Note that the narratives below are hard and fast, and do not necessarily represent the comprehensive perspectives of Bobak..
Cold As Asssicles in Minneapolis12/1/2011
Shoving popcorn in my mouth like a beast… on a leather couch in Minneapolis, is where I am.
It’s cold as asssicles outside. But inside this sponsored loft of lean hipster-sheik decor and leather couches, a mesmerizing bath tub, multi-sized pots and pans, a laundry machine, and inspired recess lighting, I hail in comfort… for the next few days, all compliments of the Playwrights center in Minneapolis.
I immediately went barechested. Fiercely. Upon entrance of my chamber of artistic freedom/relaxation, as all humans should in the face of luxuriance well deserved.
But I have to say, performers at the Guthrie theater have an excellent set-up here.
I’m in a staged reading of Home Below Zero here next week, an excellent new piece by Dan Dietz whose also working with Warner Brothers these days. His presence: a calculated gaze of a warrior spirit, an ease-of-comfort walk, and a very unpredictable sense of humor somehow. His work: a gripping style of sincere realism, and very poignantly balanced with a unique gravity of curve-ball comedy that is rejuvenating and compelling. (One of his very notable assets is that he can brilliantly inject dark moments with comedy and make it work.)
SO I’ve never been to Minneapolis. It’s cold. And what generous wintryness it has to offer. On the flight over a soon to be ER doctor described this place as a land of unlikely encounters and pleasant surprises, “there is this one bar where you will find Very Old People mingling joyfully with hipsters.” I can’t really imagine this, being from San Francisco. I mean, hipsters only see hipsters. Right?
Anyway, the streets are rather empty but something feels very right. I wonder if everyone is hiding in pubs. And it’s colder than my asian friends home when I was 12. I know, I should stop making such overt remarks, but seriously, Jonathan Liang’s home was Always Freezing. I hated hanging out there because of that. (But on the flip side, his mom always sent me home with those thin and small circular asian candies that came in packaging that reminded me of a roll of quarters. I wish I could remember their name.)
Anyway, onto forces we can’t control, I escaped the 90 mph winds in LA last nite. What the shit was that about!, and so incredible! YES!
Oh LA, you’re not impervious to Nature. It CAN Eat You. And it will…. One day.
I witnessed a bench fly into a tree. When it happened I was in a mesmerized awe, thinking Oh Mother Nature… blowing those dirty kisses.. Then with the aid of a friendly man’s crutches, I helped retrieve the bench. It must have weighed nearly eighty pounds.This was up in Bel Air. It was awesome driving around
at midnite and chuckling to myself as I recognized nature doing a gracious number on all the pretty landscaping that mansion
owners spend fortunes on. Anyway, what I mean to say is: If you’re in Minneapolis on December 5th come see this free reading.
Dog Eat Actor 9/21/11
We live in a dog eat actor world. In LA. We’re treated like medieval peasants with leprosy. Saying you’re an actor in LA is like saying you eat cat shit all day and drown puppies for fun. Which is precisely what medieval peasants with leprosy do.
I accidentally said I’m an actor once, a few weeks back to my new neighbor, and she looked at me with a fierce pensive gaze, as if I suddenly asked her to eat shit with me. I never asked her to do that. I never would do such a thing. We had a saying hello hiatus for some time. I wondered for a while what I had done wrong. (She saw me on tv a few weeks later and we’re friends again… “so you’re actually an actor? Huh. Hmm…. Hello.”)
I prrrr down Santa Monica boulevard’s fresh pavement in my pristine 88 Corolla, and am prey to billboards every three feet, , shoving images of hyped up tv diddle-shit-daddle, an ongoing forceful reminder to the vulnerable non-booking actor that they suck balls right now. Bigtime. These visual entertainment guides serve as clear and stern harassment devices; it is as if the prevailing mantra up there is yea, you aint up here bitch, now keep idling in traffic…
To top off the ongoing visual threats around town are friendly reminder for actors not to park in certain zones all around town. Parking Lots and common areas around town are generously replete with signs ranging from “No Actor Parking, you will be towed immediately” to “Actors !don’t even think about parking here” or “Actors keep silent here, this is a business..”. Or “Actors, No Way.” They should actually read, “Hey actor, go fuck yourself.” Or “Actors Please Go Home and Shit In Your Hand”. Or “If you’re here for an audition, up yours bitch.”
Oh the love. It’s not a joke though. We are like mosquitos to the masses. Creating traffic, rushing in and out of places like angry children trading fruit rollups in the 80’s. Truth is, we transform the 405 into a parking lot and create high blood pressure for the mobile elite and the working class.
But it makes sense. LA actors simply deserve it. Most actors I’ve met here that are from LA, are simple and clear about their attitude: highly self- motivated butt-clenching animals out to conquer God. Well, with the exception of two. Every improvisational audition I have where I’m paried with an LA native features aggressive audition antics, attempts to sideline the other actor and not provide space for their work to be seen…. But it’s all love in various forms I reckon.
August.
I’m alone on a pristine canal in a boat too large for it. I hopped onto it from a bridge. There’s a mission. I don’t know what exactly. The rocks are distracting and so are the families giggling in the water with their small children. It feels like the hobo version of Miami Vice, but all my alliances are old and haggard men with hockey sticks and straw hats trying to give me instructions through the CB. Except its in Cantonese or Sumerian. I can hear music somewhere, like a lofty Indiana Jones soundtrack (Temple of Doom) but I’m trying to find it to turn that shit off so I can focus on not running mud or rock or families. Then I realize it’s a part of the journey, the music , is coming from somewhere else intangible and I must surrender to it. A raw sense of impending doom comes over me as I glide through the canal scraping up against things, staring onto land and spotting two of my alliance hobos with hockey sticks waving at me to STOP.
Stop what? What does that mean? Suddenly before me is a slide (like the ones at Raging Waters), and two talking babies in diapers sliding down and rotating with adult-like momentum. The sound of footsteps, Norm, my really old landlord, guaged steps, taking out the trash. Really Loud plastic bags. I wake and stare into a swimming pool . Ahh…. Beverly Hills, I’m home.
CARMAGEDDON Averted 7/15/11
Yup, I escaped Carmageddon. I am one of those rare cases. I left LA in time.
It had been too many days of fear and anxiety about the 405 closing all around town.
Every few minutes in the past few days an emotionally toxified LA-ite would complain, unprovoked, about needing to sleepover on an air matress in their office…. or consume anti-anxiety meds to get over Carmageddon, the six month anticipated closure of the ten mile strip of the 405, one of the busiest freeways in the country.
Luckily, I had a gig up north so I left early this morning and didn’t have to think about supporting the pharmeceutical industry today.( Those bastards, making a primetime debut even in traffic.)
Only in LA would a ten mile strip of closure be cosmically captured as CARMEGEDDON. What a bunch of narcissistic mind-wranglers.
Hasid Jews as Billboards Of Eschatology
What’s with all the mumbling Hasidic jews in south Hollywood? They’re everywhere, and it seems like they’re always crossing an intersection. These modern sages are like billboards on the move. Mute Public service announcements. I think they get paid to cross intersections all day in the name of religion, promoting hardcore Theosophy in silence. Relentless. I never understood the value of symbolic fashion statements in religiosity. Its a bit LAME to walk around in special apparel to publically identify your religious affiliation, affirm that you’re one of God’s men, and help create more separation in the world. But more importantly, who wants to see a bunch of bearded men in black outfits on a really hot day either? It’s aggravating. Seriously. Is it so we can think: ah poor miserably sweaty man, he is on God’s side? Or: His apocrine glands must be really fighting right now, what a good faithful man? Or: I really feel for him, wearing all black in the sun? Or: That sweaty faced mumbler is doing God’s work? Or: They must be God’s men, fighting the sun in style!? Who wants to imagine a bunch of distraught bearded men in black? It’s not fair to them, either. And it’s not fair to me or any innocent bystander being subjected to these bodies in the sun shoving heated religious fashion into my eyes. I feel like distributing tank tops and super soakers to Hasids on hot days, and saying dude, take an edge off.
Speaking of Hasidic jews, I once had the privilege of dating one. Bad Move. For a Brown Man. All you brownies, it’s not worth it. Lucky for me, I had a little extra credit Bonus situation: she had three brothers with Brooklyn accents that would randomly show up at her place and sounded like Brooklyn cops. In the modern developed / civilized world, a random appearance at someone’s house typically means an opportunity for a civilized conversation. In the Hasidic Jew world, this means hiding in the closet . Or jumping a fence. Or hiding beneath a pile of blankets (and hearing her little niece say, “wow, your friend Maya has really hairy legs”). I have to admit: That period of feeling like a wild teenager again was rejuvenating for half of second, but then I realized my time spent with humble Hasidic girl prevalently coincided with a basic and fresh feeling of TERROR. While inadvertently examining closets all length in that period of few months or strategically sneaking out of backyards at dawn without a bullet proof vest, I would frequently wonder why I am doing this to myself. The few times where my presence was appropriated for her brothers, I got to witness his 16 little children (between the ages of 3 and 9) with tiny jewish hats and inevitable talk of moving back to Jerusalem. The kids presented as 70 yr old Judges trapped in tiny child body. My attempt to connect with the little ones were always met with Judgement Day Eyes, (panthers with glowing eyes), combative and watching cartoons as if dissecting the Old Testament. It made me feel like the new 5th grader at an all white school again.
It must have been equally as stressful for her too, being the sole girl with eighteen brothers, and always on the verge of hiding the Brown Man that was allegedly Muslim as reported to her mother by one of her brothers. “We really need to intervene…I mean, he’s a Muslim.” (hmmm, I wonder why they thought that…is it because I’m Brown maybe?) So that didn’t really work out, for a few lighthearted reasons.
Hasidic jews in Hollywood!
Koala Time at Four Barrels. 3/ 26/11
I am Pensive MiseryGrump of Wetness. Its coming down like angry summer rain in Tehran. I’m walking by ultra hipster joint Four Barrel Coffee in the mission, packed with bodies in apparel affirming: Post–Modernism-Making–a-Come–Back-On-Legs. Hipsters unite here to secretly browse affirmations of the Hipster Motif, covertly plan their next poetry slam, and keep the Legend alive in the Mission District.In my wet mop state of body and mind, I decide to turn around and get some coffee, because, to be honest, there’s an angelic glow to this Hipster Caravansaira. It’s spacious and well lit , a sort of biking elite museum of unusually relaxed poses and slender long fingers paging hip novels, mini toffee cookies resting on rustic surfaces. Inside, it’s a hefty dose of mission district hegemony. I could instantly feel them all checking me out at once, taking notes: “Brown Non-hipster, 1:12pm, enters assertively, wet and miserable.”
I browse the Hipster arena with a sense of cultivated foreign pride, standing there dripping water all over in my discount rain gear, nodding combatively and slowly. I do a relaxed 360 to confirm my non-belonging to everyone . “I’m only here for the incessant scent of Fresh Hope this establishment offers” I whisper fervently to the masses in a cuban accent. Then, a quick glance outside to make sure that none of my friends or family witnessed my entrance. It then occurs to me that no one else is wet. Even the new hipsters entering are dry. No umbrellas or rain gear in sight. Strange. Is it because Hipsters don’t get ever get wet? I wonder. I mean, I look like I was swimming. What the Shit is this about I wonder. I get worked up in this foreign land. Do they have special Secret Hipster Shields like RainX for humans? I suddenly imagine a gang of hipsters on bike, sunny day, riding proudly, cinematic hair flowing in breeze, shiny gotees, skinny vegan legs. I can’t even fathom one of them falling off a bike. Then it dawns on me, as I’m standing in the crowded line: Hipsters can’t fall off bikes. Their form and posture, the core of their Agenda, is fundamentally opposed to this. A hipster falling off a bike would be like a Christian burning the Bible. I scrutinize further, conceptualizing this realization. When a Normal Dude bikes by, its like: there’s a vulnerable Normal Dude on Bike that can crash and get brain damaged. Right. But when a hipster bikes by, it’s like: WOW, that looks incredibly smooth, like a super hi def commercial for Smooth Glide GOD Child on Wheels. That coupled with an intently ergonomically focused poise, they’re impervious angels effortlessly floating by to deliver a note to the Queen of Sheba. Something disrupting this smooth motion would be a glitch in Nature. “Hey, what can I get you,” the permanent smile dude in tie half tucked in intercepts. “I’d like an extra small toffee cookie and a small cup of coffee. I’m about 17 cents short. That cool?” Half tucked Tie Guy nods and winks.
I drop the hipster honorary ceremony and decide to attack the half and half full focus. I wonder when they’re gonna have goat milk half and half.
On the way out I run into my singer songwriter friend of friend Dan. Who doesn’t have a singer songwriter friend of friend Dan? We begin talking koalas. I was ranting about being brown and underprivileged when I notice his special way of diagrammatically extracting lyrics for new songs. It looked like a corporate chart. At some point, he tells me that Koalas are always sort of grunting lightly, throughout the day. We talked briefly about petting a koala. I’ve never done that. But he was rather decisive about the permanent koala all day grunt. I thought about petting a koala and hearing the little furry bastard grunting. It made my day.
The Loch Ness Monster is Coming. 3/19/02
So I was at Safeways last nite at midnite because I found a few dollars in my sweat pants unexpectedly. I wanted that cheap-ass skirt steak sizzled generously with borrowed garlic . That’s right. I valiantly walked past the robust skin heads at the front entrance speed mumbling about who owes who what like they do all day; I swear these dudes are always in the same position when I walk by, which is like 6 times a year on my discount skirt steak outing. It’s as if they have an annual meeting to decide their signature physicality that never changes, and it must go down something like this: ok you, on the bike for this fiscal year, facing south, right leg featured, green jacket, no not that one, the one the rats raped in Berlin last winter….and you, pick your nose pensively… that’s all you do, ok that’s right, all day, take it easy…. and um, you, no you ,you’ll be the vagrant prick mumble-snarling at people but whatever you do for God’s sake don’t look left, you need to be glaring south-west the whole time, until third quarter.
This year they look like the Back Street Boys gone Very Lazy, on valium, scowling, with a headache, constipated. Dreamy. Hazy. Album Cover.
Either way, They didn’t care to stop yours truly.
I was free to enter. Brown Man Averts Danger Once More ( this headline rapidly jet- farted across a blue sky… in my mind).
Inside the glory glow of Safeway, I hit up the meat like an Iranian, straight-up, no distractions. Damn. That sounds so sleazy. But come to think of it, Iranian dudes are super sleazy. Well. .. So are Turks and Arabs. In fact, all Mid Eastern men are, for the most part, cologne bathing womanizers, with the exception of Shahaub Roudbari, a local SF actor. I think he’s the only Iranian dude I know that has breaks on his penis motor.
Anyhow, brown dudes, where was I, they often take euro trash to another level. LA is loaded with these super freaky massive-collar posing urbanites featuring (but not limited to) Iconic Chowd Gotee, Shiny Slime BoyWatch, LazySleaze Eyes, Glazed Permanent Smile (that reminds me of a picture perfect commercial headshot.) It’s fucking embarrassing; it totally is. Not just the gotee I mean. They come out here from Iran when they’re like 12, and become devout Manwhores. But it’s totally OK, because at the end of the day they can go home and their mommies will have fresh laundry and lamb stew and awesome basmati rice waiting, joyously supporting their secret lifestyle. Way to go Islamic Republic of Iran! Looks like Operation Oppress Human Desire is working its wonder. Brownie Bonus for successfully Mindf*&%ing your own country. Right? Doing your country right by creating F%#*tards. Yay! (insert celebratory clapping here, preferably hands of the unkempt men of the Iranian Parliament).Well, at least the Iranians have a scapegoat. Turks though, and Arabs…. No excuse. They’re just devoted objectifiers of woman because, um, it gets the job done. I know , I know, lets be fair, to some of you, like three, in Saud Arabia, and the two in Turkey, I know you are genuinely decent towards woman.
Speaking of Arabs, the Iranians have long considered them their retarded brothers. Here’s some Arab History for you all out in the Midwest: Iranians are not arabs. Arabs are their brothers, but retarded versions. They still beat their woman and repress them. The Koran was revealed to the Arabs not because they were the chosen ones like all Arabs believe but because they were considered the “most contentious nation”, burying their infant females among other retarded things. (Well, I guess China does that too. Hmmm. Anyway, this is a Brown Man Minute.) The truth is, the Arabs haven’t changed much. Look at the clothes the elite wear, their choices, their woman dressed like drab ghosts head to toe, some with nets over their eyes, the way most of them treat woman. (And Hands down, Saudi Arabia is a benign tumor in the middleast; making a long alliance with US to support their elaborately appropriated hedonistic lifestyle . I mean, who the fuck spends billions of dollars moving sand to create an Island? Yes, Some Arab state. United Arab Emirates. So they can have fancy hotels that cost 20k a nite, and people like Bill Clinton can watch porn in safety. )
Lets recap here before we move on:
Arabs basically cage their woman, in most cases, unless they’re among the five decent men that live in that part of the world.
I warned you about reading this, it’s dangerously mindful drips of truth that will make you mad, especially if you’re the color brown like me. Cuz that’s how I roll. I am Brown and Down. You’re reading Brown And Down, from San Francisco, on the Web, Live with an extra soft pink shirt on, typing on a laptop resting on a shaky ironing board, disturbing Middleasterners. But the truth is: Brownies get a lot of bad rap, especially Iranians. Dick Cheneys daughter is to blame. She’s invested over 40 mil in promoting anti-Iranian and generally Anti- Brown propaganda since she was two. Some of it is real though (see above), but Iranians are not terrorists. Has there been even one Iranian convicted of a terrorist act that you can recall? ? No. Because, those rotten brownies are all from Yemen, (or some other small sandy spot in Arabia.) And all this hooha about nuclear energy, is hooha. Khomeini scrapped nuclear energy efforts for military purposes, as it was
deemed sacrilegious, prior to 1979. Either way, the bottom line: Benjamin Netanyahu is an irate porcupine who talks the smack regularly (and looks more like a pharmeucetical rep than a prime minister- see photo left). He’s not only prime minister of Israel; look at what this confused chap is up to these days, all in a philly accent: Netanyahu also serves as the current Chairman of the Likud Party, as a Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel. Health minister? What’s going on here?
This devilishly diluted cowboy from Jerusalem has lots going on.
Anyway, enough of this anomaly MIT grad called “Bibi”, now back to the Iranians. One of most interesting things about Iran (aside from the skinny old men in restaurants that smack the back of tourists unexpectedly and wave an index finger smiling), Their government is not even Iranian. They’re Hizbolla martians: part Lebanese, part Alien in Stinky Slipper. (I took a stroll through Tehran’s parliament two years back when working on a dead end film I Ran Iran, and I tell you, all the compelling soft voices of the higher up majlis elite came out of bodies with hairy feet in stinky slippers.)
Back to the lecture at hand, perfection is perfected, let the brown man undastand… that MidEasterners can have a gorgeous way of transforming EuroTrash… to new trashy heights. They be the true authors of the Revised Sleaze Gospel.
So I’m still at Safeway, undistracted.
I grab my slab of skirt and I’m headed to the register. Skirt steak that is. I walk past two semi intoxicated ladies packing their carts with canned beans et al, like 20 cans, mostly red kidney, not much variety. I’m like yo, is this what you do when you’re drunk ?… No answer. Long backpacking trip? No answer. They suddenly are still and appear super diligent, drunken gazing over an aisle of canned beans, in a fretfully piercing manner, bodies fixed, on their knees, like they’re taking orders from an Egyptian king. Then suddenly, As if speaking into the can of Hormel chili being studied, blue beanie girl says in a monotonously lofty voice, “The big earthquake. is coming. this .weekend. ..”
I walk around their two crackly carts of metal and wonder about something a friend from LA passionately relayed to me yesterday about the Maori of New Zealand predicting a massive earthquake this weekend. Then I think about how cool it would be if the Loch Ness monster also visited us on the same weekend. I go home and eat my discount meat in peace.
BLOG du Brownie
Electronified For the Masses
Note that the narratives below are hard and fast, and do not necessarily represent the comprehensive perspectives of Bobak..
Cold As Asssicles in Minneapolis 12/1/2011
Shoving popcorn in my mouth like a beast… on a leather couch in Minneapolis, is where I am.
It’s cold as asssicles outside. But inside this sponsored loft of lean hipster-sheik decor and leather couches, a mesmerizing bath tub, multi-sized pots and pans, a laundry machine, and inspired recess lighting, I hail in comfort… for the next few days, all compliments of the Playwrights center in Minneapolis.
I immediately went barechested. Fiercely. Upon entrance of my chamber of artistic freedom/relaxation, as all humans should in the face of luxuriance well deserved.
But I have to say, performers at the Guthrie theater have an excellent set-up here.
I’m in a staged reading of Home Below Zero here next week, an excellent new piece by Dan Dietz whose also working with Warner Brothers these days. His presence: a calculated gaze of a warrior spirit, an ease-of-comfort walk, and a very unpredictable sense of humor somehow. His work: a gripping style of sincere realism, and very poignantly balanced with a unique gravity of curve-ball comedy that is rejuvenating and compelling. (One of his very notable assets is that he can brilliantly inject dark moments with comedy and make it work.)
SO I’ve never been to Minneapolis. It’s cold. And what generous wintryness it has to offer. On the flight over a soon to be ER doctor described this place as a land of unlikely encounters and pleasant surprises, “there is this one bar where you will find Very Old People mingling joyfully with hipsters.” I can’t really imagine this, being from San Francisco. I mean, hipsters only see hipsters. Right?
Anyway, the streets are rather empty but something feels very right. I wonder if everyone is hiding in pubs. And it’s colder than my asian friends home when I was 12. I know, I should stop making such overt remarks, but seriously, Jonathan Liang’s home was Always Freezing. I hated hanging out there because of that. (But on the flip side, his mom always sent me home with those thin and small circular asian candies that came in packaging that reminded me of a roll of quarters. I wish I could remember their name.)
Anyway, onto forces we can’t control, I escaped the 90 mph winds in LA last nite. What the shit was that about!, and so incredible! YES!
Oh LA, you’re not impervious to Nature. It CAN Eat You. And it will…. One day.
I witnessed a bench fly into a tree. When it happened I was in a mesmerized awe, thinking Oh Mother Nature… blowing those dirty kisses.. Then with the aid of a friendly man’s crutches, I helped retrieve the bench. It must have weighed nearly eighty pounds.This was up in Bel Air. It was awesome driving around
at midnite and chuckling to myself as I recognized nature doing a gracious number on all the pretty landscaping that mansion
owners spend fortunes on. Anyway, what I mean to say is: If you’re in Minneapolis on December 5th come see this free reading.
Dog Eat Actor 9/21/11
We live in a dog eat actor world. In LA. We’re treated like medieval peasants with leprosy. Saying you’re an actor in LA is like saying you eat cat shit all day and drown puppies for fun. Which is precisely what medieval peasants with leprosy do.
I accidentally said I’m an actor once, a few weeks back to my new neighbor, and she looked at me with a fierce pensive gaze, as if I suddenly asked her to eat shit with me. I never asked her to do that. I never would do such a thing. We had a saying hello hiatus for some time. I wondered for a while what I had done wrong. (She saw me on tv a few weeks later and we’re friends again… “so you’re actually an actor? Huh. Hmm…. Hello.”)
I prrrr down Santa Monica boulevard’s fresh pavement in my pristine 88 Corolla, and am prey to billboards every three feet, , shoving images of hyped up tv diddle-shit-daddle, an ongoing forceful reminder to the vulnerable non-booking actor that they suck balls right now. Bigtime. These visual entertainment guides serve as clear and stern harassment devices; it is as if the prevailing mantra up there is yea, you aint up here bitch, now keep idling in traffic…
To top off the ongoing visual threats around town are friendly reminder for actors not to park in certain zones all around town. Parking Lots and common areas around town are generously replete with signs ranging from “No Actor Parking, you will be towed immediately” to “Actors !don’t even think about parking here” or “Actors keep silent here, this is a business..”. Or “Actors, No Way.” They should actually read, “Hey actor, go fuck yourself.” Or “Actors Please Go Home and Shit In Your Hand”. Or “If you’re here for an audition, up yours bitch.”
Oh the love. It’s not a joke though. We are like mosquitos to the masses. Creating traffic, rushing in and out of places like angry children trading fruit rollups in the 80’s. Truth is, we transform the 405 into a parking lot and create high blood pressure for the mobile elite and the working class.
But it makes sense. LA actors simply deserve it. Most actors I’ve met here that are from LA, are simple and clear about their attitude: highly self- motivated butt-clenching animals out to conquer God. Well, with the exception of two. Every improvisational audition I have where I’m paried with an LA native features aggressive audition antics, attempts to sideline the other actor and not provide space for their work to be seen…. But it’s all love in various forms I reckon.
August.
I’m alone on a pristine canal in a boat too large for it. I hopped onto it from a bridge. There’s a mission. I don’t know what exactly. The rocks are distracting and so are the families giggling in the water with their small children. It feels like the hobo version of Miami Vice, but all my alliances are old and haggard men with hockey sticks and straw hats trying to give me instructions through the CB. Except its in Cantonese or Sumerian. I can hear music somewhere, like a lofty Indiana Jones soundtrack (Temple of Doom) but I’m trying to find it to turn that shit off so I can focus on not running mud or rock or families. Then I realize it’s a part of the journey, the music , is coming from somewhere else intangible and I must surrender to it. A raw sense of impending doom comes over me as I glide through the canal scraping up against things, staring onto land and spotting two of my alliance hobos with hockey sticks waving at me to STOP.
Stop what? What does that mean? Suddenly before me is a slide (like the ones at Raging Waters), and two talking babies in diapers sliding down and rotating with adult-like momentum. The sound of footsteps, Norm, my really old landlord, guaged steps, taking out the trash. Really Loud plastic bags. I wake and stare into a swimming pool . Ahh…. Beverly Hills, I’m home.
CARMAGEDDON Averted 7/15/11
Yup, I escaped Carmageddon. I am one of those rare cases. I left LA in time.
It had been too many days of fear and anxiety about the 405 closing all around town.
Every few minutes in the past few days an emotionally toxified LA-ite would complain, unprovoked, about needing to sleepover on an air matress in their office…. or consume anti-anxiety meds to get over Carmageddon, the six month anticipated closure of the ten mile strip of the 405, one of the busiest freeways in the country.
Luckily, I had a gig up north so I left early this morning and didn’t have to think about supporting the pharmeceutical industry today.( Those bastards, making a primetime debut even in traffic.)
Only in LA would a ten mile strip of closure be cosmically captured as CARMEGEDDON. What a bunch of narcissistic mind-wranglers.
Hasid Jews as Billboards Of Eschatology
What’s with all the mumbling Hasidic jews in south Hollywood? They’re everywhere, and it seems like they’re always crossing an intersection. These modern sages are like billboards on the move. Mute Public service announcements. I think they get paid to cross intersections all day in the name of religion, promoting hardcore Theosophy in silence. Relentless. I never understood the value of symbolic fashion statements in religiosity. Its a bit LAME to walk around in special apparel to publically identify your religious affiliation, affirm that you’re one of God’s men, and help create more separation in the world. But more importantly, who wants to see a bunch of bearded men in black outfits on a really hot day either? It’s aggravating. Seriously. Is it so we can think: ah poor miserably sweaty man, he is on God’s side? Or: His apocrine glands must be really fighting right now, what a good faithful man? Or: I really feel for him, wearing all black in the sun? Or: That sweaty faced mumbler is doing God’s work? Or: They must be God’s men, fighting the sun in style!? Who wants to imagine a bunch of distraught bearded men in black? It’s not fair to them, either. And it’s not fair to me or any innocent bystander being subjected to these bodies in the sun shoving heated religious fashion into my eyes. I feel like distributing tank tops and super soakers to Hasids on hot days, and saying dude, take an edge off.
Speaking of Hasidic jews, I once had the privilege of dating one. Bad Move. For a Brown Man. All you brownies, it’s not worth it. Lucky for me, I had a little extra credit Bonus situation: she had three brothers with Brooklyn accents that would randomly show up at her place and sounded like Brooklyn cops. In the modern developed / civilized world, a random appearance at someone’s house typically means an opportunity for a civilized conversation. In the Hasidic Jew world, this means hiding in the closet . Or jumping a fence. Or hiding beneath a pile of blankets (and hearing her little niece say, “wow, your friend Maya has really hairy legs”). I have to admit: That period of feeling like a wild teenager again was rejuvenating for half of second, but then I realized my time spent with humble Hasidic girl prevalently coincided with a basic and fresh feeling of TERROR. While inadvertently examining closets all length in that period of few months or strategically sneaking out of backyards at dawn without a bullet proof vest, I would frequently wonder why I am doing this to myself. The few times where my presence was appropriated for her brothers, I got to witness his 16 little children (between the ages of 3 and 9) with tiny jewish hats and inevitable talk of moving back to Jerusalem. The kids presented as 70 yr old Judges trapped in tiny child body. My attempt to connect with the little ones were always met with Judgement Day Eyes, (panthers with glowing eyes), combative and watching cartoons as if dissecting the Old Testament. It made me feel like the new 5th grader at an all white school again.
It must have been equally as stressful for her too, being the sole girl with eighteen brothers, and always on the verge of hiding the Brown Man that was allegedly Muslim as reported to her mother by one of her brothers. “We really need to intervene…I mean, he’s a Muslim.” (hmmm, I wonder why they thought that…is it because I’m Brown maybe?) So that didn’t really work out, for a few lighthearted reasons.
Hasidic jews in Hollywood!
Koala Time at Four Barrels. 3/ 26/11
I am Pensive MiseryGrump of Wetness. Its coming down like angry summer rain in Tehran. I’m walking by ultra hipster joint Four Barrel Coffee in the mission, packed with bodies in apparel affirming: Post–Modernism-Making–a-Come–Back-On-Legs. Hipsters unite here to secretly browse affirmations of the Hipster Motif, covertly plan their next poetry slam, and keep the Legend alive in the Mission District.In my wet mop state of body and mind, I decide to turn around and get some coffee, because, to be honest, there’s an angelic glow to this Hipster Caravansaira. It’s spacious and well lit , a sort of biking elite museum of unusually relaxed poses and slender long fingers paging hip novels, mini toffee cookies resting on rustic surfaces. Inside, it’s a hefty dose of mission district hegemony. I could instantly feel them all checking me out at once, taking notes: “Brown Non-hipster, 1:12pm, enters assertively, wet and miserable.”
I browse the Hipster arena with a sense of cultivated foreign pride, standing there dripping water all over in my discount rain gear, nodding combatively and slowly. I do a relaxed 360 to confirm my non-belonging to everyone . “I’m only here for the incessant scent of Fresh Hope this establishment offers” I whisper fervently to the masses in a cuban accent. Then, a quick glance outside to make sure that none of my friends or family witnessed my entrance. It then occurs to me that no one else is wet. Even the new hipsters entering are dry. No umbrellas or rain gear in sight. Strange. Is it because Hipsters don’t get ever get wet? I wonder. I mean, I look like I was swimming. What the Shit is this about I wonder. I get worked up in this foreign land. Do they have special Secret Hipster Shields like RainX for humans? I suddenly imagine a gang of hipsters on bike, sunny day, riding proudly, cinematic hair flowing in breeze, shiny gotees, skinny vegan legs. I can’t even fathom one of them falling off a bike. Then it dawns on me, as I’m standing in the crowded line: Hipsters can’t fall off bikes. Their form and posture, the core of their Agenda, is fundamentally opposed to this. A hipster falling off a bike would be like a Christian burning the Bible. I scrutinize further, conceptualizing this realization. When a Normal Dude bikes by, its like: there’s a vulnerable Normal Dude on Bike that can crash and get brain damaged. Right. But when a hipster bikes by, it’s like: WOW, that looks incredibly smooth, like a super hi def commercial for Smooth Glide GOD Child on Wheels. That coupled with an intently ergonomically focused poise, they’re impervious angels effortlessly floating by to deliver a note to the Queen of Sheba. Something disrupting this smooth motion would be a glitch in Nature. “Hey, what can I get you,” the permanent smile dude in tie half tucked in intercepts. “I’d like an extra small toffee cookie and a small cup of coffee. I’m about 17 cents short. That cool?” Half tucked Tie Guy nods and winks.
I drop the hipster honorary ceremony and decide to attack the half and half full focus. I wonder when they’re gonna have goat milk half and half.
On the way out I run into my singer songwriter friend of friend Dan. Who doesn’t have a singer songwriter friend of friend Dan? We begin talking koalas. I was ranting about being brown and underprivileged when I notice his special way of diagrammatically extracting lyrics for new songs. It looked like a corporate chart. At some point, he tells me that Koalas are always sort of grunting lightly, throughout the day. We talked briefly about petting a koala. I’ve never done that. But he was rather decisive about the permanent koala all day grunt. I thought about petting a koala and hearing the little furry bastard grunting. It made my day.
The Loch Ness Monster is Coming. 3/19/02
So I was at Safeways last nite at midnite because I found a few dollars in my sweat pants unexpectedly. I wanted that cheap-ass skirt steak sizzled generously with borrowed garlic . That’s right. I valiantly walked past the robust skin heads at the front entrance speed mumbling about who owes who what like they do all day; I swear these dudes are always in the same position when I walk by, which is like 6 times a year on my discount skirt steak outing. It’s as if they have an annual meeting to decide their signature physicality that never changes, and it must go down something like this: ok you, on the bike for this fiscal year, facing south, right leg featured, green jacket, no not that one, the one the rats raped in Berlin last winter….and you, pick your nose pensively… that’s all you do, ok that’s right, all day, take it easy…. and um, you, no you ,you’ll be the vagrant prick mumble-snarling at people but whatever you do for God’s sake don’t look left, you need to be glaring south-west the whole time, until third quarter.
This year they look like the Back Street Boys gone Very Lazy, on valium, scowling, with a headache, constipated. Dreamy. Hazy. Album Cover.
Either way, They didn’t care to stop yours truly.
I was free to enter. Brown Man Averts Danger Once More ( this headline rapidly jet- farted across a blue sky… in my mind).
Inside the glory glow of Safeway, I hit up the meat like an Iranian, straight-up, no distractions. Damn. That sounds so sleazy. But come to think of it, Iranian dudes are super sleazy. Well. .. So are Turks and Arabs. In fact, all Mid Eastern men are, for the most part, cologne bathing womanizers, with the exception of Shahaub Roudbari, a local SF actor. I think he’s the only Iranian dude I know that has breaks on his penis motor.
Anyhow, brown dudes, where was I, they often take euro trash to another level. LA is loaded with these super freaky massive-collar posing urbanites featuring (but not limited to) Iconic Chowd Gotee, Shiny Slime Boy Watch, LazySleaze Eyes, Glazed Permanent Smile (that reminds me of a picture perfect commercial headshot.) It’s fucking embarrassing; it totally is. Not just the gotee I mean. They come out here from Iran when they’re like 12, and become devout Manwhores. But it’s totally OK, because at the end of the day they can go home and their mommies will have fresh laundry and lamb stew and awesome basmati rice waiting, joyously supporting their secret lifestyle. Way to go Islamic Republic of Iran! Looks like Operation Oppress Human Desire is working its wonder. Brownie Bonus for successfully Mindf*&%ing your own country. Right? Doing your country right by creating F%#*tards. Yay! (insert celebratory clapping here, preferably hands of the unkempt men of the Iranian Parliament).Well, at least the Iranians have a scapegoat. Turks though, and Arabs…. No excuse. They’re just devoted objectifiers of woman because, um, it gets the job done. I know , I know, lets be fair, to some of you, like three, in Saud Arabia, and the two in Turkey, I know you are genuinely decent towards woman.
Speaking of Arabs, the Iranians have long considered them their retarded brothers. Here’s some Arab History for you all out in the Midwest: Iranians are not arabs. Arabs are their brothers, but retarded versions. They still beat their woman and repress them. The Koran was revealed to the Arabs not because they were the chosen ones like all Arabs believe but because they were considered the “most contentious nation”, burying their infant females among other retarded things. (Well, I guess China does that too. Hmmm. Anyway, this is a Brown Man Minute.) The truth is, the Arabs haven’t changed much. Look at the clothes the elite wear, their choices, their woman dressed like drab ghosts head to toe, some with nets over their eyes, the way most of them treat woman. (And Hands down, Saudi Arabia is a benign tumor in the middleast; making a long alliance with US to support their elaborately appropriated hedonistic lifestyle . I mean, who the fuck spends billions of dollars moving sand to create an Island? Yes, Some Arab state. United Arab Emirates. So they can have fancy hotels that cost 20k a nite, and people like Bill Clinton can watch porn in safety. )
Lets recap here before we move on:
Arabs basically cage their woman, in most cases, unless they’re among the five decent men that live in that part of the world.
I warned you about reading this, it’s dangerously mindful drips of truth that will make you mad, especially if you’re the color brown like me. Cuz that’s how I roll. I am Brown and Down. You’re reading Brown And Down, from San Francisco, on the Web, Live with an extra soft pink shirt on, typing on a laptop resting on a shaky ironing board, disturbing Middleasterners. But the truth is: Brownies get a lot of bad rap, especially Iranians. Dick Cheneys daughter is to blame. She’s invested over 40 mil in promoting anti-Iranian and generally Anti- Brown propaganda since she was two. Some of it is real though (see above), but Iranians are not terrorists. Has there been even one Iranian convicted of a terrorist act that you can recall? ? No. Because, those rotten brownies are all from Yemen, (or some other small sandy spot in Arabia.) And all this hooha about nuclear energy, is hooha. Khomeini scrapped nuclear energy efforts for military purposes, as it was
deemed sacrilegious, prior to 1979. Either way, the bottom line: Benjamin Netanyahu is an irate porcupine who talks the smack regularly (and looks more like a pharmeucetical rep than a prime minister- see photo left). He’s not only prime minister of Israel; look at what this confused chap is up to these days, all in a philly accent: Netanyahu also serves as the current Chairman of the Likud Party, as a Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel. Health minister? What’s going on here?
This devilishly diluted cowboy from Jerusalem has lots going on.
Anyway, enough of this anomaly MIT grad called “Bibi”, now back to the Iranians. One of most interesting things about Iran (aside from the skinny old men in restaurants that smack the back of tourists unexpectedly and wave an index finger smiling), Their government is not even Iranian. They’re Hizbolla martians: part Lebanese, part Alien in Stinky Slipper. (I took a stroll through Tehran’s parliament two years back when working on a dead end film I Ran Iran, and I tell you, all the compelling soft voices of the higher up majlis elite came out of bodies with hairy feet in stinky slippers.)
Back to the lecture at hand, perfection is perfected, let the brown man undastand… that MidEasterners can have a gorgeous way of transforming EuroTrash… to new trashy heights. They be the true authors of the Revised Sleaze Gospel.
So I’m still at Safeway, undistracted.
I grab my slab of skirt and I’m headed to the register. Skirt steak that is. I walk past two semi intoxicated ladies packing their carts with canned beans et al, like 20 cans, mostly red kidney, not much variety. I’m like yo, is this what you do when you’re drunk ?… No answer. Long backpacking trip? No answer. They suddenly are still and appear super diligent, drunken gazing over an aisle of canned beans, in a fretfully piercing manner, bodies fixed, on their knees, like they’re taking orders from an Egyptian king. Then suddenly, As if speaking into the can of Hormel chili being studied, blue beanie girl says in a monotonously lofty voice, “The big earthquake. is coming. this .weekend. ..”
I walk around their two crackly carts of metal and wonder about something a friend from LA passionately relayed to me yesterday about the Maori of New Zealand predicting a massive earthquake this weekend. Then I think about how cool it would be if the Loch Ness monster also visited us on the same weekend. I go home and eat my discount meat in peace.