Sunday's restless rambling, writing, and realizations...
Spent most of this weekend fighting off restlessness...and soaking in as much distracting music as possible. Right now I'm knee deep in Corinne Bailey Rae's, Are You Here, and loving every soulful strum. A little earlier in the day I was fully consumed with Ben's Letter by 54 Seconds, which reminds me...God, I love bands who still make music videos...love 'em. Anyway, when I could have been watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament's Selection Show I was singing along with, and making a mess of, Tom Waits and Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis, which just might strangely be the sweetest song ever. Just for the record, Tom Waits might also be just about the coolest guy alive.
It's funny, I've been losing my interest in a lot of the things that I used to find escape in...like the NCAA Tournament. Anymore, I'm just kinda who cares about that junk. I've been discovering, or re-discovering more and more alternative means of entertainment. I've been writing a lot more, and enjoying it. Sports ruined how much I loved writing. Now I write stories just for the sake of writing stories. Just this afternoon I sat down in an attempt to avoid a nap, and sketched out the start to what might be something I continue with. It took all of five minutes to start a story that I think I'd like to finish. It felt better than watching Murray St. celebrate their tournament bid.
My afternoon distraction looks like this...
The name Charlie Holden pricked the ears of friends and neighbors alike. He was distressing to most, an unfathomable botheration to others, and occasionally even something of a danger to the people around him. He was a mild annoyance to most everyone, and a substantial concern to the general populace of his entire community. His reputation was so considerable that the police precinct in Waubuno was more familiar with Charlie than with any other civil threat that they encountered on a daily basis. His fat and flustered face was plastered all about the muster room for everyone to fear and loathe. That was a momentous accomplishment for a twelve year old son of a cocktail waitress, but a distinction that he wore proudly, like a Boy Scout badge, that is if Boy Scout badges were awarded for arson, assault, common thievery, and general nuisancery, which is a word specifically invented to describe the future felon.
Charlie Holden was bemoaned by everyone save his mother. Her name was Jenny Parker (Holden was a surname belonging to Charlie's long since, and wisely estranged father), and she thought that Charlie was at worst, incorrigible, and at best bored. The consensus amoungst friends, family and strangers alike was that Jenny Parker was generally an idiot. Unfortunately for everyone, Waubuno suffered idiots indiscriminately. In fact, it had a glorious history of doing so. It was a lineage than ran much deeper than Charlie Holden's psycho-social issues, or his mother's reputation as something of an easy target, to generously infer a more gentle kind of morality on her oft observed indiscretions. Not surprisingly, Waubuno itself had quite a reputation as well, although not for the same sexual impassivity that Jenny Parker did, but rather for the overall malaise and apathy of it's inhabitants.
Waubuno, as the saying goes , is where ambition goes to die. The town is infamous for its sheer number of degenerates. Surrounded by failing farms and full to the brim with defunct factories, it ranked number one in the region for welfare fraud, liquor consumption, sexually transmitted diseases, and indictable marijuana possession charges. It ranked a less distinguished second in the province for drug trafficking convictions and prescription narcotics abuse. The town wasn't without some redeeming qualities though. Waubuno's Novice hockey team, quite surprisingly, won a Provincial Championship in the very same year -- last year -- that it's head coach and trainer were convicted of fraud, stealing $22, 000 from the minor hockey association's bingo accounts. It did, however manage to lift one of it's young sons into the National Hockey League, Kerry Kinicki, while a much less distinguished list of seventy or eighty men were serving sentences of five plus years in Federal penitentiaries. Fifteen years before anyone in Waubuno could remember it happening the town also sent one it's own to Hollywood. Ellen Carpenter never made a single feature film and died penniless and alone on Fifth Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, a victim of sexual solicitation gone bad. They found her body in a construction site port-a-john. Aside from the Novice hockey championship Waubuno had very little to boast, except, perhaps the worst twelve year old of all time. Charlie Holden quite possibly could have been that.
See what I mean? A story out of nowhere, and for what purpose? Just to write it, I guess.
I suppose I'd better get busy filling out a Tournament bracket. I haven't completely lost interest. It's just hard to find any of it very important with all this nonsense falling out of my head and smattering all over the keyboard all the time. There are notebooks full of that stuff. Ever since I stopped checking ESPN every twenty minutes and started filling my ears with more music than Sportscenter highights it's been prolific city. I'm happier, healthier, and certainly closer to being actually productive with my free time than I was before. I dunno what all this scribbling means, I just know I like doing it. It feels better than watching Michigan football stumble again and again, or see the Tigers miss the post-season in a one game play-off. Writing feels a whole lot better than that.
It's funny, I've been losing my interest in a lot of the things that I used to find escape in...like the NCAA Tournament. Anymore, I'm just kinda who cares about that junk. I've been discovering, or re-discovering more and more alternative means of entertainment. I've been writing a lot more, and enjoying it. Sports ruined how much I loved writing. Now I write stories just for the sake of writing stories. Just this afternoon I sat down in an attempt to avoid a nap, and sketched out the start to what might be something I continue with. It took all of five minutes to start a story that I think I'd like to finish. It felt better than watching Murray St. celebrate their tournament bid.
My afternoon distraction looks like this...
The name Charlie Holden pricked the ears of friends and neighbors alike. He was distressing to most, an unfathomable botheration to others, and occasionally even something of a danger to the people around him. He was a mild annoyance to most everyone, and a substantial concern to the general populace of his entire community. His reputation was so considerable that the police precinct in Waubuno was more familiar with Charlie than with any other civil threat that they encountered on a daily basis. His fat and flustered face was plastered all about the muster room for everyone to fear and loathe. That was a momentous accomplishment for a twelve year old son of a cocktail waitress, but a distinction that he wore proudly, like a Boy Scout badge, that is if Boy Scout badges were awarded for arson, assault, common thievery, and general nuisancery, which is a word specifically invented to describe the future felon.
Charlie Holden was bemoaned by everyone save his mother. Her name was Jenny Parker (Holden was a surname belonging to Charlie's long since, and wisely estranged father), and she thought that Charlie was at worst, incorrigible, and at best bored. The consensus amoungst friends, family and strangers alike was that Jenny Parker was generally an idiot. Unfortunately for everyone, Waubuno suffered idiots indiscriminately. In fact, it had a glorious history of doing so. It was a lineage than ran much deeper than Charlie Holden's psycho-social issues, or his mother's reputation as something of an easy target, to generously infer a more gentle kind of morality on her oft observed indiscretions. Not surprisingly, Waubuno itself had quite a reputation as well, although not for the same sexual impassivity that Jenny Parker did, but rather for the overall malaise and apathy of it's inhabitants.
Waubuno, as the saying goes , is where ambition goes to die. The town is infamous for its sheer number of degenerates. Surrounded by failing farms and full to the brim with defunct factories, it ranked number one in the region for welfare fraud, liquor consumption, sexually transmitted diseases, and indictable marijuana possession charges. It ranked a less distinguished second in the province for drug trafficking convictions and prescription narcotics abuse. The town wasn't without some redeeming qualities though. Waubuno's Novice hockey team, quite surprisingly, won a Provincial Championship in the very same year -- last year -- that it's head coach and trainer were convicted of fraud, stealing $22, 000 from the minor hockey association's bingo accounts. It did, however manage to lift one of it's young sons into the National Hockey League, Kerry Kinicki, while a much less distinguished list of seventy or eighty men were serving sentences of five plus years in Federal penitentiaries. Fifteen years before anyone in Waubuno could remember it happening the town also sent one it's own to Hollywood. Ellen Carpenter never made a single feature film and died penniless and alone on Fifth Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, a victim of sexual solicitation gone bad. They found her body in a construction site port-a-john. Aside from the Novice hockey championship Waubuno had very little to boast, except, perhaps the worst twelve year old of all time. Charlie Holden quite possibly could have been that.
See what I mean? A story out of nowhere, and for what purpose? Just to write it, I guess.
I suppose I'd better get busy filling out a Tournament bracket. I haven't completely lost interest. It's just hard to find any of it very important with all this nonsense falling out of my head and smattering all over the keyboard all the time. There are notebooks full of that stuff. Ever since I stopped checking ESPN every twenty minutes and started filling my ears with more music than Sportscenter highights it's been prolific city. I'm happier, healthier, and certainly closer to being actually productive with my free time than I was before. I dunno what all this scribbling means, I just know I like doing it. It feels better than watching Michigan football stumble again and again, or see the Tigers miss the post-season in a one game play-off. Writing feels a whole lot better than that.
posted by Unknown at
8:15 PM
2 Comments:
The writing — like your doodling, only with words — has been something that's shown the great depths to you… going all the way back to when we were teenagers and didn't have a clue.
Keep, that mind floss going because what comes out, is worth sharing.
Don't give up on sports completely...look at the Olympics, they can bring people together in ways never thought possible previously. But I am glad that you are happy. I enjoy reading Happy Brian's posts. A. Lot.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home