Rubber Beds & Bag Lunches

I spent the morning stripping, washing and making beds at a homeless shelter.  I don’t think I’ve ever done this kind of thing before but there I was, alone in these rooms, stripping nasty sheets from rubber beds stuffed into horrid rooms, lying only inches apart…I started crying because I could be homeless and sleeping here.   Anyone could.  Realizing this didn’t change the fact that I was trying to do the job without letting the linen touch my clothes or that I was holding my breath for two hours.  I am still an asshole.

On the first floor a group of VERY special needs kids from the nearby school put together bag lunches in assembly line fashion:  ham sandwich that I would never eat because I don’t think that was really ham, a bag of cookies and a juice box.  Not the kind that advertises on tv either.  I don’t think that juice box label was even in English.  At 5pm the shelter opens its front door and hands out these bag lunches to  people who need something to eat.  They’re mostly families.  Again, I started crying because  what if it were me standing in that line…

I didn’t cry for these people who are actually living this life.  No.  I cried for myself.  I cried over the possibility that I could sleep on rubber beds or wait in line for a bag lunch you best eat fast before you have time to think about what it was you ate.  It was no different than crying over the possibility that I may never fall in love and get married or succeed financially.  It was no different than crying over any long shot or sure thing that has to do with ME.   Always about me.

I’ll be there tomorrow stripping beds, bleaching floors and trying to put pillow cases on pillows without letting any of it touch my body because gross!

And then I’ll be there again.  And again.  And again until I stop crying for myself and start smiling at the people in front of me.

I am not a bad person.  But I realized today I am not nearly as good as I can be.  But there’s still time.

You Are A Racist! And You Have No Experience In Dance!

That title?  Someone posted it to my “ABOUT”.  Under a fake name.

If you are going to call me out on such things – I mean if you feel that strongly that you can accuse me of racism and, even worse, question my experience in dance – of which I have very little but nonetheless shove my opinion down peoples’ throats like a bulimic in a tutu, then for fuck sake include a picture of your tits.   AT LEAST.

Yeah.

You forgot sexist.

The 117th Boston Marathon Still Running After 21 Hours

If you live here, you can’t get away from the news coverage, a round the clock guessing game of 40% accuracy but rubberneckers don’t care about facts so long as they’re entertained.  The 117th Boston Marathon has become the longest marathon in history.

Can you imagine training your life away for this thing, working yourself down to nothing but muscle and bone which really isn’t that hard if you’re an Ethiopian and it’s always Ethiopians who win I mean they ought to call it the “Ethiopian Marathon” for fuck sake – but imagine putting all you’ve got into training and then winning THIS one? THIS ONE?

The conspiracy theorists are going wild online but we all agree finally America was the target.  Canada was being kicked around for awhile and the Tea Party claimed to have pictures of Obama running from the bomb scene minutes before detonation but we’ve at least come together on the target.  I mean the bombs went off at just about the 3 hour mark so all the foreigners had already crossed and its nothing but lazy Americans rolling in at this point, so, yeah…America.  You would think that doesn’t need to be said but people are actually thinking this has something to do with North Korea. Really? Do they even know there’s a Boston Marathon? Have you even ever seen a Korean running this thing?  They only run FROM shit…not TO it.

The world is showing its support for Boston.  Bostonians are posting “Don’t Fuck With Boston” crap on Facebook at 100 mph and within minutes of the bombing too. It seems like whenever something bad happens people run to Photoshop where they used to run to each other. The human connection has officially jumped the shark. New York City projected this image on a building  to show its support. Yeah, thanks. The Yankees still suck.

So much will be said about the 117th running of the Boston Marathon but not this:  Rosie Ruiz is having a “Newman!” moment of epic proportions. I never thought she was going to get trumped but here it is.  And the kid from the Simpsons says HA! HA!

This event won’t soon be forgotten and this Marathon will never be the same. It was the worst day imaginable for some people and each year it will feel like the world is yelling “Fore!” as time passes, compassion fades and more Ethiopians show up to win while they are left to grieve their limbs, their physical wholeness, their sanity,  their loved ones…

It was the best thing that ever happened to Justin Bieber though…

German With Subtitles

DOWNFALL - An Oliver Hirschbiegel Film

(German with subtitles)

Man, this was good. And it doesn’t play against the camps, the murders, the disgusting evil, the Jewish victims – it’s just about the last days in the bunker with Hitler (Goebbel’s kids call him “Uncle Hitler”, it’s really fucking bizarre). The blonde actress who played Eva Braun was fantastic. Her performance made me uncomfortable and nervous. I felt like she was losing her mind more and more as the film progressed. She reminded me of this girl I was crazy about once. More than that, she reminded me of the many men I know who like girls like that, the kind you can fuck right into a mental hospital.

 

Men love blondes.

 

They love flighty, fragile, smiling, blonde sexpots who look like they are 3 days away from applying lipstick like a clown and laughing hysterically at the cereal box. Men love blonde women who are sophisticated and have money and create a facade of normalcy, albeit annoyingly boring normalcy, the Redbook kind, the kind who will always be able to get money from her Dad and you really don’t have to do anything except look interested and cheat carefully. Men like blonde women who have a Masters in something and are a professor somewhere and are very respected and dress conservatively but in the hip Ivy League kinda way and when you fuck them they suddenly blurt out shit like “fuck me Uncle Ray!” but then they want to examine it later and you don’t so they call their therapist in the middle of the night because the therapist is a colleague and well well…

 

Men love blondes.

 

I have brown hair. I’ve had a resentment with blondes most of my adult life and don’t like to hang around with them. They make me look less appealing to men in bars or parties or expensive benefits at a University where no matter what I do I can’t seem to look sophisticated. No matter what I do, I project sexy.

 

Hitler liked blondes. He liked them so much that he wiped out 6 million brunettes to prove it.

 

So ok this movie was good.

Ghetto Etiquette

What kind of ice cream truck comes rolling through the neighborhood at 8:58pm? The one in my neighborhood, that’s what kind. What’s that all about? Little kids coming stumbling out in their pajamas rubbing their eyes yelling “ice cream!” in their half-sleep, falling down and dropping their dimes and quarters, crying and mumbling “ice cream man!” into the concrete. Yeah. I live here.

Poetry Douche

There’s nothing worse than a poetry blog:

some bullshit reach at haiku written in the 1st person-present so we can live each of your ridiculously insignificant moments in all their grammar-fucked glory like it’s breaking news.

I can’t even bring myself to CONSIDER reading your poetry blog. I already know it’s bad. If it’s more than 12 lines it will suck. You’re not a poet. You just saw some poem once where there were only 3 words to each line and that’s what you’re doing.  Also, cutting isn’t getting you the attention you were banking on.  Your parents, in a rare moment of sobriety,  gushed over some 6th grade shit you wrote and you’ve been carrying that around like you’re fucking Keats.   They were alcoholics.  They knew nothing and probably didn’t even read the thing.

The only way to interest people in poetry is if you are writing it 15 minutes from your own suicide or at least while sitting on a ledge. You can turn back and climb back in, we won’t care, but it can’t be too long, it must be self-effacing and it has to pack a sarcastic punch somewhere within its grandiose self-indulgence otherwise you are just a poetry douche on WordPress.

And it should go without saying that if you are a “Vampire” writing bloated, marathon pseudo poems, just stock piling “dark” words senselessly the way soccer moms buy toilet paper at Save-More, I hate you and I know you are listening to Skinny Puppy, loser.

If you are writing a poetry blog you probably wear flip flops in winter, have a futon and have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said better and by even more mediocre minds than yours.

Your poetry blog is stupid.

I Thought It Was Funny