Conversation With My Crazy

Six years ago today my Crazy whispered, “Sobriety? Sure, Pal. Let’s spend the rest of our life as a tragic bore. It’s all crosswords and tea cups from here on out.”

I replied from my slumped fetal position under the hard florescent lights in a psychological-observation lazy-boy betwixt two other mad-hatters, “Have you seen where we are right now?”

“Exactly. You need to figure out how to get us out of here pronto. We’ve managed our way out of worse together. You’re good with the words, let’s make with the apologies and promises and see if we can’t be excused. Better yet, when they move us out of this room, let’s just make a run for it. Maybe with a little luck we can still make it to JFK to hop a flight to Austin and catch the Texas/Missouri game with your old man,” my Crazy replied.

“They’ve got my wallet,” I said. “Not sure how we’d manage that.”

“You’re not using your head—think, Dude.”

“Well, I think my credit card information is saved on the JetBlue website site, so we could probably buy a ticket to Austin online.”

“Keep talkin’.”

“And, my passport is at home, so we’ve still got an ID. I’m not even sure what hospital this is though, we could be miles from the apartment.”

“We’ve walked longer distances, I’m sure of it.”

“True, but not in a hospital gown.”

“This is New York City, no one is going to think twice about us. And if we had to, we could hail a cab and ditch it at a light. You are a fast runner, Peter.”

“Yeah, I am pretty fast. Even barefoot. They’ve got my keys, but my landlord is probably home, he could let us in—hell, he might even give us a ride to JFK if I told him it was an emergency,” I suggested.

My Crazy conspired with the part of my brain that was responsible for doling out what little adrenaline my body was still capable of producing. “Alright then, we’ve got a plan. Let’s do this!”

“What do we do when get to Austin?” I asked. “We don’t have any money, and unless I can convince the staff here to let us leave peacefully so that we can have our things back, I’m not sure how we’d get any.”

“Lots of pawn shops on the way to JFK, my friend.” Crazy insinuated. “You are a man with one too many guitars, aren’t you?”

“Genius,” I said. “We’ll hock the Fender, it’s worth like four grand. I bet we can get at least a grand for it.”

“See, Peter? And here you thought we’d no options. Let’s get going.”

“We tried to run last night though, remember?” I warned.

“Not your best effort, that.” my Crazy scolded. “You’ve got more ‘oomph’ in you now. Let’s stand up, see if the door is still locked, and go from there.”

I stood up, shuffled across the room with my blackberry between my butt-cheeks, to test the door, keeping a watchful eye on the attendant through the observation room’s glass. Locked.

“It’s locked.” I informed.

“Thanks for the update, Chief.”

I gazed through the small window on the door, out at the long hallway we’d have to sprint through if somehow magically the lock just popped to open in the next few moments. “Well, the dude behind the glass already told us we had to wait for the doctor to show up. He seemed pretty perturbed the last time we bothered him. What now?”

“Remember the time we faked being ill to get out of that Bronx jail cell?” my Crazy reminded.

“Oh yeah, we did do that.”

“Same thing here, should be even easier, don’t you think?”

“It’s not really apples to apples, but yeah, I get what your saying.”

“Alright then, enough talk.”

“This all sounds like an awful lot of effort just to see a football game,” I said.

“QUIT FUCKIN’ STALLING!”

“We aren’t trying to escape to go to Austin, are we?”

My Crazy regained its composure, though its desperation was still evident in the trembles that punctuated its words, “Come on, Rosch. You know the answer to that.”

“This is about the three tallboys still sitting in the fridge from last night?”

“If you say so, Peter.”

“There’s always the chance we already drank those and we only think they are still there,” I warned.

“Well, we won’t know until we know.”

“True. Okay. When we get back to the apartment, we’ll drink those, get cleaned up, either have the landlord drive us to JFK or convince a cabby to take us to a pawnshop on the way to JFK, and then once we are in Austin we can call the banks and get new credit cards, bank cards, and figure the rest of this out—BUT, right after that, we are getting sober.”

“Absolutely. Wouldn’t have it any other way.” my Crazy assured. “I mean, we pull this escape off, we deserve a drink, but after that drink—after just enough to keep us sane on our way down to Texas—we’re done with it and on to the crossword puzzles and church choir or whatever it is you’ve decided our life is going to be.”

“Cool. Let’s eat the Froot Loops they set next to us while we were sleeping, and then we’ll head out. I’m starving.”

“I like this idea. I’m no doctor, but I suspect your stomach isn’t really going to be too psyched about its re-introduction to milk, sugar, red no. 5 and the rest of it. You puke that up and it’s win/win.”

“Agreed.”

Sing Sing for my Son

A quick-ish lesson in the train of thought that leads one man to decide that, yes, he is capable of serving hard time for his unborn son. The Mrs. and I went to see Transcendence this past weekend. If you haven’t seen it, I’m recommending you wait until it’s on one of modern day’s home viewing options. Save your thirty to forty bucks for the umpteenth remake of Godzilla. Not sure why that trailer has me hooked, but it does. Now then, the Johnny Depp flick has nothing to do with child rearing specifically, but even if you haven’t seen it, you can deduce that it does construct a story that dances around notions of what the future might hold for our civilization.

And so, if you are me, you are watching and thinking in the voice of a ninety year old man, “Hurumph, lots of changes comin’, yes sir, yes sir!”

You continue this conversation with yourself, recalling a brief back and forth with a parenting friend about the impossibilities of knowing exactly what technologies you’ll be disallowing your children to use in the near to not-so-far futures of their lives. And if you’d been reading about haptic suits and a life lived almost exclusively as an avatar online in a book like Ready Player One, you start wondering if your future son will even go outside at all. You start thinking about what you’ll ban, remembering that all pre-parents had similar conversations about video games, cellphones, and the lot, only to ultimately be confronted with newer things you couldn’t have fathomed that come along with the pleas of, “But so-and-so-friend’s parents let he or she have a blankity-blank already, come on, I’m eight or nine or ten or five!”

You move forward, remembering that because you only intend on having the one that it’s important to put him into social situations with other babies, children, and grow-ups. You don’t want him to be a shut-in. Suddenly, all thought deviates to an entirely different possibility, “No way my kid is going to be living in a haptic suit, he’ll be a chip off the ol’ block. Very charming, a real go getter. Devilishly handsome too.” You condemn yourself momentarily for letting your ego turn your child into the inwardly projected image of yourself. Somehow, age fourteen comes into play. You wonder how you’ll convince him to have protected sex if he has sex at all. You didn’t have sex at fourteen, but your mind tends to bolster the prediction with its vague recollection of scattered news mentions of promiscuity occurring at younger and younger ages.

“I hope he’ll be smart enough to not take the risk so young,” you say, but before you can even finish the thought you’ve already scripted a scenario in which this young-man-about-town of yours has dazzled the pants off of some young lady at age fourteen. You change the age to fifteen to feel better about yourself. Next thing you know she’s pregnant. He didn’t listen. You think about how you’d handle that situation, and then with no invitation to the thought party whatsoever, the thought, “What if he feels trapped? Kills her and hides the body?” pops into your head. You know almost certainly that this won’t happen, but even as you watch Johnny Depp “die” (oops, Spoiler Alert) on a table in front of you, you can’t help but shake the possible reality that you’ll be faced with that difficult decision of either turning your pride-and-joy in to the authorities, helping him live a life on the lam, or figuring out a way to take the fall for the atrocity he has committed.

“I’d turn that lil’ shit-head in,” you reassure yourself, even as you begin to accept what your remaining years look like in the slammer. “It’d have been an act committed under intense duress. My son is a good boy. He’s a good boy. It won’t happen again,” you repeat to yourself. “It was my fault. I didn’t do a good enough job of explaining the consequences of the birds and the bees. This is how it has to be.” And so there, under the darkness that accompanies the screening of a so-so film that isn’t holding your attention, you silently proclaim, “It’s all good. I can do the time.”

The Gross In The Machine

Last weekend, on the way to my wife’s folks’ house in northern New Jersey, we decided to roll the dice on a certain segment of humanity.

Side salad: That would be the same wife someone has been trying to dig up dirt on via search engines, at least according to my blog’s Top Searches feature–an entertaining little deliverer of information most of the time, that on occasion only serves to further grow my paranoia exponentially with its revelations. “Peter Rosch DUI,” “Peter Rosch’s Wife,” “Peter Rosch Kill Kill Kill,” “Peter Rosch Sucks,” and so forth. Is it the private detective that’s been reaching out to me regarding a former business venture? Maybe. Am I the one who entered “Peter Rosch Sucks” into the google search box? Probably. (Many thanks to my old pal Warren for introducing me to the term ‘Side Salad.’ It’s a nice way to deviate from the main story, and I’d not want him to stumble upon this blog one day, see that I’d adopted it, tried to pass it off as my own–even as I’m sure some people don’t care for it–and then also start entering bizzarre combinations of search terms as he plots his version of my demise).

So, as I was saying, me and the Mrs. took a detour on the way out to the in-laws. We decided to pop-off to a small town along the way to test-drive of a new vehicle at a dealership. I won’t name the vehicle, mostly because I don’t want any of my readers judging me by that particular book cover, and also because I don’t want the dealers of that particular brand to stumble on this blog, realize what vehicle we want, and use that information to get the upper-hand in any potential future negotiations. (It’s safe to say, it’s a real level 9 day up in the skull today). All I’ll say is, it’s a car we’ve deemed to be worth considering the notion of actually buying a new car–something I don’t think either of us ever considered doing prior to having to deal with potentially wicked snow-storms up in our future northern stomping grounds.

We didn’t buy the car, we might not ever buy that car or any car, unless…

It only occurred to my several hours after what I had repeatedly deemed as a very successful interaction with not just one, but three different salespeople at the dealership, that maybe, just maybe, having let one of them take our current vehicle for a spin without us–in order to assess the trade-in value–might have given him ample opportunity to capital F with the car. A long shot to be certain, if for no other reason that even if he had put the voo-doo on the vehicle, he’d have almost no reason to believe that we’d come back to exchange our old ride with his dealership specifically. But, I then began to speculate that the rigging of potential buyers’ old automobiles in order to induce a new sale might be a globally fraternal sort of understanding amongst the hockers of shiny new whips. And so, anything he might have done to encourage us to part with our reliable Brooklyn beater, would ultimately serve the greater good of the brotherhood of auto-pushing-sleazesters.

And that realization–made only days after hearing a story about two creatives who loathed a co-worker so intensely, that every Friday they’d urinate on his desk chair, giving it enough time to dry before Monday, but still ultimately stink–had me putting that prank and others into circulation in my head. Did they tweak a bolt or a screw? Did they leave human feces under the driver-side seat? Did they attach a tracking device underneath the fender in order to come and steal it later? (I believe that a timely check on my vehicle to prevent a ticket in Jersey City made just yesterday, might have thwarted that very plan, as I met a suspicious stranger peering into my vehicle who upon meeting me eye-to-eye awkwardly dismissed his activities). Have they planted a small speaker and camera in the car in order to occasionally attempt to frighten me with ghostly Henry Kane coos of “Whooooooooooo, whooooooooooo. You’re gonna die in there, all of you, you are going to die?”

Maybe. Probably not. But maybe. Let’s call it a Premium Plus package of Paranoia. Heck, If I was selling something that lost a great deal of its value the minute my customer had it off the lot, in order to put food on the table–I might try at least two of those four options before throwing in the towel. Definitely the last one, as that footage of scared drivers reacting to my Henry Kane impression, while careening into oncoming traffic, might just supplement my legitimate income while making me micro-famous on YouTube.

Puts You In The Grave

This Level 9 Paranoia Children's Song (the first of what I hope might be many) and accompanying video is exactly what happens when a guy–a guy with more than just a few issues–gets up at three-thirty in the morning one too many days in a row while his wife is out of town. That said, I think it might be the best thing I have ever done. Amir, I'm ecstatic. Take me away boys.

Hostel Dentistry

Blame Delta Airlines, that’s my motto. Sunday evening I took a red-eye to Prague, CZ. When I got on the plane, I had nothing wrong going on in my mouth other than the nearly lifeless tastebuds smoking gifts me that currently inhabit the surface of my tongue. But when I awoke, there were the beginning inklings of what I surmised might be a loose filling. How Delta Airlines is responsible for what by Wednesday had turned into a full-on tooth ache isn’t really important. It’s simply important to have someone to blame, and I have chosen them and not the tobacco companies, the M&Ms I crunched upon relentless pre-nap, nor am I willing to blame the age of that particular filling, which I think has been riding around in my head for over twenty years now. It’s a trooper that filling! A gutsy little metallic mofo that refuses to let go and die. How do I know that it is still clinging to what’s left of that tooth like a champ? Because I caved and had the production company book me a visit to a dentist here in Prague.

I was pretty proud of myself, “This is a real adult move,” I said to no one with near visible self-high-fives. “An adult doesn’t let everything he thinks of the Eastern European Block, that he has based almost solely on the flick Hostel, prevent him from seeking the pre-emptive treatment he deserves.” My rah-rah-Rosch moment was short lived, and slowly the very things that movie and its successors taught me about the inhabitants of this part of the world grew, until they were large enough to stomp any delight in my decision. That said, it was too late to turn back. This whiney baby had made quite the fuss about his tooth, and arrangements to see a specialist had been made on his behalf–to tell them I wasn’t going to go through with it might brand me a liar about toothaches, and that’s a particular type of liar I aspire not to be. Filthy buggers that lot.

So, I laid my head to my pillow, quite late I might add, and did the only sensible thing a man in my situation could do: I watched a slightly crappy, but full version, of The Descent on YouTube. My mind quickly relented and those slimy cave-suckers all but erased any thoughts I was entertaining about the possible outcomes of my visit to the dentist a short six hours from that moment.

This morning I was greeted by a lovely woman by the name of Veronika. She assured me she would sit with me to translate, and I found that reassuring, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that she wouldn’t be in on the sale of my body to others for the sport of torture. Perhaps she was too nice about it all, and as we took a cab, instead of a sanctioned production van, to a part of Prague covered in the most sure tell that indicates bad parts of town, graffiti–graffiti I couldn’t even understand at that–I began to more than suspect, and indeed decided to believe that she wasn’t above dropping off some ad schmuck from the states at a place of the illest repute imaginable (Cameron, I know illest isn’t a word, go with it).*

We went inside, the office itself smelled delightful. “Very nice,” I thought. And then began a brain loop of an old Wendy’s commercial where there is an Eastern European fashion show taking place–”Svim Vear, Very Nice. Svim Vear, Very Nice.” My escort introduced me to the dentist himself. That struck me as odd, and yet I proceeded into the next room. I lay down upon the chair, a horrendous looking beast of a contraption next to all manner of deadly instruments, nothing unusual about that. Veronika left the room. The moment of truth: This would be where I finally met my Level 9 Destiny, I would be dead soon, but victorious when my current partner was forced to utter at my funeral, “I guess he was right, that poor bastard was right.” We’ve made an arrangement to this, and I trust he’ll come through for me.

The dentist asked me to open my mouth in better English than the Starbucks baristas I hold so dear back in NYC. And so I did. He proceeded to slam a small hammer into the tooth in question, a gigantic pain coursed through my skull. “That’s the one!” I shouted. And he agreed then said, “Let’s have an X-ray, shall we?”

I got up and followed him to another room, farther removed from the front desk, and with my companion nowhere to be found. He opened a door. There was an X-ray machine there, and it looked legit, but I still couldn’t shake the absurd idea that maybe they’d tweaked it to render you unconscious upon firing it up. No struggle, no messes. Just ZAP, and I’d be ready to be moved to the dungeon that lay below that mini-mall. He exited the room, and the machine began to whirr. I took a deep breath, had a momentary panic about being radiated, and then it was over.

He opened the door, smiled large, and asked me to come have a look with him back in the first room. By now, my fears were subsiding, and I was ready to admit that today would not be the day I’d concocted at all.

After politely telling me that he saw noting, and that there was little else that could be done, he sent me on my way to pay and rejoin Veronika so that she may see me back to my hotel. And so I did.

I asked her if it was possible to walk back to my hotel, as I didn’t believe there was much point in allowing this charade to continue. It was very nice of them to make sure all my teeth were in great shape to charge a much higher price to the suit who’d pay top dollar to destroy a perfectly good pair while wearing a pig’s head in a dark dungeon and all. Very nice indeed. She seemed puzzled by my desire to forgo the cab ride back, but agreed to drop me off half-way so that I could enjoy a perfectly nice stroll on a beyond perfectly nice day here. I’d tell you that I thought this was nice of her, but a more accurate way to end this story would be tell you that I am pretty sure that just about the time I was ten feet from the cab and headed into a menacing looking park, I heard her say, “You’ve von for now Mizter Rozch, enjoy your valk, for it will be you’re very last.”

That I have turned her into some sort of vampire-talker at this point is a sure indication I’ve got no business finishing posts at one in the morning in foreign countries in the hopes of hitting my commuting friends back in the states in time for them to be able to read this post before climbing aboard their respective trains.

Thanks for taking this ride with me friends.

* My nephew assures me that actually illest is, in fact, a word. Thanks Cam.

One Man’s Lullaby

Why am I the way I am? No one thing could be to blame, but it is worth mentioning that my mother and/or aunt used to sing this song to me as a wee little lad. Found myself humming it this afternoon on an otherwise nice walk with the Mrs. Thanks ladies. xo

Coffee Shop Shakedown

This past Sunday morning, before the onset of a painful, no doubt secret lab accidental release style 48 hour virus that left me somewhat zombified most of Monday and yesterday, I was having an amazing morning. That morning included one of my favorite things of late: meeting my good friend, whose name I won’t use since I’ve no idea what level of paranoia he is rocking these days, for a cup of coffee and a nice chat.

My mood was so spectacular that I wasn’t even bothered by the fact that a stranger sitting across from us had skillfully injected himself into our preliminary conversations about the weather, recent films seen, and other surface level conversation had before getting down to the real nitty and gritty. As the dialog moved along, predominantly led by my friend and me, the three of us had somehow landed on what is and isn’t tax deductible in our various trades.

I took a moment to reflect on how we’d arrived there with this stranger, and came to realize he had used a piece of my own tale concerning an ancient and foolish charge I’d made for my tattoo that reads, “Question Everything. Trust No One.” The irony that this all stems from that is only evident to me as I write this.

Before my friend could say another word to the balding sly-fox seated across from us, I posited, “Wouldn’t it be something if you were actually some dude from the IRS who hit up coffee shops, to start up chats, move them towards tax returns, deductions, and the like–so that you could then flag folks for audits down the road?”

Our new friend was a little startled by the insinuation–and after a raucous bout of nervous giggles said, “Oh right, like I’m some sort of James Bond of the IRS? And this is what I do, go around and chat up people in posh neighborhoods to find out what they’ve been up to with their taxes.” This was followed by more nervous quips made in rapid succession that moved us quickly into another subject matter entirely.

Had we blown his cover? Maybe. Is Williamsburg really a ‘posh’ neighborhood? Maybe. Did I leave fearing that figurative ‘knock’ on the door we all dread might be coming despite our best efforts to play by the rules? Not really. You don’t live with Level 9 Paranoia, and get all willy nilly on the kind of stuff you know for certain Big Brother is keeping tabs on. I’d say I was most taken aback by his suggestion that he might be the James Bond of the IRS. Maybe the Roger Moore Bond. And that’s a big maybe.

The Ol’ Stranger’s Daughter’s First Birthday Scam

“Ahhhh, how sweet,” you might say. “You have adorable neighbors, and there will probably be cake too.” Perhaps, perhaps. But if you are living with level 9 paranoia, like myself, a more accurate reaction to this carefully crafted apartment elevator invitation would be, “Oh sure, let me come up to the roof around four so you can know that I’m no longer in my apartment, and can then signal a friend on the street, letting them know my unit is currently ripe for the cat-burglaring.” Or you might wonder aloud to yourself, as I did, if Pri, Tati, and this Goldy person are actually assembling everyone on the roof for a mass cult suicide jump – there might still be a party, and maybe the roof jump isn’t scheduled for this Saturday, but pulling all the neighbors together with cake and ice cream to discuss their Heaven’s Gate style plan isn’t the worst ploy. A lesser thought, let’s call it level 7, might simply be, “Hmm, what a great way to get a bunch of free toys for this Goldy character.” It could just be they are the neighborly sort, but my money is on poisoned Kool-Aid.

Karma Punk’d

Two days ago we moved into a furnished sublet in Brooklyn for a temporary stay. The apartment’s owner is a seemingly lovely woman. Had I met her more than twice, each time for less than ten minutes, I might feel inclined to not even use the word seemingly. Her place is aces; a full-floor unit with a great vibe, comfortable furniture, solid AC units, and a bed that for two straight mornings has left me as recharged as any I can remember. There is one rule during our stay here however, one that I’d agreed to happily after spending six months surrounded by the jungle – we were asked kindly to not kill any bugs during our stay – specifically, we were asked to abstain from killing the one or two tiny cockroaches we might see when operating the kitchen sink. I assured our host that this was a task we’d honor, as we’d spent six months living with all manner of insects, and had always done our best to accept them or remove them without killing them, cupping them in various glasses and placing them back into the wild. That said, I’ve come to believe we are on some sort of Buddhist reality TV show. The first two nights here, I’ve encountered far more than the ‘one or two tiny’ cockroaches I’d expected – any trip to the bathroom at night means conducting basic hygiene routines amongst at least a half-dozen small to medium-small roaches – there aren’t hundreds, not even dozens, but there is always just enough to make me think there are an infinite number more lurking all around me. I’ve killed not a one, nor do I intend to. To be honest, aside from the one that crawled onto the couch with me last night, they don’t really phase me the way they might have prior to our residency in Costa Rica. But, I have come to believe there may be hidden cameras recording our resolve – and that in some small television station production room somewhere, a producer, possibly our landlord of two-weeks, has a release-more-roaches button she or he can press while shouting, “I’m going to break these two yet!” I don’t blame her, filming us going back on our word, while commiting violence against anything – even cockroaches – probably makes for better TV and higher ratings. But it isn’t going to happen, I refuse to be Karma Punk’d for the idle thrills of the lazier Buddhists of the world.

Street Money Beat Down

Finding large sums of lost money on the streets can be a pickle for any moral soul. My wife just found some this morning and she’d like to return it, because she is a good egg. She’s gone about the business of putting up a sign that might provide this amount’s rightful owner with a means to see it returned. All good, should be interesting to see who contacts her, and get a sampling of humanity’s honesty.

When I see any bill on any street, in NYC or even Podunk, USA, without fail my thinking is: Yay, money, free money, wait – this is some sort of gang-initiation where some newbie is supposed to beat the crap out of the first person who dares snag this cash from the ground. Even a dollar leads me to this conclusion, because if I were running a gang my logic would be that the lower the amount used to select someone at random for the initiation-beating, the more frightening the legend of it and my gang. I would want to run a very cruel-sounding gang is all I’m saying.

Don’t get me wrong, that senseless rambling has never stopped me from taking the money – I’m apparently a bit more paranoid that leaving any money behind, even pennies, carries its own toll on the passerby. And I guess that screwy line of thinking beats out the street-money-beat-down fear. However, before I pick up any lost cash, I do a good bit of looking around for frothing-from-the-mouth teens hellbent on proving their worth to other psychopaths.