Joe Personality

Thursday October 10
I just orderd a beer from the bar here at Gladstones near my class at Citywalk, and the Braves and Cards just got underway in the NLCS. I'm having a fard time ditching my perturbment over the check of mine that the fucking court lost. The constant message of American law is that your own judgment doesn't count, nor does the truth. We are bound by the utter arbitrariness of the system. I feel like with my track record and run-ins with the law that I have made the local government fuck-with list.
I want to be hoppin', jumpin' Joe Personality at class tonight, but I'm pissed. I should have perfected or at least bettered the work I am going to turn in tonight instead of going out last night with SeedyO. Had another one of these ridiculous heartbreaks over an uninitiated love with a girl across the bar who wanted to talk to me, I could tell, but I was too lame to make the approach. She was sitting with three other girls, an empty chair right next to her, and they frequently fell into silences out of which they looked around the bar for anything new in their lives. I was right in her line of vision. We make contact and smiled and batted and rolled our eyes at each other. I have only to walk over and sit in the chair. I might have said, "Hello ladies. I was hoping that I might engage in your conversation if I'm not intruding. It's so rare to see such lovely ladies unescorted in a place like this, and what are bars for after all, if not to interact with humanity." What the reaction would have been, I'll never know.
The first band, Dairy Kings, were a bunch of dorks who are a band because they crave attention and want to be on stage, the desire to which their music was second, although, perhaps many a hallowed rock and roll legend began the same.
The second band, Chewy Marble, was likeable not only because they had an unitentionally sexy girl drummer. She sang, too, and I could almost see the tautness of the muscles in her abdomen as she endured fiercely through demanding beats. The comparison of the lead singer to Buddy Holly is made unavoidable by his lankiness and glasses. His lyrics seemed genuine and heartfelt; unlike the first band, he seemed up there for the music. The bassist was a low key black guy, and the keyboard player did an unfortunate kind of all-we-are-saying-is-give-peace-a-chance sway as he played.
Anyway...

Hollywood and Vine

Wed. 10-8-96
A new book. I'm writing this on my knee in the lobby of the godamn alcohol school where the fat black women who are the school clerks that I am waiting to process me move occasionally, if only to ward of the onslaught of cobwebs. The appointment was for 4:00. It's 4:01 now, you just know these fuckers will leave me waiting here for a while. I'm missing Game One for the American League Pennant, which the Orioles were winning four to two at Yankee Stadium at the seventh inning stretch.
SeedyO and I are at Jack's Sugar Shack on Hollywood and Vine. It is John Lennon's birthday. Candles flickered and smoked on his star on the sidewalk, and some kind of a little Beatlesfest is going on here. Jeff has met a virtual friend in the flesh for the first time here tonight. A band called Chewy Marble is playing after the Beatles tribute is over. Seedy said the girls at the next table were asking about eligible bachelors, and another girl said there were a couple at the pool table which was where I was playing pool at the time. He indicated the girls with his elbow, but I didn't want to look conspicuous, so I didn't look. Yauh. Why do all my first pages suck? What if I rip them out? Hmm. The second pages always suck, too. If I rip them out and the third pages suck, too...Would the spine bleed? Fuggit. I feel uneasy without a beer. Seed thinks it strange that he sees two guys here that he saw at the Beach Boys show at Largo last week. There's a guy here who looks like George Harrison. I wonder. Chewy Marble plays simple pop. That's okay. The vice presidential debate was on TV tonight. Gore and Kemp. Totally boring. I read the first chapter of The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne for my Intro to the First Novel class. I finished all the homework today for tomorrow's class. A story about myself which is true and one which is false, plus five first lines. SeedyO said the first lines were "baroque". I wonder if he means "wordy". Do they set the stage. I think yes. An old lady who calls herself Duffy proudly displays pictures of herself with the Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, and the Dalai Lama. "I could see the Lama's aura and feel his benevolence," she said.
I liked the old Jacks on Pico way better. They finally got pool tables in here now, though. I won the first game I played but lost the second. I beat a long-haired dork wearing gloves and sunglasses while he shot pool in his leather boots and thought he had some kind of Eddie Vedder mystique, but I scratched the eight ball against a dude spitting tobacco drool into a plastic cup that he placed on the edge of the pool table when he shot. I asked him if he ever spilled any on the felt, and he said, "Not yet."

Mr. Corn

He's Mr. Zurn, Mr. Corn, Mr. Corndog, Mr. Cornhead, Mr. Zurdon. The Terminator. Hasta la vista, baby. He's funny. He's my favorite teacher, but he gets mad if you hit anybody or don't do your work, and then he yells and turns red and spit flies from his mouth, but he's cool. He let's us stay in the room and use the computer and he reads us lots of cool stories and makes voices and sometimes he sits at his desk and pretends to snore really loud and he makes lots of jokes. He sometimes calls us stinkin' rotten awful kids, but you know he doesn't mean it. When we do well he tells us how smart we are, that we're the smartest class in the school, the most intelligent kids he's ever had, and then he might rub your hair for a second. He gives out prizes like crayons or fruit roll-ups if you get a star next to your name under the happy face, and if you get under the sad face you have to stay after school and clean the room. He's big, he's like a giant and his hair is yellow on the top and red on the side, but not he's bald cuz he shaved it all off. He's got a lot of hair on his arms, too, but he moves his arm away if you try to touch it. He's really loud, too. He always says, "OOOOOOKAAAAAYYYY" really loud when he wants you to listen. Sometimes he spells wrong on the board and we have to tell him how to write it. He gave us diarios to write in, and we get to write every day, and we can read them to the class when we want. Sometimes he wears funny shirts. When we play softball he hits the ball really far, and we all try to catch it. When he plays basketball, he says, "Outta my way, punk," and then he laughs and gives you the ball and lifts you high in the air so can dunk it."

Goosed

Oct. 7 Mon.
There's a woman here in class who changed her Italian name Figarto to Figar because she is "in the hearin' aid business."
What a fuckin goosechase the Gods of Bureaucracy sent me on today. I stopped at Van Nuys courthouse to try to get the abstract (isn't that an appropriate name for it?) the DMV says I need to clear me of the speeding ticket I paid for a year ago. Things were going well when I quickly found a parking space with forty-eight minutes on the meter! But then I arrived at the entrance to the court building where I had to wait behind about fifty minutes behind a hundred people who had to be individually scanned by a single guard with a hand-held metal detector checking for bombs and guns and such things as might come in useful in a place so widely and powerfully hated. When I had run that gauntlet, I rode up the escalator where I was faced with three more lines, one which had about a hundred people in it, one which had about fifteen, and one which had two people in it. Guess which line was the one I needed to wait in. I went to the short one first where I waited about fifteen minutes while an unshaven Caucasian, from the Caucacus moutains would be my guess, haggled in broken English with the clerk. When I got to the window the clerk affirmed that the line I had to wait in to resolve the problem of the DMV having no record that I'd already paid for the ticket that they were saying I had failed to appear on was indeed the line that had a hundred sullen souls. It took about an hour to get to the front. I read about the Presidential debates in the Times while I waited and Latino kids shrieked and ran around me. When I got to the front I explained my dilemma and the woman behind the glass said they had no record of my payment. I walked away from the the window exasperated and then turned back and waited at the window again, and when she was done with her next victim I said, "Hey, if it's not paid for, then why hasn't it gone to warrant?"
"It has," she said.
"So I could be arrested?"
"Yes."
Now I have to go to the bank and track down a copy of the cashed check to show the motherfuckers and hope that I don't get pulled over between now and then.
When I got out to the car there was a parking ticket on the windshield.
Then I drove over Sepulveda here to UCLA. I have to buy a book for my Thursday night writing class called Sudden Fiction. They were all out at Universal, so I thought I'd try here on campus. I parked up by Bunche Hall and traversed the grounds to Ackerman Hall where the bookstore is. I got there and the bookstore was gone. I asked a kid what happened to it. He said it was never there. I started to hear "Twilight Zone" music. He directed me to the plaza building. The clerk at the bookstore at the plaza building said extension course books could only be purchased at LaValle Hall. I scoured the campus map. There it was, back across campus near Bunche Hall where I'd parked in the first place. I marched back up the stairs and across the grass and into the LaValle Commons student store. I scanned the shelves. No Sudden Fiction. I aksed the attendant about the book. She looked it up on the computer. They didn't have it. She said they'd have it at the Universal City bookstore, which was where my odyssey had begun.
Anywhere, here I am now in Writing the First Novel. It's almost all women. The instructors name is Linda Ashour. We have to read The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne.

A Special Family Heirloom

October 5, 1996
Let's at least shit this out and get on with it. The Dodgers are playing their last game of '96. I'd like to finish these three pages. Mark came to watch the Padres, but it looks like they're about to be eliminated. I drank a couple Bartyles and James wine coolers today, and then Mark showed up with some 16 oz Grolsch beers. I smoked a kernel. My head is all foggy. Shirelle is on her period. She complained bitterly about the marijuana pipe I left at Mariachi's a few weeks ago. It's some sort of special family heirloom. She and The GIP went to the new Burger King.
October 6
There's just not much to write about today. Last night I was in a writer's club chat room on the net and some kids were talking about how they believed they needed to live hard lives to have things to write about. I said what was more important was having the luxury of time to dig through your imagination. Many, many people have "hard" lives, many fewer have the time to write about it, the time to develop the skills to write about it well.
-Jeff and Nina came over last night with joints and beer. We played Scrabble and listened to tapes while Tom switched around TV channels.
-Ideas for the truth story for class could be Maine and for the false I could say I won a silver medal on the 1984 USA Olympic Team.
-What else? I should Email the instructor, Rob Roberge, just to BS some. I'm afraid to stake myself to much commentary for fear of destroying my legacy. Ha ha. Uh saguaro in sunglasses ice skates across the desert while a coyote howls.
There was a black little chickadee with a mohawk on the wire out back, coming south for the winter.
- We went to the New Beverly and saw a film called "Welcome to the Dollhouse: about a tormented junior high girl. Someone called Shirelle's and my name before the movie started. We tured around and there were Nina and Glory, up to LA from Bellflower to see the movie. After, Shirelle and I went to Acapulco with our buy-one-get-one-free coupon. I ate a very fattening meal. Shirelle didn't know what to order. I teased her that she was making me feel like I was sitting on a nail, she was giving me such a pain in the ass. She was making fun of my fat belly.
-Shirelle doesn't want to be made to feel bad about smoking pot in her "own" house. Tomorrow I have a class on campus.