...all ten of my chins...
...a maybe review of the movie MAGNOLIA by Paul Thomas Anderson...
“This was not just a matter of chance”
-An Unnamed Narrator in the movie Magnolia”
…a week full of feeling…66* sunny 8:57AM in west oakland california…
(01) HIM (01)
On Monday a man looked at me with a sad face. The wrinkles beneath his gaunt gaze were amazing. I could trace myself as a little dirt dot entering and exiting the ends of his labyrinth folds. I got lost looking at him looking at me. I wasn’t who he wanted to see.
His sadness lifted, shrugging skyward as his arriver arrived. His face, a dusted patch of unnumbered speckled moments lifted and disappeared. What was memorable was just as easily forgotten and all I see now is a fuzzy rainbow void, the way heavy makeup might leave a false face behind on a well slept pillow.
I remember feeling sad for his sad, because it was also my sad. He had a resting what if face. What if I wasn’t there blocking whatever dream he was looking for, whatever wishes he was making. What if he is no longer sleeping in me. My pillow smells like weeks of hair. What if I never wash it?
(02) CHECK (02)
A friend upon hearing me sing a song did a welfare check. I am certain I rock now. Not all music should scare people, but I was happy he cared enough to listen. He wasn’t wrong to be afraid. I want my voice to unleash. I’m out of exhausting and I’m into existing. I’m up for admitting I occasionally get down. So did James Brown.
James Brown was the Godfather of Soul. He had so much soul that if Soul’s parents ever passed away he would be in charge of them. This week I was the babysitter of Soul. I read him a few books before bedtime, and made him a dinner of cheesy macaroni and sausage. His parents told me they would be home by bar close but they never arrived. I woke Soul up in the morning, dressed him in clean sweat shorts, and prepared him a box lunch. He was abducted on his walk to school. I got a ransom note and it read “I got soul and I’m super bad”.
(03) DOOR (03)
My mom and dad removed the door to my bedroom after my dad tried to break into the bathroom while I was exploring pegging myself with a lacquered gray pestle I made in 11th grade ceramics class. There isn’t a lot of value to calling my dad a child molester, because that is what he was. My great fear is that he wanted to watch me. After I closed my door and said please leave me alone, their solution to my sadness was to remove any privacy I could have as a 16 year old boy headed on a Canadian basketball roadtrip. They unscrewed my door and said screw you and I hid the pestle in a plastic bag inside of a carpenter’s kit of pet rocks I collected from six to ten. They thought I would kill myself or them, because I printed out an ad for a video game about a superhero worm that said “Psy-Crow Killed His Parents.”
I like puns and I still do. When my buddy’s dad asked me if I planned to kill him I knew that an Earthworm Jim video game would not be part of my earth that year. My dad went on to marry a hooker after secretly pimping for extra cash with a half dozen white collar suburban Minnesotan food product dweebs. He eventually became the big boss of a thrifting empire.
I can only imagine the objects that get reused in his stores.
(04) JUDGE (04)
I don’t want to tell you these stories. I don’t want to be vulnerable. My hell craves a dishonest existence. My heaven hopes I’m not done yet. They put cheese into the boba drinks on the road to San Jose. I want my salt to be less creamy. I am a crab because spiders scare me. I need to be myself to see myself.
Hell isn’t a hole. You won’t get lost in it. Hell is a mirror that you bought so that you might look into it and see yourself again and again and again and again. Don’t get into becoming a reality star unless you are willing to star in reality, in which case consider how hard it might be to star in a galaxy full of ourself. We’re so full of it. The light within us will travel longer and further than any piece of our matter. I matter, I tell myself. I'm an all star. I am all star.
I am a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. That seems serious.
(05) MISS (05)
The last time we spoke it was under the auspices of sending you any amount over $67 dollars for the guarantee you would call me back in the next two weeks for a conversation that might last at least 30 minutes. For years we would talk daily, about gambling, conspiracy, the headlines of the day and the cracks we saw within them. You had me listen for a clicking click that was proof they were paying attention to you. You came to visit for three days. We watched a show so unmemorable I can’t remember it.
I remember instead how gone you were. The trip you were taking in your head was going to be longer than the three weeks your voice insisted on. Calls went from days to weeks to months to the one time you called me asking to send you any amount over $67 dollars for the guarantee you would call me back in the next two weeks for a conversation that might last at least 30 minutes.
(06) MAKE (06)
I worked pop-a-shot for a semester downtown on the third floor of the arena. Tom Petty was playing a show there and we snuck some vodka into a diet coke can and made it in around song three of the set. We don’t have to live like refugees. Midway through the set a scent of acrid air asked me to notice it. Puke and popcorn. The couple in front passed back a hot half smoked joint and Tom sang “Don’t Come Around Here No More”. The vomit got louder. We left before the encore. The puke was yours.
It was $5 a shot or $10 for 5. Most kids missed so I would slam dunk their last shot to make their miss a make and gift them a fuzzy white and blue stuffed basketball. The teddy bearification of the world is odd. I had a stuffed baseball bat. I had a stuffed garbage can. I had a stuffed sailor toy with a detachable stuffed mustache. This morning I went ahead and ordered a vomit plushie to celebrate the arena’s team making the western conference finals.
(07) CLEAN (07)
Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should. I bought four cans of jock spray to settle the endless itch in my ball pits. The cool dusty sting of unpronounceable ingredients soothed my annoyances. This was not a solution, but rather a subscription. I solved the problem permanently when I figured out that rubbing alcohol will do the same trick. Now I bathe all my pits in the stinging glory of antiseptic burn juice.
I think the shower is superior to the bath because of gravity. My gross goes down the drain. But to stew in a soup of your own salty soap is a fine way to pour into your porous. The endless holes of our breathing skin play connect the dots as the steam wet kisses the walls and glass. I keep toothpaste next to the shampoo I don’t use and brush my teeth until they feel like a coffee cup cold and ready on the cupboard. Shaq is slam dunking in a picture on me.
(08) DIRTY (08)
I wanted to be a hippy when I grew up. The romance of a ruleless life on the road dancing wavy armed circles around responsibility appealed to me far more than suiting a tie to my skull and selling wavy gravies to supermarkets. I didn’t know where to start so I chose the easiest path and quit showering. Days 1-10 of unshowered existence are a chair stacking tower of increasingly unstable funk levels. Day one I smelt like weird feet. Day two, like a hamster cage. Day three, a gym locker. Day four, the aroma of dumpster diving for aged cheddar. Day five I smelt like dead hairy lobster. Day six, like pickled piss stains. Day seven, composted broccoli stems. Day eight, bare bovine butt. Day nine, like a wine made of socks. Day ten I capped out my ascendence of scent laddering to an indescribable stink I might only describe as me. Unfiltered, raw, real me. I could no longer smell myself though, as my me had plateaued.
(09) FINE (09)
There was a rapper named Warren G who had a song called Regulators that sampled the music from a song called “I Keep Forgetting”. Michael McDonald, the lead vocalist on that track, sings like every word is coming out the inside of a letter H. Warren G lived in a gated suburban enclave in Orange County that my parents moved to when I went off to college. I visited once and awoke to the 9/11 happening on my TV Screen. The next night my parents fought like they might kill each other. They had two small dogs who weren’t allowed outside because the local hawks were known to hunt the backyards of these boring bungalows. When I went back to school I took with me some of their records. Most of the music my parents had forgotten to listen to were bad generic folk. Boring sad songs about losing love, and finding lost love. They had lost their love long before they fought to lose it more. I took their Doobie Brothers with me.
(10) RECALL (10)
I don’t know the number dialing me. The area code is 213, and every minute it calls again. I see the voice memos, they clock in at only a second long. It has to be spam, maybe a robocall. I picked up on the 36th attempt, my friend has been in jail for 88 days and finally remembered my phone number. We quit talking a year ago, and now the FBI had found him in a tent on Mulholland drive. His bail is set to almost one million dollars and his plan is to get a council of assistants together to fight all charges. I am hoping to talk to his lawyer. I am calling his rabbi later today. His parents sometimes pick up the phone for me and I wonder if they envision me as the 16 year old who used to swim off their dock and cook summertime burgers. The first time my friend went to jail he was 17 and naked in the shower. His parents had him handcuffed and stuffed into the back of a siren sedan. I will call them later today and see what they think.
“Life ain't short, it's long, it's long.”
-Earl Partridge as played by actor Jason Robards in the movie Magnolia”
…special thanks to
& for your help with feedback on this…to all whom have read this far and haven’t seen the movie my two word review is “It’s Long”…just like life man…just like life…
“The trip you were taking in your head was going to be longer than the three weeks your voice insisted on.”
But not as long or as glorious as the stank days one through ten! Day eleven was pure rocket fuel to the outer banks and beyond, I imagine. Not nearly as far into the Beyond as Aimee Mann and Magnolia took us. Thank you 🙏🏽 Again.
A screenplay about the story of your life is still in order. You and I are both mutual acquaintances with someone who can tell you where to send it.