November 8, 2010 - Breakfast

I've decided to relaunch Ftrain and I want to do it in an informed fashion, so I've been placing all of my email into one folder. A lot of noise from lists, but tens of thousands of these are my messages. It's not done copying yet, after three days. There are thousands of messages gone, in crashes or erased from old tapes at college, but a more complete record wouldn't be of great assistance. The personal email is what I want, anyway, rather than countless "Here is the PowerPoint."

I'm reading over my blog as well. Thirteen years there. An awful lot of humiliations and stupidities. Failed projects. Bad moments. But more that is worthwhile and that I'm happy I wrote. I was always terrified that I couldn't be understood and, feeling like an alien, went out of my way to explain every feeling. That turns out to have been, in many cases, the right instinct. I can actually empathize with this person, this stranger from 10 or 15 years ago, because he has made his processes so explicit. I grew up thinking that good writing was code. One was to pack the hell out of every line, "Waste Land" style. Shanti shanti shanti.

I don't want to go back to the old form, however; I was not in control of my materials. I couldn't sequence, structure, comprehend. But I don't want to start over, either. "Relaunch" is a bad word; I'm looking for a thread, not a break. It's good to go over everything, to relive, through full-text search, those moments of regret and realize that they were nowhere near as cataclysmic as they seemed. I am humiliated, of course, by my excessive prose, my yearnings and self-deceptions. But there they are. I am relieved that I was actually interesting in spots, and also that fatness has not defined every moment of my existence; it merely feels that way. I expected far more depression, far less engagement.

Searching evidences a horrible moment of total narcissistic confusion in my mid-20s. I was on my way to being a complete sputtering cock. That was an era of mistaken dating and some ungratifying friendships. I wanted--fame, I guess? Acceptance. But was in terrible blank fear of it as well. So when I began to be noted I panicked, froze up. Things that should have mattered--invitations to write, national radio, my novel--felt like they had come too soon. I wasn't ready, couldn't do a good job. And there was just too much Internet all around me. Considering the alternatives I'm glad I went the way I did. Going to work at Magazine's Magazine settled me down: I took my vow of humility and poverty, and in exchange for an awful lot of rowing in a leaky boat and submitting to certain stupidities I got to see what real, unfiltered, ego-driven narcissism gets you. Namely, you put money in the bank of culture, but you can't actually convert that to security or happiness, or real money. You can pretend it gets you power, and use that power to sexually harass others. But you can't really move the culture, not as much as is done by a single episode of a crappy TV show. You have to believe in a fading, irrelevant ideal in denial of good sense. This is not sour grapes; this is understood and frankly discussed within the enterprise.

So I learned that, for which I am grateful. And I decided I don't want to waste any more time, nor do I do anyone any good by remaining impoverished. And so now I organize. It used to be that any kind of organizing immediately filled me with fears of my own mortality. Cleaning my room gave me a whole set of emoto-cognitive what-lies-in-store willies. But now it seems like a way to get towards actual facts. Introspection has always been a very external process for me: I write, I talk, I ramble. But here I am given the chance to actually review the work to date and pass judgment. I'd be a fool to waste that opportunity.

Me: I've been reading old Vaudeville routines.

Friend: I've been reading the Silmirillion.

Me: Wow.

Friend: I know. But I need to know.

Me: The fact that either one of us gets to have sex with anyone is kind of amazing.

Friend: Gandalf was a Maier

Me: So far the best routine is Fred Allen.

Friend: But not Valar, like Sauron.

Me: A guy is getting audited and he tries to claim his toupees.

Friend: Oh.boy.

Me: And the tax guy says how can he claim his toupees
and the guy says:
"they're overhead."

I had to give the 100-year high-five on that.
I built a time machine and went back in time and ran to the NBC studios,
found the writer's studio,
walked in and gave them a high five,
and then came back to our time.

Except everyone had turned into a lizard-butterfly.
You shouldn't mess with comedy writers.

Weight: 318 lbs