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Monday, November 27, 2006 when we buy clothes a part of us is trying to figure out who we really are, right? so I'm sitting in a show store trying to decide between these really funky cowboy boots with a pointy toe and a pair of boots that are a "take" on the motorcycle boot. and I'm asking every girl that comes in what do they think. opinion is divided. the sales girls give me opinions, but I'm worried about this problem I've identified. when someone notices a jacket or whatever, that can be bad. they'll say "Oh, nice jacket," but it's partly because it caught their eye and in a way that's a bad thing. what you want is just a whole head-to-toe thing where the girls check you out and say "cute guy." not nice jacket, nice glasses. "cute guy" is what you want. (I would say "hot guy," because as Robbie Burns said a man's reach should exceed his graps, but I'm not even gonna bother, I'm so far off that kind of radar-- but I can still shoot for cute: cute's still within my grasp, I think.) and a thousand little details, adjustments, refinements go into that. cary grant said it took attention to 10,000 little details to great the entitiy we know as cary grant. but anyway... I had these two shoes on. and I'm asking all the girls that come in the store "which do you think?" but not which jump out at you. "If there were two guys of equal cuteness and one was wearing these and one was wearing these...which would you think was hotter." three in favour of pointy cowboys, two in favour of motorcycle boots. I got the motorcycle boots in the end, and I'm glad I did. they make me feel tough. I say to the sales girls-- there are no less than five: "Look, girls Tuesday, June 20, 2006 'sup. hey I'm gonna write a story for Toro (men's mag) about the maybe semi-resurgence/mini-renaissance of "masculinist" literature and its curious connection to the Internet. Maddox's book The Alphabet of Manliness debuted at #4 on the NYT bestseller list, and that is a pure internet phenomenon. He's got a strong POV. I like his idea of the new "hetrosexual": "In a world where metrosexuals--stylish, well-groomed, and sharply dressed men--have taken the center stage in defining the new masculinity, small pockets of men are starting to emerge, rebelling against the status quo. This new breed of man has rejected a lifestyle of wine tasting, pedicures, and excessive cultural awareness (i.e., any cultural awareness). This newly born response to metrosexuality is gaining momentum like never before, calling back to a day when men proudly wore plaid, ate liver and onions, and smelled like motor oil by choice. This modern man has come to be known simply as: the hetrosexual." "Hetrosexual," that's funny-- only two "es"-- I like that. But I don't know about the plaid, liver onions, and motor oil. As Owen Wilson says to Jackie Chan in Shanghai Noon, "I like your energy but I'm not with you," likewise I like Maddox and Tucker Max's energy though my view of modern masculine man is a little different, I'm thinking more Cary Grant, the type that could wear a tux well and probably COULD crunch a beer can into his eye (Maddox has a little video on his web page of him crunching a beer can into his eye) but chooses not to. I'm with him on the wine tasting, though. Went to a wine tasting hosted by Francis Ford Coppola Winery at the Spoke Club right after the movie "Sideways" came out and man were people ever talking shit at that. The air was thick with pseudo-oenophile bullshit. I stood in line behind one bollocks-talking person after another and you wanted to grab them by the hair and say "move aside, motherfucker, I saw sideways too-- we all saw it, fool!-- so stand aside, I'm thirsty." I mean, don't get me wrong. It was a good movie. But it is responsible for more people talking shit about wine than I think the human mind is even able to comprehend. As numerous as the stars in the sky are the number of people inspired to talk shit about wine by the movie "Sideways". Monday, May 08, 2006 "My wallet's gone! My wallet's gone!" -- Morty Seinfeld. Just as there is no feeling worse than losing your wallet, there is no greater joy than getting it back again. It's better than sex! Though that statement is less true these days than it once was. When I lost my wallet yesterday (dropped it in the liquor store, retrieved it from the cops with $60 cash intact) I realized, all the information re: me is still pretty much in effect (minus the "hard copy" of $60). Financially, all I am is information in cyberspace. Money is information now. The whole transaction of me as writer is information: I e-mail articles, books, screenplays, etc. They print them up hard copy in magazine, book, celluloid (not yet) Then they send me a check, which by putting in the bank I turn back into pure digital information, every once in a while I extract a little stack of hard copies. Thank god for hard copies that's all I say. Thank God humanity still likes hard copies. Without "hard copies" this entire process would be meaningless, pointless, and I would be shaking a can of pencils in the street, pretending to be blind. When the cop at 14 division was retrieving my wallet from their "locker system," I said "Boy, if my cash were still in there that would really restore my faith in humanity." "Don't let it," he said drily. "Yeah, that's right, isn't it? You guys sort of deal with humanity gone wrong." No answer (what answer could he make besides "Yeah-- duh! Ya think, there, Einstein?" I don't even want to think about the scenes he's burst in upon. Big, brutish men doing horrible things to...I don't want to think about it. I got my wallet and got the hell out of there.) Little footnote: I was most depressed about the $60. I didn't give a crap about the other bumf in my wallet. I was like, "Oh, no, I can ill afford to lose even $60, yadda yadda yadda," then after I got my wallet back, that sixty was gone in under two hours. $20 to Pam; $20 in video late rental fees (down from $40 from a merciful clerk); $20 in fresh rentals... Yes. I rent a lot of movies these days. You have to. Study the medium...like an alligator, submerged except for the eyes, observes the movements of a thirsty antelope lapping up water at river's edge, so I study movies. One day I will pounce, in a flurry of bubbles and churning water which will soon turn red as the antelope struggles against my gnashing teeth. (In this metaphor I am the alligator and the film industry is the antelope). When I strike they won't know what hit them! Friday, March 31, 2006 Ever have a fight with a person? I'm having a fight with a store. It's a long, probably exquisitely boring story, but the short version is: they promised me this suit which I needed for a wedding, and didn't deliver. I wandered into the store when a Hugo Boss representative was there and they said they were getting two, cheap, in my size, 48 Tall, and so I said "Put me down for one. I really need a suit, I've got a wedding to go to and my suit's full of moth-holes." They said "Sure, we'll phone you as soon as the suits come in." But they didn't. They phoned some other dude, he came in and snatched a suit up, and they said they never got another one. So they just didn't bother to call. The more I mulled over this, the more it upset me. This is a store around the corner from my house, where I've been a customer for 13 years, ever since they opened. I've spent thousands of dollars on their Eurocrap. I went in once, they gave me their story. I went in again and said: "I just want to have one more conversation about this." And their "explanation" was no good. In fact I didn't want an "explanation" at all. The situation was crystal to me. They saw a quickie sale and took it. They said, in effect, to themselves, "Fuck Dave." And so I said "Fuck you, I am never shopping there again. You've lost my business." In slightly politer terms. So I had to scramble, the day before the wedding jetted down to Moore's the Suit People, grabbed a suit, jacket, tie, shoes, a total head-to-toe retrofit. They altered it and I picked it up in the morning. Perfect suit. Great wedding. Great service at the store. But here's the thing. They phoned me today, one week later, just to see how it went, "How was the suit, did you have fun at the wedding?" They probably do this every time. It's probably some sort of policy. Here's the thing: I don't care. They earned my loyalty. I will now shop there the rest of my life, whenever I need a suit. I will never set foot again in the dumb first store. And I sent an e-mail to the orginal store explaining this. They're local, I like to support local businesses-- up to a point, the point at which they treat me with less than extra-special consideration. This is money we're talking about. I want to be treated like a fucking King. So if any of you out there own a store, and you think, "Ah, no point in phoning customers up personally, that's corny, doesn't make a difference, anyway," you're wrong. It does. You should do it. Your business will prosper. It is all about extra-special consideration. I give it when I'm earning my money. And so I want to get it when I'm spending it. Dig? Sunday, March 19, 2006 week of maculine activities/society. poker thursday night. a terrible pitched battle. down most of the night, had to fight like a demon to pull myself out of the hole. walk out of there a lousy double-sawbuck up. but i must win, my bloggies (ooh the new eminem is on the radio, I'm diggin' it), there's a terrible pressure. as I left all three of my little waifish children looked up with saucer eyes and said "Daddy, I hope you win tonight." My three year old looked up at me. He has the face of a cherub, he is still closer to the animals, to leaves and trees and nature, than he is to the city and the world. His face is like an apple pie. When I'm lying in bed with him at night, and he turns that face upon me, it's almost scary-- like the face of god. too beautiful. "I hope you win, too, Daddy." Like there's not enough pressure anyway. I've got to win to impress Pam, too. When I get home, it's the first thing she asks: "How'd you do?" Because if I win, see, I'm a winner. (I put this to Pam the next day. She did not answer. Finally, I said, "What do you think of that?" "Well, there may be a grain of truth in it.") If I lose I'm a loser. I'm one of those rare cases where everything is in such balance winning or losing could tip it either way. Most guys, even if they lose, are still winners; and vice versa. Not me! My life hanging so finely in the balance a win or loss at poker could tip me over into "winner" or "loser." At this point in my life I am one-half winner (two books published, TV gigs, magazine stories, etc. three kids, nice house, nice wife) half loser (cf my tax returns for the last three years). My kids look at me like: "Hmmm, Dad doesn't go to an office like other dads, he doesn't even appear to leave the house all that much. He seems to whine and fume about his career quite a bit. Is he a winner or a loser?" Answer, kids: only time will tell. I'm still in the battle, boys, I'm in the trenches with motherfucking bullets bouncing off my helmet. Smoke in my eyes, the field of battle obscured in a thick fog out of which good men, men I've called "friend" stagger, clutching sucking chest wounds-- and die, clutching my lapels, blood bubbling out of their mouths, a beseeching look in their eyes... ...or perhaps you think my metaphors are a tad...o'erwrought? ...anyway, the new guy, the newbie played like a hustler or a shark-- or a total rube, it was hard to tell, at first, which. he literally hauled out one of those little cards which tell you what beats what, "Does a straight beat a flush? Does three of a kind beat two pair?" (answers: no and yes) etc like a fucking rube from a lowbrow comedy! we eyeballed him through our eye-slits. is he for real? but what we were privileged to witness as the evening progressed, in my opinion, was an extremely quick learning curve. exponential. halfway through the night he'd taken the temperature of the situation, and was betting with unwarranted aggression. usually we ease into betting, seeing what our cards are gonna be (in, say, seven stud), then bet as our hands improved. he observed this for a while, and as I described it to my friend, in his learning curve, he went from a to b to c...to G! He'd bet big on his first card-- "Eight bucks"-- trying to knock out the chickens. It worked! For a while, then when it stopped working he switched tactics... ...and this was the great part... our friend patrick was way up, up like no one has ever been, somewhere between $200 and $300 (in our game it's rare to go home more than about $100 up). he was unstoppable. he was unbeatable. every hand he had cards, and he was using his giant stack of chips to just punish everyone else. it was like being continually being pushed down by a big, bad bully who is just much bigger and stronger than you. you get up and he pushes you down again and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. the new guy observed this. the, on one card, he went all in. just like the guys on TV. actually he went all in plus $20. it was on a big pot, there was between 80 and a hundred bucks or so in the pot, patrick thought he had an other one won, and the new guy bet $55 on a single card. patrick stared at this bet, his brows knitting, eyes narrowed. time passed. then he folded his cards. and it was a bluff! the newbie had nothing! bupkes! the terrible arrow of this bluff, this lie which was also a terrible truth, pierced patricks armour. mortally wounded, hit right in the 'nads of his chip-stack, he eyeballed the newbie: the wheels and gears in his brain started to whirr and spin ever faster. as they will when you've been stung, tagged, wounded in battle. he looked like he'd been shot. that newbie gave our game, which had been threatening to slide into a sort of complacent groove, a goose. it was a battle once again. after all, that's the poiunt of poker: NOT to socialize, as some fools say-- this isn't a sewing circle or mah-jongg game where we sit around and say (ny new symbolic comment, gleaned from a question one girl asked of another in our circle recently): "so: I understand you're dating someone new: who's the Mystery Man? What does he do?" -- this last bit delivered in a sort of sing-song, as if the speaker knew you were expecting the question and have a ready-made answer ("oh, his name is bill, he's an architect and he's so dreamy") -- no fuck that! I don't want any information about my friends. I want seeing them to be a vacation from information. We're awash in too much info as it is, I want to cross swords with them in a microcosmic battle for cash... ...and in the end I tagged the newbie with his own technique, went all in in a game of seven card stud on a monster pot, the newbie (thinking I was bludding) called, I rolled over a flush, and that put me from about $60 down to I think about $70 up. Later I lost some of that so in the end after hours of horrible battle, bloody and bruised, eyes inflamed, lungs scorched, liver throbbing, I went home a lousy, stinking, steaming $20 up. But at least I could look my longsuffering wife little orphan-like children in the eyeballs and sy, "Kids, I won. Darling I am a winner." But in the end no one even asked. *** On the other hand I turned down the opportunity to go to a strip club last night. Not sure I can even put my finger on why-- and I just heard on the radio Bubba Sparxxx came up with the concept of his most recent disc in the strip club; so maybe I should've gone, but... oh and there's nelly saying his 7-year-old son has a "grill." (teeth jewellry) funny... ...I don't know, I didn't feel like it. it was a stag party and they were going out to the airport strip or something. truth is: maybe if it'd been downtown I would've gone. but there's something about these suburban strip clubs, they're for the hard-core hard-up. lots of potential to run into dudes who are too into strip clubs-- just as they'd come from "sgt. splatter's" paint-ball thingie, and there were plenty of "too into it" guys there, too. anyway, I bailed, just as everyone was getting into the van. shock and horror from others: "Dave? What! I'm disappointed!" I hate crapping out on a "big night," and I could see horror and disappointment in these 20-something's eyes. Once I had been a hero of debauched 20-something-dom, my novel Chump Change celebrating strip clubs, booze, staying out late, etc. and here was the author of chump change, bailing? I'm sorry, boys. I would've come. But I feel trapped in the suburbs. it was really more about that than anything. downtown, I can put my finger to my lips and bid adieu, je ne regrette rien, whenever I feel like it. in the suburbs you then have to battle with survival, like "how am I gonna get home?" and I didn't feel like that. *** oh. p.s. we were able, through a friend who works in the same office, track the trajectory of patrick's hangover throughout the next day, which was really, really fun. we'd phone our friend his colleague for updates throughout the day-- starting with the morning: first update: "he's suffering. hes put his head down on his desk. his ears are all red and inflamed." then, later: "he went out for some air." then when he came back our source reported he was looking quite chipper but predicted this was merely one of many "false dawns" in patrick's hangover: "it's like there's a species of chanterelle mushroom where you eat it and you feel really horrible and sick for a few hours and then it goes away and you feel great, you're like "God, that was close.' The next day you're dead."
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