Whoops...

I actually meant to post that, um, post, here. It's a blog started by my good friend, Silverfuk Cosmo - extreme hacker and roller blader extraordinaire. Actually he is neither of those things, but he is funny, as are the rest of the contributors. Prepare your minds to be blown.

This is the last of these, I promise.

Someday, when I am not so swamped with projects (i.e. afternoon naps and finally getting around to watching the complete first seasons of LOST and 24) , I promise to return to my usual deep and beautiful reflections on the world according to The Sure Thing.

In the meantime, this is all I've got.

So, for purposes of dramatic tension, first, the response:

From:	XXXXX (Penn State)
To:	Alexis C. Jolly
Subject:	re:
Message:

haha what's up man? That was neither a
Dominican whorehouse nor a presidential library,
but just some benefit dinner I went to in Philly.

Anyway, I agree with you about work sucking.
I'm all about trying to get paid for watching
TV. That is what I say my career goals are when
people ask me.

I think I'm getting there. I work for the
BaltimoreSun.com. I get to watch sporting events
and stuff and update the website and write a
little too. I just started so who knows how it
will be.

Does your fam. still live off Brinton's
Bridge? I passed by there the other day.

--XXXXX


And now, the original:

XXXXX,

That looks like a fancy room in your profile picture. Perhaps a presidential library? Or a classy Dominican whorehouse?

I work for a company in LA that distributes industrial refrigerator parts to butchers and school cafeterias, among other places. It's not the best job, but I'm getting some decent job skills.

Fuck it, who am I kidding? I'm not learning shit. What a waste of education. I have to sit in a cube with this pervert named Curtis ("Call me Curt!") who I honestly think spends the whole day figuring out ways he can brush his hand up against my leg. I swear to God I'm going to hit him one day. And that'd be legal, right? If he was harassing me?

Listen, I know this might sound weird, but don't you ever wonder why we all have to get jobs in the first place? What if we all just built farms together and really worked the soil and made something grow? We'd get up early and milk the cows. We'd take off our shirts under the blazing midday sun and dust each other off. Maybe even go for a quick dip in the watering hole. But we'd be doing it together - all of us.

Anyway, let me know what you're up to.

ACJ

Two hours that shook the world...

I've gotten several [ed. note: two] requests to update the blog, both of which were electronically deferred with complaints about how busy I've been with writing, tutoring, and a recently acquired (and bound to be lost once they realize the vastness of my incompetance) editing job on some children's books and scripts.

In reality, it's because I've been wasting my time doing things like digging through the facebook for the names of old classmates from my public school days and writing messages like these, exceprted below. Enjoy.

-----
Matt - we played soccer together. And shared a room at Middle States.

I'm just writing to say I'm sorry for the time I put my socks up on
the fan and they smelled up the room at soccer camp. Jesus, I'm
sorry.

You see, I'm part of this like 11 step program - kind of like AA only
it's for PCP addiction, not booze. I would kill for a fucking drink,
but that's beside the point. Anyway, I'm supposed to apologize to
everyone I've done harm to as a result of my addiction or otherwise.

It doesn't seem to be doing much good now, but maybe when I get to
step 3 (48 hours in the pit... I'm not even sure what that is, but I
guess Lawrence will fill me in when we get there...) it will make more
sense. Right now not much of anything is making sense. God has
chosen a path for me, though, I know that, so that's helping me along.

Anyway, I hope grad school is treating you well. Maybe next time I'm
in the area I can crash on your couch?

Take care,
Alexis

--------

Lucas,

I hope you rode the dot com wave. I did. I'm writing this from my
fucking airplane.

And when I say "I," I actually mean my assistant, Lenny. He's ten
years older than me, but will do pretty much anything I ask him to
because I pay him off the interest of my interest. How's that sound?

This might seem like one of those typical spiteful emails you get from
the guy who was kind of quiet and awkward all through middle school
then suddenly struck it rich... but you know what? It is, so fuck it.

When you have the Prince of Monaco (it's a microstate) blowin' up your
cellie to catch drinks at the Four Seaons, Paris, you have to allot
fifteen minutes of spite a day just to stay balanced.

Love to hear what you're up to.

Best,
ACJ

Dictated but not read - LR.

--------------
Mark,

We were in AT [ed. note: the "Academically Talented" program] together.

Now I'm a manager at fucking wendys. I thought that was supposed to
put us on some sort of career path... lead to some kind of success.
Not spending my days making sure Paulo doesn't pour the french fry
grease in with the fucking mayo.

------

In hindight, I probably shouldn't have used so many capital letters.

You say tomato...

…I say esophagogastroduodenoscopy.

Which is the procedure I’m scheduled to receive a little over a month from now to see if I am, in fact, allergic to wheat, or if my self-diagnosis is simply a continuation of a lifelong cycle of school absences and sick days. All of which are part of a pathetic desire to just have someone bring me soup and rub my head as I watch “Wings” reruns on the couch, then share my joy when I fart under the blanket and disperse the fumes into the living room with my ankle undulations.

The Rumination of the Night, therefore, is as follows: Did James Joyce (or Dostoevsky, Bergman, etc.) worry about things like wheat intolerance, or am I just, as one of my dear (and recently engaged – but that’s a whole other entry) friends likes to put it, “a little bitch?”

Let’s take a step into Imagination Land to see if we can’t work this out…

Alexis: So, Fyodor, I’m kind of worried about this bloated feeling I get every time I eat pasta. I’m thinking it might be this thing called Celiac’s Disease.

Dostoevsky: Really? That’s nearly comparable to the fear I felt when I stood blindfolded in front of a fucking firing squad in fucking Siberia, praying that I would die a quick death from the bullets tearing apart my vital organs rather than suffer the slow delirium of hypothermia.

Alexis: Oh.

Dostoevsky: But then I went on to write Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, so, you know, no biggie.

Alexis: I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but I’ve got this blog…

So on a toughness scale of 1-10, 10 being Gene Hackman’s Popeye Doyle in The French Connection, I’d say I fall somewhere between Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle and Powder.

The thing is, I don’t feel all that bad about it. I don’t think we humans can ever truly grasp the ephemeralness of our mortality until we find ourselves in front of a firing squad or realize our roommate sprinkled the cupcakes with arsenic again (shhhhh…). And even when we do catch the occasional glimpse, that memory and its urgency are bound to fade until the next Maxwell’s Demon comes along to temporarily reverse our inevitable progression toward emotional stasis.

We can fight it, of course. Some people use drugs, others use art. Some even use love, or at least those moments of love when it's most like a movie.

Personally, I prefer the old car-battery-hooked-up-to-the-nipples trick, but that’s just me.

An elite is inevitable...

...while the disgruntled majority celebrates the return of the ninety-nine cent double cheeseburger.

And on this, the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's birth, I find myself contemplating on which side of the culture binary I belong.

Of course, I'd like to imagine myself in the former category. After all, I didn't go to expensive private school X, then expensive Ivy League college Y, to spend my life with people in puffy NFL jackets whose weekend dreams include dry humping future dental hygienists on the dance floor to "Laffy Taffy" before capping off the night with tequila shots and a blacked-out h-job session.

But then again, I can't help but notice just how darn plebeian I can be. Today, for example, I've spent several hours (ahhh, the benefits of unemployment) listening to my favorite radio station here in Los Angeles, which has dedicated its entire day of programming to the works of W.A.M. (not to be confused with WHAM! whose musical library has been guiding sexually ambiguous youth through the progressive life stages of hot-pink-spandex-wearing-gender-construct-free teenagers to quiet lives of pharmacist-by-day-truck-stop-frequenter-by-night desperation since 1983). And while I sit here, enjoying the genius that is Mozart’s Prague Symphony, about every thirty seconds my mind flashes back to Matthew McConaughey's chicken dance.

Seriously.

You see, I was fortunate enough last night to attend a concert by the talented James McMurtry, and who should be among the crowd of about a hundred but Mr. McConaughey and a bored looking Penelope Cruz. Now, the last thing I want this blog to turn into an "Oh man, I may have waited in line for three hours to get in to the club, but at least I wasn't passed out in a mixture of blow and thrown-up Spago foie gras like that idiot Lindsay Lohan" type gossip rag. There's Defamer for that. No, I choose to keep celebrity gushing to a minimum because, frankly, it's embarrassing for all of us.

I only bring it up because last night I, along with pretty much everyone else there, kept being distracted from McMurtry's singing by McConaughey's dancing and the sporadic pop of Penelope's bubble gum. And granted, while there was something impressive in how rhythmically and persistently the Sahara "star" (it's easier to write "star" than "protagonist of a cinematic Buchenwald") could alternate between his crouches and neck extensions, it was more impressive in way that a three-legged cat is impressive, rather than the "get this guy on Dancing with the Stars!" way.

More to the point, I found myself getting physically angry over the fact that I was letting this celebrity become the focal point of my night, rather than the talented musician performing on stage. And then I found myself getting angry over the fact that I was getting angry over a celebrity, rather than enjoying the talented musician performing on stage… ad infinitum.

But now, as I look back on it, trying to figure out if I ought to give up my dream of a subscription to The Metropolitan Opera for a subscription to the Spice channel and a case of PBR, I actually think I can rest assured. You see, after much thought, I’m confident that I would have been staring at the moron doing the chicken dance while his pretty girlfriend stood bored nearby regardless of their celebrity status. And I would have had similar wishes as I watched - namely that the seemingly pacifist McMurtry would suddenly raise his acoustic over said dancer's head and send him dancing to an early grave.

Like I said, I'm still working on that zen thing.

Anyway, the important thing is that, once again, the forces of elitism have reclaimed their dominant position in the heart and mind of this Hollywood neophyte, and all is well with the world.

Although I do have a difficult time accounting for the fact that I nearly crapped my pants with joy when I noticed a guy in the audience who looked just like Leonardo DiCaprio trying to keep a low profile. Although I'm pretty sure the fact that he didn't respond to my shouts of "Leo! LEO! Let me be a part of your entourage!" as he drove off in his Civic proved it probably wasn't him.

Damn you, Jack Dawson. Damn you for taking my heart down with you into those icy waters.

A sense of timing is the mark of genius...

A sense of irony is the mark of over-education.

I was informed today that I "didn't have quite enough experience" to qualify for an unpaid internship with a (for the sake of any potential future career) here unnamed production company. Likely because when asked to provide sample coverage on a script I later learned they particularly enjoyed, I employed such words as "amateur," "one-dimensional," "mundane," and "physically difficult to get through." This all in the first paragraph, by the way.

But I suppose the Rumination of the Night revolves not so much around differing ideologies, but rather the fact that I'm pretty sure I didn't get the job because the "Head of Development" (read: gets a sweet business card, but still has to dash out of the office whenever the boss requires a cinnamon dolce latte from Starbucks) with whom I interviewed could detect my aversion to him.

And the thing is, I don't know why I felt it. I've made a conscious effort over the past few months to become a better person. I've even started going to effing yoga classes at the gym to get in touch with whatever it is yoga is supposed to get you in touch with (the tao/inner peace/thick-eyebrowed Persian housewives). Yet, despite my efforts, I still find myself constantly judging others like...well, I could make a Simon Cowell reference here, but then I'd have to hunt down a rubber band, a baggie of ice, and a sharp knife.

So, back to this HOD, who shall remain anonymous (Hint 1: his first name is the same as my roommate's. Hint 2: his last name sounds like Endicott. Hint 3: okay, his last name is Endicott). I'm sitting there, trying to b.s. my way into his thinking that all I've ever wanted to do with my life is answer phones and make sure the filing cabinets are properly alphabetized, but I can't stop staring at his pastel brown shirt, his carefully selected thrift-store tie, his large forehead flanked by spindly blonde hair, and his hands folded like he's just waiting for Wes-friggin'-Anderson to cast him in “Rushmore II: Max’s Revenge,” thinking that if it came down to making this month's rent or paying God to have the lighting fixture come crashing down on this guy’s head, I would gladly sacrifice my credit record.

Perhaps the saddest thing is that I think I actually do know why I spent the whole time judging him, but it took writing this to figure it out. Which is that in an email exchange the night before, he jokingly suggested I call him "Captain, O' My Captain." Now, an expert on modern American Poetry I did not expect him to be; however, anybody who's seen "Dead Poets Society" should be well aware not only of Whitman's panegyric to our suicidal closet-case of a sixteenth president, but also of the correct phrasing of his poem, courtesy of Robin Williams in a role second only to his eponymous lead in "Patch Adams."

So, in short, I didn't get a job (though I don't know if an unpaid internship in which my level of importance falls somewhere between the stapler and the magazine rack technically qualifies as a "job") because of these darned elitist tendencies I can't seem to shake.

Carpe diem, bitches.

In the land of the blind...

...the man with the most durable groin cup is king.

Here in Los Angeles, as an "aspiring screenwriter" (read: destined to a career in fluffery), I often feel as though I were strolling about in a backward g-string. And I don't just mean that literally.

All of this serving as preface to the following Rumination of the Night: if the producers of "Skating With Celebrities" - which replaced "Arrested Development" on Fox - don't rely on their assistants to hide the razor blades and/or electronic appliances every time they draw a warm bath, then I may just have to throw in the towel on this whole entertainment industry here and now.

So, if anybody should happen to know said producers' PA's, I would appreciate it if you could please forward my query so I can finally get some sleep at night.

And if you get a chance, ask if they're hiring.