happy birfday, jess pye

Kicking and Screaming

Last night I watched my latest Netflix “Kicking and Screaming.” It was made in the mid 90’s, but the subject matter is something a lot of my peers have or are dealing with right now — post-college angst.

Basically a bunch of friends graduate from college go through the “what the fuck do we do now” phase and overall refusal to leave the past behind. There’s a lot of sleeping with freshman and one of the dudes (about 22) shacks up with a 17-year-old gal with terrible hair and an even worse accent.

The one aspect that really freaked me out is that Olivia d’Abo is in this movie (as the girlfriend that takes off to study in Prague and leaves her man behind.) D’Abo also was featured in a few Law & Order SVU episodes as a psychotic chick who seduces and kills both men and women to achieve whatever she wants. So seeing her in this movie was quite a mindfuck.

Also, both d’Abo and her boyfriend in the movie are supposedly novelists. Throughout the movie, she pulls out a little notepad and scribbles down her thoughts when inspiration strikes. At one point she asks her boyfriend if it bothers him that she writes down the things he says or the moment they have just shared.

I say he should be lucky that she at least uses a notepad. Once I outlined a story I was writing on deadline on a piece of toilet paper with a pencil — no lie. I can just imagine what my man would say if he found a piece of toilet paper....”oh dear, I think some of the bathroom followed you from your last trip. Here, let me get it for you....Oh, wait, there’s writing on this...What? What, the...hell.”

I promise I will start updating regularly tomorrow

New Mean Creek video for the song "Not To Dream"

Writer's Block

Just recently I’ve felt the urge to write again. Not the paid freelancing stuff I do for newspapers, but the creative type that pleases mostly myself as I move through the editing process time and time again. Call it masturbation of the intellectual kind.

So tonight I decided to camp out in front of my computer and dedicate most of the night to begin hashing out the start of an idea I’ve had floating around my head. It’s not next great American novel, but I’m pretty excited about it. Let’s just call it the “great project” for now.

As I finish up checking my email I start looking over the notes I’ve been making on the “great project,” and I start getting pretty damn excited – practically salivating over the fact that I have the next day off for the holiday so I can write for as long as I want.

I mean, since I’ve packed up and moved up to Boston it’s been pretty hard to concentrate on anything else than getting acquainted with the city and my new job.

I figure I should shut off my cell phone to eliminate any distractions and as I sit back down at my desk I suddenly hear a whoosh. It was more like a missile flying past my face, than a quick exhaling of the breath.

I look up and it’s the fucking biggest bug I’ve seen since I moved out of my parents’ house in New Jersey. (Not that there are necessarily huge bugs, it’s just that in Boston I’ve seen pretty much little to no insects buzzing around.)

Running out of my room I grab the first thing I can find – a mop. So I’m frantically jabbing cleaning supplies at the bastard (who has taken shelter in the corner of my ceiling) while dialing everyone I know in the 10 mile radius.

After two people fail to answer the phone, I realize no one is going to be around to chat because it’s Labor Day weekend. Everyone is either finishing up a delicious barbeque or preparing to rage all night long because they have the next day off. No one would choose to spend the night alone as I decided would be a grand idea.

Ten minutes go by and the bug is still delicately doing the “don’t kill me, thanks” dance in the corner of my ceiling. At this point, I’ve dedicated a pretty sophisticated bug- killing motion in my mind. It consists of jabbing said cleaning product at the ceiling, then running away as quickly possible.

After five failed attempts with this procedure (and one sore hip from accidentally running into the door) I give up. I go into the kitchen, pour some two-buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s and put on Lucero to think the situation over.

Before I can stop myself, I’m three glasses of wine in and halfway through making an intricate pasta dish for dinner. Although the dinner was delicious and I was tipsy enough to forget there was an insect bigger than half my face flying around my bedroom, I had lost the ability or urge to write.

Call it writer’s block if you will. I’ll label it as punishment for delaying the call to the maintenance man to fix my window.