Hello, friends. This is Monday Morning Commute. Within these walls, we share the various functions and safety valves we’re utilizing to get us through the daily week. Not only that, it is a post used as a general “this is what’s up in my world” sort of bullshit community building exercise. I hope you’re all well.
Let’s party.
Check out teenage Ray Bradbury hanging out with the famous movie star Marlene Dietrich. The visionary used to hunt down famous people on his roller skates. You can’t make this sort of shit up. Old Uncle Ray with immaculate game. Or creepy stalking tendencies. However you want to cut it.
Sup fuckers. Don your war crest. Paint your face with the blood of those who have fallen before you staves, swords, axes. This is getting real. The following week is filled with enough revelry to burst my little heart. Were I a coward. But I am not such thing. My arteries are thickened from excessive, caffeine-fueled pumping. The next seven days are a gauntlet of awesome that justify this meager little column. Nay, these seven days justify my generally effusive demeanor. This is MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE, the column where we pontificate on the various little objects filling our hurt-holes. The arts, farts, funny books, and video games we are using as a salve to soothe the general burn of existence.
What’s good in the hood, folks? Been a hell of week! Hell of a fucking week. I suffered a butt-drubbing last week at the hands of a son a bitch in a FedEx truck. The little Japanese Car that Could, which had shuttled me to work and back for many a year, Now Simply Can’t. Smash-pow! Don’t ever stop for pedestrians. That is the lesson learned. Crazy Taxi those motherfuckers. Grand Theft Auto right through their right of way. No, I’m just kidding. Don’t do that. Unless you’re fleeing from laser-cocked zombies, who want to nourish their hunger on your balls. Or labia. Laballs. Where was I? I blame the concussion. Oh yeah! This is Monday Morning Commute. The column where we share the various arts, farts, sexual proclivities (still waiting for someone to break that ice), and other general things you’re enjoying on a given week.
Let’s party, gals and guys.
Back in 1953, they clearly didn’t know what we do now about abestos. And I’m glad that’s so. Sure, it is all poisonous and everything. Sure, sure. However, it also can do cool things, like prevent copies of Fahrenheit 451 from burning. That’s some high concept shit! Let me get a copy. I’ll huff it. Gain Bradbury powers. Or cancer. Probably cancer.
Bask in the glory of Dave Mustaine’s melting face. It runs down his skull, slowly dripping onto his kevvy metal t-shirt. Despairingly, he rips the t-shirt off before it stains his perpetual undergarment. He forever wears a “Kill Em All!” tee that he stole back in 1983. Every night before he goes to bed, he rubs its fabric between his fingers. Praying to both Alex Jones and Whatever God He Believes In That Year, he utters one phrase over and over. “Please call me, Jimmy Hetfield. Please call me.” The sheer repetition of the hours-long nightly prayer dims into a dull drone, people throughout his underground bunker (the End is Coming) wishing that either Hetfield would call him, or he would go to sleep. They care not which, and they can’t express either. You see, throughout the compound Davey’s prayer is blared through loudspeakers on every wall. These same loudspeakers are live microphones. The peons must follow their Saviour (or employer, okay) in his prayers. Over and over again, they pray. Hoping to channel their extended energy in a way that has never, ever worked. The answering of a prayer through sheer mass of plea.
Uh, what? Anyways, this is MONDAY MORNING COMMUTE. Where we talk about the arts we’re enjoying this week. Guys and gals, let us party.
It’s with a tearful eye and a hyper-extended thumbs-up that I bid farewell to 2012.
The last twelve months have been some of the finest of my entire life. And I’m not exaggerating. Unlike those saccharine slobs who always clamor about the present hour being their finest and the preceding moments nothing more than the bliss-steps to their existence plateaus, I have no illusions about the fact that I’ve chalked up some miserable years. I’ve anguished through entire calendars, burnin’ `em up with fuel of the most incendiary sort.
Self-doubt! Resentment! Apathy! Vitriol! Cynicism! Sally forth towards the mire!
But 2012 was a whole different beast. Sure, there definitely some moments when my nostrils were assailed by the wispy vapors of the aforementioned propellants. But repugnance was ultimately cast aside, overpowered by the surfeit of wonder! It’s almost as though entertainment and art and love formed a giant sword-wieldin’, monster-destroyin’ mech, and I got to pilot the son-of-a-bitch!
If only!
Anyways, it looks as though every crew member of Spaceship OL is delivering their year-end highlights, so I’m going to join the party. But since I’ve garnered a reputation as being the erratic, currently-undiagnosed-but-we’re-working-on-it, hack-writin’ resident of the crew, I’m going to switch things up a bit. Each of my highlights will be paired with an Ultra-Dimensional Portal! By clicking on any UDP, a hole will be punched in space-time, and your consciousness will be projected astrally.
Got it? Okay, here’s one last look at 2012!
Hell yes. SpaceX wizard Elon Musk says that human beings could be on Mars in as early as 12 years. This may very well be bluster and nonsense, but who gives a shit. Let me have this, you naysaying bastards.
(I hate to start this piece in the most boring way possible, but) I grew up in Andover, New Jersey. Nestled in the farmlands and forests of Sussex County, Andover is an old mining town and the polar opposite of the general population’s image of “Dirty Jersey.” Expansive corn fields, forests criss-crossed with streams, and a local hot-spot called Lake Illiff make up most of the geography of my homeland. The neighborhood was a giant nipple feeding my imagination. I lived there until I was 19 when I thought it would be a good idea to go to college.
Like most young boys, I harbored a large imagination. With tools like action figures and my Mongoose BMX, Andover was one big playground. My dad introduced me to Star Wars when I was in the 2nd grade (because that’s what everyone should feel like happened to them during their first Star Wars experience, right? We’re “introduced” to it). I read a lot of escapist fiction like Dragonlance and Lord of the Rings – also courtesy of my dad. All of these sacred works blew my imagination up, made me want to jump in my X-Wing and take on the Empire up. I wanted out of Andover. This town wasn’t big enough for Patrick Cooper, who would surely grow up to save the planet from evil. Then along came Ray Bradbury.
[Ray Bradbury died today]
I was filching my seventh cup of caffeinated splendor from the coffee machine when a coworker came rushing towards me. He had mustard on his shirt and concern in his eyes. “Hey man, how’re you holding up? You all right?”
After taking a rip of coffee, I proceeded. “Rodrigo, what the hell’re you talkin’ about? Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
“Oh shit, I thought you heard…Dude, Ray Bradbury died.”
“Bwahahaha,” I sprayed coffee all over my dress-pants. “That’s hilarious!
Rodrigo was befuddled. “Hilarious? I thought you’d be upset. Isn’t Bradbury your favorite author?”
“Of course he is! Bradbury straddles the lines between science fiction and fantasy and parable like no other! He’s an avuncular horror-master, a winsome conveyor of the fantastic! Fahrenheit 451! The Illustrated Man! The Martian Chronicles! How could Bradbury not be my favorite?”
“So,” Rodrigo ventured forth cautiously, “you love Ray Bradbury but don’t care that he’s dead?”
I once again found myself struggling to spill the coffee past the bulwark of laughter and into my gullet. Finally successful, I wiped an errant tear streaming down my cheek and broke into a smile. I’d help my coworker understand.
“Ray Bradbury can’t die. When he was twelve years old, Mr. Electrico imbued him with the power to live forever! And now, regardless of what’s happened to his corporeal form, Ray’s going to be with us forever.”
[Ray Bradbury is going to live forever]
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