I Could Never Do That

November 8, 2009

People find out that I’m writing a book and that’s what they say: “I could never do that.” They say this and they mean, what? “I could never work on a single thing for 200 hours or so?” I’m not buying it. Everyone who says this to me has something they’ve committed several hundred hours to. Work, school, improv, acting, poker, exercise, television fandom; these things are all hour-hungry activities and they all, to whatever extent, return on the investment that you put in. Your level of ability in poker is your book. Your flat abs are your book. Your paycheck is your book. You do it every day. If you don’t have anything in your life that you’ve chosen to dedicate hours and hours to, then go find it.

Product is the excrement of action. I have a book because I fill my hours with writing.


T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – The Silly Version

November 1, 2009

Give us streusel, needle pie,
Till the blackbirds have perched atop some guy
And some monkey’s left his poops along the mantle;
Give us trim that’s never seen a chicken’s feets,
Or split its slitted seats
Or bashed its head on pig-iron pantaloons
And big old waitresses on sunny dunes:
Feets that fester like a mold-encrusted jelly bean
That’s tinted yellow-green
That makes me want to puke like I’m a hydrant
Oh Lordy give me power
To chew it back another hour

All the time my girlfriend’s knitting socks
Pattern’d with bears and Goldilocks

A feeble clown that whacked his bike upon the parking deck
A wimpy mime that crashed his cycle in the parking deck
Whooshed his poodle through a firey hoop of whimsy
Published a little guide for sorting speck
Squeezed in his red Corolla a dozen white-faced colleagues
Rolled through the projects, baked a waffle cake
And, syrup rolling down his sodden rayon smock,
Belched ether in the air and shat a rake.

Listen up, you crusty jerks
As the sickly clown goes over falls in swimsuits
Calling his shrink despite the roaming fees
You crusty jerks, you crusty jerks
I’ll stab your stabben faces till my blade’s point is moot
You crusty jerks just stole the wrong guy’s beans
The chili recipe’s in crisis now
As, to the distant north, a baby weans
Jerks that rob and jerks that kill
Some jerks can eat a million stacks of pennies
And a jillion fries from Wendy’s or Benny’s
I’ve crushed my thumb and now must have my pill.

All the time my girlfriend’s knitting socks
Pattern’d with bears and Goldilocks

Listen up, you crusty jerks
My jumpsuit, “It’s on fire!” Ouch. “It’s on fire!”
Your sister lit me up like a funeral pyre
And in two short days I was set to retire –
(Fluffy clouds: “Go through Sears and cut northwest!”)
Diesel gas, dripping aliens bursting through my fancy vest,
A hamster chewing carob, gnashed beneath a wooden chest –
(Goober Grape: “That’s the sandwich spread the kids love best!”)
Have you seen
Ma petite pamplemousse?
Every day I floss incisors and sell gallons of their juice.

There are giant frogs in Jersey, giant frogs –
They are in the attic, the pantry, everywhere,
When I’m tired sometimes I sleep in my boss’s chair
And then she wakes me from my nap and we play Pogs
Till there are icicles in my nasal hair
And in her underwear

When there’s a beagle in your jockeys, kick him out
Those dogs that circle in a hypnotizing way
And when they’ve circled, laying on the floor
That’s when they get the spray
I’ll eat a big bowl of some fish and sauce
Yo, Biggie Smalls for mayor!
And when there’s corn in mama’s chowder, throw it out
If it’s hot, or cold, or mild
(If you eat it, your seed will never bear a child!)
Is it soup from a can
That’s sexier than my hand?
Soup that burns when babies touch, overflown by trout
B.I.G., the rap slayer
My eyes just got the spray.

***

Did you ever go down south and fry yourself a ham
But shaved the glaze that’s on it in a pan
And saved it for Thanksgiving, frosting granny’s dentures?
You ought to see the way it snows
When the eagles molt their cadmium beaks into cumulus.

***

A shot of whiskey, my resume, now my career’s at stake!
Chewed-on burnt nuggets
Fatty … Greasy … Opaque butt plug-its,
Spattered on the wall, sending invitations to New York’s elite.
One time, when I combed and plucked and blotted
I charmed a British gal into saying she “fahted”
And then when she licked my eyeballs, kissed my bum,
And when we cut through Sears (north by northwest), she stole a rack of blouses
We got engaged then — and then clicked our mouses;
We have raised a family here in Frisco
And we have trademarked magic Oreos lined with Crisco
And, in short, we both felt dumb.

And can I get a witness, anyone,
Support my job, my calligraphy, my buns,
Ignore my nature trails, ignore my frightening cache of guns,
Can I get a witness,
Who will tell me that my beagle’s not too old
Who will scratch the sciatica from my back
And save it in a death-defying planter
And say: “I am your father, you’re from my balls,
Come praise your daddy’s sack, I still have my sack” –
And sell, haggling euros at the mall.
Your pitch: “These flakes are at least as good as crack
These flakes are just like crack.”

And can I get a witness, anyone,
Will someone testify,
She looks like Gwyneth only taller and with bigger boobs
And she’s a Pisces, and I’m a Virgo, and we’ve seen “The Big Lebowski” a thousand times
And cuddled, and our farts nearly rhyme? –
Get your feet off my trash can or I’ll smash your face!
Just imagine steroid panthers up in this place:
Will someone testify
My butt, contouring the seat beneath my mass,
It smells, “Just like a piece of Bourbon Pie,
Like whiskey baked in pie.”

***

Shit! I forgot my muffins, left the oven on;
Someone call the fuzz, the firemen too
And bring dalmations, if you know what’s good for you,
And feed my newt, you prat, you vile punk,
Abandonza! It’s good to be the king,
Wafer-thin, spritely, and rectangular
Devour my wages, make the ladies sing;
Alas, my groin, it seems triangular –
My groin, alas, is skunked.

Where’s your hand? … Where’s your hand? …
I feel something moving on my naughty gland.

Does your mother do your laundry? Have you seen Keanu’s wife?
You can climb the tallest mountain if you buy a Ginsu knife.
You’ll excuse me please, I’ve got to take a life.
Your zipper’s down, bro. XYZ.

I can smell your family’s spirit in my pool
Skimming the scum from the surface slicked slime
Looking round longingly for a lime

There’s a monkey in the cockles of my heart
She feeds me little guavas when I’m in town
And makes fart noises on my belly when I lay down.


Attention Nerds (a light rant)

October 26, 2009

Yes, actually, we do get it.

The joke is on us.  You were ostracized in your youth and now look what’s happened.  The tables have turned.  The nerds and the geeks are in charge.  In fact, the nerds are now the cool ones.  Congratulations.  The bums lost.

But you need to stop gloating about it.  Every time  you indignantly ask some square, “You haven’t seen MST3K?!”, I die a little inside because I also enjoy that show, and I’m not indignant about it, and you’re an embarrassment.  Your nerd pride is sullying all the very few benefits you and your so-called nerd brethren are privy to.

America cannot survive by nerds alone.  This world needs people who don’t realize that Weird Al also wrote a bunch of original songs.  These people enter your data and talk to your customers.  They are your customers.  They raise the kids that will be your kids’ classmates.  They vote.  So drop the condescending tone and pretend you know what social cues and fashion are.

Which brings me to my next point: just because a person is an expert at something does not make that person a nerd.  I realize this is semantics, but nerds are nerds because they’ve been shunned by popular society.  When it became cool to wear thick plastic glasses, it ceased being nerdy to wear thick plastic glasses.  This is the way it has to be.  Go ahead and learn Perl, but you’re not a nerd until you know Perl and you sing TV theme songs at work without realizing it bugs the shit out of people around you.

So you go to Renaissance  Faires in costume and get drunk.  Maybe you hack Super Nintendo roms.  Or you consider yourself a theatre nerd, or a football nerd, or a food nerd.  At least you have a hobby that brings you out into the light every now and then.  You have your nerd pride but deep down you don’t think of yourself as uncool.

But imagine the people that you, a cool nerd, shun.  The coworkers who never hang out.  The smelly guys with no personality.  The loud eaters who pick their asses at bus stops.  These are nerds.  They don’t even have to know Perl.  Why are you defending these people?

Look, I own and play an orange ukulele.  I do improv comedy.  I’m adapting a film into poetry.  But I’m not a nerd.  I’m a square with interests.  And so are most of the self-proclaimed nerds I know.

Nerds aren’t ironic.  You are*.  Nerds are not proud of themselves.  You are.  If everyone who likes computers and felt vulnerable during adolescence is a nerd, then no one is.

*(This includes tweeting about nerdy things you’ve done to let everyone know how nerdy you just were.  “Imagine!  I just did that!  Ha!”)


The Worst Song Ever

October 15, 2009

(Edit: Evidently the guy’s name is Roy.)

I started a Pandora station using “Golden Slumbers” by The Beatles  because that’s just good work music.  It’s something soothing that I can ignore.  Well I must have taken a wrong turn and liked the wrong thing because somehow this ended up streaming on that station:

Link: “Wear A Fast Gun” – Wizzard

If you need to sign up for imeem to hear this thing, DO IT.  Grown people  need to be  exposed to this song for the same reason they need to know what genocide is: you need to know when it’s happening at the same party you’re at.

The guy responsible for Wizzard and, hence, this abomination is a guy named Roy Wood.  Evidently he left Electric Light Orchestra to start this new band.  And this is one of the songs they came up with.  Smooth move, Roy Wood.

I feel bad even letting you know that this song is out there, so I’ll try as best I can to comfort you here on a moment-by-moment basis.  Read along as “Wear A Fast Gun” gathers in oaty clots in your ears.

  • 0:00 – 0:15.  Okay, this is bad.  They’ve already introduced you to their good friend the distant French horn.  More than letting you know that this is going to be “progressive”, they’re creating the mood of the beginning of a long journey.  People, this song is over 9 minutes long.  If it sounds like a dirge, it’s because that’s how long it would take a slow diabetic to drag a corpse to Mordor.  Oh, and the way the notes coming out of that instrument sound like they don’t really line up, as if an intermediate-level teen is playing the horn?  Get used to that.
  • 0:15 – 0:21.  Don’t panic.  Yes, that is what the lead vocalist sounds like.  Yes, the first line of this epic rock ballad is, “When you’re walking down.”  The truth is it does not improve after this moment.  In a while it actually gets worse.  But still, it’s just a song right?  You can deal with what sounds like Ozzy Osbourne covering folk songs at full belt, can’t you?
  • 0:30 – 0:33.  Man, listen to that bass guitar fill the rhythm.  Nice little walk there, you might even say.  Except that isn’t a bass guitar.  This song has no bass guitar.  THAT’S A FUCKING TUBA.
  • 0:46 – 0:51.  When I first heard the song I thought this was the point where the ridiculous intro ended and the rock and roll kicked in.  Sadly, the whole thing is ridiculous.  Also, I hope you’ve paid attention during the first minute here, because there’s no expansion of the concepts you’ve just been introduced to.  The whole thing is about walking down an unpaved street and not doing anything about anything.  I’m so serious.  I’d tell you to really listen to verify that I’m right but, yeah, don’t.
  • 0:51 – 0:59.  To elaborate on the feeling I explained before that you’re no doubt experiencing now, the second time this guy starts singing is a little like coming up from a wave in the ocean after a lot of water just went up your nose but knowing that now you’re okay only to be hit right away by a second wave this time made of baby shit.
  • 1:01 – 1:04.  “Feeling all screwed up inside.”  Wow.  So bad.
  • 1:22 – 1:36.  Okay, this is the chorus.  I’m not sure what a fast gun is.  It’s either a gun that is fired at one’s enemies so fast that they are unable retaliate, or it’s a gun that one never uses at all so no one gets pissed off.  Either way, listen to those high notes.  It’s like a parrot sat on a little toilet full of acid and his balls dipped in a little.
  • 1:36 – 3:07.  You ever eat too much and get up real quick and the vomitus gets into your throat but you’re able to swallow it back?  Well, that’s fantastic for you.  I just blew chunks all over the remote.  You suck, song!
  • 3:07 – 3:37.  Jeez Louise.  This sounds like background music that Warcraft 2 threw away.
  • 3:37 – 4:42.  By now you’ve stopped listening.  I’m not mad about that.  It’s only natural.  It was folly to assume you’d persevere through this dreck for the sake of a dumb blog post.  If you made it near this far, you’re in possession of an amazing constitution and I commend you.  Lord holy God this is awful.  At some point Roy Wood must have thought this was working, and that makes me feel bad for him.  Does anyone know him?  Is he a computer that’s been kicked by a sheep?  Because in my dreams that’s what he is.
  • 4:42 – 5:13.  Oh yeah.  There’s a choir of baritones in this part.  On the bright side, maybe those guys are all dead now.
  • 5:17 – 5:30.  It’s like they told their flautist to prepare his own solo and instead he developed Parkinson’s disease.  If flute music is like a butterfly in flight, that solo was like a butterfly I’d like to take a dump on in flight.
  • 5:30 – 9:17.  This is proof that just because you’ve got a bunch of classical instruments all playing at once, you’re not necessarily making classical music.  Or even music.  Like you’d know if a kid with a violin is just making noise, so this band just makes noise for nigh on four god damn minutes that I’ll never get back.  At some point the choir comes back.  Man.  It’s hard to keep telling you guys about this.  It’s draining me.  The last moments (by which I mean the last 20 whole seconds) mark the return of the flute solo, which is a fitting death rattle.  The whole thing fades away like a giant slug cramming itself down into a septic tank and killing itself in the process.

I’ve listened to it again.  I’m now angry and disappointed that a human or group of humans conceived of this.  These poor bastards probably had to tour with this terrible song.

Damn it.

Really, my life sucks a little more every time I hear it.  I’m sorry, guys.  This has been a mistake.

Damn.  What a shitty song.


Guitar Hero Is Not A Waste Of Time

October 9, 2009

There is a prevalent feeling on the Internet that these darn kids should put down Guitar Hero and Rock Star in favor of the real thing.  The argument goes that all the time put into mastering these games could just as easily have been spent mastering real guitars, as that is held to be culturally more significant.

Never mind that kids who play Guitar Hero are picking up real instruments, I take umbrage with the idea that somehow learning to play songs on a real guitar has a greater real-world impact than mastering a video game. Of course being a legendary player of Guitar Hero is not going to make you rich and famous.  But honestly, playing a guitar probably isn’t either.  The best guitarists in the world undoubtedly play because they just love playing their instrument (or at least that’s where it all got started).

Why is that?  The truth is that mastering an instrument and mastering a video game are similar experiences.  Here you have this thing invented years ago by someone else, and out of this invention emerges a whole system of methods to learn, practice, and master.  It’s this learning system at the heart of each endeavor that people love about playing music or games.  When it comes down to it, structured play is a form of work.  It’s a matter of narrowing your focus, finding flow, and entering the magic circle for a few hours a day.  As long as this learning paradigm is being studied, practiced, and worshiped, who cares if the end result is a song or a high score?  If the songs don’t get famous (and they largely won’t), the difference in cultural impact is nil.  That’s not to say that playing a song on a guitar is useless.  It is to say that playing a song on Guitar Hero is not useless.  Either way it’s teaching people how to learn by doing.


I Got Hacked Last Week

October 5, 2009

So Rexbaxter.com got hacked last week, which did a number on all my sites since they were all being directed from the same domain provider.  If you’ve visited this site or any of its sister sites recently and saw a weird skull image and a lot of crude anti-Israel propaganda you might want to go ahead and scan your computer for spyware and such.  Sorry about that.

The ultimate consequence of the hackery is this:  I can try to restore rexbaxter.com to its old glory with all its silly DVD reviews, or I can use the domain and space to host something new.  I haven’t decided what to do yet.  What do you think I should do?


Doldrums (sobriety whine)

October 3, 2009

Here we go again.

Yet again I’ve put aside alcohol For the purpose of motivating myself toward some lofty finite goal. This time I’m not drinking again until I’ve finished the first draft of my upcoming book. I’ve been writing all year and I’m halfway through. I’ve been sober since Monday.

I worried at the beginning of this week that this method wasn’t going to work anymore. I would fail to be motivated. I’d become numb to the denial of booze. This is what I thought.

Guys, I love to drink. And I love the drinkers I know. Family, friends, dinner parties, bars; you name it, I’ll associate it with drinking. To get by I skipped bars last week and was cruising. Then we went to Philadelphia.

I was there with SidViscous! For the Philadelphia Improv Festival (which by the way was an awesome event). After a rollicking set we hit a bar where 16 oz cans were a dollar each. Our group ordered 60.

If you’re a drinker, imagine sitting before a coffee table holding 60 open cans and the rule is “these are paid for; drink away!” This was tough. I didn’t drink. I stayed strong. And still this experience delivered the profound low I’d been chasing. I need a drink. Therefore, I need to get to work.

I figure I can reach my goal if I make a BIG push in the next 45 days or so. That’s a friend’s wedding, Halloween parties, maybe Thanksgiving, umpteen performances, and probably 4000 other tiny occasions with no alcohol.

This is a game. This me me versus addiction, the enablers, lack of willpower, boredom, social stigma, and resistance in the face of the production of asinine blogwhines. When it’s over and I’ve won, I’ll be happy. Hell, I’ll probably find my share of happiness on the way to the finish line, too.

But I am thirsty.


Spending and Consciousness

August 29, 2009

My friend Jen has been trying the envelope method to corral her spending this month and she’s had some success.  Of course, I think that’s great.

It makes me think that the way I spend is as if I haven’t spent most of my life earning the money I’m throwing around.  For a guy who relishes down-time and freedom as much as I do, you’d think I’d more closely equate my spending with the amount of time I spend at other people’s desks.  It comes down to a matter of consciousness.  Successful budgeters will take every transaction as an opportunity to be reminded of the work that went into earning whatever’s being bought.  Was it all worth it if you’re blowing your money on something you don’t need or really even want?  On a habit?  On making someone else content?  On anything that’s going to limit your freedom down the line?

Sometimes I want to write how many hours of work each one of my dollars is worth, right there on the bills themselves.  Short of doing that craziness, though, the envelope method is one of the best around.  Way to make it work, Jen!


Iteration for Improvisers

August 28, 2009

I’ve seen it a million times. A group will “invent” a new form or game, practice it (or not), then throw it up on stage. Then they’ll keep throwing it up on stage whether it worked the first time or not. The assumption is that the group has to get used to the new form and that it’ll improve itself simply by being played through a few times without any conscious attempt to make significant changes. Of course, this is doing things the hard way.

Game designers are great at using iteration in their work. They’ll toss together some rules, crank out a prototype, and playtest it as soon as possible. Really, when it comes to designing a game, what could possibly replace the value of actual players interacting with this system you’ve set up for them? And, naturally, a game designer’s job isn’t complete once the game enters playtesting. In a way, that’s where the real craft begins. If it isn’t fun, it goes back into the workshop and tweaks begin. Too often, improvisers would be content to release the game as-is, no matter how tests went, and rely on the players of the game to just get used to it. That is no way to improve a game, and it’s no way to improve the structure of an improv show.

Improvisers: your form will not figure itself out. That doesn’t mean you need to trash it altogether. It means you need to critically evaluate what went right and what went wrong, and use your time wisely promoting the right stuff and excising the wrong stuff. This is true whether you’re playing Party Quirks or Harolds, Freeze Tag or Deconstructions. Test it, refine it, repeat.

Even a game has to hit the shelves at some point. Your brand new longform structure spends itself as soon as it’s implemented. It’s never complete. And so improv groups should never assume that the form is set in stone. If your second beats aren’t working, change your second beats. If your group just can’t do organic edits, don’t do them. Stop treating the form like it’s sacred. Only success is sacred.


These I Believe

August 13, 2009
  • Work to exhaustion when you’re young.
  • Overnight success takes years.
  • There is only one way to receive a compliment.  “Thank you.”
  • You can wait and wait for the right time to pull the trigger, but no time is ever perfect.  Leap.
  • There is no higher purpose than making other people smile.
  • Health is more than the absence of disease.
  • You have to be able to make the most of solitude, and you also have to be willing to squander it.  These can be  the same thing sometimes.
  • Karma pays out over generations, not months.
  • Salmon is just the best fish.  Bake it in foil.
  • Smart people are smart because they read.
  • No one cares about your acting process.
  • It is shameful to repeat a funny line because it wasn’t heard the first time.  Let it go.
  • When you’re not practicing, someone else is.  And when you meet him, he will beat you.
  • People love lists.
  • We don’t need monsters because we have bears.
  • There has to be a universal truth, because love is always right.  Before there was anything else, there was already love.
  • Every child born is a genius.