Tag Archives for new suspense

The Worst That Can’t Happen

When presented with opportunities, I’m prone to mentally constructing the worst case possibilites of my involvement with something first, and I do so feverishly. You might regard this as a pessimistic attitude, and a regretfully sorrowful way of living. You’d be wrong. The key word back there, or phrase I guess, was ‘prone to mentally constructing.’ I do not believe in those scenarios. I do not prepare for the worst. In all actuality, I think everything that I am a part of is going to turn out amazing. I go into every project believing that it is a chance to do something great. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t spend a wasteful amount of time dwelling on the outcomes one might deem far far from less than favorable–in the bad direction of less than favorable if you catch my drift. Death is tops on the list, always–but, how that death might occur is different from one project to the next. I’ve probably bored you to tears with other stories about potential near-misses, crazy trains of logic that outline how I might go if such and such happens–at times keeping a blog about one’s inner most sickness can be daunting. So, I’ll hope that you’ll grant me an apology for any overlapping themes. It’s Sunday, so I’m going to get to a point quicker than normal here–ask me to do anything, and I’ll believe (if not full-on know) that there’s a chance it is going to turn out incredible–but, and it’s a big but, don’t think for a minute that I haven’t given consideration to the litany of scenarios my participation in your event my bring down upon me.

When I was asked to participate in The 48 Hour Film Project a month or so ago, after a little bit of buttering up by my good friend Jordan, I enthusiastically agreed to join the crew, as the director no less. I had no doubt we could make something great–it didn’t even matter that I’d not worked with a single soul who would be joining me on that journey. I was confident whatever we did would turn out grand. And, as hopefully the link below shows, I believe it did. But, you can be sure that in the weeks prior to the event itself, I had managed to craft dozens of scenarios that were anything but successful completing a short film with over twenty friends and strangers, having it screened at NYC film center, and watching it enjoy a nice smattering of applause immediately after its unveiling. I believed this could happen, but I also gave quite a bit of thought to some of the following, and a hell of a lot worse:

I’ll be outed as a faker, a man who said he could direct, but actually has no business storytelling whatsoever. (This one is as obvious to a creative as any.)

The police will no doubt take notice of the spectacle we are creating with that little magic video capturing device, and stop us. This will lead to a citation at best, and at worst, would remind them upon running my name that I was due to report to prison for having not completed a DUI course correctly some years ago. Given the location, I’d most likely end up in The Tombs downtown this time–for no other reason than I hear that name mentioned far too frequently on Law & Order SVU.

We’d not have a crew to lock-down sets, and this would of course lead to an acute inability to control the crazies who come out when young people are making a mockery of their miserable lives by enjoying themselves with fancy clothes and cigarettes on their desserted alley streets. (Yes, I am referring to myself as a young person. Deal.) And armed with whatever the city version of a pitchfork might be, would proceed in beating us down for having the gall to do something for the sake of passion.

Getting zapped by electricity due to not really understanding the hows, whys, and whats of modern day grippery. (My word, created by using the word Grip. If you are in the business you know what those surly bastards are up to.)

And finally, at least for this list, the thought that, not unlike all my creations and co-creations, that some how putting something out there at all, with my name on it, will lead to the harshest form of criticism of praise: a good ol’ fashioned stalking, beating, abducting, torturing, and slow demise. (Oddly, this particular imagined outcome makes nearly every list of every single thing I do, because I clearly have an ego the size of an elephant that my poor self-esteem does a magnificent job of hiding.)

Without further ado, here’s the only real result of having participated in The 48 Hour Film Festival. And it’s called, Pickle.

Pickle

Happy Meal Romeo

It’s summer in the city. A time when few things, if any, titillate me quite as much as seeing couples–married couples mind you, and preferably with a child or children–warring with one another in the most public of places. I could care less what they are fighting about, and while I might delight in the degree of hostility the verbiage their exchange over near-nothing carries, even I am aware that I will most likely not be able to use each observation of a particular couple to my advantage. I’ve got a life, and I can’t be bothered with tailing and keeping tabs on all of them, and frankly, I don’t need to. So long as there are marital problems–and given the staggering rate of divorce here, there appears to be no shortage–I will be A-OK. Assuming I don’t die from utter exhaustion.

I work hard. I’d say I probably work harder than most. Nope, definitely harder than most. When you rent or own a total of seven apartments–in Manhattan no less–and furnish each of them to match the varying tastes of the women who inhabit the seven neighborhoods those very same seven apartments are located, and do so impeccably, there is no downtime. Aside from the two afternoon hours on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays that I afford myself in order to enjoy the fruits of all this labor, you will almost always find me working. I’ll allow that there must absolutely be a few minutes in every day that my body and brain insist I sleep. I’m not sure when those minutes actually take place. My addiction is demanding and I’m okay with that. Hell, at least McDonald’s is still relatively cheap, because I doubt any of what I do would be working if I didn’t at least ordered a small bag of fries.

Let me try to get straight to the point. I sleep with mommies–all races, sizes, and religions. The only guaranteed similarities of the women I bed is that I find them at McDonald’s on the aforementioned afternoons, and that each and everyone of them has been defeated. That probably sounds like I am the one doing the defeating, but what I mean to say is that each of them has let all the trials and tribulations of being a married housemother crush what I am sure were once very vibrant spirits. You might call that easy pickings, but let’s be fair to me here; nannies far outnumber actual mommies in this town. And the fairly recent demands Bloomberg put on chain joints to display the caloric counts of Big Macs and their brethren, coupled with the desire–even in defeat–to still be the best mom in the world, has driven most self-respecting mothers to take their children to Subway, at the very least. It is nothing like the salad days I enjoyed when I first started this back in the late nineties.

I’m not going to bore you with how this situation came to be. It is too late for that, and it is too late for me. I recognize that my addiction is a huge problem, but my admission on these pages isn’t because I am hoping to stop by coming clean. If anything, I’m either writing all of this down because I’m proud of the small degree of joy I’ve brought into the lives of what I believe to be exactly three-hundred and eighteen women, or because I’m worried that if I don’t record it, in some fashion, no one will ever know what I was up to, other than tirelessly working.

I don’t kiss and tell–I never have–and so, if I were to keel right over on my way to job number three of six tomorrow morning, the few friends I have would only remember me as the buddy of theirs who worked himself to the bone, and for what? A simple studio apartment in Lower Manhattan with nothing more than a mattress, cable, and only a forty-two inch, not even LED, flat screen TV amongst countless empty containers of Chinese take-out? I could live in one of the my other six apartments, each with all the usual creature comforts, but I’ve tried that, and on far too frequent an occasion some mommies have had the nerve to perform an I-was-just-in-the-neighborhood-pop-in to see their Happy Meal Romeo. To put it bluntly, that’s simply not part of the deal, not a part of my deal anyway.

To say I was surprised to see Meghan outside of my primary address yesterday morning as I stumbled home from job five of six would be a lie. In actuality I’d been rather disappointed that in over two decades not one of them had ever bothered to stalk me in the realest sense. I wasn’t hoping it would happen, but had been preparing for it to happen nonetheless. And there she was with her infant son, Gabriel, tucked neatly into a nearly five hundred dollar Britax B-Ready Stroller–you don’t experience the volume of success I’ve had without knowing the baby gear bullshit inside and out. Meghan was peering up at my studio window on the third floor of the crusty pre-war building that housed it. Only now, she just barely resembled the woman I’d fallen so madly and deeply for at the St. Marks McDonald’s just two short days before.

It was a Wednesday, which is a day that over the years I had systematically removed from my hunting schedule. It’s a pitiful day to operate, for far too often a couple’s weekend argument will resolve itself by Tuesday evening. I surmise that the thirtyish hours between Sunday evening and then is enough time to let cooler heads prevail for what I can only assume to be the sake of the children–I couldn’t really say for sure, having never taken that dreadful walk down a hypocritical aisle. Either way, in the early going, I learned through trial and error that on Monday, mommies are still too mad. They hate all men based on the actions of their husbands. With my skills a Tuesday afternoon is doable, but by Wednesdays they have lied themselves back into a momentary illusion of contentment with the state of their sad lives. While I can still work with that, I’ve got a small window of time these days and it’s far easier to catch them on a Thursday of Friday when old pre-monogamy habits can be gently reignited.

It is no hump-day for me, and I was there for a chocolate shake, nothing more, until I saw Meghan. Not so defeated as to have given up physically; she was young and her body had obviously rebounded quickly. But in her eyes there was an infinite black sadness that all the florescent lights there could not fill.

Yesterday morning, the difference, and I spotted it from a half-block’s distance, was the just slightly brighter than dim hope she now possessed in those same peepers that had pulled me in so quickly. A connection between us, as I saw it, no longer existed. Like so many before her, the very quality that had immediately hooked me forty-eight hours before had been robbed from me–by me–in what normally took three or four beddings at a minimum. There is nothing remotely attractive about a confident woman. Plenty of men may disagree and fortunately for those poor bastards we live in what some might refer to as the era of confident motherhood. While I wouldn’t go so far as to label Meghan’s demeanor yesterday morning as self-assured, it was clear to me that if we were ever to be a thing again, it would only be after she had returned to her husband, her material things, her land of pre-nursery-school-school interviews and daytime TV. Only then, might we ever be able to again enjoy one another completely.

These things can take time; she certainly won’t be the first woman to eventually crawl back into a red and yellow booth smelling of smooshed pickles and ketchup, hoping that schmuck of a clown will help her eat her feelings. And when she’s reached that place of desperation again, I’ll be obliged to rescue her once more, and I’ll even have a new toy for Gabriel by then.

Until that time however, I’ll have to stay at my Chelsea dwelling and pray that none of the few mommies I’ve bedded in the last few months in this area are feeling up to steering their strollers my way. There are inconveniences to my hobby, I’m sure that you’ve hypothesized more than a few–but would be more likely to cast aspersions my way than offer me even a shred of sympathy. And I can live with that; if you are married I’ve no doubt that eventually I’ll be helping you too. Together, we can all live happily ever after.

Memorial Day Weekend Watch-Outs

I’m sure many of you are amped up, out of your minds, and ready for a three day weekend to fill your bellies and souls with food, drink, and good times. I too am looking forward to a break from the insanity that the everyday tends to load punishingly upon our shoulders. Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop, and so I’ll be keeping my own busy as I plow ahead on my next book in between gorging myself with the many delectable meats, cheeses, and chocolates I suspect will find their way to my mouth regardless of my own attempts at keeping them minimal, manageable, and at bay. Have a great time out there, be safe, and keep an eye out for some or all of the following possible scenarios that might make for a less-than-stellar weekend.

Poison Drinking Straws at Movie Theaters, Cement Trucks, Bar-b-que’d Meats Discarded from Tall Buildings, Children’s Birthday Party Scams, and don’t be so nice to someone that they decide to follow you home and kill you.

I’ll be back next week with my own observations from what I’m sure will be a weekend that lends itself to a countrified slant on my own brand of sweet, sweet Level 9 Paranoia. Until then, enjoy my silence.

Done in by a Chicken Wing

I wish I could say yesterday was the first time an object fell from the heavens only to crash land within feet of my person. A quick mental countdown of all the items that have either accidentally made that trip, or were intentionally thrust from the city’s rooftops and windows, has the total tally at about eight or nine. Once on the Lower East Side it was a butcher knife. That is probably tops on the list if ranked in order of most deadly, beating out the plastic cups, glass, pennies, toys, water bottles, small building bits, water (possibly pee), and food items, which brings me to yesterday’s chicken wing–full sized chicken wing too, not some baby Buffalo Wing.

For good measure, let’s call it ten incidents total, not including the water (possibly pee)–because that happens too frequently to include, over the span of sixteen years of urban living. That’s less than one a year, and so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my daily list of possible life-ending outcomes doesn’t include a stunted stay in this world due to some drunken ex-frat-daddy’s decision to hurl bar-b-que’d pork ribs off the deck of his cookie-cutter condo. It is all too possible that yesterday’s chicken wing wasn’t discarded by anyone of the sort. This is Williamsburg, Brooklyn after all, and I suppose hipsters can and will be just as ignorant. In my experience, all types of people can be ignorant–I’m not sure why my brain constructed an image of a backwards ball cap wearing beefy-sloth as the culprit. Obviously, I have issues.

The difference between yesterday’s incident and all those prior, was I finally had a relatively decent idea of the item’s origin. There is basically only one large building on that particular block, and its vast rooftop decking is primetime party-time during the warmer months of New York City living. With this certain knowledge, I finally was able to do something about it, something that had not been possible, and maybe even less wise, when that butcher knife nearly took me out back in ’07. I decided to tattle.

I told my wife to wait just a moment, and then I beelined to the doorman’s desk in the lobby of the behemoth and said sternly, “I just thought you should know that someone is tossing chicken wings off the rooftop.”

He took a long look at me, scanned the little security camera TV screens in front of him, and remarked. “People are idiots.”

I was pleased he agreed. His remark validated a line of thinking I’d carried silently for far too long. Inside I was beaming–I finally had an ally in my cause to rid the world of degenerate revelers. But, that’s where the conversation ended. For one, I wasn’t really sure what I was demanding be done at that point, and two, I don’t think he really had any intention of getting up to go investigate unless he witnessed it first hand. The triumph ended awkwardly, and I shuffled back out onto the sidewalk to rejoin my wife and head home.

In the remaining hours of that day, I hadn’t given much thought to falling items being capable of hurting or killing me, but I spent quite a few minutes going over all the probable outcomes of me being a sneaky little snitch. For all I know, the doorman was a good buddy of the chicken-chucker and I started to think it was possible that he’d have me on the lobby camera’s feed now. With that he’d not have to work very hard to describe me to his friend from that roof-top, who most likely lives in that building just one short half-block east of our own. The individual who tossed it was probably already enraged with the near-miss, and upon hearing the news of my squealing would make it his mission to see me done in. Or at the very least, bloodied, bruised, and humiliated. All in the name of stopping people like me from attempts at curbing his favorite pastime of launching half-eaten meats off of rooftops.

Will I take an alternate route to the train on my way to work this week? Not likely. Will I dye my hair and sport a different pair of large shades? Perhaps, but only because my band is doing a radio show tomorrow morning. Will I spend too much time scanning faces on that block, in an attempt to see him coming before he sees me, and then get mugged from behind for my iPod by another unrelated idiot because I’m too focused on trying to stay one step ahead of my newest enemy? In my mind, that seems most likely.