Gulp Fiction

The diet again

I haven’t been writing in a while. I haven’t been on the diet in a while either.

Trying to eat healthy was easy for a while until I started working nights. There is nowhere healthy and quick and cheap to eat for dinner in Fairfield.

Today, I said I’m back on the diet. So for dinner I had a half-pound cheeseburger, onion rings and a Dr. Pepper.

Maybe I’ll start again tomorrow. I hear KFC is having one hell of a deal.

A treatise on writers block

Writers block can be a dangerous condition, as dangerous as over confidence, factual accuracy or even blunt declarations designed to grab the reader’s attention.

A writer suffering from writers block can push him/herself to an all-out, insanity-laced-with-LSD extreme in a desperate attempt to escape from the frustrating blank darkness, sometimes with disastrous results.

Such actions can send men to prison, church, rehab and sometimes even wondering how in the world they ended up in a campground in Del Norte County with a barefooted woman named Sunshine eating granola and singing “Ripple.” Badly. Off key and with the wrong words to boot.

Terrible things can emerge. Just look at Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away” – “I wish that I could fly, Into the sky, So very high, Just like a dragonfly.”

Those lyrics are right up there with Lord Byron or possibly Raffi. I’m not quite sure which one . . . the one without syphilis.

Such “brilliant” lyrics can only be the result of writers block or simple lyrical incompetence served with a warm side of the inability to recognize rotting garbage of the mind, and I am convinced that Mr. Kravitz suffers from all three to some degree or another.

In my case, I tried to write about tacos. Immanuel suggested that I write about Jack in the Box tacos to which Susan replied that it would damage what little credibility I have left to make such a deep-fried, greasy move. All the hot sauce packets in the world couldn’t mask the ill flavor of mystery meat paste that would be left in the mouth of society by that creation.

I tried to write about ludefisk but figured that the taste of lye was no better a flavor to leave on the palate of mankind than meat paste.

Indian food was good but its depths-of-Hades heat would simply sear off the moral callous I have tried so hard throughout these many years to build up with my licentious vulgarity.

So I was left with the pale task of writing about nothing. I figured it worked for Seinfeld.

Who would be my Elaine? My Kramer? Who would serve as my Larry David, and foster and cuddle me through the dark times? Lenny Kravitz was no good. He couldn’t write his way out of a wet paper bag and would surely be no help in plucking me from the sea of self-doubt and idiotic loss of words in which I have been afloat for the past month like Ishmael searching for Queequeg’s coffin.

My compatriots were no help. They had problems and deadlines of their own.

The guy at the mini-mart was normally helpful with things like directions and candy bars and relationship advice, a candy-slinging Buddha of some kind, but I doubted that he had the wherewithal to aid me in my time of literary need.

Perhaps only writers block could save from writers block. I would have to waterboard the waterboarder.

With a Dr. Pepper and a bag of Gardetto’s, I went to work, plugging away with feverous industry as I typed blindly away with no direction, no point, no merit aside from the ever-growing word count and document length listed at the bottom of the page.

Occasionally, a dog would bark or someone would call to ask if I wanted to go to Jack in the Box for some tacos, but for the most part, I strived forward simply disregarding any disconcerting embarrassment or doubt that arose as mere rubbish.

As I came to the end, I realized that I had won; though devoid of any real point, direction or even charm, there was something at least relevant to, at worst, myself, and, at best, a few others. And maybe it was even funny.

That was the start as well as the result that I had been searching for during these weeks. That was what had eluded me since Thanksgiving.

I realized that I had waterboarded the waterboarder. I was free from the Gitmo of the mind.

What to do with the night when the night means nothing

It's getting dark earlier. And even darker for me.
Working nights is a new and, in many ways, an unpleasant yet somehow welcomed addition to my life.
It has its perks: no alarms to rudely roust me in the mornings, no bedtimes, no traffic, no busy and jammed lunch hours to worry about any longer; only dinner hours, a strange bedfellow of service industry years gone and still remembered fondly.
It has its cons: no more watching sports on weekdays, no more dinner with Izza, no more making to the bar in time for anything except the nomads still left behind, no more "Girls Night Out" with the girls . . . and me.
I work four 10-hour days now, which is nice. Working until after midnight (and later) on Friday nights is nothing to brag about but there is something that soothingly makes up for it (if only in schadenfreude) in knowing on Monday mornings when my friends are slowly dragging themselves to work, I am, if not sleeping, at least still in bed.
The only question is what to do with the nights.
After arriving home, the time alone is beneficial -- I hear there is a Sarah Palin porn coming out soon and I haven't balanced my checkbook in quite a while -- but for a man who wishes for chicken wings when he gets off work, whether it be 5:30 p.m. or 12:30 a.m., something about watching the sun come up alone is worse than having chicken wings but no one to eat them with.
Aside from video games, compulsive cleaning, compulsive exercise, compulsive TV watching, compulsive online gambling (not if lame-duck GWB has anything to do with it) or casual writing, I can see no way to pass the time with any real meaning.
I suppose I can't complain too much, though I have a tendency to do so otherwise.
Izza makes her own schedule now and we have our mornings. We watch "Jeopardy," make chicken strips (though not chicken wings), and enjoy the peace and comfort of domesticity. I rub her shoulders, ask for her to rub my shoulders (or vice-versa)(mostly vice-versa), then shower and go to work.
But once again, what I am to do now?
She is asleep. I can't sleep.
Sportscenter can only be watched two or three times in a row without the desperation of the situation becoming horribly clear. Watching a show you've seen before is like watching a show you've seen before.
Honestly, I like Stuart Scott, but how many times can you see that man's lazy eye stare you in the face before going insane?
Perhaps chicken wings, thawed before I go to work, of course, cooked myself beside a stove Izza just cleaned, can remedy the late-night urge to which there is, despite Stuart Scott's attempts, no time to cure.

The sad and destructive tale of Hurricane Boland

DAVIS — The destruction was beyond belief.
After a night of slutty cops, slutty school girls, slutty nurses, slutty sluts and just about every cliche male sexual fantasy ever imagined, I was happy to once again be safe in the confines of my home.
It was 364-UTNH. Three-hundred-and-sixty-four days until the next Halloween. The safest day on the calendar.
Until Hurricane Boland reared its beautiful, dimpled, beard-clad face.
Waking up, I found four voicemails on my phone. Five missed calls, four from Boland. Four voicemails, all from Boland.
I listened to the first one.
"He's on the couch," Izza said. I deleted the rest of the voicemails. From the tone of the first, it was a safe bet to assume each one would just grow in desperation and at 7:45 a.m. I just couldn't handle it.
He said he was bleeding. He said he was lost. He said everything that I expected and admired.
He spoke with the confusion yet determination of a man who still suckles at the teet that is Halloween; a man who still dresses up, a man who still believes.
I had done nothing for Halloween except for drink too much and look at 21-year-old girls dressed in barely nothing, girls too afraid to dress with the disregard for convention the rest of the year.
They were once-a-year skanks.
Boland was a Hershey's Kiss. A brilliant mix of duct tape, coat hangers and tin foil that would impress any talented yet alcoholic and currently unemployed engineer.
We had been at the bar. The G Street, to be exact, the only bar worth mentioning but nothing happened worth mentioning.
Somewhere between me being disgusted with everything, going to sleep and waking up, Boland had broken his nose, destroyed my shelf and knocked down a tree.
PG&E is here now. The fire department was here. The fire department moved Boland's truck.
Izza and Bethany have found, much to my displeasure, Sex and the City Movie DVD.
Now, once again, much to my displeasure, I am about to watch Sex and the city . . . the movie.
Normal conclusion of a post seems impossible. Suicide, reasonable.
If I survive, I'll continue at at better and far-less emasculating time.

A nice little Tuesday

I really hope there are some Christian groups near my polling station come Election Day.
I know they can’t be within 100 feet of the station but maybe they’ll be right around the corner.
When they come up to me, I’ll simply say, “Actually, I was just about to go in and vote a Muslim into the White House, give gays the right to marry, allow 14-year-old girls the right to have an abortion without parental consent or notification and then, coincidentally, take my girlfriend to Planned Parenthood for a quick abortion of her own before going to dance on a few veterans’ graves, burn an American flag, join the Taliban and have dinner at Applebee’s. A nice little Tuesday, if you ask me. We might hang out in a church parking lot to push crack on the kids getting out of Bible study but I don’t know if we’ll have enough time.”
They will be understandably upset, I hope. Then again, that is the idea.
Most of that is not true, of course. I’m not going to Applebee’s.
I guess I’m just not a “real American.” To be a “real American” you have to love Applebee’s. Or so I am told.
“I pledge allegiance to the restaurant of the United States of America, and to the overcooked entrees, for which it stands, one diner, under flavored, with diarrhea and blandness for all.”

Saturdays with Sarah

DAVIS — Saturday mornings are strangely good these days. As good as they can be without gigantic breakfasts, a gang of flunkeys passed out on any and every couch and available piece of real estate in my house, and a seemingly never-ending series of mimosas that gradually turn to beer and eventually, much to Izza's dismay, whiskey.
Yes, domestication has its perks. What they are, I still don't know.
Waking up this morning, I heard a sound that any man with a long-term girlfriend knows and dreads: The sound of Sarah Jessica-Parker and her three devils yacking obnoxiously under the guise of femininity about penises, shoes, cosmos and murdering the last shreds of dignity this world has left.
Needless to say, I was disgusted, forced to to get up regardless of how tired I still was.
Why I bought her that movie I will never know. I should have bought her "Hockey's 100 Greatest Goals" instead. At least we could watch that together without one of us vomiting.
Waking up to the sounds of Sex and the City is worse than any alarm, worse than the grinding gears of any garbage truck, and worse than just about anything I can imagine.
I think water-boarding victims at Gitmo cringe at the very thought of it.
Still, I made Izza some eggs and a bagle, made myself some coffee and started writing in an attempt to not lose my mind completely.
So far so good. Then again, it's still early.

Bloody knuckles, bloody ears, bloody stool, and bloody vomit

FAIRFIELD — Sadly, Izza went to the New Kids on the Block concert last night.
I’m not proud, but she actually wants to go with me to the UCD hockey game tonight and to the punk rock show tomorrow night so I guess that makes up for it . . . maybe.
If anything can wipe away the shame of paying to witness NKOTB’s synched gyrations and falsetto scuminess I suppose it would be a few high checks, cheap beers and cymbal crashes . . . once again, maybe.
I suppose I can’t really preach. I got drunk last night and punched a hole through a wall because I was pissed off at a video game, so I can hardly be considered a beacon of maturity.
Luckily, I have worked with drywall before so I can fix it without too much hassle.
Maybe my anger is the result of hockey being back. Punk rock and ice hockey do have a way of getting white people all riled up. It’s like sniffing Pixie Stix, but for adults.
I used to not understand or tolerate either but thanks to Dave Baker (hockey) and Pat Solem (punk), I have become a hockey fan and a punk fan.
I, much in the way the apostle Paul, have come around to see the light. No longer will I refer to ice hockey as “ice soccer” and no longer will I refer to punk as “angry teenager music.”
Then again, my GF went to the New Kids on the Block so, once again, I can hardly be considered a beacon of musical maturity.
She did find a $100 bill in the parking lot though; probably left as a sacrifice to the music gods by some poor sap whose succubus of a GF dragged him to the show despite his desperate pleas otherwise.
Or just a drunk, rich gay man.
I told Izza to bring her big purse tonight. That’s the way to go to any UCD hockey game, though, in all honesty, I have only been to one.
Fans are not technically allowed to drink there (it is a family establishment) but nobody cares as long as it’s kept only in the rink where the game is.
Izza brings her big purse, I dump a 12-pack into it (maybe a flask as well for good measure) and everybody is happy. Except perhaps for the person sitting directly in front of me who is forced to listen to my drunken, profanity-laced screaming for three periods.
Heaven forbid, it might go into overtime.
Then it’s on to the Murderland show Saturday. Where I again will spout drunken, profanity-laced rants at the top of my lungs. If I can speak on Sunday, it will be a miracle.
But after two nights of screaming, I doubt anyone will lament my silence.
P.S. Anyone who wants to go to either of the aforementioned events is obviously welcome to attend as well. UCD plays at 8 p.m. tonight (Friday) at Vacaville Ice Center and Murderland plays Saturday at The Stork Club in Oakland.
P.S.S. If ice hockey is not your cup of blood, Murderland also plays tonight in Citrus Heights. Check them out at http://www.myspace.com/murderland.

Ornithology and the human digestive tract, or, how I learned to love Johnny’s chicken wings

DAVIS—Heartburn be damned, I say there is no better way to show that good, old-fashioned Sarah Palinesque American spirit than by chowing down four to five pounds of spiced poultry with, say, one to 18 beers to wash it all down in the frigid coziness of a cold Fourth of July afternoon or a warm Thanksgiving morning and following it all up with wiping my mouth with the American flag and wiping my ass with the Canadian flag.
That’s just the way I roll.
Johnny makes some great wings. There is a certain allure to baked chicken wings. I know “purists” will scoff at such a suggestion, but for those of use who are trying not to die from a massive heart attack by the age of 12 and who like our chicken skin as crisp as a Canadian government-certified healthcare plan, such a means is not only justifiable, it is warranted. If I had such a plan, I could eat all the fried wings I wanted, but I don’t.
Fried wings are greasy, plain and simple. Normally, I not only abide by the grease policy, I endorse it with enthusiasm. But there is something, however, to baked wings that really grabs me by the colon and does not, despite my strongest efforts to shake it loose like an undigested piece of corn, let go.
The thing about fried wings is that they are hardly ever battered. So in order to bring a nice crisp to the skin they need to be charred beyond the point or recognition, leaving a dry center and an oily surface. And a dry center and an oily surface is exactly the reason why McCain-Palin need your vote.
Wings are simple, like most American food—imported, improved and modified for the masses, pretentious French people be damned.
Wings are a delicacy of necessity; the remnants of a waste-nothing era long overdue for a rebirth.
Just like barbecue and most soul food, they are the fruits of a people who did not have the luxury of selection. They took what they could and through culinary genius not only made it edible, they made it so good that it became the envy of the higher-class people who through power or leverage brought the hardship which caused such discoveries to be needed.
That is why wings and brisket and pork shoulder, previously thought to be nearly inedible by the upper-class white folks, has become as American as American can be. As American as soccer and frogs legs.
Baked wings are healthier and, frankly, better. Usually, I abstain from advocating or engaging in anything healthy but in this case I make an exception.
And Johnny has this garlic, pepper hot sauce that he coats them with that would make a vegetarian switch sides.
It is a very special sight to see the hoard of dangerously hungry young men move in as the two giant bowls come to the table—one full of wings, the other empty for the bones—and watch as, with amazing swiftness, the bowl of wings drops lower and lower as the bone bowl gets higher and higher.
I’ve seen five pounds of wings disappear quicker than an Oakland Raiders fourth-quarter lead (and the subsequent head coach, for that matter).
I hope to see them disappear just as quickly tonight, or possibly sometime this weekend, if Johnny doesn’t have to work or have some other pressing engagement this weekend.
I figure the “I buy, we fly, you cook, Izza cleans” rule still applies. I don’t know if Izza knows that rule yet. If she reads this, then she knows.
Now if only I could get Izza to enjoy the pleasure, nay, the privilege, of eating wings, all would be right in the world. And we invade Canada. Then everything would be just right.

Eating veal is not for the squeamish

or the timid, or even for the caring, and especially not for vegetarians.
As I do not subscribe to any of those groups, needless to say, I had a good amount of veal at the Rotary Oktoberfest Saturday night, and none of the guilt from which others who subscribe to those groups might suffer.
There is something soothing about an Oktoberfest celebration in September: the air is calmer, it stays light out later in the evening, and the all-you-can-eat bratwurst and all-you-can-drink beer is like getting to open a few Christmas presents on Christmas Eve. An exhilarating taste of what is to come.
My father wore his lederhosen (my mother was out of town so there was no way to stop him); he asked me if I wanted to wear mine but something held me back.
After I was there, I wish that I had hosened it up. The stimulus of all the surroundings made me feel a bit ashamed to be so ashamed.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of brats were being cooked up. Two kinds: a veal sausage, as I mentioned earlier, that had a delicate texture, and juicy center that was simply amazing; and a more traditional brat with a slight peppery spice to it that went exceptionally well with a mound of purple cabbage kraut and brown mustard.
Sudwerk provided the beer. And lots of it. There was a martzen, my favorite, and a pilsner, which my father was drinking until we told him that they had red wine.
Sadly, many Americans don’t know that Germans do drink and make wine, especially in southern Germany, where grapes will grow reasonably well.
A German polka band played throughout the night, keeping the sleep-inducing effects of beer after beer, and more food than anyone should eat on any day other than a holiday from causing us all to call it a night, head home and sleep until Thanksgiving.
The accordion’s annoying yet invigorating sounds kept us all going, much they way I have heard others who have been to Oktoberfest in Munich describe how the high-energy music keeps the masses going late into the night without the aid of large doses of amphetamine . . . for the most part.
For years, I never truly enjoyed Oktoberfest celebrations.
Perhaps it was my parents’ friends, my inability to drink, my hatred of polka music or some combination of all three and a few others. But in reality, there was something deeper.
There was some self-hating, guilt-ridden liberal white person aspect of my personality that pervaded and convinced me that because of the injustices committed by white people that such celebrations of white (and more specifically, German) culture had no place in the world. Maybe it was having grown up in the People’s Republic of Davis that filled me with such foolishness.
Luckily for myself and the sausage makers of the world, through age and time, maturity and life lessons, that bleeding-heart element of my psyche has been thoroughly flushed out like the undigested piece of corn in the stool of society that liberal white guilt is.
Now I am just a guy who eats baby cow with a clear conscience. And it tastes just fine.

Goodbye, young prince

I have tried throughout the week to write something clever and funny. I can’t.

I have tried to write something about chilidogs or drinking too much on my day off, something to brighten the mood and get us to smile again, yet, despite my best attempts, nothing seems capable or timely or even sufficient to lighten the darkness of youth lost so young in a town so desperate for the idealism that only youth’s vision can possess.

I had never met Matt Garcia in person. I spoke with him several times over the phone, mostly during his election bid. Rarely do editorial assistants enjoy the courtesy of having our names’ remembered by anyone other than PRs and MRs and the LTTE folks.

But Matt remembered me and my name. Some would say it was because we had the same name but he gave me the impression that he would have remembered my name no matter what it was.

He spoke to me with as if he genuinely cared; much the way I have heard others in the community speak of how he spoke to them.

He listened, rather than spoke; a trait all too rare in many politicians.

I will not speak of who he was or what he still is; of what he meant and still means to this city, to the future and to the people whose lives he touched – there are people who knew him far better than I did who can testify to that far better than I ever could.

I will only say that he was a man I wished I could have known; a man, though younger than myself, who I admired; and a man who carried a cause few in this world have the strength to hold.

I will say just this and let it be.

Stand tall, young prince, as you walk into the unknown, we will care to the tending of The Field in your absence; and though you are gone, if just in being, the seeds of change you planted in the child of us all will one day blossom into the beauty you magnificently once envisioned.