Fool's Gold

Like any young, old, or pre-pubescent adult in this day and age, the media has my attention saturated and fed through an open feeder tube, constantly feeding me gift wrapped, tightly presented, sugary bullshit.  When I watch T.V., (and when I do I tend to tarry long from the sports networks) all I am trying to do, as I sit down on my couch and watch re-caps and replays of the days various football games, is to forget, for the moment anyway, man’s infinite and incalculable follies.  When I watch ESPN, it is to enjoy the celebration of our mental and physical prowess, pitting mind against mind or body vs. body. We would be ignorant, or ridiculous, or slightly high to think that the sports network has anything to do with something other than sports.  Watching the sports channel, at least I used to think, was to accept the fact that emotional problems, because of their negative influence on performance, would be left at home, on the bus, in the locker room.  Tiger’s performance does not need defending.  So then why, for chrissakes, why, is every goddamn sports talk-show like Around the Horn, Pardon the Interruption, and Mike and Mike going into such deep speculation about Tiger Woods’ sex life?  What needs speculating?  What very well is a PR nightmare for the greatest golfer aside, what does analyzing character, charting the sincerity of apologies, and trying to guess and conjecture on the Woods’ family life have a-n-y thing to do with golf?  Who are we to say such things?  We press these people (and by ‘these people,’ I mean what had once just been actors but now athletes) so tightly into a lime-lighted, glass framed box on center stage, taking away humanity, taking away error, taking away mistakes; and yet we can hardly understand why they always seem to disappoint us in the end.

The man himself, Dave Debusschere dropping buckets from the 3-point line.  Wikipedia has this to say about the Hall of Famer: “He was renowned for his physical style of play and tenacious defense, as he was named to the NBA All-Defensive first team six times … He became one of the most talented and feared players in the league and one of the greatest power forwards the NBA had ever seen…”

I can’t say with any certainty that Debusschere lived in Oneonta, NY, and I certainly cannot say he lived on the right side of a student-rental duplex on Cliff Street, but I’d like to think that if we were to have a séance with the Hartwick Basketball team, he would appear to personally thank us for the way we rep his impeccable career with reverence, pride and beer.  Cheers to Debusschere.

The night of December 4th at 22 Cliff Street is Christmas, and that means some very unique things, like Dave Debusschere (when he played for the Knicks) jerseys, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton Christmas songs (as well as Jim Jones’ Dipset Christmas) and Jello Shots.  Have a very merry (and drunk) Cliffy Christmas.

*Rocking a Twirly Santa Hat in the Christmas section of Wal-Mart.  The two prerequisites of obtaining a “Mart-Cart”: handicaps and laziness.

Making use of the Cliff Street Pub’s new accessory - a dartboard, with Dylan.  When you play where the dart lands is the amount of seconds your opponent has to chug, and after playing a few times, kicking up the dosage of alcohol in the bloodstream a few liters, the game becomes less an attempt to zero in on a good score, and more an attempt at hitting the board in front of you.

Left the library at 3:06 P.M.  Head is swimming.  Breathe tastes of Gatorade, Red Bull, gingivitis, and cigarettes. Stomach is swishing with a potent Molotov cocktail of energy drinks.  Muscles feel flabby and pathetically weak.  Feel nauseas.  Light up a cig at once as I slink into the car.  Smoke absent-mindedly on the ride home thinking about the jumbled kaleidoscope of pictures which has somehow lead to this night.  Driving down a hill, I receive at once the real and at once insane vision that a large deer carcass is huddled in the middle of the road.  My over-cooked brain quickly asks itself “Is that really a fucking deer? no? good god that was a close one – sweet Jesus, it’s okay, I’m just crazy.”  I still swerve out of the way just in case.

Getting safely to my room without any more uncontrollable and feverish Indian visions, I lay down.  Still could puke.  Outside, the noise which assails my racked body is that of a sickly neighbors drain fighting hours of cloggage; a noisy tractor-beam from a ‘Close Encounters’ type alien abduction or … a fucking owl. I tell myself not to rule out the possibility of any one of the three.  This night, full of intriguing and unruly ups, and ups, and ups, and downs, and ups, and ups, and ups, and downs, and ups (etc.) – sure has seen its share of untimely and completely far-fetched developments.

Take for instance what happened to me only thirty-odd minutes ago, sitting alone in a usually inaccessible classroom in the library.  Typing up a paper that is neither in my voice, nor for any one of my classes, and yet, in the midst of a grave understanding that there is the very real and very serious possibility that I will be caught, broken, convicted of plagiarism, and expelled; I have the intense, momentary, out-of-body experience that someone is, and has been, closely watching me.  I mean really watching me – and not with the intentions of checking to see if they could be some assistance pertaining to the works on or relating to Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  No, this on-looker wouldn’t care if my name was Charlotte or Gilman.  My mind was assured he could work with either.

So my head recklessly becomes locked in a one-track swivel, whirling around without any hesitation or guile towards the small, square glass window on the door.  And by god, sure enough, a face not only is framed in cold, nightmarish reality by the square window – but going so far as to justify my sensory perceptions, is also engaged in the activity of staring straight back at me.  I’m on so many uppers at this point in the night that it goes without saying my heart skips ten beats in quick procession – making me legitimately dead in most states for a millisecond.

And just to clarify, the face which stared back into my own was a face that would surprise you at midday, sun shining, surrounded by a safe buffer-zone and healthy separation of people –with at least one cop standing nearby.  It was a face that knew that surprising and smiling at the same time is probably a bad idea and in doing so could only strike fear into the heart of that certain particular unknowing person – no matter how innocent or comical its intentions were.  I was trapped and scared shitless.

There has been ‘No Ceilings’ in the speakers and walls and mindsets of the party-goers at 22 Cliff since implementing the Vertical Keg-stand and the constant playing of Lil Wayne’s new mixtape of the same name.  Keg count: 12.

Thanks Toby for keeping it safe, I’ve been looking for that other black sock of mine…

Quite Possibly the one Disney Movie you have never seen: “Destino” by Walt Disney and Salvador Dali.

If you’re a fan of Dali, you’ll recognize a whole bunch of references to his many abstract and surrealist paintings - and if you know Walt Disney, well, then you know there’s going to be a healthy dose of cartoon nudity.

*Disclaimer: Please excuse the disclaimer.

It’s not hard.