I have unbelievable hostility for the people at the gym who refuse to tell you their rates and instead make you take a tour and tell them what you’re looking for in a gym and whether you’re training for a marathon or just looking to feel the burn cuz it’s go time and you can sleep when you die and summer’s coming and nothing tastes as good as thin feels and tone it up etc and then sit you down and throw a bunch of numbers and conditions at you and work their way around a piece of paper until it’s just an inscrutable black blob of numbers and x-es and you’re sure that if you could just hold it all in your head, including the special promotions they mentioned at the beginning of the gym tour which they’re now not mentioning anymore so you should remember to remind them about that you could get the best deal but you also suspect, or rather know, or really, feel, that no matter what you’re getting fucked even though they’re flashing you a shit-eating grin and asking if you have friends who would be interested in training, not to contact them, but just they can “get some ammunition on you” for when they go to their manager because they don’t even know if she’ll okay this deal and she’ll want to know how they even got the number so low but it’s ok because they like you and want to help you out.

I’m reminded of room draw in college where you’re each given a number but if you draw into a room together you combine the numbers and take the average so while looking at rooms you must carry a calculator and have various back up plans for if person A goes with that plan or B goes with that plan or abroad, etc. Frustrated, my friend Wendy declared that this was like a horrendous word problem and she suspected if we could just figure it out somehow we could get an entire dorm.

And loosely related is trying to get an apartment in NYC where you’re walking around with a broker and trying to butter them up because maybe they can help you on the price and they’re trying to butter you up because they want you to take the apartment and so it’s just a big ass-kissing free for all.

harrumph

My friend Mike who used to be in Smile but is now in Satisfaction wrote this which I think is pretty fucking ingenious so I’ve reprinted it here:

It’s alright.. cocaine.

It’s alright. It’s alright. It’s alright..

Cocaine.

And here’s my contribution:

When you’ve been waiting to use the bathroom for like 25 minutes and the door is locked and you can hear a whole bunch of giggling bitches in there, one of whom asked to borrow a “key” or “pen cap,” cocaine.

the phrase “owning” your “sexuality.” Not the concept, or the notion, or the idea, or the H&M-clad strut it implies, but simply the phrase. I rent mine.

Similarly, while I can’t stand “walk the walk and talk the talk,” I really can’t stand when people say “walk the talk” or sometimes “talk the walk,” which actually just goes to show that these phrases are meaningless ultimately because how do you walk the talk? Uh-oh, now I’m beginning to wonder if walk the talk is right and I’ve actually had it mangled this whole time? walk is a weird word. everything’s losing meaning. help.

So I’m not really the karaoke-ing kind. I just don’t love it, perhaps owing to the stick up my ass. (note: not owing to the stick up my ass). Anyway though, late Saturday night I was bamboozled into accompanying old college friends to Sing Sing where, if you can push your way through the crush of frat guys clogging up the front artery without getting date raped, you’re allowed entrance into a small room with a large TV and some vinyl couches upon which you’d be remiss not to either spill something or film yourself engaging in all manner of kink, which we didn’t do, because all we did was sing and drink beer. Stupid us!

But anyway, while turning in a surprisingly heartfelt rendition of Dolly Parton’s stirring “Jolene” I was forced to recognize what a truly amazing set of pipes I have and when a friend said to me “good work” and “nice!” I truly believed her and felt that it was almost unfair to the others the level to which I was just killing at Karaoke and my god, is everyone sitting there taking in how much talent I have and thinking that they never knew I possessed such a pitch-perfect angels-singing type tone coupled with obvious hard-won technique? I mean, it was impossible to miss.

And it was only when I heard the same friend say “good work” and “nice!” to another friend after a really painful piss-poor slaughtering of some popular song that I began to wonder just what the hell was going on and also it occurred to me that I bet everyone who holds that mic and sings along to incorrect lyrics on a screen thinks all the people around them are secretly in awe of their alarming talent, and my god and who knew and how come you never told us and look at you, all bashful. You should go on American Idol!

Is that the appeal of karaoke?

Useless and yet very me-festooned.

Last night I told Chris Ziegler, who’s in town because Dios were playing and he’s on tour with them hawking their merch*, that I’d created the much debated blog. He seemed upset. Chagrined. Disappointed. “But if you have musings you need to share why not just call me up and tell them to me?” he asked. I explained that thus far, the musings were simply about musing on a blog, and were there no blog there’d be no musings. He requested a shoutout. He also mentioned ouroboros. I laughed an insufferable laugh. I can’t spell ouroboros.

* When asked “what is this CD?” by a potential customer on the last tour Chris actually responded, “What isn’t this CD really?”

Did you ever have that excited feeling when you were a kid and you got a new pet and you went to sleep the first night the pet was there knowing when you woke up the new pet would still be there and maybe you woke up in the middle of the night and forgot for a second and then remembered and it made you smile?

I wondered last night if this blog at all would be like that, even in the slightest way. Not so much.

I can’t believe I’ve now joined the ranks of the bloggers, but here I am. I expect I’ll be changing this template soon as there’s only so long I can hang with the sanitary napkin box look. Is everyone’s first post about their first post? Also, whilst staring in the mirror, I worry somehow that naming this blog after myself is gauche, declase, not done, lame, egomaniacal and yet naming it something wry, coy and clever would just be dishonest, like trying to mask narcissism with a saucy band-aid. And it is narcissism, all this writing and whatnot. Because it wouldn’t really be about a tempest in a teapot. Or critical mass. Or something lifted from a TS Eliot poem. Or something lifted from pop culture. Or something ironic and postmodern, which were the other options. You know?