The Goings and Comings

Today’s Christmas, Tomorrow I’ll be in New York visiting TMK and Los and whoever else is around to hang out. When I take the road trip by myself, I usually make a couple of CDs, however, I couldn’t get the music off my iPod so I decided to just make 2 playlists on the iPod since I’m bringing it with me. Here are the two playlists:

Going to NY – Playlist 1 (a.k.a JD’s Road Mix part Forty.)

1. Boston – Foreplay/Long Time

2. Kansas – Carry on Wayward Son

3. John Cougar Mellencamp – Pink Houses

4. Bouncing Souls – The Something Special

5. Saves the Day – Dying Day

6. Third Eye Blind – Never Let You Go

7. Owl City – Fireflies

8. Taking Back Sunday – Summer, man

9. Say Anything – Hate Everyone

10. America – Sister Golden Hair

11. Motion City Soundtrack – Her Words Destroyed My Planet

12. We Are Scientists – What’s the word

13. The Sounds – Night after Night

14. Raconteurs – Many Shades of Black

15. Phantom Planet – Quarantined

16. Panic! At the Disco – London Beckoned Songs About Money written by Machines

17. Motion City Soundtrack – Feel Like Rain

18. Head Automatica – Scandalous

Leaving NY – Playlist 2 (a.k.a JD’s Road Mix Number Forty-One

1. The Strokes – Whatever Happened

*This song is always (ALWAYS) on any road mix I make, always. I can’t tell you how many mixes I have made that have this song on it. Oh wait, probably 21 or whatever, considering it’s always on the leaving half of the road mix.

2. Third Eye Blind – London

3. Panic! At the Disco – The Only Difference…

4. Hey Mercedes – Absolute Zero Drive

5. Green Day – Welcome to Paradise

6. Motion City Soundtrack – Disappear

7. Gaslight Anthem – Great Expectations

8. Dashboard Confessional – Until Morning

9. Airborne Toxic Event – Sometime Around Midnight

10. Blink 182 – Degenerate

11. The Strokes – Juicebox

12. Jack’s Mannequin – What Gets you Off?

13. Jimmy Eat World – 23

14. Keane – Bend and Break

15. The Killers – Bones

16. Kings of Leon – Manhattan

17. Motion City Soundtrack – Last Night

18. The Offspring – You’re Gonna go far, Kid

19. Phantom Planet – Raise the Dead

20 – Hey Mercedes – Boy Destroyers

21 – We Are Scientists – Can’t Lose

I do also plan on listening to the SMODcast’s that I have neglected over the past weeks and weeks, also I’m sure I can catch a replay of O&A or at least the very worst of.

The Written Word.

So, I haven’t been writing as much as I promised. I have, however, been watching so much fucking TV it’s almost unbearable. This is what I do though and then write. I need the inspiration to write my own stuff and I get that inspiration from stuff like “The West Wing” and “Sports Night” and “Studio 60 on The Sunset Strip.” I get inspiration from the novels of Bret Easton Ellis which is why I cannot wait for this.

Bret Easton Ellis has a new book coming out, a continuation (if you will) of Less Than Zero which he wrote 24 years ago when he was 21 and still in college – aptly deemed “Catcher in the Rye for the MTV Generation” – and I’m very, very excited for this. It doesn’t come out til June of 2010, but whatever. Usually, we’re waiting years and years for a BEE novel to come out, so this is relatively nice.

 

I created an account on Plenty Of Fish, which didn’t last long, because I deleted it a week later. I did it as a joke, because someone I know is doing it pretty seriously and meeting people off of it. I’ll tell you what, Internet Dating breeds fucking serial killers. I care not what anyone says about this, after seeing the serious fucking cretins that roamed freely on this website, I am sure that I would either be killed, or kill someone. To surmise, I am not nor will I ever be desperate to have a girlfriend. I’m a glorified loner, I don’t need to do couples things or be married by a certain age. I have no game plan about any of this and some people think (one in particular) believe this to be crazy talk, but I just don’t care. I’ve said it time and time again, I’m not in any rush to get into a relationship…and I’ve often said, I would like to just fast forward five years into a relationship so I don’t have to deal with the intense and often rigorous couple-like things. So, I deleted Plenty of Fish a few nights ago, I wish I could delete the site completely out of my memory, because it was an utter waste of time creating a profile.

Anyway…I’m listening to Saves the Day who apparently have a new album coming out sometime soon. Saves the Day is headed by Chris Conley who’s got a pretty ridiculous voice and a tenacity to write some pretty good music. Granted the songs are morbid if you really listen to them, but they’re catchy and could be poppy given the chance.

Got a new Dashboard Confessional album as well. Really impressed by it, Chris Carrabba has written some really good stuff and continues to be the emo-tastic dude he once was.  I remember listening to “Screaming Infidelities” while writing the first movie and just allowing the song to lead me in a completely different direction. Dashboard Confessional has always been a part of my writing music and will probably continue to be forever. The new album Alter the Ending isn’t as good as a lot of their older albums, but it’s good and it’ll catch on just like everything else they’ve done.

With a new Dashboard Confessional album out, that means more Farmingdale based writing, like a movie or continuing to write the TV show.

Let the writing begin…

So, I started writing a bunch of stuff again. Thoughts for Farmingdale The Real Long Island flood my mind, as well as thoughts for stories, and screenplays. The time to put them down on computer screen are upon me, and I have to get to work on that. As soon as this God-Forsaken Spider bite diminishes. Holy fuck, I have had this spider bite for what seems like an eternity and finally it seems to be going away. According to a friend this is a normal spider bite and if it is I’m never leaving the house again. The shit that came out of this wound I will likely never forget, because it was a mixture of puss, blood, and overall fear that seeped out of the half-dollar sized swollen bite on my arm.

Regardless, I’m reading too, hell, I’m reading whatever I can get my hands on. Rolling Stone, the new Dan Brown The Lost Symbol, I’m reading The Informers again, also picked up the new Huston book My Dead Body and also reading People Die by Kevin Wignall again. I need all the prose I can get and what can I say, I like weird books. I started writing a blog a few nights ago, with the idea that I would post an excerpt of something I was writing up here, but I’m not going to do that just yet, because the shit I write is just too weird for anyone who doesn’t know me personally to read. Then again, what better way to get to know someone than to read their ridiculous writing.

Few things to know: my scribbles in no way shape or form represent who I am, the characters are a voice sure, but they’re just wacky-ass self-centered people who no regard for anyone else. They’re also based in the 80′s (most of the time), because that is a decade I surely love (except for the music;) and I personally dig wayfarers (sunglasses). Some of the stories are really out there, but they’re out there for a reason. People do drugs, they fuck, and they listen to 80′s rock & roll, at least they did.

Here’s an excerpt from the story Run Canyon:

There was always a sort-of hurried attitude to Cassidy. He was, you could say, a stickler for the dramatic in the sense that everything in his life had to have a cinematic undertone.  Maybe it was because everyone he knew and loved in his life had died, or maybe it was because he was just bat-shit crazy insane.

Cassidy calls and tells me he’s getting head from a prostitute on Melrose. He says, her name is Crystal and she’s a Virgo. He says, maybe she’s pregnant, she doesn’t know quite yet. I sigh, I light a cigarette and take a long drag picturing Cassidy getting head in the front seat of his Mazzerati and shooting a load on his gearshift. Then I wonder if the prostitute will swallow. I also wonder how much he’s paying her, but I don’t ask any of these questions. I instead accept a lunch date for two-thirty at Spago, and hang up the phone.

I’m jogging through the Canyon when my Walkman batteries die halfway through the new Pretenders album, so I turn around and go home. Katie is waiting by the pool with a copy of the Los Angeles Times. She has been crying and doing coke and quite possibly she’s had sex with someone. I drop my walkman on the table in between the chaise lounges and sit down opposite her, running my hand through my hair. I think maybe I need a haircut.

She holds the paper out to me, and there’s a review for her new movie Summer Kill in which she stars opposite this really popular Russian movie star, who learned English just for this movie. The reviews are not good, and Katie has good reason to cry, but that’s what you get for having a Russian in an American movie. I explain to her that the Russian wasn’t a good idea and she begins openly weeping about what a failure she is. I flip the paper over to sports and look at how the Dodgers are doing. Not well in fact, fifth place.

I set the paper down next to me and lean back on the chaise lounge and Katie sniffles and quiets down and then asks me in a whisper if I have any coke.

In my room, on the third floor, Katie and I are in the bathroom snorting coke off the bathroom counter. I open up the medicine cabinet and pull out a bottle of Advil and pop the top off of it. Instead of Advil being in the bottle, there are numerous pills with the letter “v” on them. The “v” is for Valium, which will bring me from an ecstatic level to a level where fucking Katie on the bathroom floor isn’t entirely out of the question.

I am a rock star, I am a rock star. I keep saying this while I’m inside of Katie, thrusting forward, my right hand clutching the bathtub for leverage, my left hand clamped to her side. I am a rock star.

I wake up and it’s dark outside, Katie is gone, and I’m lying naked in a puddle of urine. Jesus Christ, I fucking pissed the bed again. I realize that I need to stop taking valium after doing coke, because I almost always piss the bed after I black out.

-jd

Stupid Heat.

It was a Monday just like any other one, I got up around one-thirty (despite the sleeping pill at 12am) and sat in front of the computer reading shit and drinking iced tea like it’s going out of style. I am currently unemployed and I’m pretty cool with that. It gives me time to work on the stories I’m currently writing, and the screenplays I’m currently polishing and gives me to time to catch up on all the TV shows that clutter my DVR/TiVO (I will refer to my DVR as a TiVO even though I don’t have a TiVO anymore just because it sounds cooler). Anyway, I let the dogs out and let them back in, give them a treat, pour myself some iced tea and head back downstairs to the dungeon. I work on a new screenplay I’m writing lets call it Red Dawn-meets-Die Hard, and get hungry so I drive to McDonald’s and grab food and head back home where I park my ass on the couch and watch a TiVO’d episode of One Tree Hill. Yes, I know, but I’ll tell you what, it’s too late to stop watching now.

I’ve become so addicted to this silly show that I can’t stop watching, did Nate cheat, or didn’t he cheat? Who knows or cares? It’s all about the prime time soapy show that continues to baffle me. Even without the lure of the big star Chad Michael Murray or the chick who cries every fucking episode Hilarie Burton I still watch and pray that it’s almost done with. I finish off the episode and there’s still no proof that Nate cheated (I know, right?). I figure after that, I have to reinstate my manhood, so I do a little more writing on a story I’m calling California Dreaming and drop down to watch a movie called Stan Helsing …no reviews here, but let me just tell you that I love Diora Baird, but this movie made suicide seem like the only option. I sat through this shit fest only after viewing the stupid Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue from like twenty years ago (upon inspecting it was 19 years ago and some months). They were rescuing a confused boy from drugs. The Marijuana to be exact, and the only thing I learned from this movie is that if you smoke pot, a pot cloud follows you and sounds like George C Scott. I also learned that the guy who voiced Michelangelo in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon actually did the voice of the Tick in The Tick. Very cool.

After the Stan Helsing debacle, I head upstairs for the Monday Night Football game between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins, Dan-O and the Lez are in attendance, my dad is a half hour out, but comes just in time to see a Braylon Edwards TD. Just to get it out there, I’m a die-hard and I mean die-hard Jets fan. Living in Pennsylvania I don’t get too many of the games, but when I do, I’m screaming like a mother-fucking lunatic (I remember watching them end the Titans win streak last year and screaming so loud I had no voice afterward). Therefore this game, I was screaming like a lunatic watching a newly acquired Braylon Edwards finally arrive and then watch the Jets lose a close game to a Dolphin’s team that really deserved to win. I wish they would’ve won, but I’m so used to failure out of them, that it doesn’t really phase me anymore. Needless to say, a good amount of beers were consumed, so I’m pretty drunk when all is said and done and safely maneuver my way back downstairs and lay down in bed and watch How I met your Mother and The Big Bang Theory off the TiVO and pass out.

About two hours later, I wake up sweating my ass off with a ridiculous case of dry mouth and go upstairs drink twelve glasses of water and down three advils. I take a piss and head back downstairs and get back in bed and fall asleep for about two hours before waking up again sweating my ass off. Instead of turning down the head, I try to find the coldest place in the house (which happens to be the living room in the winter, or the third floor) and lay down on the couch and try to catch some z’s, but the z’s aren’t coming because I’m still molting. I get up, take a piss and go back downstairs where I pop on the Owl City album to give it another listen while writing a bit more. I take a break, watch the Toy Story 3 trailer which looks absolutely hilarious (at least Buzz in Spanish) and then I decide that five thirty isn’t a bad time to wake up.