Dear Murphy the Customer Service Cat

The day I saw you in the horse barn, just a little ball of orange fur and giant eyes, I knew we'd be fast friends.  You were swinging your little body around on a pitchfork like it was a jungle gym, then running full tilt into your brother's side like a bull.  Maybe that should have been a warning sign, but I just thought it was adorable.  When you came home, you'd fall asleep at random, like everything was just too wonderful and magical for your little body to handle.  While you were awake, you'd sit on my lap and suck on my finger.  Had I known you were just acquainting yourself with a taste for human flesh, I'd have stopped you.  Again, it just seemed adorable.

Look at you, laying there with your little paw out.  Like a little Rory Calhoun.

As you grew, you and the old cat, Sneakers, would get into epic play fights.  Returning home, there would be large swatches of your orange fur and much more of his white fur all over the carpet, seemingly ripped out and scattered to the wind.  Even when he developed a large tumor on his head, and lost the ability to remember where he was, or if he'd eaten, or how to stop meowing at top volume, you tried to cheer him up with a rousing donnybrook.  I specifically remember an instance where you had been chasing him around the upstairs hall, and he had simply stopped running at the top of the stairs, most likely forgetting he was being pursued.  You proceeded to jump on his back and ride him down the stairs like a cancer riddled toboggan because, like Jonathan Gerald Rambo, you do what it takes to survive.

Things with you were mostly hijinks and snuggles until a year or so ago.  You weren't eating right, and the vet aid that many of your teeth needed to be pulled.  Somehow, this became addition by subtraction because even though you only had one fang left, hanging from your top jaw, it became stronger and more powerful than we could ever imagine.  All weakness had left with the diseased teeth, and you stopped being Murphy.  You simply became Toof. 

Here you are, recovering in the vet.  You are as large as the vet tech, and from the look of your eyes, you are tripping massive balls.

When something displeases you, you casually raise your upper lip, letting the sun glint off the mighty tooth.  There are no arguments, because everyone knows that if they give you sass, they get back the Toof.  You have never liked to be picked up, but now, there were consequences should I try.  You test me on this every day.  When I wake up, I hear you scuttle across the floor, cackling to yourself.  By the time I get to living room, you are in my chair. 

As I approach you, you will not acknowledge my presence.  You will, however, start canting to the side until you go completely boneless and start mewling like a deranged feral toddler.  Any attempt to pick up your formless blob of a body intensifies the mewling into a blathering word salad of unpronunciated hate, which softens back to the mewling the further away I move from you. 

The Toof has also brought out a killer instinct in you.  Small bugs were no longer a worthy prey for someone so mighty.   You must hunt the most dangerous game of all.  You hide behind furniture and under beds, and strike quickly, always going for the Achilles.  I curse the day I let you see Pet Semetary for that very reason. 

It stands to reason then that you couldn't be happy being fed dry cat food.  Toof doesn't want to be fed, Toof wants to hunt, right?  Wrong.  In every other instance, you refuse to eat anything not put directly into your food bowl, and then only if your food bowl is place directly on your food tray.  You will follow me incessantly screeching like a pterodactyl until I get your bowl, then you will sit patiently, intently, almost perversely calm, staring directly down at your food tray, willing your food to return to that spot. Once consumed, you return to my chair for a hearty ten hour nap. 

Why nap, you ask?  So you can be up at 3AM, screeching in the hallway as you thrash your body into the walls, a little fuzzy ball speared by the Toof.  3AM is rumpus time.  There is no sleep during rumpus time.  There is only Toof.  

Dear Travel Agents

Please explain to me how your profession wasn't rendered absolutely unnecessary given the advent of the internet.  All that you do, as I see it, is charge people money so that they don't have to use Google.  Is that right?

I can wait here all day.  Go ahead.   Choose your words.

Need to go talk with the telephone switchboard operator to commiserate?  It might be time to quit and become a Gallagher impersonator, or a Betamax repairman. 

Dear 17 Year Old Greg

I've written these letters to myself on more than one occasion.  I even wrote the one to my teenaged self before.  This is a little difference though. 

I find that I zone out while driving.  Since I am the best at driving, I don't have to think very much while on the road, and I use that time to ponder the many rich mysteries of life.  Other times, I create hypothetical situations and try to suss out the outcome of the agents I put in play in my mind.  Recently, I started thinking about my first car, a 1994 Explorer that had about as much paint as Ben Stiller has talent, and that was just about as loud and obnoxious.  I remember how proud I was when I took it out to Circuit City to have the old tape deck swapped out with a single disc cd player.
Now, I ride around with a car that has an LCD screen that my Ipod, which holds thousands of songs on it, plays and gives me the song name, artist name, album name, tract number and even the album art.  I got to thinking about how awesome 17 year old Greg would find all of this, from his days of mix tapes and burned cd's covered in doodles from a sharpie.  Then I got to thinking that 17 year old Greg was also a little bit of a tool, and he would probably have plenty to say about the songs that were on my Ipod.  Certainly, many of his favorites are still there, but against his better wishes, I've branched out in my music tastes over the years.  I hit the shuffle button, and started running a dialogue between myself and 17 year old Greg, and what they would have to say about some of the songs that popped up.  I thought I'd do that now, with the first few random songs that come up on shuffle.

River City Rebels- No Easy Way Out (2004)
17 Year Old Greg- Awesome!  You still listen to River City Rebels!  This song is the best one yet!

31 Year Old Greg- Uh....yeah.  I got really excited when this song got released ahead of the album. 

17YOG- Why wouldn't you?!?!?  This is amazing!

31YOG- Yeah, it was great live too.  But the rest of the album was garbage. 

17YOG- How is that possible?

31YOG- It just is.  These guys went on tour to support the album with a band called Velvet Revolver, which was Scott Weiland and Slash.

17YOG- WHAT?!?!?  HOLY CRA---

31YOG- No.  Just no.  They were awful. 

17YOG- But...

31YOG- Just trust me. The whole group looked like someone vomited on an old leather jacket, and they sounded about as good too.

Julia Nunes- First Impressions (2010)

17YOG- What is this?

31YOG- It's a lady that plays really good songs on the ukulele, and she has a great voice.

17YOG- Yeah...I guess.  Does she cover Green Day or something?

31YOG- *sighs*

The Transplants- Crash and Burn-(2005)

17YOG- This is Tim Armstrong!  Oh no, did he leave Rancid?

31YOG- No, this is a side project of his with the drummer from the Aquabats.

17YOG- Baron Von Tito?

31YOG- He doesn't go by that anymore. 

17YOG- Is every group a supergroup now?  It's like Temple of the Dog, but everywhere!

31YOG- Kind of, I guess.  There are a few.  A lot of the old punk guys formed side bands to try something different.

17YOG- This is weird though.

31YOG- So's Tim Armstrong now.  You get used to it.

17YOG- He sounds like he had a stroke.

31YOG- Yes he does.

The Gaslight Anthem- Here's Looking at You, Kid (2008)

17YOG- This sounds like Springsteen.

31YOG- It's not.  It's one of your favorite bands.

17YOG- It. Sounds. Like. Springsteen.

31YOG- Well, you like Springsteen now too.

17YOG- What the hell?  I bet we like the Stones now too.

31YOG- Look, you could use some...

17YOG- NO!  NOT THE STONES!

31YOG- What is so wrong...

17YOG- I don't like what we've become.

Van Halen- Dance the Night Away (1979)
17YOG- This is on here as a joke, right?

31YOG- No, I genuinely like Van Halen.

17YOG- Did you drink too much at some point?  Hurt your brain?  Is that how this happened?

31YOG- Yes to the first, maybe to the second, no to the third.

17YOG- Do you have an opinion on Roth vs. Haggar?

31YOG- Roth was so much...

17YOG- You do!  You took the time, thought about this, and formed an opinion on who was the better singer of a hair band.  LAME!  YOU ARE LAME!  OH GOD WHAT HAVE YOU WROUGHT UPON ME?

The Lumineers- Elouise (2013)
17YOG- This is hippie music.  What the hell is wrong with you?

31YOG- It's called Americana music.  It's relaxing. 

17YOG- The Slackers are relaxing.  This will put you to sleep.

31YOG- It's good music.  If you would just stop being stubborn and try it, you'd love it.

17YOG- This is like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young had a really boring orgy.

31YOG- Why don't you shut up and eat some more pie, tubby.


Gangstagrass - I Go Hard (2013)
17YOG- ......bluegrass...and....hip hop...

31YOG- Guess what?  I don't have to explain myself to you.

Dear Men on Vacation

Every man grows a beard on their vacation, even if they can barely grow facial hair.  As long as you aren't going to some fancy dinner or are at a destination wedding, you just aren't going to shave.  It's part of the rules.  I'll even allow you Hawaiian shirts and sandals, even though I think they are cliched and awful.  This isn't about what I think is right or wrong.  It's about what is right and decent.  That's why it's becoming a troublesome trend that men have decided never to wear sleeves on vacation.

I see it every weekend at the hotel: men wandering around in cutoffs, tank tops, or wifebeater undershirts.  They go to the breakfast buffet without a care of getting shoulder hair in the eggs, and their pale biceps shriek as they enter the sunlight for the first time in ages.  For the most part, the only muscle definition these arms have seen in the past ten years were on a steak they were cutting.  You all become an army of Daryl Sheets as a statement saying, "This is me relaxed.  Behold the majesty."

 I am truly baffled.   I understand it is a trend to wear tanktops.  It's like 1991 all over again.  I keep waiting to the new Bel Biv Devoe cassingle to drop.   That explains those, but not the shirts with the sleeves cut off.  These shirts were bought with sleeves, but these men declared, "Nay, this shall not be" and took what looks like a rusty screwdriver to them.  This very morning, a man walked by me with a shirt whose cutoff sleeves left an opening from shoulder to belt.  He was showing more sideboob than a Chive photo gallery and I wanted none of it. 

I own three sleeveless shirts.  They are all Under Armour, and they are all for boxing/workout.  The most public place I wear them is when I mow the lawn to combat my farmer's tan, and this is only the third most embarrassing thing I do in my yard.  Even so, my arms are endlessly more muscular and defined than most I see, and that is a sad statement.  The average man is much more Larry the Cable Guy than Bruce Willis in Die Hard.  The average guy I see walking around on their vacation has a bigger chest than the women they are with. 

Are we just going to keep going less is more here?  Let' go with mesh half shirts to really air out our torsos.  Nothing says "vacation" like horrifically sunburned nipples. 

Dear Moxie

As one of America's oldest soda companies, one would expect that you have your act together by now.  You made a drink that tastes like the bitter brew of the angels, yet you have continually refused to distribute it nationally.  Anyone that is fortunate enough to taste your little piece of heaven, yet doesn't live in New England, is forced to either pine away until they find you again, or pay exorbitant prices to order you over the internet.  I love your soda, but I refuse to pay almost $1.00 a can.  If I had that kind of money, I would probably finally go to the doctor to find out why I can't feel my right foot anymore.  There is no question that people nationwide would embrace your product, so this stubborn refusal to go national can only be a greedy attempt to control supply and demand.  To that end, I would like to tell you a story, and perhaps use that as a way to illustrate to you that your actions have consequences.

In the summer of 2004, I spent two weeks in Maine. This was more than enough time for you to sink your bitterly sweet hooks into me.  When I got back home, I quickly exhausted the rations I brought back.  Chills set in, the shakes took over, and it got so bad that I tried mixing bitters with cola to try to get your unique taste.  When I awoke confused and belligerent hours later, I resigned myself to the fact that perhaps we were not meant to be together.  It wasn't until later that fall that I was proved a liar.

Some moments are so ingrained in the formation of the person that you are that you remember every small occurrence, every smell.  I was in my friend T.'s apartment, spending an lazy afternoon smoking cigarettes and yelling at people that happened to pass by.  Somehow, Moxie was brought up, most likely as a wish that whatever we were currently drinking was Moxie instead, thus making us both sad. 

A voice broke our melancholy, deep and dripping with honey and poison.

"I've seen some Moxie."

Out of a dark corner, which was hard to find since it was a sunny afternoon, our friend Brian leaned his perfectly coiffed head forward and smiled a toothy, vile grin.  An odor both sweet and sad, like a lost love or a lullabye sung by an orphan with a speech impediment, wafted over the porch, accompanied by the buzzing of a legion of flies.  In our excitement, we were quick to push away these omens and sat in rapt attention as Brian told us how he had seen Moxie on an end cap at the Shoppers Food Warehouse, just one day previous.  No sooner was he finished speaking we were in T.'s Suburban, careening towards our delicious destiny. 

I am not sure that I waited for the car to fully stop before I was out and running through the parking lot to the main doors.  T., being of small stature, took longer to get in, and found me at the soda aisle.  Our enthusiasm propelled us up and down the aisle the first eight times.  It even sustained us as we checked every end cap.  The dawning realization that bad things happen in the world soon crept into our minds, and desperation began to guide our actions.  T. began muttering, slowly and quiet at first, then reach a fevered pitch of, "Where? Where?  No. No. No. Where? Why?" as he began to push sodas away on the shelves to see if they were hiding the Moxie.  I used my superior height to check to make sure they weren't keeping it stashed on the top shelves just for us.  Finally, the commotion attracted a store employee, and Travis begged them to show us where they were hiding the drink.  Panic set in as the woman looked confused, and then she uttered the words that scarred us ever since:

"Moxie?  I've never even heard of that.  We don't carry that."

I was overcome with a sensation that all feeling had left my body.  I was hollow almost instantly, and it was as if I had never had feelings to begin with, like I had never known love, pain, joy, or sorrow.  I was just in the world as an impartial observer.  Poor T., having such a big heart for such a small man, went the opposite direction.  Feelings ballooned so that they encompassed his whole being and his body was a raw nerve, stinging with every breeze  His little legs gave out as he wailed, and he began pulling his body across the floor, trying to escape this cruel Warehouse of Lies and Broken Promises. Our despondency steeled itself into anger and self righteous fury against our deceiver, and we set out for retribution.  Brian was dead to us.  He had been killed by our enemy "Lyin' Brian", and we would exact our revenge.

If my memory is correct, we found him sitting under a giant parasol, hiding from the pure and good rays of the sun.  He tipped his glass of water to us, and taking a sip to quench the fires of hell that burned under his skin, he asked if we found what we were seeking.  Rage prohibited us from forming  real words, and T. was barely able to stop himself from backhanding this new Father of Lies.  Lyin' Brian professed confusion, still adamant that he has seen the Moxie, and he claimed he was so very sorry that our trip was fruitless.  T. and I knew better at this point.  We knew we could never trust anything he ever said again.

I could say that if you, dear Moxie, would have bothered to ship your product further than your own back yard, then perhaps one of my dearest friendships would not have dissolved.  I could also say that perhaps your product did me a service, and showed me that there was a villain that I had showed too much trust and brotherhood.  Either way, it would be nice if I could go to my local grocer and get your soda.  For now, your logo doesn't say, "Drink Moxie!". 

 

 

It's a stern reminder of what is missing in my life, and what...

could have been....my god.....

it's a river of slime.    Brian, what have you done?

Dear Friends Who Run Marathons

Back in the day, it wasn't so hard for you to lord your bodily supremacy over me.  While my friends all played soccer and baseball, I was forced thanks to an enlarged heart to only play for the golf team.  The doctors have never adequately explained why I couldn't play strenuous sports because I was just too full of love.  While I was still able to get into a fight and have to be separated from an opponent during a golf match, the conditioning was not as complete as what my friends went though.  Therefore, while they all had beach bodies, I had the body and face of a massive toddler well into high school.

During college I hit what they call "rock bottom" in the "taking care of yourself department" thanks to drinking "ten beers in a sitting" and eating at "buffets" "every" "meal".  Finally, I'd had enough, and started a slow process of learning to eat better and that exercising could be done.  My formerly awful knees that would pop in and out of place at will and sounded like gravel being chewed felt much better once I was carrying seventy or eighty less pounds around, and things got even easier.  While I am not thin by a long shot, I am in decent shape, and I feel good.  While my friends have recently started grumbling that they've lost their abs, I'm just happy that I can finally see ribs that aren't on my plate.  So, when time and persistence on my part conspire to even the playing field.  I can imagine the meeting, at a long boardroom table, where they all figure out my weakness, and also figure out how to defeat Superman.   They've all gotten desperate, and taken this thing the the streets, where I can only do a halfhearted chugging jog, followed by three hours of groaning and hacking lung butter.

Whenever anyone is asked about how the marathon went, the word "hell" is always used.  It tends to be followed by "cramps", "dehydrated", "hallucinated", "exhaustion", "bowels", and "evacuated".  Immediately after all of that, that person always says, "It was so worth it!  Can't wait for next year!"

I don't need to get kicked in the neck to know it's going to suck.  I certainly am not going to pay for that privilege.  Maybe it's because my body is absolutely not built for running long distances.  Maybe I just miss that gene where a marathon seems awesome.  I am not missing the gene that tells you that extreme thigh chafing and severe bleeding from the nipples is a bad thing.  If I wanted to pay for that, I'd listen to that server they call Weird Ass Daryl from work and go to that "Korean Grocery" he keeps spending all of his time at on the weekends. 

You can have your marathons.  I'm still the best at other things, like dancing to Billy Joel songs, making delicious sandwiches, and yelling at people in Target.  All of these things are on my business card.  Is "Good at running" on yours?

Dear Gene the Brain Tick

There’s a slightly engorged tick that lives in my brain.  He feeds off of my jealousy, my insecurity, and the tasty little bits of my rejected pride.   Years ago, I named him Gene after one of the biggest pricks I knew.  Gene slobbers up all of these feelings, chortling to himself as he grows fat and happy, then excretes out a crippling feeling of failure and malaise.  Gene is excellent at his job.  

There's the stigma that any good entertainer, be it a writer, actor, comedian, singer, whatever, has a lethal amount of ego and/or a spectacularly messed up sense of self.  I would fall into the latter category, which makes Gene a very happy brain tick.  If there's a bad thing to be said of me, I probably started the chant.  There's no defining moment, no single thing you can point to and say "That's why he's this way."  I had a normal childhood, loving parents, and I was rarely touched by strangers.  Somewhere around high school or college, I grew a fairly unique sense of humor, mostly as a way of coping with the fact that I am wound tighter than a coke head's watch.  At some point, I just stopped censoring myself, and I found out people thought that was funny.  So, I found self-worth there, and that's informed my writing ever since.

I touched upon this earlier, but I tend to get very envious of other artistic types that have succeeded where I have failed.  This exclusive group includes almost every person that has ever done anything creative, because, to this point, I haven’t gotten very far.  As my twitter bio says, "Failed actor, failed writer, failed director, excellent at making sandwiches."  Mostly, I've failed because I have always allowed myself to be talked out of things.  I was told I couldn't make it as an actor, so I stopped.  Same with the other things.  My podcast had about twenty listeners an episode, so that went away.  This blog, running on almost three years now, marks the single longest commitment I've made to anything that wasn't smoking cigarettes or the tv show LOST.  Why have I kept doing it?  Two reasons: I'm good at it, and more importantly, it makes me feel good to do it.  This particular letter is roughly the 150^th I’ve put out.  We’ve basically hit novel length at this point.  That’s plenty of feel good for me.  

Why did I write all of this?  As my friend Spike says, "I told you that story so I could tell you this one."

I noted on the blog's Facebook page that I went to see Danielle Ate the Sandwich the other night.  This is fitting to the blog, because Danielle actually has a tie to its history.  For the first year or so I wrote this, I would write while listening to a Youtube playlist I made of artists like Danielle, Julia Nunes, Lauren O'Connell, and others, the majority being female singers, mostly ukulele players, who can really sing.  Most play happy songs, because there aren't a whole lot of sad ukulele songs.  It may seem antithetical, but for whatever reasons, this playlist always got me in the mood to write this blog.
Some time early last year, I sent out emails to several of these musicians.  I offered a trade of sorts.  I requested each artist cover a song for this blog, and in return, I would write a letter of their choosing, or write anything really.  It was a bad idea, for certain, and clearly only benefited me as it would get my name out to their largely superior audiences.  These artists are smart, and they saw through that.  In fact, the only two to respond were Lauren O'Connell, despite her cover of "House of the Rising Sun" hitting national acclaim on American Horror Story at that same time, and Danielle Ate the Sandwich.  Lauren offered a thanks but no thanks, and Danielle was gracious, asking only that I write her again in the fall after her current tour ended.  Danielle keeps herself very busy, and was unable again in the fall, but was needlessly polite throughout.

The shorter point to that whole story was that Danielle, in email, seemed much like her on camera self.  This notion was proven when I met her this week.  I said hello to her, gave her my card, and talked with her for a bit.  She remembered my logo off the card, and the emails, and I tried to to fanboy gush on her.  The show was exactly what one could hope for had they seen her videos: funny, earnest, and charmingly self deprecating, three tenets I strive for, but feel like I generally miss as a trio, with my blog.  Moreso, she represented something I could have been.  She did what she loved doing, and she's taking every chance to make her living at it.  For once, though, I didn't get sad about it, or regretful, or any type of typical reaction to something I am envious of.  I was just happy.  I went home, sat on the porch, and smoked a cigar while watching a rainstorm come in.  I may have even smiled, which tends to look like I'm having a stroke.  This was almost a revelation, because normally Gene would have eaten well after I watched someone so happy at succeeding.  Maybe I am getting better as I get older.  Maybe Gene just had a stroke and his carcass is blocking off the bitterness sector of my brain.  Maybe it's something else entirely. 

My friend Cindyloo who gave me a DVD of the movie About Time for my birthday this year, because she thought I would like it.  I made the decision long ago to never apologize for something I like, and I will gladly say I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  Without going into the nitty gritty on the plot, one of the characters makes a statement near the end, "I just try to live every day as if I've deliberately come back to this one day, to enjoy it".  

For whatever reason, that stuck with me.  Maybe it’s because it was near my birthday, a time where I was already evaluating where I am in life.  Maybe because at this point, I’ll cling to anything that offers a chance at clarity.  Regardless, I’ve loosely adopted that idea.  Every day, I try to do at least one thing that makes me even the slightest bit happy.  It can be listening to a particular song on the ride home, windows down and enjoying the breeze.  It can be letting myself cheat and have pancakes for dinner or sitting on the deck and having a cigar after work.  Before I go to bed, I jot down each of the things I did to be happy that day.  Some days, it’s hard to find the good things that happened, and other days you can fill the page.  The point is, I have to make a concerted effort to be happy every day, even just for a little bit.  Maybe, then, it’ll happen more and more, and Gene the Brain Tick will shrivel up and die.  

So, this has been my way of half assing my dream.  Maybe one day it'll lead me on a book tour, city to city like Danielle Ate The Sandwich, or maybe I'll give up a month from now.  The point it, I've chosen for once to do something that makes me happy, and to keep doing it even when I don't get positive results.  Life rarely gives you positive results, so screw it, and just find a way to be happy, or else your brain tick will burst out of your nose.