This re-posting requires some introduction, since some of it responds to a previous “daylog” written by a guy with the handle “iceowl”. (Keep in mind, this was text-only, pre-Facebook, semi-anonymous stuff we were producing back then.) Iceowl had written, among other things, the following. (It will quickly dawn for those of you that know me that iceowl is even more of a bullshitter than I am.)
Ok, let me tell you something about [Paul]. [Paul] is a big Irish guy the way I am a big Sicilian/Slovak guy. As I suspect I spend more time lifting weights than [Paul], I’m a bit larger in bicep girth than he is, but he has the scar that trumps all visual toughness. Nobody is going to fuck with [Paul] ….
He talks louder when he drinks….
One day he said to me, “Hey, I got this thing…” and it turned out to be some sort of contest and would I help him write a screenplay, by the way we only have eight days and we don’t even have page one.
Of course, this is my kind of challenge as [Paul] well divined. So I sequestered myself, all my waking, non-money-making hours, for ten days. [Paul] and I traded the script back and forth, and when it was clear we weren’t going to hit the deadline, [Paul] negotiated an extension. He got it for us. We submitted. We did pretty damned well, but we didn’t win. I had taken part in writing a 110 page script in two weeks, and for me, that was consolation prize.
…I met [Paul] in Seattle, then. It’s his berg. We ate and drank and went to his favorite bar. We ate his favorite oysters by the pier near the place he works. …
… [Paul] and I drank the drinks of his favorite bartender. We saluted random things and then [Paul] burst into song at one point. He has a very good voice. It couldn’t possibly be any other way.
Uh-huh.
And here’s what I wrote seven years ago while waiting for my second son to finally decide to come out into the world.
Thu Jun 02 2005 at 2:16:31
ESTRAGON: I can’t go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.
Waiting for Godot
Samuel Beckett
Day 12.
Didn’t the Wise Men make it all the way to Jesus in this amount of time? That was always my impression anyways.
* * *
Well, let’s review some lessons learned from this experience, shall we?
-
A mucus plug lost does not a baby bring.
-
Doyle is a pediatrician, not an OB/GYN.
-
I can blather on about just about anything for 500 words.
There’s no news on the baby front. None, zilch, zippo. I’m beginning to feel a bit offended frankly. Does this little fishy know I wanna hold her/him? Can’t she/he hear how excited I am to meet him/her? (Leave it to me to be offended by my own unborn child.)
But blather on I shall, if blather on I must.
* * *
What an amazing ego-high to be mentioned in iceowl’s last daylog along with his father and his writing. Icey’s an amazing guy, and an amazing writer; but as Doyle will attest, he tends to fuzz up on the minor details, or perhaps, more generously, he’s writing them as he sees ’em, like an umpire calling a favorite pitcher’s slider which just misses an on-the-black strike instead of the ball that it is.
Fact is: I work a way shittier day job than iceowl, and get paid way less to do it. And while I may make money as a writer, it’s way less than say a B-level competition ballroom dancer makes doing that.
Fact is: I didn’t move to Seattle because it was a better place from which to be a playwright. There is no good place to be a playwright, because to be a playwright is a very foolish thing. I suppose if you had to pick the best place to live to be a playwright, it would be London. I’ve never been there. And then second best would be New York City. I’ve lived there twice. I moved to Seattle to raise my kids because every kid in New York City is, to some degree, a wise-assed, dead-eyed punk, and since my kids will have a genetic predisposition toward that kind of attitude anyway, I figured I’d better raise them in an ameliorating “nicey-nice” Lefty sorta setting like here (though between you and me, I generally love New Yorkers and hate Seattleites– go figure.)
Fact is: I do have a scar on my face— product of a short career as a New York window cleaner— but people still fuck with me all the time. Just this morning I was pushing on the revolving door to my building, absent-mindedly wondering how horrible it would be if I had to watch my wife get a c-section, when the door abruptly stopped . I looked up to see a guy caught in the door cussing at me for not watching what I was doing. For some damned reason I immediately hollered back at him for trying to squeeze into the same quarter section of the door as his fat-assed girlfriend, instead of going one at a time like a homo sapiens. This pair was clearly a casting reject from the Springer show, so I wasn’t going to waste a lot of time with them. It’s my favorite feature of the revolving door: you go out, I go in. Bye-bye now!
Still it had me anxious and amped for the next half hour. I’d really like to think I’m beyond my car-kicking, street-fighting days. I shamefully recall an episode from a few years ago when I was back in New York. I kicked a car as it nearly ran me over on Queens Boulevard. The asshole stopped about 100 yards down the street, as if to say, “You wanna go?” I whipped my arms in the air to invite the confrontation. “Come on, Motherfucker!” Then I looked down and realized I had my 2 month baby boy strapped to my chest in a snuggly. Not one of my prouder moments.
Fact is: I do get louder when I drink, but I cannot for the life of me ever recall singing to icey. And if I did, then who knows what else transpired? It’s all just too disturbing to contemplate.
Fact is: and here’s the hell of it: I miss iceowl and I’ve only met him twice in my life. I want him to come up and give me an excuse to go on another glorious writers’ bender.
Whaddya say, icey? I’ll sing your song.
