"What are you gonna do, then?
I pointed at my bottle and picked it up.
"How are you gonna make it?" he asked.
"Seems like I've heard that question all my life."
Ham On Rye -Charles Bukowski
A strong, non watered down Makers Mark and a potent batch of pineapple express fought valiantly against the motivation I mustered. I finally clicked off of Facebook. There were no more notifications. I needed to write, no excuses. For motivation I bought a wireless keyboard for my iPad, but it is broken. The y is switched with the z and most of the punctuation are switched with umlauts. What the fuck - not even a question mark. I've been torn about what to write for this post, and what to write about for the blog in general. It started on an unexpected high with days of road tripping and nights of incessant bourbon chugging and bluegrass listening. Nate accidentally brought a black whore back to our room for Christ's sake. Compared to that level of unfathomable ridiculousness, what I've been doing in LA has seemed unexciting and too boring to write about. But thats just pessimistic bullshit. Now that I have a little money and some options, I can set myself in the right direction. This blog is a fairly accurate representation of my life's status, and it has been floundering. In search of a direction, and partially inspired by having just read Bukowski's Ham On Rye, I figured I could start calling myself a writer, and well, actually pursue writing. Obviously that means continuing this blog indefinitely, but perhaps I may even try my hand at writing a screenplay. How hard can it be? Curious about it, and having never read one before, I bought and read the screenplay for Lincoln. My suspicions, of course, proved be true, as it seemed about as hard to write as a children's picture book.
I never called myself a writer. Even the decision to keep track of this journey was an afterthought. In December all I knew was that my friends and I drank in unpredictable excess, we were going to Vegas and I had the opportunity to string the inevitable decadence into a blog. Events transpired, absurdity ensued and despite my uncertainty, I managed to piece it all together in a fairly sensical manner. Now I'm in Los fucking Angeles, the practical epicenter of writing culture and opportunity in the United States. Calling myself a writer seems a logical step. An initial worry, though, especially with a cache of potential travel money, was my uncertainty that I could find enough to write about here. Then I remembered something I wrote in a previous post;
"Should this beautiful, momentous wave crash in California, drain painfully into the Pacific and suck my newfound metaphysical Glory into the bowels of the perpetually numb? Fuck That. I'm staying on board, riding this westward blowing whim and continuously billowing the sails of my life with unimaginable hilarity and fortuitous adventure." -The Impasse
So I decided to stop being a negative bitch and find some shit to do, some weird, funny shit. Using Google, I quickly found a list of ways to explore some of the most ridiculous things that L.A. has to offer. It includes a violent women's roller derby, free prophetic readings at the Pasadena International House of Prayer, a Mexican wrestling circus with nudity and midgets (announced by Drew Carey and Fred Armison), a nightclub called the California Institute of Abnormal Arts described as "equal parts bad acid trip and carnival sideshow of atrocity," a massive 90's mashup party, a drive in theater that plays The Goonies, the L. Ron Hubbard Scientology exhibition, an lhilarious Mexican drag show, and so on... Theres even a bar, only 2 miles away, that has fucking turtlez races on Thursday nights.
To spite my inevitable indecisiveness and bad attitude about having no good writing material, I am dedicated from this point on to visiting at least one of these ridiculous places or events per week. This means, beside from working, looking for a car and saving, all of which are basically fucking terrible, Im going to use my time embracing LA's oddities and filling my literary coffers with some great, bizarre material. In search of consistency, I can now just describe the absurd thing I visited and include any of the good nitty gritty life shit thats worth mentioning. For example, I haven't yet mentioned how last Wednesday I worked at a farmers market in Burbank, on a fake street at Warner Bro's Studios; and next week, Ellen, who films her show at the studio, is coming down to the market to do a segment. So in a funny twist, I may get to be on the Ellen show.
I also got my marijuana card. Last week I skated down to Venice Boardwalk and was persuaded by unshaven hippy in bright green scrubs. He assured me the process was simple. After showing me to a decrepit, sandy floored back room, I met a droopy old Jewish doctor, who I had to convince of my ailments. He looked like the deflated teen from the anti drug commercials. It didn't take much convincing. Then I followed green scrubs on his longboard farther down the boardwalk. We stopped at a second place and I went in alone. A thickly accented, large breasted Eastern European woman asked me for forty dollars and handed me a "doctor approved certification". She was seedy, but pleasant enough. I followed a the hippy down the street to yet another building where a friendly old black man sat guard, at the bottom of some stairs. Getting the nod, I walked up. Before I knew it, was basking in the admittedly semi-erotic glory of my first legitimate herbal medicine.
The next post I will have definite certifiable absurdity report.
