it was going to be called...as if he had to get permission from me - something he claimed I earlier wouldn't allow. I don't remember this, but I suppose it is something I would say. I told him to go tell the world...

We Are The Dusk.

Best Of 2009 Part 1...

January 17, 2009
Post Adolescent Molestation And Its Ties To Getting Poor Studio Coverage on Kimberly And Valentine...

We hit the early bird at this buffet place where all the senior citzies rolled. I think we talked about baseball, the wars he'd been in, his distant family or lack of...girlfriends of mine, mysteries of his. At some point, he said something strange, something that knocked me on my heels. He mentioned or asked about...and I need some ellipses here...either my loss of virginity or my taking of virginity. I think I gave him something, maybe out of admiration of his asking something so odd so casually, then told him to top off and to-go the iced tea he was nursing...we were leaving.

On the way home, we made a park detour to look at some newly built youth baseball fields. We parked, got out, looked around...quick. When we got back in the car, he started talking about the military again. By then, I was kind of shut off, ready to fucking go, to get back on with my life. At some point, something about the whole ordeal had become an extreme chore. Something about it had turned odd...maybe because in my mind of minds, I had a feeling about what was coming. I heard it out the side of my ear, something about showering in the military and this joke they would play and then...

Then the old man grabbed my shit - this glancing swipe, reaching across the center console, straight into my crotch. I looked over to him, speechless and bewildered, not really knowing what to say. Mind you, when this happened, I was 30 pounds heavier than I am now, all power, probably hopped up on what would today be an entire regimen of banned and illegal substances. With a finger, I could have snapped the man...maybe that's why I didn't. I'm not really the passive type, but again, in my mind of minds...if that made his day - a man nearing the end of his days, then that's an after the fact gift I suppose I was willing to give. We drove away, moved on. Forgiven, odd, sad, whatever...

February 02, 2009
There Goes The Neighborhood...

Me and Durban finally broke ground on the novel we've been threatening.

We both have this thing that's probably not very charming to anyone outside the two of us -- belief that we're literary gods in the ripening. I suppose only time will tell. But I can tell you this...the novel, the novella...anything that takes time and genuine thought to consume in this world is going extinct. We're ending. When our children's children rule the world, there won't be a world left to rule. I can't explain how that exact notion is going to relate exactly to our mighty pens, but it will.

February 13, 2009
So I'm Starting To Think It's Me...

And I don't know why I'm saying this, other than to work through self-realization...and because I've got these bruises on my shoulder and back...and I was looking in the mirror and realized that I'd forgotten my response to her question in the backseat of my car, asking if she could bite me and then my daring her, then again...then again and soon after just hoping a cop wasn't going to drive by while all the while thinking to myself -- I should have gotten this out of my system in high school.

March 04, 2009
Love Is Carnage...

So this morning, I woke up to find this sweet (I see sweetness in odd things) and direct letter in my in-box that's peppered with words like rude and curt and douchebag. The douchebag thing was more of a warning and not an accusation. We all know I'm not a douchebag -- she does too. There were also quite a few f-bombs...not angry ones, just...expressive. And I think I got the letter because of everything I just mentioned, and my likely resulting behavior due to the laundry list of excuses as to why my life is supposedly in disarray...and it is, it absolutely is, and it will always be in absolute disarray because that's what I need in my life and only people in disarray can understand that.

If you follow me and read me and retain any of these words, you know that I was at least sometime in the last year touched up pretty badly by a girl. You know that before her, I have been touched up pretty badly in the past. You know that I own the sensitivity to handle reverse situations with grace and chivalry and you know of me as being an exemplary enough character that I remember my own broken hearts and that I would at least try my damnedest to never let my actions deal any ill-feelings or broken hearts. I hope you know that -- that I would never apologize for my supposed indiscretions -- but that I would at least always try to do right.

But love is carnage. Absolute fucking carnage. And no matter how clean we try to make it, no matter how great the intentions or how remarkable both involved parties are capable of being, someone always gets touched up. It's the price we should all be willing to pay. Because to me, there is nothing as awe inspiring in this world as being in love. The thought of it literally inspires my every turn. And the higher you rise and the better it gets, the greater the crater...and someone always winds up in the crater, always. The truth, there have been a short few that have left me there...some deep, others glancing. The truth, I've left many, many more - and don't you dare think that's me holding a trophy, that's the last thing I would ever do. It's a definition, a self-realization. Because every time I wake up with one of these letters, I'm reminded of my sweet incapability. I'm reminded of my true romance...

March 30, 2009
My Behavior II...

I'm at a bar and this girl is hawking me all night, because I'm a specimen or for whatever reasons people hawk other people, fill in your own shit. I write a lot about girl plural and the pursuit of good things that sometimes associate with them because the entire process defines fascination to me. This has all been said before. For the last month or so, in so many words, I've been absolutely out of the game - and I do this often, all the time, actually...because catch this theme as I make it obvious...it also suits me. Why? Well, because at this point in my life, I'm going to dish hurt to everyone and I'm going to dish it quickly. So I certainly tell people to tell people not to chase me. I certainly do that. And in the rare, rare case that I do actually meet a game changer, and they change my game, I know that in the end, I'll lose. They'll cut my legs out. Why? Because I think let them...because ultimately, I think that's exactly what I want. Because I look at myself and I hear what you don't hear and I can say because I know, I am incapable of anything but these absolutes, these extremes. Because it's destructive, unrealistic, temporary. Because it keeps me clean.

April 29, 2009
Mt. Baldy...

It took me about an hour to get down the first ridge. If you want me to fractionalize, I will...I was about 1/15th of the way down, just fucked. Have I made this abundantly clear yet? I started talking to the rocks, because they were so fickle. Most rocks were small and most steps caused them and about 30 of their ankle smashing friends to slide. So when I'd find a good one to grip, I'd say things like be strong my friend or take care of me now. Please don't think I'm kidding. There were at least two instances where I lost my footing and saved myself from a tumble with three fingers of an outstretched arm. Sometimes, I'd laugh it or the pain I'd recently suffered off, but most of the way, I was a little more panicked than I wanted to be, wondering what things were going to be like when the sun goes down.

Gordon Ramsey...

Let's play genius again. The man comes from passion, everything. Love it. This first one is just lunatic shit, just fucking lunatic.

Genius happens later, after development, after we get camera ready - losing some weight/little plastic surgery - and hit the Brit version of Kitchen Nightmares. Once again, lunatic shit, but more collected, composed, moving in another direction. Genius. I fucking love Gordon Ramsey. Sometimes I'm sitting around watching him and want to scream it out loud.

Home...

It's snowing outside. Light, white. Everything feels very clean in Lake Forest. I was sitting at the table with my family and we were sipping some Grand Mariner and started talking about old times - growing up in this town. High school was trying for me in a lot of ways. I used to hang with this group of guys, an irreplaceable group of guys. Let me run with this one a little bit...

Lake Forest High School football sucks. Terrible. We never really competed for anything - never made much of a splash in the conference - rarely made the state playoffs. We were a town that bred tall, big armed throwers and ran the option, year after year with backfields full of slow white kids. Anyway, once every 20 or so years, fates would line up and we would somehow field a trio of runners that could compete and go down state. I'm 28 years old - we had 1 team in all of my memory that put it together...and guess what, I can still remember the 3 kids' names from the backfield: Klapper, Comstock, Boeder. They were amazing. I only mention them because me and my friends were like that - that lining of such destined talent. Only our talent fell in different fields...like drinking, fighting, vandalism (allegedly), theft, grand theft (allegedly)...honestly, I could go as far as the imagination could roll. We were like that, terrible youth or so the authorities liked to believe. Actually, we were not very well behaved, I won't pretend otherwise. At some point during our sophomore year, after the state of Illinois allowed us to drive cars, the entire high school population and their parents started calling us this awful name that will be mentioned later in this post...and then it stuck. Comedy. A lot of people come out of high school and tell stories of their glory days and of the hell they used to raise and I just listen and nod and say things like wow that's amazing you guys were hard. I have nothing to say.

When dessert came out, I mentioned something about LakeForester archives, grabbed my Mac, paid 3 bucks and took a little trip down memory lane. Oh baby did this throw some hell into my life, and then so too the felony charges that would soon follow...

...

Six charged with mob action
DANIEL I. DORFMAN STAFF WRITER
Published: February 24, 2000

Six area teen-agers were arrested and charged with mob action among other crimes Feb. 13 after police say they instigated a fight at an unsupervised party. According to Lake Forest Police Commander Patricia Lord, at approximately 4 a.m., the six suspects attempted to gain access to a party on the 200 block of East Vine in Lake Forest.

A front window to the home was broken, leading to some fighting. A Lake Forest police officer was in the area when he heard the glass brake and began to investigate.

"They knowingly got together to do an unlawful act which in this case was criminal trespass to residence," Lord said.

Matthew T. Krawiec, 18, 284 Granby Road, Lake Forest was charged with one count of criminal trespass to residence, three counts of battery, one count of mob action and one count of criminal damage to property. His bond was set at $15,000. Krawiec was arrested in January for breaking a window at another unsupervised party.

Gary L. Jester, 17, 12533 W. Meadow Circle, Lake Bluff, was charged with one count of criminal trespass to residence and one count of mob action. He posted $500 as bond and has a scheduled court date of March 6.

Patrick J. McConachie, 17, 701 Sheffield Court, Lake Forest was charged with criminal trespass to residence, one count of battery, and one count of mob action. He posted a $1,000 bond and has a scheduled court date of March 6.

Michael T. Hutchen, 18, 971 Coventry, Lake Forest, Reilly Smith, 18, 185 Washington Circle, Lake Forest, Austin C. Smith, 17, 883 N. McKinley Road, Lake Forest, were all charged with one count of criminal trespass to residence and one count of mob action. All posted $500, and have a scheduled court date of March 6.

Frat Boys
The six suspects are believed to have ties to a group known as "The Frat Boys." That group has been linked to at least one act of vandalism.

"The gentlemen arrested are part of a group which is self-described as the Frat Boys," Lord said.

The words Frat Boys were painted on mural designed by a Lake Forest High School student across the street from the Gorton Center on Illinois Road.

Lake Forest High School Principal Marilyn Howell conceded school officials are aware of the "Frat Boys." Describing them as elusive.

"We have some idea who belongs, but we are not sure who belongs each week." Howell said Tuesday.

She added this is not the first time problems of this type have emerged.

"Senior boys will emerge with a group with a catch name and they are accused of doing acts that are not appropriate to the school or the community."

Howell would not comment if "The Frat Boys" have been under suspicion for other acts inside the school.

...

Ten years later, the machine and everyone in it above are still such a joke to me. These were "adults" handling us "children." We the "evil" element of this pristine North Shore town. Comedy, comedy...all of it comedy. I would love to sit down again with these people, all of these people who sat me down and have a face to face about their lives today, about all of the judgements they laid upon me, about the "guidance" they were giving me - these people inside this small high school and in this small town, trying to "teach" me about life and what movements within it should be deemed appropriate and not. Unbelievable.

Someone sent the article to my soon to be college baseball coach at Illinois. They were on a road trip to Michigan State and he stood up and read it out loud to the team before a game. They told me I couldn't play baseball, that they were going to take away my scholarship. They told me a lot of things. I thought about running away - I thought about a lot of things. Growth. We hired a good lawyer and everything of mine got thrown out. A couple of my friends didn't talk to me for a week - thought I cut some sort of deal with the prosecutor. Things were never the same between us. That was tough. I like to think it made me tough.

I like to believe a lot of the things that happened from my 15-18 made a great deal of the man I am today.

Right now, well, I don't keep up with anything and am a selfish cockface so I have no idea what anyone is really up to. When I'm home, I do what I can to change that. Maybe tomorrow. These boys are in my blood - them and the handful who didn't appear in publication for this particular happening - who made up the 50 some compiled arrests over those 4 years. I wonder what's bendin' their lives. I wonder how they're moving...

I Think I Have A New Hero...

Until they pull this one...


And one hell of a musical guest to go with him...

Oh Mon Ami, Audrey Tautou...

Madison Reese...

I think she said she wrote me sometime in July for the first time. Some kind of spill her guts e-mail saying things like, wow you're great...I've read your history - It's kept me up late nights many nights. Then she told me I was all at once an egotistical cocksucker...called me fascinating...then boring...smug and false...judging my missteps and conquests with women...dealing with all the dickhead selfish and hurtful things I constantly say and claim. Every now and then I get an e-mail from some girl posing either as herself or someone else, telling me I moved her, telling me I wow her, essentially wanting to have a better connection with me - some guy who writes about things on the internet, hopefully truthfully, maybe over dramatically, but always with honesty.

Anyway, Reese came to me because she was in need of something. At first, because we're trained to do so, I thought it might all be a bit too much. After all, here was a girl who wasn't even offering me her name, her identity, and she was spilling her life to me...asking me to spill my life to her. I don't remember the point, but there was certainly a point where things changed between us, at least for me. I stopped seeing her as some girl trying to reach out and grab something she could never have - statements like that piss her off wildly and she'll be sure to tell me all about it, leaning back on the ever too familiar, you're such an incredibly arrogant motherfucker, or something in the ballpark. I don't mean for this to sound overly sentimental, but at some point she turned into a friend...and at some point I sat back in my chair after sending a long reply to a long e-mail she had sent and thought to myself something like, wow...28 years old and does a girl in this world know me better in this moment than one I've never met...one who hasn't even given me her name. Interesting moment for a reflective soul, I'll give that.

It's something after 8 on a Thursday. We've both been busy for the past few weeks, trading e-mails about meeting up, a face-to-face but it hasn't yet been allowed to happen. Tonight works. I'm taking a drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel. I'm going to have a cocktail in the Polo Lounge and told Reese to meet me there. She'll read this sometime before or after she goes and will undoubtedly give me shit - especially for preemptively stealing her thunder about giving me shit for writing another post about her. I think she's thinking a little bit too much about this right now. I think it's working her up, nerves and such. I think she is nervous as hell to see me, to reveal herself to me and I understand why but don't. I love myself and think I'm hot shit but mostly for the sake of arc. Maybe she thinks I'm something I'm not. Maybe I fail to give myself proper credit. Is that even possible? I'm going to tell her that I don't want to know her real name...because to me it will always be false. Reality and truth came in the form of a false reach out a long time ago. Seeing this girl and meeting this girl isn't going to change anything for me. What she is has been engraved - this struggling and talented and fierce and wounded and confused fucking bitch that I want to sit in front of and say something like, I got you if you got me. We're gonna be just fine.

Las Vegas...

I can arrange for that Rei, getting tazed. You just let me know.

Dan Nesser

This Is My Graceland...

Tonight, after I get off work, I'm driving out to Las Vegas. It's been a few years since I've been - stretching to my days of haze and black out. This time it's different or it's going to be different. I'm buying some new running shoes on my way out that I need to break in before January 17th. That means I'm getting up to run for 90 or so minutes both mornings - no matter what. Done are the days when I set myself up to fail because of the poison I ingest the night previous. I'm meeting a friend there who hails from the city of sin. He's going to show me around - my Graceland because we're going to the trailer park where Brandon Flowers used to write his music from - during the in betweens between his shifts as a bellhop. The Killers' second album, one of the greatest rock albums of all time is either named after the trailer park he grew up in or the casino he worked at - I'm not sure which is the truth. That's why I'm going - to feel the roots of one of the great bands and a frontmen who moves me greatly.

I'm staying at The Hard Rock tonight and Friday before taking in what I'm really in town to take in. About a month ago, I jumped on a plane and flew to Berlin, mostly because I didn't think these boys, the Muse boys, were going to make it over to the States...

On Saturday night, they're playing The Joint - at The Hard Rock. I'm there to take them in again - this time on my home soil. After the show, I'm driving home to make my 9am Sunday class. That's what the weekend is going to be like - something to look forward to. I put out an invite to Durban for Friday because I miss him and because I could use him and because we need to talk about these new book and life developments. He said he might show but I never know for sure. It's Durban.

Time To Put This Down...

I posted a picture on November 20th with a title that said something exactly like Trouble Coming. There was a picture of a boat in blue water. I had Google searched something like Thailand Beaches and it seemed like the best one to fit what was in my head. I used it as a flag, something of a nod to myself to mark the moment I decided that this coming April, when my lease in LA expires, I'm buying a one way ticket to live in Thailand for a bit of time. It's not an I've had enough or an expat thing, quite the contrary. In my mind, the one life I want to live sounds exactly like this: see the world, place your voice in that world, give it life. I've always had this notion of selling a script or getting an advance on a book and using it to wipe away the 10,000 I owe in debt and then escape to the world and live somewhere where I don't have to worry about that shit and just create. Bleeding artist, I know, but if you know any truth to me, you know that's my heart. That's what I've got to stay true to. Something happened to me recently, some sort of epiphany I always knew was there. I'm a slave. The job I work runs me in circles just to support me and allow me time to write and create from Los Angeles. I love Los Angeles - there's nowhere like it...and I live a good life, I do. My complaints are so petty but still, this notion that's echoing, and it is, is saying something like what the fuck are you waiting for what the fuck are you waiting for what the fuck are you waiting for? Maybe I would feel more chained if I didn't have an escape, but the truth and my great fortune is that I have a golden ticket - a piece of paper that could remove my debt and get me where I want to go - a land where I can rent a shanty on a cliff on a beach for 5 dollars a day, where I can eat all I need for 2, where I could stretch one thousand dollars forever if I needed to. What the fuck am I waiting for? I'm not anymore. I'm gone.

This Monday, I met with a book manager that Team Burn set me up with. We had drinks in Culver City and he said something like I read everything...fucking everything from unpublished authors and this is the best thing I've read in a long time. Then he said these two magic words that went exactly like this, maybe ever. Then he told me we were going to sell it in the new year, to be ready to storm New York in February. Two days prior, the Bestselling NY Times Titan I got the book to sent me an e-mail apologizing for the wait, but that he was nearly done and that it was exactly, really...really good...very impressive. Then he told me to check back in two weeks. I didn't tell him I close strong, that if I had him early, I'll most certainly have him late. In both cases, I don't know what I felt. I've always had belief. Maybe at some point, I thought some form of validation would come but now I don't think it ever will. None of this matters. It can't matter so I'm glad it doesn't. Whether I sell this thing or whether it gets published matters but can't. If my work never sniffs a screen or a hardcover matters but can't. I was in a pure place on November 20th, alone, me and my pen and what we came up with, me and my pen, was something exactly like, we know exactly what this next book is going to be about...we know what we want to say...write it...do it...make it happen. It's in Thailand, life and my story after the work that remains in-between. I find myself often taking breaths and thinking about that and it fixes anything in the world that could possibly ail me. What else could be the path if there is one...

I've Spoke About This Quite A Bit...

But when the world no longer asks me to speak for myself, when it begins to speak for me, I worry about my future here, HERE, on this page, but that's okay, a thing deserving support, good for me, the world, because I'm an egomaniac like that and that's what I'm thinking, right now, for the past week, with a growing beat, 5 years in the making and ready to get at what's coming.

That's all. Goodnight.

Everybody Gets Pitchforks!

Eddie Van Who?

My brother, who plays the guitar, no notice, only take...

Obsession...

3:19:08...

Getting there. Brutal course. There's more in the tank, I know. Mile 24 was a flat 6 minutes. 25 and 26 were 6:30's. I was finishing like a rabid motherfucker and some talented burner turned over his shoulder and said something exactly like, Jesus Christ dude. Felt good, felt strong. Felt like I can in the future get it under 3, then to 2:45, then who knows. I feel like I'm on the edge of picking up a sponsor and if that happens, who knows. Last night, I was watching the replay of the Ironman in Kona and the winners were all in their 30's - at their peak. Who knows.

Today, I ran with my dad and brother. There were two points in the course where there was a doubleback, where we could pass each other and slap hands and fists. It was a little cold and dark and drizzling and we were suffering for something together and potentially intangible but it obviously became something else. Seeing the look on my old man's face, twice and then at the finish - 50 some years old and conquering today. It was a life moment. I'll remember it forever - this Sunday.

So These 2 Albums...

Seattle...

Landed sometime around 6. Parents flew in sometime around noon. It was raining and a little cold. Seattle. Thanksgiving. We came from Chicago and Los Angeles. Every year, we usually find our way back together and then find this - something of a tradition for Team Smith. Indescribable John Candy. Home away from Home away from Home in the Northwest.

And Ended Here...

Osteria Mozza, somewhere in front of a Verdicchio, Pinot Nero, Montepulciano. I remember the order, but it's not important. At some point, I was driving around town, looking for a place to pop in on, somewhere to take care of me for dinner. Honestly, It's been a long day. I taught 3 classes and shot a fitness video and I'm tired -- somehow because they were pairing wines with everything I ordered. Everything. I'm wiped...so wiped, there's a lot of editing happening in this typing behind the scenes. LA in the last bits before the holidays is like this floating ghost town - so beautiful and empty, and I guess that's what brought me to my wandering, my need to find something grounding at the finest restaurant in town...somewhere where they knew my name. Sad but true. Amazing, amazing.

I Am...

Drinking whisky in a bar around Sunset, Cat Power in my ear.

Come find me.

My Continuing Education...

An Afternoon With Team Nelms...

My scabs have finally peeled away. All I have are pale spots and slashes of what recently was.

Last Saturday, me and the boys made a drive up north to Mt. Pinos. They had been talking for months about taking bikes up the mountain and then bombing down in full armor and of the dives they'd taken and how I should come and see it and feel it and take it on. When my car broke down, I bought a bike that could handle that sort of excursion and then we went. And then there was snow. I knew that no matter what was going to come was just going to come, because fear or anticipation are by the day becoming useless traits to me. I remember thinking something like, fuck we're really doing this, before we dropped into the first trail and then I remember just hanging on. It was fast and rugged and I was such a rook to these flying maniacs, but they took me through. The first run, I rode a lot of brake. The second, considerably less. There's a fucked up drop in on the second of three paths that takes a lot of faith, especially for a kid who had both never seen it and was scared to hell of heights - also the cause of the great closing wreck to the following video. I remember dropping through and then thinking I'd be alright. I took my first dive into a patch of thorn bushes and survived it and loved it and then remember thinking I'd be alright.

We rode until the sun was setting, until a rider we passed said something like, if you guys go down that trail again it's frostbite for sure...before we rode the trail again, until the sun set, until we couldn't even see the damn trail anymore. We packed up, hit some bottom of the hill pizza joint, drank some hot chocolate and drove home. At some point, I pulled a thorn from my leg that was at least a quarter inch inside. It felt fitting, and even one week away, it still feels like a damn good day.

Esh even let me pick the music...

New York, I Love You...

But Paris was better.

Ah, Berlin Through The Eyes of My JFK to Tegel Journeybeauty...

A couple weeks back, I think when I was flying home and then maybe even in recent stretches, this girl got me thinking about the psychology of attraction and why we work or why we don't...why we're inspired or why we're not. We sat next to each other on an airplane from New York to the much aforementioned German city and things happened. Most were real, some were probably invented, but things happened. We traded info and were going to paint town at some point and then it never really happened. I think she sent me an e-mail about Halloween and I sent one back and then didn't hear anything. I was out to dinner one night before I went out and I sent her a text to come meet me and didn't hear anything and something appeared in me. I say this without hubris and in full truth - I don't often get rejected. Usually it's me and apologies and some beautiful thing disclosing herself on the corner of a busy street and my uttering incapabilities and apologies over and over and over. Some of them shed a tear there or when they leave, or slam doors, or tell me to grow up and fuck myself in no particular order. I'm not making fun of any of this - I know how dire the straights of love are to navigate, and I think it's why I so, so rarely even think of fucking with that kind of force. But this girl was different - or maybe what was different about her was that it and she would have been my ideal in that moment - a foreign city and beautiful girl for 4 days and then lots of these: ???????? Maybe that's not universally appealing, and that's something I'm learning too - that everything universally appealing to me isn't necessarily universally appealing. Anyway, the point - it's obvious I'm still learning to move through it with grace...life and rejection. Looking back, I'm not sure where the attraction fell, in the girl or in her refusal of my advance. In her case, it felt like an 80/20 - because she was as curious in the first 6-8 hours as any girl I've met.

For whatever reason, I got an e-mail today...just a little while ago. Berlin feels like ages ago. It was very sweet, said whatever people say when they either misplace or bypass an e-mail. Very sweet. She sent me this video and so it's going to post. Feels very nostalgic to me and probably anyone else on the plane that day. Also very ships passing. Love it. This girl defines the tag "girl" on here. Darling. We hold that up here, always.

Trouble Coming...

To place true value upon anything but that which is internal is at best a fickle fight, and at worst absolute self-destruction. I refuse to participate. Something will be done...

Turned Out Alright, Poisoned And All...

January Jones...

Black Holes And Such...

I got off the phone very recently with a friend in something of a crisis, a writer whose movies show up on televisions and big screens all over the world. Hugely successful, hugely talented. Frustrated. He got off the phone with a girl he knows from the uber agency. Frustrated. She told him stories of writers behind some of the iconic films of the last 20 years, dudes with Academy fucking awards. Frustrated. I've been trading e-mails with a friend of mine, an auteur director and brilliant writer. He just made a movie with a lead starlet who here gets more press than any other starlet I know. Having trouble with distribution. Frustrated.

Artists frustrated with their representation. Representation frustrated. Phones aren't ringing. Nothing is happening...

I've been in something of a panic lately. Just restless I guess now that I'm back in town and settling. I'm working on plenty of things I care about - so the balance is fine. I have work, great work out there and floating through consideration, somewhere. I keep on thinking that if I came through the same way I came through but 10 years earlier, I would have a major career. I have the talent, the work ethic, the heart, the desire for growth and discovery. Things would have been different if. I'm frustrated now but I'm fine...because I can't know which path I would prefer, success or this, because this...life is pretty fine. Today, I was cleaning up my apartment and thought back to an opportunity I had to work for a showrunner/writer - a massively successful one who had 2 separate network shows pumping out and out and out. For a thousand reasons but mostly having to do with time and money and personal creative sacrifice, I declined. That was maybe 3 years ago. I remember someone told me I was an idiot, which may have been true, but at the end of the day, my decline was based on the faith I had in myself, that someday, somehow, my course would take me exactly where I want to go. And even after 5 years out here and thousands of stumbles and hundreds of rejections and a few victories, I still feel that same way. Looking back, if I would have taken the job, which was a peasant's salary at the time, I'm sure I would be writing for one of those shows or another show - approaching producer credits, moving up and up and up and making money, so much money. That's exactly how it would have gone, because I'm the groomable type and because out here, nothing fills holes of abuse endured like mentoring. Fact. We are all so abused. So fucking abused.

Instead I'm sitting in this apartment on Kings Road, rested, body rocked from the endless fights I pick with heart and muscle and I'm just thinking about it all, taking it all in. Reflection often comes November, December, I find. It's fine as long as you don't hang around in it. But I've been thinking of a lot lately, like that in 5 years, for this industry, the golden age is coming. Nothing is getting made, bought or sold. Actors are starving, artists are stumbling. The doors are tight, so fucking tight. The weak fall away and the strong adapt, because we have no choice. Get better, undeniably better. Get fucking tighter. Give more, go deeper. The old tricks don't work anymore. If you want to play, you have to fight, fight real fucking hard. Everyone. Top to bottom, front to back. And if you're not willing, then you're done and you're dead and no one cares. No one fucking cares. And if I get held out of that tiny door because someone else gave more, saw clearer, shot further, then I'm fine with that. And we'll either push and elevate or everything is going to go to shit. I believe in the former, fear the latter...sitting here on a Wednesday night trying to figure out who is going to publish my book, who is going to make my movie, who is capable as being as relentless as I am in the face of this shit, all of this shit.

Brentwood League Champions...

Sometimes it's funny to find what things occupy time and heart in life as we go and go and go. For me, for the past 6 months, one night a week goes to dodgeball. Tonight, the team I play on in Brentwood took the crown. When I was 9 years old and playing baseball, the team I was playing for, Lake Forest, went up against the unbeatable Highland Park to see who would take the North Shore crown. They were undefeated and we were just beginning to come into our own as a town youth program. I remember it was tied 1-1 at the end of the game and they brought in this pitcher who threw hard, so fucking hard that you couldn't even see the thing and I came up and hit a home run and we won the crown. That was a good day. Tonight felt like that - not because I hit a home run or anything really equivalent, but because we took the title. Seriously great. The things that occupy time and heart...

Rumors started to float around the bar that we now get to play the champion of West Hollywood (also play on a team there) on the floor of the Staples center during halftime of a Lakers game (probably Clippers though...let's be serious). We played flip cup and people started to get really drunk and I stepped back because there were times and places for that in my life. Worlds ago, years ago. I'm drying out and have no problem with that. There were plenty of champions behaving like champions without me.

Awesome.

I'm Not Sure How Today Happened...

I was just sitting in the shower, in the dark head tucked in that let the water roll over me and laughing laughing laughing, how the fuck did today happen?

Yesterday and last night after riding maybe somewhere close to 100 miles on a bike, I decided I had to get out and go to a party. This place was a palace at the top of Crescent Heights and I ate some food there and at home before I went and that was that. Around midnight, I was so exhausted I couldn't even hold a conversation...so I do what I do - slip out and away without telling anyone and start my walk home. In this case, I was coming back from the top of the mountain and something started to feel off. I was tired, so tired and I chalked it up that all I had to do was make it home and find my bed and watch some SNL and that everything would be fine. At 2 in the morning, I woke up. I was hot and dizzy and surging...surging everywhere. That first time, I threw up 4 times. I felt better, went to bed, than woke up at 3, 4, and 5, always doing the same thing - body just emptying out, chills, hallucinations, the works. It was brutal, brutal. When I was a kid, it would have made me cry my face off. Parts of me still wanted to. Every time I'd settle back into bed, feeling better, I thought that would be it, over and over and over. Terrible. And for 5 minutes every time I'd get up and walk to the bathroom, it felt like my world was ending. Throwing up is a beautiful thing if you allow. It is beautiful the way we work. I wish I could have just stood back and given my admiration and let things fall like that, but there was too much on my mind. At some point, it was 5 in the morning and I hadn't made my playlist for my 9 in the morning killer class - 50 Equinox animals looking to me to kill it, kill it, kill it. It's not such a heavy thing to think about unless you begin to fall terribly ill, and exertion becomes something so daunting. I had no idea how I was going to pull myself together. It was going to be impossible. But that wasn't all...

There was another class I had to teach at 3 in the afternoon. It was supposed to go down at the Avalon nightclub in Hollywood. I had people coming from a lot of different parts of California to fill my class - which was essentially this monster production where you had to pay good money to get in. I started to think about being up on that bike, trash can at my side, hitting a huge hill and then throwing up, throwing up, throwing up. It made me want to cry, the thought of it all, such a heavy fucking Sunday. Sundays are not meant to be so fucking heavy.

At some point, choiceless, I started to look at it in from a new angle. I sat down and forced, fucking forced myself to eat 3 bananas and choke down, fucking choke down a half gallon of water. At some point, I stopped sweating. At some point, my vision came clear and the shakes stopped. At some point, I saw it as a gift, this brilliant opportunity to look something so fucked in the face and somehow, somehow find a way to beat it, because I pick fights, because I chase battles.

I arrived at that first room at 9 and said something like this class is not supposed to happen...everything we do now is a gift. Then we slaughtered it. I blacked out at the end for a second, caught myself from falling over, but we slaughtered it.

I rode my bike across town lugging 2 backpacks full of thank you bags consisting of Kool Aid and CD's of the 3 o'clock class. Then I stood in the green room before going on and stood over the toilet and just spit and spit and thankfully nothing came out. Then we slaughtered it. I just saw clips on ABC News and it looked good. I set my recorder for Fox 11 - 10 o'clock news because I want to see how it looks - because I want to leave a mark.

I'm sitting here on my couch, hydrating, hydrating, hydrating. Football is on, Wokano is being delivered. Curb and Bored To Death are coming on in an hour. I'm trying to breathe, just breathe, not sure how today happened.

Growth.

People I Love This Weekend...

It started with Trainspotting, whenever Trainspotting came across me, but something happened when I became enraptured with the series Long Way Around and Long Way Down...where Mr. McGregor rides his motorcycle with Charlie Boorman through Eastern Europe and then later from England to the tip of South Africa. I'm certainly not that affected by celebrity - maybe I was at one point, but doing what I do, I'm just not anymore. BUT, if I did meet Ewan McGregor I feel like I'd ask him out on a man date, to buy him a beer somewhere and talk about life. Genius to me can be defined in a thousand ways - and because of that, I admire this man's genius in his sincerity, his thirst for life, his manner. Clooney too. If I had a dynamic duo of working actors today, it might be exactly these two...


...

Sometimes when I'm working, Taylor Swift's dad comes into Mozza and sits at my bar. We talk about her rise from whatever she rose from and I tell him how she made such an impression, albeit brief, on an episode of SNL last season. Now she's hosting double duty tomorrow night. Wildly, wildly talented girl. Me and him get friendly and I say things like well this is great...you come in here for lunch and I get our meeting out of the way...having already met dad in case I ever ask your daughter to marry me. He always laughs, actually laughs before leaving a huge tip. Good guy. Can't take my eyes off her. That kind a gal...

I'm Going To Tell You What You Can't Do...

After doing exactly what I did for the past 100 hours. You can't step into your home and expect that everything is going to be the way you left it, or that things will feel the way they felt - maybe ever again. I'm not saying that my life changed in the last 100 hours of my life - that would be absurd...but I'm not saying it didn't. Last night - and technically it was last night even if it felt like 50 hours ago, because I didn't sleep and gained 9 hours, Sunday night - I was walking through Amsterdam at 3 in the morning after seeing 3 seperate bars give last calls. I had another 2 hours to burn and my spine hurt and body needed rest and I was tired, so fucking tired. It was the red light district and I walked into an arcade because I was going to pay 2 Euros to see a sex show - 2 people fucking behind glass so that I could just sit down and later write about something so poetic with full authenticity. Behind me, a band of fools walked in, drunk...high, took away the flavor of my moment. In the booths, rag dispensers were drilled into the walls and I suddenly realized even I couldn't have turned what I would have seen into something romantic or like I said...poetic. Even my words. It made me want to weep. So I left and found this steps from the exit, took a picture...

Swans, beautiful swans lining the rivers amongst the savages - fucking savages. It's exactly what brought me back to Amsterdam. I could have stayed in the airport and slept and waited for my flight but instead I committed to something else - something costly and opening. And it was still beautiful, and at times ugly, but wholly inspiring - fucking swans bathing in the scum of red lights...undaunted, unaffected - and because of them so was I. I think I bought an ice cream cone, soft serve, butter pecan and walked the streets before getting on a bus that would take me all over town before dropping me at the airport at 6 in the morning. I saw the sun come up and then I don't remember much else besides landing in Los Angeles and trying to hold my hand out without watching my fingers shake.

Hello Los Angeles. I'll find you again, just be patient with me. Be accepting. That is all.

Amsterdam...

I'm drinking Le Chouffe at a bar. Bowie is playing. It's getting close to midnight and my flight doesn't leave until tomorrow morning at 1030. Trains back to the airport don't start until 430. I have some time to kill and then some. Good town. I just spent the last hour walking and walking, looking for something to eat before I stopped at a Mexican joint called Caramba. And by Mexican joint, I mean some wildly talented and successful chef crashed town and decided to open up this stomp in the middle of one of the most quaint and affluent streets of town. Incredible. I told my waiter to tell the chef his food changed my life. He came out and we had a beer and talked briefly and struggled through barriers of understanding, but seriously memorable.

It's almost midnight. I have five hours to kill. At least. At least. Smoking doesn't work on me - even in Amsterdam. I'm not going to buy mushrooms and get on a 14 hour plane ride - probably wouldn't do it anyway. I'm not going to pick up some girl so I can share her bed for a few hours - it's not really my style. Sex echoes too much in me. There are candles in front of me - candles everywhere in this part of the world. I'm still trying to reel in everything that has happened over the last few days, can't believe it's a Sunday and I'm sitting with 3 drunks in a bar in Amsterdam, on my computer, about to be told to move along.

I woke up this morning and was riding around town and I couldn't help but think that if we're open to it, absolutely open to it, the world gives us exactly what we need, not always what we want but what we need. I was thinking that a lot today - the girls, the nights, Durban. He's gone and I'll see him again soon. Soon. Right now, I'm trying to come down, trying to wrap myself around the events that occur in my world...how I brought them upon myself, how I will continue to bring them upon myself. I'm just drifting now. Just drifting. It's Sunday and I don't know anything else but that this is my life and I will continue to make it.

My Lady In Red...

This post has been removed by Team Burn.

Durban...

This post has been removed by Team Burn.