The lost years

I'm missing one of my journals.

This is a little horrifying.

I've been trying to kid myself that I'd only misplaced it. But as I was on my hands and knees, reaching under the bed in a last ditch effort to convince myself that I was hiding it in my guitar case, reality finally came crashing down. Somewhere during the course of my last move, the written record of three years of my life has been lost to circumstance.

I probably wouldn't have even noticed had I not decided to take a trip down memory lane. Over the last week or so, I've been reading through all of my journals piecemeal, bits here and there throughout the years. After spending several nights revisiting countless unfortunate crushes, over dramatized school worries, and lots of transcribed song lyrics, I was more than a little over myself. But more than anything, I hadn't been able to glean the perspective that I'd hoped from analyzing my past self. I'm looking into those corrective lenses for hindsight that I keep hearing so much about. For every meaningful turn of phrase or happy memory that would have otherwise been forgotten, there was a noticeable cringing. Is it really such a good idea to keep these things? Not only saving the old ones but persisting in scrawling out book after book, year after year?

My motivations in keeping a journal have shifted over time. When I first felt the urge to have a diary, I was about 12. My parents' divorce was getting uglier by the minute, and what better way was there to immortalize your court-appointed therapy? I existed under the delusion that someone, someday might uncover it, like a lost Hemingway manuscript, and publish it. Considering that at that time I was chiefly concerned with Star Trek and collecting those furry animal stickers, it's probably for the best that my early work avoided commercial distribution. After high school, there was more of a focus on pure documentation - I recounted conversations verbatim, described events neutrally. Then I was writing out of habit, feeling that it was more an obligation than anything else. Aw, shit, I might as well write something since The X-Files is a repeat.

Then something changed. In the last few years, my journals got uglier, less structured. I found that the only time I felt the urge to write anything was when it was weak or self-hating or a fist shaken at the sky at the unfairness of things. It became an fetid swamp for me to unload all of the things that I worried would taint my real life with The Crazy. Rather than meticulously documenting events, it was a litany of heartbreak, neediness and open letters to people I despised for what I deemed casual cruelty. I go back and read things that concern me sometimes, pieces of thoughts that I know I've had before and swore that I wouldn't have again. On the other hand, it could be that personal progress isn't so much not having the thoughts as not indulging them by sobbing on the phone in a hotel room to someone who really didn't need to talk to you about this at 1:00AM on a Tuesday. Progress is keeping your crazy off the street.

If you tell a lie long enough, everyone around you will believe it. Contrary what people say, you yourself never do. It just gets less and less hard to tell. In making the effort to keep my less attractive impulses contained in blank books provided by Barnes & Noble, it's almost as though I've managed to spread a whitewash over all my scars. I know they're there, although I might kid myself otherwise. As a result, I've come to realize that I seem simple and well-adjusted. Overconfident, suggested someone who I thought knew me pretty well. I find it both funny and frustrating, I guess. Having been the unhappy misfit for so much of my life, it's strange to realize no one believes you can appreciate their damage.

And that's the thing. Damage is compelling and charismatic. For a long time, I always wore my dysfunction on my sleeve; I was unapologetic of its manifestations. What better way to make sure that everyone likes you because you're a hot mess with too much baggage? Fuck them if they can't deal with it! I'm a twitching bundle of emotional tics! It's the curse of the self-awareness. But after too many emails that should have never been sent, too many people alienated, too much time offered up to the seductive cult of self-pity, I was simply unwilling to work that hard. Being in love with your own pain gets tiresome. Get cable. Read a book. Mock others - most of them deserve it. By all means, be fucked up but temper it with a larger perspective. To borrow a phrase*, "Life is short, and then you die with a bad CD collection."

I'm trying not to mourn my missing journal too much. Those years are gone from the collection, so there's no opportunity to revisit the mistakes, poor word choices and probably not as many lessons as I might hope. Although, to be honest, this week I've been looking back on my past self with more generosity than I'll allow my current incarnation. Isn't that always the way?

Maybe the value is less in the actual record and more in the writing. And so it goes.

* Thanks, Mark

Smash! Hit!

A couple of people asked me if I've watched American Idol while it's still wallowing in its audition stage. Apparently there was a guy who sang several songs, spanning diverse genres, in the classical style of one, Brett Scallion. I'm sure it was painful and embarrassing for all parties involved, but no more so than your mom insisting on telling your friends that one joke about
the rabbi and the parakeet that she can't ever really remember. But that's at least a private shame. The point-and-look fascination that people have with this spectacle of the untalented year after year is a little beyond me.

Do they not have a karaoke bar in your town where you can witness this kind of thing first hand? Because let me tell you, after a few red devils at Tracy J's, coercing someone with an outrageously bad voice into singing isn't all that difficult. Not only will the previously reluctant decide that belting out "Sweet Child O' Mine" in that time-honored tuneless, shouty fashion is an excellent idea, but they "will totally kill it, dude." Certain people approach karaoke (often stumbling) with the unwavering confidence of the musically ignorant. More often than not, you have no idea how hard certain songs, not matter how hackneyed, are to sing until you try to do it even passably well - it took 12 takes and an act of God for me to even hit the correct notes on the first line of "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

Maybe I'm in an uniquely qualified position to appreciate this, but there's a lot of untalented people out there. Music is harder than it looks, my friends. Even thunderously average music requires a certain level of Neanderthal brilliance. (So easy even Chad Kroeger can do it!) It's not like just anyone can sit down and bang out a trite, derivative yet commercially viable radio hook. That kind of highly-valued mediocrity is created in labs from call-out research and survey groups and probably some kind of ancient voodoo ritual. Nevertheless there's a lot of average floating around - some halfway decent average, some bad average, some boring average. Some average that sells millions, some average that couldn't get its mom to come to a gig.

However.

When the needle slips below the very generous purgatory of the average or even of "not horrible," we enter the murky water of things that are bad. Lots of things are bad, but certain things are so overwhelming, spectacularly terrible that they take on a certain aura that can best be described as "Oh my fucking God - seriously?"

It takes a magical blend of sheer ineptitude and lack of shame to create what's I've come to be term The Smash Hit. Let's be clear: there's a razor thin line of difference between bad and awesomely bad. Often what sets the awesomely bad apart is the pure, clear-eyed belief in their talent. Come to think of it, this is probably the ultimate appeal of the American Idol train wrecks: being truly, blissfully unaware of how terrible you are really is a thing of beauty. Even in the face of cold hard reality, they persist. Even to the point of putting themselves on national television. Or, in my particular experience, asking to be signed to a major record label. My friends Rob, Kodi and Nick took it upon themselves, toiling mightily in the A&R department and slogging through the dirge known as "unsolicited submissions," to put together several compilations of Smash Hits. It became legendary in our office. We even held release parties of sorts, each one more eagerly anticipated than the last. Each Smash Hit had that sublime quality of not only being unequivocally bad but also hilariously unaware of how bad it really was. It was beautiful.

So if nothing else, maybe we should celebrate the American Idol auditions for keeping the well of potential Smash Hits deep and dark and full of fresh horrors. Because as long as there is someone out there willing to record an off-key cover of "The Rose" or actually pen the lyrics "Evelyn / You are very small / You hold the ball," there will always be a little bit of magic in this world.

Elucidate

How many $3 words have you used today?

Gay boyfriend!

I was on my way back from the post office this afternoon - not my favorite place, but I needed to mail something, and they do a better job than me throwing it out the window and hoping for the best - when I thought to myself, "That looks like Ted Allen." Oh, that's because it is Ted Allen. Squee!

Probably because he practices a decidedly low-level brand of faggotry and a high level of withering disdain, I used to have a delightful crush on Ted Allen. And there he was on the corner of 23rd St and 7th Ave - right in front of the hot dog place. Make of that what you will.

This was sort of funny, only in that I had seen Clinton Kelly on the 1 train on my way to work a few months ago. I also adore Clinton Kelly, despite the fact that the American version of "What Not To Wear" is a crime against popular culture. And, really, it's just wrong because that man is something like 6'4" and looks as though could bench press me. Must you mock me, fates? Wither the tremendously sturdy straight men?

Although, to be honest, neither Clinton nor Ted can be my true gay boyfriend - my heart already belongs to Andrew, the manager of my local Chipotle. He is faaabulous and gives me free burritos, evidently just for showing up. Unless he thinks I'm packing something that I'm not, and that would be highly embarrassing for both of us.

Johnnie and Ella

If you ever have one of those nights where you decide the best thing you can do is snuggle up with some jazz and a bottle of scotch (the whole bottle), let me elaborate on the necessary precautions that you should take:

• Turn off your cell phone: people that you haven't spoken to in five years will not call you back. They don't even remember who you are. Or, if they do, they will not accept the charges.
• You will sing: loudly and enough to annoy the gay guys next door, despite the fact that it's basically payback since you've had to listen to more than your share of Kylie Minogue at high volumes. But be aware that you're not in the key you think you are. And that song is harder to sing than you think it is. But go on, girlfriend.
• Make the drinks stronger: who cares if the soda is flat? And don't worry about how late the deli across the street is open. Drinking it straight will seem less unsavory in a little while, trust me.
• Pretend: go ahead and think you're tragically romantic. You are drunk by yourself and cursing iTunes because they don't have the painfully sad, live version of "One More For My Baby" that you wanted. Just listen to something by AC/DC and get over yourself.

And the important thing to remember is that tomorrow? Yeah. It's going to hurt.

MTV Quote of the Day

"If I've learned anything, it's that girls only like fat guys who lie!"

No, we like fat guys who beat us too.