Macy's Ain't Got Nothin' On Me

I think it would be ridiculously fun for one day just to ride around the city on a parade float. And not as part of a parade; I’m talking just me, on a big ass float, cruising the narrow, city streets.

At first thought, I imagine the float to be a big pink and flowery monstrosity. But I think this is the wrong way to go. I’m thinking grey tissue paper, with purple tissue paper piping. Somewhat tasteful (as far as parade floats go), perhaps with a stuffed polar bear menagerie mechanically frolicking around a polyurethane ice flow, strange and somewhat chilling smiles on their stuffed faces. Maybe a penguin or two that slide down a funny little fake ice slide on an endless loop, a stuffed penguin treadmill. There would be big banners on both sides of the float which read, “Super Arctic Fun Fun”. I would sit high on a plastic ice throne, thirty-eight feet above the street, with a crown and a real live monkey bouncing around on my lap.

And yes, I know, penguins are not Arctic animals, they do not live near polar bears. It’s a parade float, let it go.

I would have some poor lackey driving the thing – maybe some kid with a learner’s permit that I would give twenty bucks and a six pack of Zima to – and no, I do not want the roads blocked. 90% of the fun lies in the mass of confusion I could cause with this fuzzy beast rolling through Chinatown, through Pioneer Square, through Capitol Hill and maybe even a couple mile, 12 mph stretch on the I-5. Can’t you see it? People screaming, pedestrians pushed up onto the curb, me tossing out cherry pits to my less than adoring fans like they were candy…

Someday, when I’m truly rich and crazy.

From The Dark Depths

Hey y’all. They finally photographed a real life giant squid. Here’s what it looks like:

It’s 25 feet long – The same length as the shark in Jaws, coincidence? – and apparently it moves quickly and viciously. While quite large, it’s not exactly this:

I seriously love this shit, I get off on it.

Since I was a wee child I have had this mean fascination with the deep sea; it’s a heady mix of fascination and fear. I remember having a Jacques Cousteau book when I was about four that was chock full of pictures and illustrations of giant squids, and those hideously ugly fish with the little glowy bobber that hangs over their giant needle sharp teeth, and sharks, my god the sharks.

I love sharks.

I’m going to keep that statement simple. If I lose control here about sharks this post will be the length of the Gettysburg Address.

As a kid I was also interested in outer space, magic, unsolved mysteries and things, but nothing held my attention like what existed in those deep and black depths of the oceans. I still hold onto this with a childlike fascination that is equal parts fear.

When I got older, I started getting into the scholastic ideas of the ocean being a symbol for the mind’s subconscious and how those fascinating beasties could themselves be symbols of our fears and desires, occasionally rising out of the blind, dark depths and devouring. I still like this idea, in that intellectually masturbatory way that I like to intellectually masturbate. But hearing that they had finally seen a live and kicking giant squid made me remember that feeling of being 4 years old, sitting on the floor of the living room and staring with wide-eyed wonder at my cherished Jacques Cousteau book.

Spirit In The Dark

I heard Aretha Franklin singing on the radio this weekend. A fourteen year old Aretha Franklin singing on a bad recording, and it made the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I couldn’t help but smile like a goof, all the while tiny tears falling as those shivers ran down my back. That girl made one of those amazing storms where the sun still shines through the rain.

It made me think of Janis too, how every time I hear her sing Cry Baby, no matter how many times I hear it, I cry a little and smile like I’ve found that rough but beautiful path to heaven. It kills me to know that she had found what she was supposed to do, she was doing what she was supposed to do – I mean you could hear it in that gloriously dirty voice – and it still wasn’t enough to fulfill her.

They’re beautifully scarred woman, these sacred ladies of mine, lifting a simple song into something that shakes the soul.

Brain Damage, Or You Know, Serious Brain Damage

So I’ve developed a habit of attempting handstands while I’m drunk. For the most part they’ve gone okay, but Friday night I managed one that was not one of the “most part” collection. Not only did I knock a variety of things off of the wall, but I immediately went right down on my head.

Biff, smartly I might add, made me promise to not do anymore handstands that night. In my defense, I was so drunk that I had to close one eye just to be able to focus on someone.

That’s a pretty shitty defense when I read back over it.

But I realized that there may be a problem when trying to discern if you have somehow given yourself a concussion when ridiculously drunk. From what I understand, a concussion involves dizziness and vomiting. Drinking copious amounts of bourbon without much in the way of food as a buffer can also cause this. Herein lies said problem.

I awoke with a splitting headache, still dizzy, still feeling the urge to vomit. How was I to know if this was just another awful hangover, or if I had bruised my brain in the previous evening’s festivities. Always trying to hope for the best in these situations, I decided to forgo the trip to the hospital and passed out watching Monsters Inc. instead.

A nap and some eggs and sausage gravy set me up just fine – so unless these are cures for concussion, I was just drunk.

Furniture I've Got At Home, BTW

I realized on that grand ol’ walk into work today, that I have been out of sorts for the last week or so. Granted, I’ve been fighting a cold and that’s bound to bring the Billy buoyancy factor down, but that wasn’t it.

I auditioned for a show that I was SURE I was going to get a part in but didn’t. It wasn’t so much a blow to the ego as a feeling like my momentum was stopping. It also made my tedious customer service job seem that much more awful without the hopes of doing what I love in the after hours.

But I think I turned a corner somewhere down in Pioneer Square this morning, I’m feeling alright. I honestly feel okay about not getting the show and am excited about looking for another one to do. I also feel good about focusing on some serious writing for the first time in forever if I don’t have a winter show.

And I remembered my pie/bread baking plans. And the soup, the soup…

Essentially, I realized I’m doing just fine, with great people around me (including some I get to hang out with and drink whiskey this weekend). Plus the story that Becca told me about the special chair they use to jerk off apes for their semen… It just makes me feel the magic.

6 Months

Today is the 6 month anniversary of Billy Cleans His Plate. We are over here eating Cherry Chip cake and drinking punch that some wiseass spiked with Bacardi Raz.

I remember when you were just this little page with only 2 or 3 postings, no bigger than an email, and now look at you. Was I ever that young? These blogs of today have no idea what it used to be like, writing down your random, ridiculous thoughts in a notebook that nobody ever read, ever.

Oh yeah, good times… Y’all remember that one post, with the stuff in it? That was fun.

Along with celebrating meaningless milestones, I would like to congratulate home slice down on Pike and 4th who has for the 87th day running tried to ask me unintelligible questions while I quickly walk past with music blaring from my ears. Way to go big guy!

Here’s to 6 more months of complete randomness, and thank you for reading…

Delicate Building

The past few days I have had so much dried mucous in my eyes when I wake up, that I could easily build a dried mucous house, an eye booger mansion.

Well sure, it'd be small, but I bet it would be at least 2 stories high.

And I guess this might be the proper time to let you know that I am fascinated by typically gross things my body does. If I pull a particularly gnarly scab off myself, I may save it for a day or two just to look at it. I love hunting for ingrown hairs, and then painfully yanking those fuckers out with tweezers just to gaze at those renegade follicles like a victor, like Hemingway fawning over a kill with sad, lover's eyes.

So I am a little overcome with emotion right now that there is not a small jar of eye boogers waiting for me at home. I just didn't think of it.

White Trash-tastic

So around 7 or 7:30 in the morning on Saturday, in this sort of bleak zone between Fremont and Ballard, we stopped at a Shell station to get some Gatorade. The woman in line ahead of us was picking up her 22 oz bottle of Bacardi Raz and a lottery ticket.

Bacardi Raz is a “malternative” malt beverage with the refreshing flavor of raspberry. Nothing about this woman spoke of refreshing, though she did seem a little malternative.

Now, I don’t want to judge this lady – that’s a lie, that’s actually all I want to do. I hope she didn’t have kids, but if she does I’m sure after pouring them a sugariffic bowl of generic cereal for breakfast, she told them to keep it down during mommy’s rest time where she retired to her room to scratch away her hopes of a fortune and guzzle a bottle.

I have no problem with tying one on at 7 in the morning, seriously, no problem at all. But do it with style and class, not with a bitch pop. Get drunk with whiskey. Tequila makes for a great breakfast beverage. If you are of the classy elder lady variety, or theatrically gay or British, go for gin. But stay away from the Smirnoff Ice, the wine coolers, for the love of god stay away from the Bacardi Raz.

And lotto tickets should really be saved for after 5 pm. C’mon.

Steal This Post

So I saw this sticker which had been pasted to a lamp post downtown, it said, “Question Authority!”

Now, I’m no handwriting expert, but from the neat and curving cursive script on this sticker I got the feeling that the writer was a sensitive individual with a powerful (if not somewhat tired) point to make.

But the exclamation point at the end… It really makes it seem more like a command than a suggestion. Not a, “hey everyone, seriously, question authority” but more like, “I demand that you question authority!” Which then makes it an authoritative statement, does it not? So the messenger makes me then question the message.

This might be the subtle point. To question everything is a good freaking idea, I don’t care which side of the proverbial political fence you are on, there are creepy loonies in either yard. But I doubt this was the point, it’s the realist in me.

It reminded me of a message I once saw in the tunnel that connects the UC Santa Barbara campus with Isla Vista, the little “town” that houses many of the students and the requisite liquor stores and pizza joints. Where, by the way, UCSB students burned down a Bank of America in protest in 1970. Seriously, a good idea? “We’re pissed, so let’s burn down a B of A!” Why do most college protests just end up coming off like stupid ass fratboy accidents? They end up making a good argument that liberals are whiney little bitches. Seriously, you’re in college, put down the Meister Brau for a moment and think about what you’re saying and doing.

Wow, histrionically went off the mark there, sorry.

But the I.V. tunnel, along with a spray painted, “R.I.P. Lux Interior” (which I thought was pretty cool) there was the message of, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” in big, blue, spray painted letters. Way to spread the message of protecting and saving the planet by using a product which eats up the ozone like a stoner with a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

So what’s your angry, little point Billy, you might be asking. I guess it’s that messages like “reduce, reuse, recycle” and “question authority” are good reminders, but beware of becoming the system you are fighting. Or maybe it’s that protest is fantastic, fighting for what you believe in is great; but be smart about it, be original and be creative, don’t be schmuck that leaves our side looking like assholes.

Or maybe it’s just that generally, people can be so dumb.

Why Not Wear Traffic Cones

Because I’ve now been trained by the ridiculous calls I take everyday, I will ask a question that I’m really not interested in the answer for. This question, in a roundabout way, has something to do with the point I am going to try to make after receiving the answer.

Is anybody’s favorite color fluorescent green?

I have to guess that the sheer volume of people clamoring for all things fluorescent green is, frankly, low. (See, I had no interest in how you answered that question. I’m just going to bulldoze through my ridiculous point as if your non-answer only strengthens my argument.)

This is what happens to you when working a customer relations gig by the way…

So, I saw this girl walking down the street. She had long pale white dread/braid things for hair (much like those ghost twins in Matrix 2). That’s fine, that’s cool even – the kicker is she had fluorescent green material weaved into those pale white braids.

Seriously! Why not just walk down the street with a bullhorn shrieking, “Hey! Look at me!”

I have.

But c’mon, we’re talking about putting a color in your hair that is normally reserved for warning people or alerting them to something, rarely (late 90’s specifically) is it used for a fashion statement. If it was your favorite color I could kind of get it, but as I pointed out so brilliantly with question number 1, I find it difficult to believe that girl hearts glo-green.

I almost asked her if she needed that much attention, but I was too busy swinging my dick at oncoming traffic to get people looking at me new pants.

Recovery and Halloween Past

I skipped work yesterday because of a cold, a snotty and feverish cold. I’m sorry there was no post yesterday, I was busy watching Simpson’s episodes on DVD and napping. But I just wanted to tell you:

I was going to a concert one Halloween, I quite often went to concerts on Halloween, but that year I did not have a costume. I figured I’m young, I’m creative, I can find something to use at 7-11 on the way and so took a quick look around. I’m not sure why they had them, but they had Halloween boxer shorts available – black with orange skeletons.

My friend and I got the boxers, some nylons and some glow sticks. We wore the boxers, tied the glow sticks into the feet of the nylons and then put the nylons on our heads old school bank robber style. On walking into the show we swung our heads around in a way that made the glow sticks swing wildly inside the nylons.

The event staff made us remove the glow sticks for some unspecified reason; but man, we got cheers from the crowd on walking up in there.

Postcards From Portland

Portland had always had this strange pull for me, it was always the magic runaway destination, and yet I had never been there until this weekend. Did it contain all the wondrous super city shiny dream stuff that my overactive mind created back when I was 22 and said nearly daily, ‘let’s drive to Portland’? Well, no. But that is a lot to put on a city. Portland was pretty adorable though. Highlights included:

1) Realizing somehow that the Sea Foam Green (which Michael nailed as the correct color) was the color of Portland to me. One of those things you cannot really explain, so just let it roll…
2) Having Jenny give me quarters like a doting mother so I could play the Star Wars video game from the 80’s.
3) Getting good and drunk in Jen and Michael’s adorable apartment, playing a good game of Trivial Pursuit.
4) Drunken macaroni dinner (me drunk, not macaroni) at a fun restaurant where the waiter had an accent that I was guessing was more Welsh than Scottish. Turns out he was from Idaho.
5) Listening to Jenny answer a question I’d asked as if she had just been biding her time and waiting for me to ask it. I walked behind her and smiled at this, a little giddy at just hearing her talk as well as just getting to be around her again.
6) Going out for breakfast with Biff and Jenny (I love going out to breakfast and it was something that Jenny and I were trying to do on a regular basis when we both lived in the Bay Area, but only managed to do once or twice) and enjoying the coziness that fell over me while I sat there drinking coffee and waiting for food and sharing a table with two of the greatest, loveliest ladies around.

Checking out a city I’ve never been to before is always great, but getting to see it through the borrowed eyes of someone who has lived there for years as well as someone still fresh to it is a unique experience. It was also good to know that it was more comforting than weird to be driving home from our first road trip from a new home and realizing it was Seattle we were driving home to.

Captain Tuck

I didn’t get to see his face, but I smelled his cigar. This guy, this older man smoking a cigar passed me on my walk in this morning. He was wearing a soft fabric baseball cap. He was also wearing large, voluminous pants – almost MC Hammer pants. I almost said “please Hammer, don’t hurt ‘em”, but I didn’t.

He apparently needed these parachute pants for the room it takes to tuck in your shirt and blazer.

Yup, belt up halfway along the waist, and his dress jacket tucked down into those pants. And did I mention smoking a cigar? Did I mention smoking a cigar like a dick hungry porn starlet trying to prove something in a blow job scene? No sooner had he finished blowing out the last foul smoke cloud, he was back sucking in a new one.

And what just made this over the top great, the cherry on the sunday, the whiskey in the glass, was that the guy walked down the sidewalk like a drag queen modeling fall fashions to an adoring crowd.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, but I will call him Captain Tuck.

Mucilaginous Root

Yup, the marshmallow plant is a flowering herb with a mucilaginous root that is used for medicine and confections. There’s something about the word mucilaginous that just makes you want to… eat candy?

Not so much.

I’ve never been nutty crazy about marshmallows, but I’ll take ‘em rather than leave ‘em. I used to like kiddy cereals with marshmallows in them – mostly the Frankenberry, Boo Berry, and Count Chocula variations, but I’ve eaten my fair share of Lucky Charms, I even remember when they first came out with the purple horseshoe marshmallow. I vaguely recall the blue diamonds being new.

Grandma used to make us peanut butter and marshmallow cream sandwiches. Shit yeah! That was like candy and lunch all together. Honestly the thought of eating one now makes my stomach clench a little, but man I loved those sandwiches.

S’mores were a definite favorite when I was a kid and we would spend those glorious holiday weekends out at Hood Canal. Somewhere around my flowering teenage years I started getting off more on watching the marshmallows burn in a nuclear flame out than I did eating them. But I remember one weekend out on the canal with just my brother, my cousin and my uncle - where we pulled more crab out of the water than was legally allowed – there were big plans for roasting that jumbo bag of marshmallows. It ended up turning into a marshmallow fight of epic proportions that had my grandparents finding fossilized candy in random nooks of their house for months to come.

And then I remember my very first Dead show. Some guy on the lawn there between sets watched the first few missile shots of a marshmallow battle fly past him. He turned to his friend, and with a grave seriousness said, “I just don’t have the energy for another marshmallow war”. I laughed for like half an hour.

Of course I was hallucinating at the time.

We’re planning on going camping this weekend, and normally it wouldn’t have entered my mind to do it, but I think we’re gonna have to invest in a bag of marshmallows for the campfire.

Heavy Into Fall

The air is cooling and you can nearly smell the season changing in the breeze. We were out walking last night and saw the most amazing, blood red crescent moon hovering above the Olympic Mountains. It’s like fall is standing behind this thin and gauzy curtain, ripe and ready to jump out at us, so psyched that it keeps letting out little fall farts that end up ruining the surprise.

Fall is my favorite. It gets cold at night and in the morning, and you get to wear sweaters that have been put out of mind since winter. You get that glorious display of turning leaves, but even better than that I think is the constant autumn smell – woodsy and spicy, somewhat feral and comfortable all at the same time. And those brisk, partly cloudy days where you just want to walk somewhere and get soup.

I don’t know what it is, but fall always puts me in this romantic mode of baking things and making soup. Even now I have these grand notions of large bubbling pots of homemade soup that just make you close your eyes and smile when you taste them. And rustic breads and pies. Now I’ve baked some bread, but never once have I attempted a pie. I cannot explain it, but I have it in my head that I’m going bake me a shit load of blackberry pies this fall; and apple pies.

And I’m already looking forward to those cold, dark and rainy days where I’m gonna cuddle up all cozy with Biff and the cats and slowly get up to drink coffee and cider. Maybe play some cards while we listen to “Preaching the Blues” on KEXP, eat some pie…

Some Seriously Bad Monkeys

So we closed out The Crucible, and I think that most of the cast felt the same in that we were sad that this was it, that this was a once in a lifetime cast that poured their hearts into this production. But I think we were all a little happy at the same time, as this play is fucking draining. I know I was definitely looking forward to some time off, for a free weekend for the first time in months. But when we went out to take our final bow and I looked across that stage at a line of incredible actresses I had had the fortune to work with, I got a little weepy.

I know we put on a powerful show and that feels fantastic. Reggie came to see it and walked out so tense and upset, that it was great. I mean not for her, but knowing we were able to so powerfully affect one member of the audience was validation for something I was already pretty sure of.

We had to pull down the sets and clean everything in the theater – including painting the men’s dressing room walls - after the final show. We did cut the blow with beer and wine and pizza – a great witch/devil soundtrack featuring the Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder… No ELO though, seriously where was Evil Woman?

People began to split off as the night wore on, people hugged, people said goodbye, people told each other how proud they were to have worked with one another – and meant it. It finally got down to about 8 or 9 people heavily drinking, heavily slurring and doing some sort of freeform Irish square dancing. By the time we all did a sing along to Bohemian Rhapsody, I had done about five handstands and attempted the splits twice… Yeah, I’m feeling it today.

I stumbled out of the theater after 6 AM, saying my farewells to the director and assistant director and to Heather, who played Elizabeth Proctor so amazingly well. I headed home as the sky was fully coming alive, carrying a chair that couldn’t fit in anybody’s car, holding my head up and tears back knowing that I was walking away from one of the most fulfilling theater experiences I will probably ever have.

Time To Go...

You know, when there’s that guy you don’t really like a whole lot already, and then he gets all done up on an eightball of coke and won’t shut the hell up, so now you really can’t stand him?

Because he just keeps fucking talking, loudly and, of course quickly, like he’s a friggin’ political genius and he’s got all the answers and he knows who’s wrong and he can make crazy predictions about when the next major chunk of freeway will fall. And seriously man, he’s been stating the obvious for years.

And you know when you’ve only gotten a few hours sleep because you have very little self control and went to bed late with a belly full of whiskey and no food and then got stuck behind an Amtrak on the way to work that would move one way a little bit, and then the other, and then back the other way, so that after seven and a half minutes of watching this you finally decide to try another way in a squeal of tire burning fury so that essentially you just want to take coke guy out back and kick the living shit out of him even though your knee is hurting for some reason?

I am so happy that there’s a three day weekend coming…

All Within Twelve Hours

I saw a bus driver get out of his bus, which was blocking at least 3 city blocks of rush hour/baseball game traffic, to do some stretches next to the door.

I saw devastating pictures of New Orleans, a city near and dear to my heart, one of my favorite places in the world.

I saw Biff sitting at our table, a little tipsy and smiling and laughing – she looked beautiful.

I saw a homeless woman sitting on the steps of the church down the street, bag at her feet, staring out into nothing.

I saw a train go by with 3 aircraft fuselages strapped onto flat cars. Massive!

To steal a line from Jim Jarmusch (and imagine a young Tom Waits warbeling it in falsetto if you would), ‘it’s a sad and beautiful world’.