207

Two quick hits for you all tonight. Mr. Grant “Stemage” Henry has contributed a truly kickass track to the “Songs for the Cure ‘10″ compilation CD. 100% of the proceeds from sales of this record go to The American Cancer Society. A ten dollar donation gets you a digital download of the CD and twenty-five bucks gets you a physical CD in the mail. I don’t know a single person who hasn’t in some way been touched (and well and truly pissed off) by cancer and this is a great way to help in the fight and get some sweet tunes simultaneously, and at the same time, too!

I’ve heard the song Stem recorded for the compilation and it’s fantastic. Six minutes of instrumental genius that take you through serenity, into rock, and then into a little more rock. It starts you out in the Shire, walks you into Mordor and kinda leaves you there, but it totally destroys the one ring so it’s okay. His song alone is well-wroth the donation but I’m told there are other songs on the CD as well. I’m proud as punch of my boy G for helping out with this and was all too happy to throw down my monies and I hope some of you will see your way to dropping a little coin on this outstanding cause as well. If the CD isn’t enough incentive I’ll give a free For Catherine DVD to the first fifty people who forward me their receipt showing they donated twenty-five dollars or more. Go here to donate and go right on over here to read what Grant has to say about it.

In other news, my beloved little moving-picture For Catherine will be playing at The Browncoat Pub and Theatre in Wilmington, NC this Friday and Saturday (February 5th and 6th) as part of the Guerilla Film Series. The movie starts at 8 PM and tickets are only five dollars. If your in the area you should totally check it out. It’s a really cool film series highlighting micro-budget cinema and they have beer there. If you’d like any more information check out the theatre’s website above or write me up and I’ll help in whatever way I can.

Get a beverage of your choice and do something fine,

E
So much to be and nothing to do…

It is tradition that around this time each year, as new beginnings near, I reach forth my arm and with a steady, strong hand firmly press the stirring rhetoric button. And this year is no different. So hold on to you knickers, kids, we’re at full-tilt-boogey.

In just a few days we will exit what Time magazine dubbed, “The Decade From Hell” and while it’s hard to argue that some truly awful shit has gone down, it’s also hard to argue, I feel, that life is pretty flippin’ sweet.

Looking back over the past decade I fell in love once, got my heart broken twice, broke more hearts than I care to think about, wrote a book, made a movie that has screened on every continent but Antarctica (and at this rate Antarctica won’t be there much longer so fuck it, right?) graduated college, made a ton of AMAZING friends, spent an evening with Kevin Smith drinking nine dollar New Castles, shared a few beers with Butch Walker, Josh Joplin and Angie Aparo, picked up a hitchhiker, totaled a car, became good friends with not one but two strippers, lost a brother and my father, gained two brothers and a sister and the cutest little crime-fighting nephew ever, got a little praise from Brian K. Motherfucking Vaughan, laughed my ass off in both oceans, campaigned for and helped elect the first African American President of these United States, watched about 2,000 episodes of The Late Show with David Letterman, saw the Counting Crows live in concert about a half dozen times, walked away from a feature film seven days before shooting because it was the right thing to do, almost got in a fistfight in the bahamas, won a bunch of awards, got told a dozen times or so that I suck and should never be allowed to make movies, co-hosted a podcast, wrote, like, fifteen screenplays and, like, fifteen-hundred blogs, apologized, at least once, to everyone I know, appeared on a nationally televised teen soap, spent about a year as a homeless person, got asked to act in a porn, turned that down, wrote a one-shot comic book, started a bi-weekly comic strip with Xoph, toasted at five or six weddings, ate some stuff and this is just what I can think of off the top of my head.

Yeah, there’s some really, really shitty stuff in there, and some really, really shitty stuff that I didn’t mention, but all in, not bad work for a decade, I feel. And I hope as you all look over your last ten years you see that you found awesome and hope and greatness almost daily. And I hope I was some tiny, tiny part of some of that good stuff.

But, beyond than this, I hope you see that more than standing at the end of a crippled decade we are standing at the beginning of a year and a decade and a future that can be anything.

I have no idea what the future will bring, but I plan to dig the hell out of every moment. I have no idea where I will even be living this time next month, but I plan on kicking ass while I’m there.

The future is wide and mysterious and entirely ours. Yours and mine.

Bring on the awesome.

Get a beverage of your choice and move the world,

E

Yes, I still love you but it’s okay…

So I’ve been digging, ladies and gentlemen. Oh yes, I have been digging. Digging through the ashes and bones and sometimes literal garbage of my past lives. I have been doing this not to remember or to forget, but just to get away. It’s a whole thing and I don’t really want to go into it. If you follow me on twitter (and what the unholy fuck is wrong with you if you don’t?) then you’ve heard about this and you’ve heard some of the songs I’ve discovered from days long gone and best remembered only now and then. For example, I’m currently listening to Biff Naked as I type this. Anyone remember that chick? Craxy, right? Wonder what she’s doing right now.

Anyway.

I’ve probably got a whole blog of songs that got me here somewhere inside of me but that’s not what this is. This is something far more embarrassing. And don’t ever say I love me more than I love each of you, because I’m gonna look, at least mostly, like a fool by the end of this blog. Because tonight, just a few hours ago, really, I came across a list of possible titles for my first moving-picture, “For Catherine.”

Some of you may know this and others may not, but FC was originally titled simply, “207.” Then I went and changed just about every word of that script and it no longer seemed to fit for whatever reason. The title that I went with ended up coming simply from the dedication page. The title page to my script was ripped off and so whenever I looked at my script the first thing I saw was, “For Catherine.” And, eventually, it just stuck.

Before it stuck, though, I used to make lists every few weeks of possible titles. The list I’ve just found is mostly comprised of stolen lyrics from Counting Crows songs and I have no defense for that. So…yeah. For those of you who never liked the title of my movie, and I’ve heard from several of you, read this and bear in mind it could have been much worse.

Here we go:

The Way Things Be in 207 (Note: It gets even worse)
Everyday Regrets
Walkaways
Citizen Duo
207 Kids
Greenlit Cigarettes
Why the Clash is the Most Underrated Band in the History of Music (Note: Actually I love this title. It’s just that I’m the only one. I’ve tried to give three or four projects this name and, dammit, it’s gonna stick one day.)
If We Were Silver
Barely Out of Tuesday
Certain Seasons
Just a Girl
Fade Out
Colours Start to Fade
Seasons in a Letter
Left in a Letter
Black and Blue
Here Until You Leave
Familiar Positions
Toxicity
The Goodnight Girl
Down
Redemption in Reverse

So…yeah.

In my defense these lists were meant to be stream of consciousness sketches and that. Still…wow.

Anyway, thought some of you might enjoy that.

Get a beverage of your choice and if you can’t laugh at yourself, laugh at me,

E

never pay the reaper with love only…

My friend Evan the Editor or, as I call him, “Rodge,” called me up tonight and I found one of our exchanges funny enough to share with you all.

Ev: So…baseball…
Me: Fuck the Yankees!
Ev: Fuck em! Twenty-seven World Series wins.
Me: Yeah, and how many in our lifetime?
Ev: I’m not sure.
Me: I’m trying to remember all the years I’ve been depressed.
Ev: They’ve won the last 29 years in a row?
Me: …
Me: I hate you so much.

Also, we came up with a new T shirt design. It’s just a plain shirt and says across the chest “Football is like the Yankees: Fuck em.”

The shirt doesn’t make complete sense but I’m okay with that.

Get a beverage of your choice and enjoy your weekend, kids,

E
my hopeless dream…

There’s something fascinating about journalists. Something strangely glamorous and maybe just a tad, just a wee bit, delectable. Maybe because we see them so rarely these days. They seem mythic. Like bigfoot only less fuzzy. Like a hydra only much scarier if you’re doing shit you shouldn’t oughtta.

Maybe because the idea, if not the practice, is truth. And maybe that’s just me, I don’t know, but the idea of journalism to me is truth distilled, laser guided and fearless. Truth like you mean it. Truth with a kiss sometimes, sometimes with a bullet. The idea is truth and so the idea is holy.

And maybe it’s just me, but we never see that these days. Journalists have been replaced with fear mongers and hate mongers and various other mongers. (Monger is a fun word) By Glenn Becks and Bill O’Reilys. Sensationalism and exploitation is a lot more profitable than verisimilitude, it seems. And, if you listen to these unbelievable, unbearable fucks, profit is patriotism. Freedom is in the dollar, freedom is in the lie. A real American HATES.

Which is completely fucked but if I dig any further into this trench I may never find my way back to my point.

It is due, in part, to my fascination with the idea of a stone journalist that Transmetropolitan sits atop my list of greatest comics of all time. And I could talk for days, seriously, about Transmet. I even included a reference to it both in my first movie and in my toast at Xoph Daddy’s wedding. And if you ever meet me on the street and ask me what the finest moment in comic book history is, I’ll tell you it’s when Spider Jerusalem put on a shirt. But inside the blacker than pitch tone and cybernetic enhancements of Transmet, it’s the hope that makes it brilliant. It’s the humanity that makes it burn.

Transmet is genius.

But more than hope through gritted teeth these days what i want to see is hope inside open arms. More than the corrupt being taught a lesson with a bowel disruptor I want to see them taught a lesson with a defibrillator. These people have hearts, too. Even Glenn Beck inside the fear and the flab and the lies and the hate and the tears and the bullshit, somewhere in there, I have to believe, is a heart. Maybe he just need a jump-start.

Which brings me to DMZ.

I read the first trade of DMZ a few nights ago and I fell in love, much the way I fell in love with the likes of Y the Last Man and Kabuki. Hard and at first sight.

In DMZ we see a New York through the lens of a young, neophyte journalist. And what we see, for those of us who’ve been lucky enough to get that city, the city, under our feet is at once a New York we’ve never dreamed of and the New York we’ve known all our lives.

Brian Wood’s New York is war-torn and savage, broken and kind, suspicious and receptive, innocent and experienced, feared and all but abandoned by the outside world and still the crossroads of the universe. A New York that refuses to die or even bend under skies raining smartbombs and daisycutters. A New York of communities that care for their denizens as best they know how. A New York that protects its own. A New York that is enigmatic and as much completely separate as it is completely central to a nation.

And that’s the genius of the book. The genius is New York. The genius is the greatest city in the world through the lens of an outsider swaddled by people who just won’t die, who refuse not to flourish. Swaddled by New Yorkers.

At least that’s the genius of the first six issues. I’m told there are more.

Speaking of New York, falling hardcore, head over heals, retarded in love and genius, I think I’ve found the woman I’m going to marry.

Oh, sure, I foresee some complications, like the fact that we’ve never met and she almost surely has no idea who I am, but I’ve chosen to view these things as minor inconveniences. I’ve chosen not to let this define our relationship.

Anyway, her name is Susan Enan and, holy-shit-on-a-pogo-stick is she good.

I know that many if not most of the people who read my stuff prefer that their music sound more like Armageddon than salvation, but I think many of you might make exceptions for beauty on this kind of scale. Artistry like a cannon. Grace like a whisper.

I picked up her record on Amazon a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t stopped spinning it since. Her piano smokes with a soft, caring tone, her words are immaculate, surgical and towering, she has a voice like redemption and when she breathes, more than sings, certain words like “despair” it may be the sexiest sound in the whole of the world.

I fear that if I keep praising her in the manifold ways she deserves I might end up sounding more like a stalker than I’m comfortable with, so I’ll just link you to all kinds of places to hear and purchase her music and hope you find the same kind of deliverance in her voice, the same kind of calming sorrow in her words and the same joy in her instrument as I have.

Get a beverage of your choice and remember that music can still surprise you,

E

cling to what you treasure, and treasure what you hold…

So I tweeted about this yesterday, but this was such a seminal discovery for me I wanted to make sure it was saved for posterity so I’m also blogging about it.

Lets set the stage. It was early afternoon and I was enjoying a cup of green tea at Poops new apartment when I looked out onto her deck and saw that not only was it adorned with tiki torches, but that one of these torches looked EXACTLY like Mickey Rourke. It was stunning. Concussive. So awesome I’m considering starting a whole new blog called Tiki Torches that Look Like Scary Celebrities. It helped, I suppose, that the torch was hammered, half blind from syphilis and stumbled into a tree while I was watching it.

I may have made that last part up.

Anyway, for those who don’t follow my tweets, and, really, what the fuck is wrong with you if you don’t? Are you opposed to hilarity and awesome? Anyway, for those who don’t follow here is the picture.

I assure you this picture is unaffected. That mane, I suppose, was once its wick. Whatever the case, that tiki dude was awesome in The Pope of Greenwich Village.

I also want to mention briefly that The Cutting Room, the webcomic I have started doing with my mail man has received a bit of a face lift and I encourage you all to check it out. I’m particularly proud of the Jennifer’s Body and Julie and Julia comics.

Get a beverage of your choice and please don’t set Mickey Rourke’s head on fire,

E

I’m made of wonderful, I’m all easy breath and steady walk…

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here, but I was reminded of something I meant to do months ago. You see, my wife and I watched the movie I Love You, Man just last night. It was surprisingly good, I thought. Extraordinarily funny at points yet with a few moments of genuine pathos. At one point Jason Segel’s character delivers a toast recommending to the girlfriend of Paul Rudd’s character that she perform fellatio more often. And that’s not the funny part. That’s the pathos.

The movie is clearly a bromance, which I can totally get behind. For far too long, heterosexual dudes have repressed their platonic love for one another, and I say it needs to end. Check it: Ethan and I are a solid example of macho brotherly love. We met under the auspices of studying Emily Dickens. Then we secretly discussed Deadpool. Then—the inevitable cataclysmic fallout in all Bromantic Comedies—we accidentally shot each other several times in the face with shotguns while defending a large Mexican villa from Martian Invaders that looked surprisingly like Adam Duritz. Then, after we turned off the Nintendo, we made up and made out—in the most plutonic of make out sessions ever. You can’t make stuff like that up.

Anyway, the toast in I Love You, Man reminded me of a toast that this man I love delivered almost a year ago at my wedding, and I think it’s too damn genius to keep off the interwebs. As per usual with Ethan, it’s sometimes hard to hear what he’s saying over the raucous laughter that surrounds him. Also, if the shot ever seems to be out of focus, that’s because the camera was crying tears of joy. Watch it. Love it. Love the E.

Also, our latest venture, a webcomic has just been updated. So check it out right over here.

You wish you were getting married so that E could deliver a speech, don’t you?

Happy labor dabor, heroes.  I hope you’re all having a brilliant, chimerical, labor-free day.  For the most part I myself am taking it easy, Final Draft shall stay quiet for at least one day, but the one endeavor from which I will never cease, will never vacation, is my love for you all.

The highlights of my holiday weekend are thus:

1) My filthy assistant is coming down to the beach to visit me, which is most awesome.  I suspect hugs may even enter the equation.  She is bringing her boyfriend who is, I believe, from Equatorial Kundu, so that’s nice as well.

2) Saturday morning around four in the AM I received a telephone call from Mr. Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade and that was fucking sweet.  Inside the dizzy, vast jungles of my mind he sits atop clamoring mountains of other scribes in a magical land of awesome, chilling up there with the likes of Dylan Thomas, Dante, Sorkin-Allmighty and Brian K. Vaughan, and to speak with him for just a few minutes was, to say the least, decadent.  On a related note his wife gave birth to their second child over the weekend and I want to extend my warmest congratulations to them.  Surely that child will grow up to possess a vocabulary that would stagger even me.  Mazel tov, sir.

3) Today we launch my latest endeavor to rule all media: A new webcomic called “The Cutting Room.”  This is Mr. Mcpheely’s baby, he just asked me to write some strips and I told him I’d drop some words for him once a week.  It represents a fun little romp through my fucked up thoughts and if you have any interest in hilarity, please check it out.

4) Also Penny Arcade related, G and the boys made it back safely (barely, from what I hear) from melting the collective face off of PAX, and though I couldn’t be there myself I followed the tweets and the overall consensus seems to be that they dealt in fucking murders out there in Seattle.  I expected nothing less and am proud as punch of all of them.  A finer group of killers one could not hope to come by.

All in, a pretty rad-tastic weekend/week/thing despite Roddick’s heartbreaking loss to a GIANT from Greensborro on Saturday. And surely there is even more daunting beauty just around the bend with the new movie starting pre-pro this week and new opportunities for love and for greatness with each passing moment .  To the universe-entire I offer, nay, I challenge you: Bring on the wonder.

Hope you’re all having even more kickass times than me.

Get a beverage of your choice and live like you just escaped a bear attack, because, really, didn’t you?

E

If all this distance ain’t gonna bring you to me, then what’s the point of all this patience…

When Adam Duritz asks if I’ve seen him lately, I’m staring right at him but I know what he’s asking so I don’t say anything.  A few years ago he was out on the radio just starting to change and a few years after that I was doing the same thing in Art Houses and festivals and in your living room.

And when he says he doesn’t need anyone I know he’s lying because I’m lying, too.

When he says, “Somewhere out in America it’s raining” I expect the sky to open up at his command.  If anyone could control the weather with his words it would be him (or Destro).

Can I tell you one thing I remember about you, sir?  I can tell you a hundred things.

I could paint you a picture.  I could paint you in blue and red and black and grey.

Adam and I have a strange relationship considering the fact that we’ve never met.  This is going to sound completely fucked, I know, but the way I feel about him, it’s the way I’ve felt about a couple of the girls who walk around trailing pieces of me like a kill.  He’s like a girlfriend.  I know it’s fucked up but when he’s happy, I’m happy.  When he tells me “I’m very much in love these days,” I think, oh, sweet, we’re in love.  I wonder who we’re in love with.  When he’s excited, it is infectious.

When he tells me to make my eyes empty circles I think, I’m way ahead of you, brother.

And Michael Franti, what can I say?  I like a song about war crimes with a beat I can dance to.  Or, as Mr. Mcpheely pointed out, overturn a police car to.

I saw the man moonwalk barefoot during a medley of Jacko songs.  Barefoot.  A feet I didn’t think possible.

I went to an epic show Friday.

Epic the way you mean it.  Three and a half hours of rock and jumping and dancing with strangers.  Three and a half hours of Crows and Franti and Dylan and Guthrie and Stones and Grateful Dead and cute Jamaican chicks and whiskey and ten dollar Bud Lights and when they all came together to sing Redemption Song, at least for those few minutes, I was redeemed.

I saw the Saturday Night Rebel Rockers Traveling Circus and Medicine Show a few days ago.  And it was fresh. To.  Death.

Get a beverage of your choice and scatter me, please,

E

I wanna be a lion…

So I’ve been trying to write a letter for a few days now.  Maybe a week.  Definitely not more than a month.

Probably.

And the fact that I’ll almost certainly never send this note, this epistle, this hymn, this bullet, lifts none of its weight.  The syntax needs to be perfect, the composition holy, the heart precise and flawless.  With this letter as much and maybe more than ever I need to be a surgeon with my words.  But the biggest stumbling block, without doubt, is the honesty of it all.  I need to tell the truth, unobstructed and unadulterated.  Free.  August.  But I lie for a living.  I am professionally dishonest.  Trying to tell the truth is anathema to all that I am.  Like trying not to get headshots in Halo, I’m working against muscle memory.

Like any artist I try to use my lies to tell the truth, but honest honesty?  Madness.

In my search for fineness, for genius, for truth I decided to look to some of the greats for inspiration.  In order to say the things I need to say the way they demand to be said I need to see very, very far.  I need to, once again, climb the shoulders of giants.

And while scaling the literary history of love I found some brilliance let slip from the mouths of Lord Byron and Samuel Clemens.  I found something raw, ancient and still new in Napoleon’s devotion.  (Say what you will about that weird, tiny prick but adored his Josephine.)  I found ferocity in the love of a man without fear, a man unburdened in the knowledge he would die tomorrow, his ardor found scrawled on a parchment and resting on his corpse.

In my search I found beauty, which, we all know, is truth.

And I also found something unexpected.  I found a website selling pre-written love letters for 34.99 a pop.

What?

I mean…what?

That’s half a step from hiring a hooker to fuck your girl for you.  And, by the way, I mean half a step worse.

I’m not going to link these people because I don’t want to drive traffic to this den of tackiness, this hole, but I will share with you some of their samples.

These are actual excerpts from this site untouched by me except to copy and paste.

Dear Charlotte,

You do not need to impress me or do anything to make me love you more. I love you…

Okay, well, first of all, that’s pedestrian as shit.  And I feel sure someone who buys his love letter on the intertron is not real hard to impress.  But mostly what I’m worried about here is, what if the girl I’m into isn’t named “Charlotte”?  What then?  What do I do?  I’m fucking lost.

They also have letters for those of you who see someone you fancy on Match.com (or whatever you kids are using these days) but just don’t have the words.

I am a gentleman who is seriously looking for a nice lady to develop a life-long love & companionship. I have read your profile and would like to trade emails with you if possible….

…If you are looking for a nice gentleman, please reply and I will tell you more details about myself.

Warmest regards,

Justin

Are you seriously looking?  Seriously?  Did you seriously even graduate high school?  Do you seriously not know that “lifelong” is one word, not a hyphenate?  Also, I feel pretty sure it’s “possible” to trade emails with someone.  Because of the internet and all.  If this person would like to, well, that’s a whole other kettle of monkeys.  It’s nice to know you are a nice gentleman, though.  All those fuckhead gentlemen are really screwing things up for you guys lately.  The bastards.

Also, what happens if she does dig you, Justin? (If that is your real name!)  Are you going to find a site with pre-made personalities?  Will you buy a new you, with new details to share?  A new passport and a new face?  And if so, are you a fucking spy?  And if so, you should really be able to think on your feet a lot better than this.

Ridiculous.  Tis rhubarb.

One last, kids.  One last.

My Dearest Susan,

You make every moment worth every other moment, good and bad.

I’ve read that twelve times and I have no idea what it means.

I so like the person I am with you.

I so hate the person you are.

With you I’m strong, capable, and even heroic. You inspire all that is good in me…

Heroic?  Capable?  You can’t even write your own damn love letter you feckless shit-stick.  And she clearly doesn’t inspire shit except a charge of 35 dollars on your damn AMEX.

With fondness, respect, honor, duty and an overflowing cup of love…

Matthew

Oh!  Okay.  I just realized that Matthew is a twelve year old girl.  Maybe I shouldn’t have been so mean but, I mean, “an overflowing cup of love?”  That’s just sad.  And kind of gross.

What happened to you?  You’re a mess.

I got some love on my pants.  Because my cup of love, you see, is overflowing…prematurely sometimes…

Also I clicked on their link to read the testimonials of their “satisfied customers” and I got 404’d (page not found).  Which is pretty funny.

I get searching for words; I do it all day everyday.  I get how hard it can be to articulate something that seems bigger than you can know.  Something that seems unapproachable.  Love has a way of feeling like the beginning and the end of the world and it’s not, but it can seem that way when it comes and goes.

I get girls that can leave you lost.  Girls that can spin you like no ten bottles of tequila could.  I get it.

And this is a hard world filled with hard boys and hard girls.  You can’t really get away with “Juliette is the sun” anymore.  I get it.

But damn.

It’s one thing to get a little turned around in a cacophony you don’t quite understand.  It’s one thing to crib a little from Byron.

But.

You don’t order love from a menu, children.  It doesn’t come in a .pdf or a box of any shape.

I don’t actually know anything about this sort of thing, but I’m pretty sure I’m right about this.

And speaking of Byron:

My Heart -

We are thus far separated – but after all one mile is as bad as a thousand – which is a great consolation to one who must travel six hundred before he meets you again.  If it will give you any satisfaction – I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes – and as cold as Charity – Chastity or any other Virtue.

-Lord Byron to Annabella Milbanke, his future wife.

That’s how it’s done.

Get a beverage of your choice and tell someone you love her (or him if it is a him).  In your own words.  It can’t be worse than that shit.

E

I had a pocketknife that I won in a fight that I carried like it was gold.