"Yeah, and my tongue will be in your mouth"
I left work early today. Around 10:30 or so. I took a vitamin and it immediately made me feel like my stomach was going to explode. As much as I tried to ignore it, knowing it would pass, it wasn’t working. I couldn’t think straight. Even when I walked into the warehouse, the music that was playing innocently enough, was like an orchestra of chainsaws in my head. So I left. I went home and laid in bed, eventually falling asleep and eventually waking up at 3, stomach calmed but still confused as hell… and I made the poor decision to get up and go to my gray bin full of 20+ years of writings. And the only time I really wrote stuff down back then was when I was… confused as hell. So it didn’t help.
The first book I picked up begins on a new years day. I can tell this was new years day 1998 because later in the book I’m in Europe with the Get Up Kids. The first thing I notice on this page is that I’ve written nonsense vertically in the margins… and on most subsequent pages as well. It didn’t take long to remember that was where I made notes on what I had dreamt about the previous night.
On this new years day, the margin read: “I’m in a movie… my hand is bloody. There is a big flashback scene, where a car full of my friends are dragging me with my hand in the trunk. They are ditching Bob Weston.”
Now, Bob Weston did produce the first Get Up Kids record, so maybe I was unwillingly being dragged along for a ride that year as they were escaping his grasp? Side note: we all know that the first Get Up Kids record didn’t sound that great. Apparently Bob apologized to them a few years after. This may have been the situation with the first Promise Ring record as well: producer apologizes well after the fact. Or I could be mixing up my stories. What I do know is that the first Braid record is long gone. The producer sold his mini studio, along with the ADAT tapes, and they have presumably been taped over. For about an hour, I was REALLY upset about this. End of digression.
The rest of the page begins with “I woke up with tinsel draped around my neck…” and details the night before at Empty Bottle that ended with a “kiss-the-concrete stupor” outside. I had been working there for the prior few months and so apparently in the minutes leading up to midnight, I was one of the people called upon to help distribute “malt liquor” new years toasts. I drank most of the bottle I was supposed to be divvying up. I list a bunch of people by name that I kissed (some of the names simply do not ring any bells) and then I hit the floor. Another shocking revelation – I remember talking to a girl (named here) earlier in the night and saying “I’ll see you at midnight!” and her response was “Yeah, and my tongue will be in your mouth.” Shocking. It is detailed here, though, that she in fact left before midnight (possibly due to a fight she had with her present boyfriend, also in attendance) and this did not happen. Still, a shocking beginning to a “diary.” Makes you want to read on, huh?
This book is a day by day recollection up until the end of May of that year… And this is only the first page. This page ends on a sad note, though, with the sentences: “She hates me now. She was so right when she said I only wanted to be liked She wouldn’t even pour me beer. I just shouldn’t have gone.”
Ugh! This is only one medium sized book in a bin FULL of books, large and small, scraps of paper just sitting there, haunting me. I can’t just throw em away, so I guess I’ll just blog about ‘em.
One last thing, I am WAY into the Stephen Tobolowsky podcasts known as The Tobolowsky Files. You should have started downloading them before you started reading this so that you could NOW go and enjoy something much more entertaining. I’ve listened to episodes 2, 3, and 4. They are all amazing. Funny, touching, well-thought out true stories. Highly recommended. I did hang out with Mr. Tobolowsky for an hour or two in 2008. This was before he was killed off from Heroes and before he was introduced on Glee but well after he was Sammy Jenkis in Memento and Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day.
Looking forward to page 2!
The first book I picked up begins on a new years day. I can tell this was new years day 1998 because later in the book I’m in Europe with the Get Up Kids. The first thing I notice on this page is that I’ve written nonsense vertically in the margins… and on most subsequent pages as well. It didn’t take long to remember that was where I made notes on what I had dreamt about the previous night.
On this new years day, the margin read: “I’m in a movie… my hand is bloody. There is a big flashback scene, where a car full of my friends are dragging me with my hand in the trunk. They are ditching Bob Weston.”
Now, Bob Weston did produce the first Get Up Kids record, so maybe I was unwillingly being dragged along for a ride that year as they were escaping his grasp? Side note: we all know that the first Get Up Kids record didn’t sound that great. Apparently Bob apologized to them a few years after. This may have been the situation with the first Promise Ring record as well: producer apologizes well after the fact. Or I could be mixing up my stories. What I do know is that the first Braid record is long gone. The producer sold his mini studio, along with the ADAT tapes, and they have presumably been taped over. For about an hour, I was REALLY upset about this. End of digression.
The rest of the page begins with “I woke up with tinsel draped around my neck…” and details the night before at Empty Bottle that ended with a “kiss-the-concrete stupor” outside. I had been working there for the prior few months and so apparently in the minutes leading up to midnight, I was one of the people called upon to help distribute “malt liquor” new years toasts. I drank most of the bottle I was supposed to be divvying up. I list a bunch of people by name that I kissed (some of the names simply do not ring any bells) and then I hit the floor. Another shocking revelation – I remember talking to a girl (named here) earlier in the night and saying “I’ll see you at midnight!” and her response was “Yeah, and my tongue will be in your mouth.” Shocking. It is detailed here, though, that she in fact left before midnight (possibly due to a fight she had with her present boyfriend, also in attendance) and this did not happen. Still, a shocking beginning to a “diary.” Makes you want to read on, huh?
This book is a day by day recollection up until the end of May of that year… And this is only the first page. This page ends on a sad note, though, with the sentences: “She hates me now. She was so right when she said I only wanted to be liked She wouldn’t even pour me beer. I just shouldn’t have gone.”
Ugh! This is only one medium sized book in a bin FULL of books, large and small, scraps of paper just sitting there, haunting me. I can’t just throw em away, so I guess I’ll just blog about ‘em.
One last thing, I am WAY into the Stephen Tobolowsky podcasts known as The Tobolowsky Files. You should have started downloading them before you started reading this so that you could NOW go and enjoy something much more entertaining. I’ve listened to episodes 2, 3, and 4. They are all amazing. Funny, touching, well-thought out true stories. Highly recommended. I did hang out with Mr. Tobolowsky for an hour or two in 2008. This was before he was killed off from Heroes and before he was introduced on Glee but well after he was Sammy Jenkis in Memento and Ned Ryerson in Groundhog Day.
Looking forward to page 2!
posted by Robert at
6:37 PM
1 Comments:
Am I the only person who feels he was most notable as "Warner Brandis" in Sneakers?
My name is Warner Brandis. My voice is my passport. Verify me.
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