December Wolves: I Ain't Thinking Of Slowing Down

Well, the year is almost up and I was concerned that I wasn't going to be able to make it to an internet portal to make good on my 15 by the 31st promise. With just one more to go and two hours to complete a look back, I think I can do it.

The title comes from the new Defeater record called Lost Ground. It's about a young African American soldier, before during and after World War II. It comes from the first song, called the Red, White and Blues. The narrator is spending his last night in town before deployment, goes to the cemetery to say goodbye to his mother, who was recently laid to rest and spends the rest of the time in the tavern drinking whiskey. He tells the bartender to keep pouring him shots, he's not slowing down.

So, five more things below. Happy New Year.

11. Having Seventy Times Seven sung for me in GFC. It felt really good to have a song played for me, at random. Seventy Times Seven being a Brand New song I never thought I'd hear live feels even better. It felt like a reward. In a strange way, from a group of people that I realized I intersected with but didn't know I made that kind of impact on. That realization, coupled with live music just made me smile at the end of the final semester. I felt satisfied.

12. Penny Bar. Despite my fear/avoidance around alcohol, it's nice to settle into a local bar and for 2009, the Penny Bar was it. Less a place than the people and the experiences inside it, the Penny Bar was an oasis of intoxication, available at a bargain basement price. Much of the rest is noise, blurs of Yuengling and generic, well-intentioned tomfoolery. One can't curse, which sounds bad, until you realize it weeds out the bad apples. Best drawback ever.

13. The End of a Year interview. The End of a Year Self Defense Family Force Five Iron Frenzy Band (okay, it's just End of a Year and they're changing their name to Self Defense Family, but work with me here...) is a group I only recently got into. They do some pretty hilarious youtube videos that I saw got almost no hits. I liked the cut of their jib, and finally sent some questions over to the band. I was expecting it to be in text format, but it turned out the guys went ahead and did it in the YouTube format. Hilariously, I was expected to be a chick, have Daisy Dukes and be attractive. That didn't work out well.

The questions were answered with unflinching honesty, with the self-deprecation and oddly specific answers. Also, they said nice things about me. There's nothing like hearing people you respect say good things about you to make you feel like you've made a couple good decisions in your life.

14. Joining Issue Oriented, the Millionaires post. I've been a fan of Ronen Kauffman's former band Zombie Apocalypse for a long time and I've also enjoyed the podcast he runs, Issue Oriented. So, when I got the text message saying "would you be interested in doing some blogging for us" I said yes before I could stop to say no. That's pretty cool. But what's even cooler is seeing something on the internet you know is wrong, saying it's wrong and actually realizing that after you wrote it you're still right and on the moral high ground.

Punk rock has seen worse than Millionaires and it will see worse than them in short order, I promise.

15. Gen Con. And internet on the megabus to GenCon. There aren't that many times when I feel like I'm in the definitive future. One time this year, stood out and that was going to Gen Con. Gen Con itself was three days, four nights of nerdery and alcohol, so that was pretty cool, but I really felt like I was in the future when I was getting internet access on my laptop while I was on the bus, in the middle of Indiana.

I'll repeat that. I had reliable internet access on a moving bus in the middle of Indiana. That's a huge step forward. Throw that in with finding out there was a cover of Bad Religion's 21st Century Digital Boy by Groove Coverage (oddly appropriate, right?) and by the end of the trip, I had a new song on my iPod, downloaded while I was on a moving bus just felt too cool for words.

Farewell

I haven't updated Eleven Names is a minute, so this is as good a reason as any. This was going into Overkill number seven, but apparently, they care, very much, about deadlines. The upshot is now that you get read the Overkill-quality piece without having to wait for the printshop and I can put in hyperlinks or make the piece as long, rambling and confessional as I want without worrying that I'm sharing too much.

Truth be told, I was uncomfortable admitting this much in Overkill, so it's probably for the better that I didn't get comfortable enough with the piece until after the deadline...



I miss GFC coffee. That's the topic Katrina picked for me, so here I am. Since graduation, I've had a lot of other coffee. The best, so far, is Starbucks. Potentially blasphemous, but it's true. For me, anyway. I don't know what makes GFC coffee so memorable. I'm tempted to say that it's the high quality beans, the blender or whatever the thing that turns the beans and hot water into coffee is called.

Maybe it's the cute baristas. But if that was true, then that would put tons of points into local coffee houses across Chicago, where any 20 something woman with thick glasses and a tired smile slings cups.

Maybe it's the hot chocolate mix that goes into 97% of the cups I pour myself. Almost certainly, the hot chocolate mix is the ingredient that makes coffee tolerable for me. And because of it, I can stomach the bitterness of coffee. I can ingest another drug. Maybe it's the whole straight-edge thing, that like Catholicism, never really goes away. It informs everything I see. It's a lens.

So. GFC coffee. What is it about the coffee that makes me think about it and miss it more than the Creative Crust or cookies from the Artist's Cup? This sounds like a copout, but I think it's all of these things and the clientele. I don't think of GFC coffee as the thing I pay $1.50 for, I think of GFC coffee as the atmosphere, the moments where I sip my coffee and curl up around it, move my nose towards the rim and drinks in the smell, the fumes clearing out my sinuses. GFC coffee is the pillows within arm's reach and talking to my friends.

GFC coffee is the smile on my face or the indignation on reading something in the New York Times that is Very Wrong And Ought To Be Recorded Somewhere.

And yet, I don't feel the same way about alcohol, yet I associate it with many of the same things. I associate it with the camraderie in the Penny Bar, the things it is unwise to tell my parents and the ancient, powerful urge to sing whenever I hear Sweet Caroline, even through the ringtone of the bitchy secretary in the office. The cute girls that seem to get cuter when Yuengling is consumed and everyone's hair is let down. Speaking of which, if anyone knows Bets...

In other news: These good feelings are all things I think about when I think of beer. And I know it's a lie.

I know that the only thing alcohol does is it makes me happier and then makes me feel everything 10 times more. I associate the alcohol with walking home alone, depressed and hopeless. I want to kiss girls, but (as Jawbreaker might say) I end up kissing the bottle.

So anyway. I'm drinking a beer at 8 p.m. in my parents apartment.

And if you want to know what being a graduate is like in these times: For me, it's not having a job, going through internships bleakly, kicking myself for not biting the bullet and going to the office and asking them for help with the next stage in the game of my life.

I need help is one of the hardest sentences in any language.

So here I am, putting my hands on a bottle of wine my parents own and when they're gone I'm wondering what I do with it. My fingers curl around the bottleneck, feeling the imitation wax around the bottle. It's red wine. Sophisticated, according to at least one ex-girlfriend. The more or less official drink of the World/Inferno Friendship Society and France. It's for lovers, lushes and "creative types." It is the closest thing that I have access to that can act as a muse.

The reflection of a writer/artist in alcohol is one of the most common romantic depictions of the type, for good reason. It exists because it's one of the ways to get out of your own head and be creative. It's traditional. It's easy. It works.





Plus, I'm no fun. There are glaciers warmer than me. I get more fun and ideas flow easier when liquor is involved. I get creative and less restrained. Besides, no is limiting, by its very nature.

I drum on the bottle with my index and middle finger. The wine glasses are just a counter top away. There's something to celebrate, right? Mom and Dad are in Hawaii, in advance of an anniversary that's a real milestone in anyone's life. Hell. This anniversary predates my life.

Relax, I tell myself. Just a little something. I'll write better. I sigh and understand, in an instant.

I already know what I do. I take my hands off the bottle, not because it's the right thing to do, but because I know where it leads and I don't have anywhere to walk to. It's no good for me. I have no one to walk home to. No cheerful roomates. My friends aren't a five minute walk away and always up here. There's not a couch to play Star Fox 64 on until I dry out.

There is no one a short walk away to air grievances with and I'm keeping company with a dark, quiet apartment. There is no point in escaping this way. I'll just come out of it realizing I'm alone in my parents' house. I haven't touched my Playstation in....months, now. My escapism currently is Hellboy and Immortal Iron Fist comics. They're fun. The secret about comic books is this: They're short stories for everyone. The suffocating pretense that usually goes with short story collections isn't there.

Also, the pictures are pretty.



The Immortal Iron Fist (left) is about family, in a roundabout way. Sure, there's kung-fu, HYDRA and mysticism, but it's about the friends who would go to the end of the earth for you and the ancient obligations that take you there. There's also a battle, in which the people the main character (Danny Rand) fought against join him to protect their home from destruction.

Comic books are also fun to read on the bus because it lets you know what people think of you immediately. Pulling out an issue on the ride home, the response is either a cautious interest, because they don't want other people to know, or never looking at you again.



I'm getting more used to the stares and the "I thought he was cute, but" sighs now.

It's a mouthful, but I'm told the kids want to see melodrama and I'm scared I'm just giving them what they want. I'm scared, like Tim Kasher, that I'm simply returning to writing about pain and bad things because it's easier than writing about other subjects and that melodrama is what brings people's (let's not mince words, your) attention.

This post is penance enough for admitting I am not a superhero, I think. The acknowledgment of my failures only goes so far before it turns into masochism and with all the pessimism here, I wonder if I'm still on the right side of the line. I know what it takes and I know that if I push myself, I've got it. The difference between hard and impossible, well, you know...

But, sometimes there's moments of clarity and joy in the post-graduate life. I got a text message out of the blue from one of my old roomates, now a sophomore, who says he's found an academic subject he's actually interested in, which is something that frightened him last year. This made my night. It made me smile.

I'm not in college any more and I don't want to be back in college. I'd like to be among my friends, who are in the area, which is an important distinction. I want to see them. I want to see what they're doing now and not have the pall of trying to get another grip on something that's gone.

As attractive as nostalgia is, I don't want to spend that time with those friends reliving the old days. I want to see what they're doing now, in this very moment. I want to be a part of that and not spend my time in a land filled with "remember when?"

And that's why I like GFC coffee so fondly. I remember it likely better than it tasted at the time, but whatever. I like GFC coffee because it represents a period of time, no longer than one hundred and forty seconds, that all I focused on was the warmth of the coffee next to my frigid body and frozen psyche.

But that's not really a note to end this on. Life is awesome. Really. I don't know exactly what's coming and that's exciting, I think. After a summer of being afraid of the future, the winter doesn't feel so bad. Looking back on it, it seems people like my writing when I'm truly engaged in what I'm writing about. That's a feeling I want to have. It's productive, but also affirming and uplifting.

Yes, I publish a lot, according to some people, but ultimately not enough for me. I ought to be updating every goddamn day. So, I'll make this announcement: Eleven Names (that is to say, me) is going on a spree in December. 15 (full length) posts by midnight New Year's Eve. There will not be fake "I've had this one done and have been waiting to publish it for months" posts. Just from now till December 31st, I'm going to write a lot. Starting today, I'm writing the column I've always wanted to have.

If I can do that, then I catapult from there to a regular posting schedule, I'm sure. And by the end of it, I'll really need some GFC coffee.

I Just Remembered Something: You Should Go On.

The title comes from a song by Face to Face singer, Trever Keith called Cross Your Heart. And now, bed.



I have wondered aloud, for a good six month span starting at the end of last year, often, occasionally in Zach's arms (there's documentation of this), Does This Make Me An Alcoholic? By that point in the evening/afternoon/12:15 p.m. I'd been drinking, though one moment stands out. I was seriously considering drinking at lunch sponsored by the Campus, in honor of the seniors on the staff, two girls and I. The editor in chief, a junior, was sitting a couple chairs down and said to us "hey, you guys can order drinks, it's after noon" and I seriously considered it for a couple minutes.

Does that make me an alcoholic? Not really.

I find myself wishing I had something alcoholic more and more often. Today, I reached for a Coke. (I always wondered when I didn't drink, which was worse, having a local beer or Coke, since ehhhh, technically, alcohol was bad, but wasn't Coke's stranglehold on Indian water as well as other "understandings" with the world I'm not aware of, worse?) Anyway. It was a Coke today. Monday, it was a Hershey bar. Just something sweet. Something to stave off that feeling of "You know what would make this better? Booze!"

And booze won't make it better. I know this. I know what booze does to my head. It just makes me think things are better and limits my inhibitors, which can be useful in some scenarios and terrible in others. I know the reason why I associate happiness with alcohol is because I drink a lot with my friends and that's fun, because we're all less inhibited and more prone to drunken singing and fun times.

I'm still using the present tense there. I should know better. That was that. I mean, I'm still thinking about plans to return to Allegheny, but it's not until next year at the earliest. But even then, it won't be the same. You can't go home, I know. Some of this is as simple as I wish I did different things over the last four years. Jesus, I wish I was more social, got out of my room senior year. I wish I had kissed more girls. Taken more chances with different girls. Said "Here's my number. Call me." Instead of just walking away after saying something nice at the bar.

Whatever. (And in the 8 minutes between writing that and coming back, I saw an image of Jade and Davey from AFI, years and years ago, playing ping-pong during a break in recording Art of Drowning and am now much happier.) Something so out of place and gloriously unprepared for a band that has historically spent a lot of time on image for their live shows just makes me smile and is a wonderful yogurt for my mental palate.

Back to the continued desire for alcohol. I know something about it. I know that I'm confusing my desire to be around people whom I already trust and love with the desire to drink. The two run together when I'm not doing anything except waiting for people to get back to me. It's been three weeks swallowed. Lord, how the time has passed me by.

Speaking of three weeks swallowed, I've been spending far too long looking at Facebook to see what Allegheny kids are up to. I miss them. But I've said that over and over again. I wake up in 6 hours, less now, to Iowa to visit family. It's my hope I can use that time to not check Facebook for a week. To fling myself into the reality of being in Chicago with no plans to come back to what I did or used to do. There's little things I can take with me, though. I'm hoping at least one gaming group at home comes through. To get me to meet new people. Start new relationships. Fire up old ones.

Facebook makes it easy to get caught up in old relationships and to go awwww. (Woah. My world just did a bit of a rotation and I wasn't in control of my head.) I have hit the iChat button three times out of habit within the last two minutes. I think that says something. I'm addicted to the constant pulse of the buddy list. Knowing people are there, just by look at that list on the right or lefthand corner of my screen.

At Allegheny, I had something like that buddy list. Call up Zach or James head over to their rooms to chill when I was confused or depressed or needed to talk. I had that mental safety net. Chicago, I'm just waiting for my good, good friends to come back. Now, Iowa offers me an opportunity to spend a weekend without that safety net.

It's my hope that the time this goes up that I'm asleep, but also, that while I'm away, I won't get on the internet or check shit. Detox, whether it's alcohol or constant communication. Reconnect with me. To prove to me that I can do that. To interact with people without Twitter, Facebook, IM clients and Gmail. Just me and my family. Maybe even turn off my phone and be disconnected and in this moment, fully, without any external stimuli.

And if I can do that for three days, then I can do that for a week. And if I can do it for a week, what about two? It's that kind of growth that I think would make my friends (and myself) most proud, that if I do come back to Allegheny, for a weekend or something next year, it won't be as a grad limping back to the school for "the old days" but as part of a positively evolving person, moving forward.

To really get the most out of the Allegheny experience, looking back, I must recognize that it wasn't just a dream and that these experiences are things I can take with me as I walk further on the path of life and return to these experiences at different points in my life to gleam different lessons from them.

This blog, in as much as it is a statement, it isn't a road that will take me to the stars, but it's hopefully, a road that will see me through. Now, to decipher what the signs mean.

THESE SHLAVS NEED TO GTFO OUR SCLAMS

I should already be asleep, so let's get down to brass tacks.

Point the first.
I have a semi-demi-hemi girlfriend, but a man cannot love a woman in the same way that a man can love, say, beer. Having grown up in either boondocks (west of bumblefuck) or a "college" town, I did not know the refined pleasures of beer that was not made of pisswater or drinks that consist of some bitters, snuck into the gaps between ice cubes through some kind of bartending legerdemain. Then I met my one true love, here in the city. Honestly. Brooklyn Brewery crafts ridiculously fine brews, seemingly brewed with the express purpose of enjoying them in the waning hours of the day, sitting in a sidewalk cafe in a trendy/filthy part of town, watching insane Russian vagrants mixing with the French hipsters.

Anyway, as the (endless!) summer finally draws to a close, it's very nice. Why weren't the preceeding months this nice? July was like being eaten alive by some kind of feral squirrel tribe. August was marked with a three day long family tiff. And September is entered in with whistful recollections of my youth, and tapping into a general sense of brotherly responsibility and affection.

April is the cruelest month indeed. Never be tutored by Ezra Pound.

Anyway, you know what's a bad idea? Right wing militant social organizations focusing around hating jews, gypsies, and gays. Sounds familiar, amiright? Well, those who don't remember history are doomed to be embarassed when they look back at themselves.

...Sorry, watching Flight of the Conchords, and it is hella distracting.

New York City can be a horrible place, because if anyone wants something, there are eighteen better people available to supply it. This is why I am having trouble finding both a place to work and a place to live. And why I'ma head to Pittsburgh. Sure, it's no New York. Hell, Brooklyn alone is bigger than Pittsburgh (no joke - it's about seven times larger in population), but it's cheap, close to people I like, and not as cutthroat.

Anyway. I'm a small fish, moving to a smaller pond. The humility needed to navigate a sub-par collegiate career is a difficult skill to pick up. The snide remarks and casual egotism tend to pale before the "Oy, we've no reason to hire you, pees awf" attitude that all of the evil British employers here have.

Speaking of the Brits - Pulp! Common People has to be among the finest songs written in the past fifty years. I was listening to it earlier today, and I tell you this - that song is the very definition of strutting music. While it plays on my headphones, I am ten feet tall and made of impenetrable adamantium. A good song to follow it up with? Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's The Skin Of My Yellow Country Teeth.

...There's a hoarse old man outside my window screaming "Who the fuck are you?"

Anyway, yes. The two go together like raspberries and ginger. And come on NME, Oasis as the best indie rock anthem band? You can go and suck on a brick until you realize that you aren't Pitchfork.

Did you hear that if we pull out of Iraq, proposed oil prices will go up to about $9 dollars a gallon? Betcha wish you'd waited before you bought that Hummer 3, eh? No? And you get all kinds of women, and can run over skyscrapers with it? Well damn, that is pretty neat. How much did it set you back? You got it used? Well, that's. Er. Hi!

Politics are not my strong suit, though, so don't ask me where or how I heard this.

With that in mind, might I draw your attention to this*? I like the midwest, kind of. I feel that it often gets a bad rap for... Jesus, the guy is still out there screaming, he's hoarser than Tom Waits... Anyway, it gets a bad rap for not being either New York or LA, or very often even humble Chicago. So it's nice to see something serious dealt with in a lighthearted but mature matter. Also, the joke about the woman thinking that getting her hair caught in the car door is an orgasm is pure gold.

*Work is not to be safe viewing plz.

GOD SHUT UP HOBO IT'S THREE AM.

Anyway, I'm on the train tomorrow. Happy labor day! Remember - were it not for the Trucker's Union, the US would still have the fastest, most efficient train system in the world. Ha ha, instead we have truck stops. Thanks a lump, boundless avarice.