“Walk into this world / with your head up high”

Posted on 02/23/2012 by ericmcclanahan
This picture scares the shit out of my wife.

Last night I got off work early enough to stop by the bar near my house and have a couple of glasses of scotch before heading home.  I ran into a friend and we fell into conversation, but I realized in retrospect that the whole while that I was talking to her I was watching the television in the corner.  It struck me that I do that often, particularly in a bar situation.  I fixate on the moving images of a television just so that I can be assured with what I’m doing with my eyes.  It’s like when I go with Mer into Victoria’s Secret; I never know what to do with my eyes.  I try to find the most innocuous thing I can find, usually a pair of footie pajamas, and keep my eyes riveted to that innocent piece of concealing clothing.

But it’s true that I don’t often look at people while I’m talking to them, and I realized that I don’t often look at people, at all.  It’s a side-effect of using public transportation for the past ten years.  You do not look at people on the bus or the trolley.  There are two reasons for this: 1st, most everyone on the bus is sad; a contagious form of sad that you can catch if your eyes fall upon them.  2nd, if you do look at someone and your eyes lock, you have just invited them to tell you their story; their long, sad, loud, and highly detailed story.  I used to collect these stories in my 20s, but I’m rather disenfranchised by them, now.

You could sit next to me on the bus and I’d never know.  People have passed me on the street and I’ve had no idea, even if they’d have called out to me, because I always keep my eyes on my destination and I drown the world out with the finest 90s’ alternative rock.  If you’re out walking your dog, I’m 90% more likely to make eye contact with your dog and give it a familiar smile than I am to look you in the face.

I was thinking these thoughts as I got on the bus this afternoon, so I made it a point to memorize every face as I walked to my seat.  I sat down at an empty bench near a window and leaned forward to put my backpack on the ground when I noticed the girl in the seat in front of me was reading a book.  I looked at the title at the top of the page and recognized it as the exact same book I had in my backpack and was currently reading.  I pulled the book from my backpack and tapped her lightly on the shoulder with an “Excuse me.”  She leapt and shrieked as though I had slid a knife between her ribs.  I apologized profusely for scaring her and went on to say I was reading the same book and I wouldn’t normally bother someone while they were reading but I thought it was worth noting.  She looked at me incredulously for what seemed like far too long, and finally said, “Well, how do you like it?”  I said fine and then left her to her reading.  I felt like an ass.

You do not look at people on the bus or trolley, and you don’t talk to them, either.  And you most definitely do not touch them.

The book we were reading was Tina Fey’s Bossypants.  After scaring her half-to-death, I was tempted to tell her her hair was on fire or that I saw a Gremlin on the side of the bus.  Anything would have been less creepy.

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“Doesn’t mean much / doesn’t mean anything at all”

Posted on 02/22/2012 by ericmcclanahan

It’s such a simple word:  Enough.

So hard to define, to pin down.  Regionally it changes meanings drastically, much in the same way as “pop”.  My mother spent a good deal of her youth in Colorado, where “pop” was used to refer to soda pop.  Upon moving to Texas she had a small altercation in her new school and was sent to the principal’s office.  As she continued to mouth off to the authoritarian (now I know where I get it) he asked her “Would you like a pop, young lady?”  She responded, almost too happily, “I sure would!”  In Texas, in elementary school, “pop” refers to a disciplinary spanking.  And yes, people in your twenties, schools used to “pop” the naughty children.  Even in my time.  Now they just make them watch “Jersey Shore” until their brain “pops”, I suppose.

As an American, I have a very foggy notion of enough.  The only thing I know for sure is that I will never achieve it.  I will never do enough, I will never be enough, I will never have enough.  I am watching everyone slide away from me, like Kate Winslet in that iconic scene from The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  I am spiralling out of the life I want to live, like Christopher Reeve in the chilling climactic scene of Somewhere in Time.  I am defining my life by the films I watch, like DeNiro in Taxi Driver.  I am getting off track.

I will never be enough:  I have budgeted my finances so that I can donate to charity every month.  I’ve quit smoking.  I’ve started writing again.  My band is doing well.  Work is going well.  I am doing well… but it’s not enough.  I still don’t have a car.  I still have no savings.  I still haven’t been to a doctor to get a check-up.  I still haven’t gone to the dentist for a cleaning, or for that crown I need in the lower left quadrant of my mouth.  I still haven’t gone to see a Nose, Ear, and Throat specialist to correct my snoring.  I am not thinking about my future in my career, only that I keep my job and stay out of trouble.  I am not thinking about upward movement.  My band isn’t on the cover of anything.

I am not doing enough:  I still haven’t hung things in the apartment.  I haven’t worked on a song for Macy in almost a year.  I haven’t been to the gym in even longer than that.  I am not going out of my way everyday to prove to my wife how loved she is.  I am not calling my mother enough.  I am not calling anyone else, ever.  I am a terrible friend.  I am trying so hard to purge my soul with charity because for 99% of everyday I feel an uncontrollable contempt for almost every human being on the planet.

I will never have enough:  I have contributed ambitiously to my 401(k), but I have no money.  I pay my rent and get myself whatever I need without difficulty or compromise, but it’s never enough.  I will always want more.  It’s the American Curse: we were told we could be and have whatever our hearts desired as children and we believed it.  That’s why we’re always miserable, now.  Because I’m not a Space Cowboy.  I’m not a Millionaire Volunteer Firefighter.  I’m not a Male Model Paleontologist.  I’m not a Creative Writing Instructor at Harvard who owns a baseball team and plays bass in a Smashing Pumpkins cover band.  I will never have enough.

And everyone is slipping away from me.  My uncle Jeff had always been my best friend, but I texted him to wish him a happy birthday today.  Yeah, texted.  I couldn’t be bothered to speak with him.  And his return text seemed cool and disaffected; he doesn’t give a shit that I don’t give a shit.  We’re all letting social media turn us into nobodies.  We’re all so special and important that we don’t care that no one cares.  This blog is a perfect example: I type this all here and hope that someone reads it, but I don’t care who doesn’t, because they have their own blogs to write.  In a world where everybody is important and special, no one is special.  We’re all shopping at Hot Topic to buy edgy t-shirts and stand out amongst all the other disaffected douchebags with edgy t-shirts.  We’re all the elite; we’re all douchebags.

The reason I texted Jeff is that the past few times I’ve talked on the phone with him he’s seemed thoroughly unenthused to hear from me.  And why should he?  Who the fuck am I?  Someone who claims his friendship and familiarity and yet rarely bothers to check in on him.  I don’t know his daughter.  At all.  She’s the most important thing in his life and I don’t know a single fucking thing about her.  I couldn’t even tell you how old she is.  Why should he care about me if I don’t bother to give a shit about the most important thing in his life?  And that’s the problem, but I can’t fix it.  It’s too late to take an interest, now, and I’m thousands of miles away.  What could I offer her even if I knew her?  Cousin Eric is nobody.  “Eric” is a name on a “friends” list on a computer screen.  There is no family for me, anymore: just more social networking links.  My mother is a picture that shows up next to my Gmail that I can hover over and click “chat”.       I don’t.

At this point in our lives, can any of us ever be enough?

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“Why don’t you break your face on my hand?”

Posted on 02/17/2012 by ericmcclanahan

Stay tuned; the elephant will come into play later.

Hooray, I’ve been writing again!!  I wrote two plays last week.  It felt so good to get back to my old self.  More to come on if these new plays will ever have an audience.

You may not know this about me, but there are two things I’m very good at: eating and sleeping.  I hate to be boastful, but yeah… I can sleep.  So well.  It’s a gift.  I also enjoy eating.  My wife makes fun of me all the time because I’ll heat up a microwave dinner and eat it, then repeat the process three or four more times to achieve what I would call “dinner”.  When Mer and I go out to eat we sit at the biggest table we can find, because we know we’re going to order everything.  Seriously, whatever restaurant we end up going to, our table still looks like the smoke pit at Medieval Times.  Every time we go grocery shopping we fill the cart so full that it looks like we just bought our refrigerator and are filling it for the first time.  I eat when I am happy and when I am sad, and I find comfort in food.  Wednesday I helped a friend move, and-

Actually, I have to dive a little deeper into that one before finishing out the eating story.  Friends help friends move because they care about each other; no one likes moving shit.  No one.  You know how they say if you do what you love, you’ll never “work” a day in your life?  Yeah, well, professional movers work.  The most maladjusted person in the world, who finds joy in kicking puppies, still hates moving.  The happiest person in the world, the most chivalrous, the most altruistic; none of these people enjoy the process of moving.  We help our friends because it sucks so much, and we get to spend time with them.  Sometimes they even buy you pizza.  The moving that I did Wednesday, in the rain, was of this detestable caliber, without the one silver lining of moving: the friend I was helping wasn’t there.  He’s in Philadelphia.  I rented a U-Haul, went to his old apartment and met his old roommate (who for some reason was not doing the job that I was sent to do, even though all the shit was in his apartment), picked up all his shit, carried it down a very narrow staircase, loaded it in the truck, drove over an hour to Camp Pendleton (thanks to the rain), met another stranger (who was very nice, I must say), unloaded the shit in his garage, drove over an hour back home, parked the U-Haul on the street two blocks from my apartment, gassed it up in the morning and returned it to the rental yard.  I did all of this alone.  No laughter, no smiles, no pizza.  Just KYXY, 96.5, Not Your Momma’s Soft Rock.

So, after all this fun, I wanted to be comforted in the way that only food can.  So I went to Schlotzsky’s and ordered two sandwiches to go, then drove to Bronx Pizza and sat down to two slices and a soda.  I would’ve ordered a whole pie and brought it home, but then I’d have to share it with my wife, and one of our strongest bonds as a couple is our mutual aversion to sharing food.  Even with each other.  We take fierce ownership over our food.  It’s romantic.

So, tonight I’m going to dinner with Mer and a few of her friends at a lovely Italian tapas place near our apartment.  The purpose of this dinner is to meet our friend Melissa’s new man.  This is exciting because Melissa has a tendency to date very manly men; Old Spice and Dr. Pepper 10 men.  Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m manly.  After all, I’m an expert eater and sleeper (we covered this, try to keep up).  But most of the dudes that she dates that I’ve met make me look like the gayest man alive in comparison.  Here’s an average conversation I’d have with a new suitor of hers:

{for this re-enactment, the suitor will be played by Chuck Norris, and the part of me will be played by Rip Taylor}

Chuck Norris:  Did you catch the game last night?

Rip Taylor:  No, I don’t really… follow… sport.  Did you know that’s how they say it in Europe?  Sport.  Singular.  Doesn’t that seem queer, um, strange?

Chuck:  I didn’t catch it, either.  I was hoping you knew the score. 

Rip:  I rarely know the score.

Chuck:  Yeah, last night I blew up a bridge, killed a tiger with my bare hands, punched an elephant so hard that it splintered into seven aardvarks, and then I ate a dog.

Rip:  Have you been watching 30 Rock?  That Tina Fey is so funny!  I’m reading her book right now; she’s got some great ideas.

So, yeah, that’ll be me later.  Fun!

As I was writing the other night, I put my iPod in the Bose dock we got this past Christmas and just let it shuffle.  There are 4900 songs on my iPod, and the lion’s share of those songs are nu-metal alternative hate anthems.  Much to my surprise, all I heard for over an hour were slow subdued songs that enhanced my creative muse and helped me to finish the script I was working on.  I didn’t discover until the iPod unexpectedly stopped playing that I had inadvertently selected a playlist I’d made called “Seriously, Life Sucks, Get a Fucking Helmet”.  It is all music selected with the sole purpose of bumming out people at the restaurant when I’m trying to close and need the “guests” to leave.  I discovered, though, that it’s also excellent writing music, and so I shall share the track listing with you now so that you may reap its benefits:

“No One’s Gonna Love You” -Band of Horses / “Everybody Hurts” – R.E.M. / “Untouchable Face” – Ani DiFranco / “Brick” – Ben Folds Five / “Hyperballad” – Bjork / “In a Lonely Place” – Bush / “Strangers on 5” – Centaur / “O Mio Babbino Caro” – Charlotte Church / “Someone to Watch Over Me” – Chet Baker / “Run” – Collective Soul / “Remember to Breathe” – Dashboard Confessional / “What Sarah Said” – Death Cab for Cutie / “Detlef Schrempf” – Band of Horses / “transatlanticism” – Death Cab for Cutie / “Reasons for Living” – Duncan Sheik / “Miss Misery” – Elliott Smith / “As Long as it Matters” –  Gin Blossoms / “Apollo” – Hum / “With You” – Ill Nino / “Only You” – Joshua Radin / “Guitar, Flute, and String” – Moby / “Um…” – Onelinedrawing / “God Only Wants You” – Ours

Go forth and create!  Or cry.  Whatever.

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“The passengers set sail that day for a three hour tour”

Posted on 02/14/2012 by ericmcclanahan

Subject: Dreams.

I had a dream the other night that the Titanic came to the San Diego harbor for its 100th anniversary.  I was seated at an outdoor cafe with Heather, Todd and Meghine, and Sam.  We were looking at the parking lot at 2nd and J where a very long line had formed of people ready to board the legendary vessel for a cruise around the Bay.  We were waiting to hear the ruling on a proposed Trade Agreement that would benefit the entire working class of America, and in particular, San Diego County.  The men, women, and children in line held helium-filled ballons, all red and blue, and waited patiently.  As news came that the Trade Agreement had been derailed, people let their balloon tethers slip through their fingers in defeat and left the line to go back home.  Balloons filled the sky with beauty, a scene juxtaposed against the sad dejected throngs marching slowly back to their banal existences.  Now that the line was cut by over half its original population, Sam decided we should go check out the famed vessel.  So I picked her up and carried her, hero-stlye, across the parking lot and up the ramp into the ship.  We walked through the bridge to a side rail, then down the the ship’s common area, which was a large dining patio that spiralled down into the bowels of the boat.  As we passed diners who pretended to be in awe of the elegance, we noticed that no effort had been made to restore the ship.  It had been hauled up from the deep, had its hull patched, and dropped rudely on the surface of the water.  The surfaces were corroded and stained, the ground littered with kelp and coral and rocks that had never seen the sun.  And worse yet, water was slowly pooling on the floor, coming from somewhere underneath.  The ocean was coming up to reclaim what was once its treasure.  Sam and I walked around the dining room and down short ramps to descending floors, watching the people eat.  One guest asked me for salt, so I grabbed a shaker from a nearby table and gave it to her, and when another saw me do that, she called out to me also, but I ignored her and quickened my step.  Sam expressed concern, that we would get in trouble, but I told her they had built a franchise store of our restaurant aboard the ship, somewhere in one of the lower levels.  If anyone asked us what we were doing there, we could say we were headed to work.  If we learned that there was no franchise built there, we would apologize for the misinformation and leave right away.  The water had risen past my ankles when I woke up.

It is actually the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, and an artifact exhibit is at the Natural History Museum in town, so that’s where that came from.  And I’m pretty sure the trade agreement is from re-watching Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace this past Friday.  I don’t know where the balloons came from.

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“It’s not you; it’s… okay, it’s you.”

Posted on 02/13/2012 by ericmcclanahan

Spent the evening watching people “sing” on The Voice.  Both myself and my wife auditioned, and, yeah, I’ll say it: we’re amazing.  And, no, neither of us were selected to be on The Voice.

I’ve started and trashed several blogs in the past few days.  I want to say something but I don’t know what to say.  So, here’s a set of lyrics I wrote for my band, Moosejaw.

“Well-meaning, self-serving hands extended towards me

Most days I’m far too tired to laugh

Seven hundred channels of processed shit, you know it often bores me

I’ve got a date with a photograph.

Painting the walls, painting the walls, painting the walls with a colostomy bag

Painting the walls with my inability to understand

Painting the walls, painting the walls, painting the walls with a colostomy bag

Painting the walls with my inability to coexist.

I apologize for breathing all your air when given the opportunity

I’ve got one bullet and so many enemies

If I remove myself it would be easier for all involved or affected

I’ve got a date with a photograph.”

-“Sinanju“, Moosejaw

The song is about growing old gracelessly, something I’m fairly certain I’ll do quite well.  Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Brain Cancer: these things scare me.  We take our faculties for granted, I feel.  I’ve chastised myself for it on many occasions.  I am healthy, possessing twenty (one) digits, and more often than not, smart.  But it won’t always be the case.  Eventually I’ll grow old and the athleticism and mental jiu jistu that I enjoy every day will start to slip away.

Meredith and I were shopping this past Saturday and got trapped behind an old couple in an aisle while trying to get to the Macaroni-n-cheese.  (Don’t keep me from my mac-n-cheese; you wouldn’t like me without my mac-n-cheese.)  I eventually slipped past them (using my youthful litheness) and got the Precious, and in the process got to get a big whiff of the decrepit couple.  Both smelled like they’d just emerged from the smoking section of a coffin, and the patriarch’s breath smelled like a perfect blend of Saturday night in a Florida bingo hall, the Goodyear factory, and liquefied pickled innards.  I think his organs had been removed and replaced with found art; hearts and kidneys and livers made from cigarette butts glued to a coarse piece of construction paper in the vein of macaroni art.  And don’t get me started on their voices.  If you could give voice to a boulder falling down a crag, it would be the woman’s.  I snuck back to Meredith, pointed at the old couple, and said “That’s why we’re quitting smoking.”  I don’t want to end up like that.

Or I’ll get lucky and just die.

Wow, that got dark fast.

 

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“A violent reaction / struggling only to keep myself alive”

Posted on 02/02/2012 by ericmcclanahan

I think I am depressed.  I am not sad, mind you, but physical symptoms of depression are changes in appetite, sleep patterns, and erratic behavior.  Considering my manic eating attacks, my inexplicable addiction to “30 Rock”, and my complete lack of a recognizable sleep schedule, there is ample evidence that I am relapsing into the Major Depression I was diagnosed with those 17 years ago.

Whatever the catalyst, I have been having terrifying dreams lately.  They make me ashamed that they formed in my brain.  Here are two.  Please keep in mind that I did not consciously form these stories, and I hope that they are not taken as a reflection of what I find entertaining or exciting:

In one dream, I am house-sitting for a friend, and I’m lying on the carpet next to their small dog of indiscriminate origin.  I think it’s a terrier or something.  Anyway, I’m looking at the dog and absent-mindedly looking about the room, and the dog is looking at me, lying on the carpet, keeping me company, smiling into my eyes, showering me with unconditional love and comfort.  (I think this was based on a comment a guy at Taco Bell said as I eavesdropped on his date.  He said “A dog will love you no matter what you do.  I can’t be comfortable with unconditional love.”)  Out of boredom, hunger, or cruelty, I snap one of the dog’s legs off and start to eat it.  The dog just watches me, almost smiling, as if to say “Sure, buddy; whatever you need.”  After I finish eating one of its legs, I snap off another and eat it, then another, then another.  While I’m eating the last leg, a friend enters the room and sees what I’ve done.  Where its legs were, there are furry nubs; no blood stains the carpet or is visible whatsoever.  My friend begins to scold me, asking what I could possibly have been thinking, and how could I have been so cruel?  I wave her off, saying not to worry and that I’d planned to eat the whole dog, rather than condemn it to live on without its limbs.  I look at the dog and the dog is still smiling, as if to say “What a swell fella!”  I lean in, about to bite into the dog’s neck, tear out a hunk of its flesh and let it bleed out peacefully, when I stop and consider the violence and bloodshed behind the act.  I can’t do it; it’s too much.  Now the dog’s eyes narrow, and for the first time it looks at me with contempt.  My friend voices the dog’s concerns, condemning me for being unable to finish what I started.  I assure her and the dog that I’ll take care of it, remembering that in the house that I’m watching there is something that looks like an old wood-finished pump-action shotgun that should put the dog out of its misery.  I go to the room where I remembered seeing it but sadly discover it is a crossbow, with only one arrow, a rather weak-looking old arrow made by tying a blunt arrow-head onto a soft-wood shaft with feathers at one end.  So I take it and pick up the dog and head outside.  I set the dog on the grass and it regards me with a sidelong glance and drags itself to a totem-pole of sorts and climbs it and sets itself atop.  It looks at me resignedly, and so I load the arrow on the crossbow and aim it at the dog, say I’m sorry, and pull the trigger.  The arrow goes into its left shoulder, though it doesn’t howl in pain; rather it looks at me angrily and pulls the arrow out with its snout and hurls it down at me.  I pick it up and see that some of the feathers have loosened and fallen out.  I think remorsefully that it will be even more difficult to hit my target now, but I know it must be done, so I take aim and fire again, this time sending the arrow into the dog’s groin muscles right next to where its thigh was.  This time it does howl in pain, and looks at me even more angrily, pries the arrow out and hurls it down at me again.  This time the arrow is far too mangled to take another shot with, so I beckon the dog down and it does so sadly, begrudgingly, and starts to speak.  It chastises me for being such a pussy, such a bad aim, so selfish and negligent.  The voice it uses sounds like a co-worker; one of my bussers, Gabriel.

In another dream, I am working at a government facility, as a receptionist or number-cruncher or something similarly not glamorous, when I see someone coming through one of the multiple security doors that I’ve never seen before.  He pulls a gun from his coat and shoots one of the agents who’d just arrived with sensitive information.  The other men in the room leap to action and dispatch of him rather quickly, and soon the entire room is locked down so a full investigation can be launched to discern how this tragedy occurred.  All of us are interrogated thoroughly, and no conclusive answers are found.  I personally have nothing to offer, as it all happened so fast that I hardly knew what happened myself, much less why.  Unsatisfied with this outcome, the investigator employs drastically more devious ways of extracting information from us, and soon we are standing in a windowless room in our underwear as he’s announcing that the next stage of questioning will be to explore our chest cavity.  He walks straight towards me and with his fingers on my naked flesh traces lines on my collar bones, where a bonesaw will cleave them in half, and my chest will be ripped open so that investigators may peer inside.  The weak-willed thin man next to me exclaims in terror, and the investigator wheels on him, saying he will be first.  Two heavily-armed guards grab him roughly and pull him screaming from the room, and in moments we hear the whirr of machinery and pained screams from down the hall.  We look at each other solemnly for what seems like ages, then a hand on my shoulder tells me it’s my turn.  I am lead from the room and then deposited unguarded in a long queue with many other men in similar states of undress.  Before long I am seeing a series of doctors, who are depressing my tongue and peering at my tonsils and grabbing my testicles and ordering me to cough.  Soon I am standing outside of a steel door through which I hear the buzzing of saws and clanging of metal instruments.  My body is rigid with fear (and I feel this in the physical part of me that knows I am lying in bed imagining all of this, and the exertion I am undergoing is not restful and could not justifiably be called sleep) and I am straining to keep my anguished yelps and urge to flee inside my fragile body.  The door opens and I enter a pristine white room, expertly cared for and left in sparkling perfection at all times.  A kind man next to a white noise machine assures me nothing irreparable will happen to me, and he hands me a manilla envelope with a new identity inside and several hundred dollars.  He lets me out of the room through another door and I am back in the catacombs of steel and rock, wandering dazed and bewildered.  Soon the catacombs become hallways, and before long I can tell that I am in a hotel or a brownstone, and soon I see another queue of anxious men.  I line up with them, hoping for some kindness at the end of the interminable wait.  When I get to a closed door, I tap my foot nervously.  Soon it opens and a man says it’s one hundred dollars.  I reach into the envelope and give it to him.  He gives me a rubber band and points to a cot near a window between two other men and says “Use this to secure the elastic band on your underwear to the pipe along the wall and when the lady comes in, do whatever she asks, and nothing more.  Have fun.”  I am confused and frightened as I enter the room and the door closes behind me.

I am still not smoking.  Maybe I should be?

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“Let’s all live in your perfect little life”

Posted on 01/09/2012 by ericmcclanahan

I have not smoked in eleven days.  I have absolutely zero cravings for a cigarette.  Do they still look delicious, dangled precariously off the lips of the aloof painting smoke dance in the sky before them?  Yes.  But I don’t want one, at all.  The idea of smoking a cigarette for me is akin to dying.  I haven’t forgotten how I felt that Friday morning and I won’t forget for quite some time.

What I am struggling with is an abundance of time that has been freed where I would normally be smoking cigarettes, particularly at work.  Hence the current blog post.  I have started reading more, and in this I hope to position myself to write more.  I’ve been thinking about my screenplay idea, and I still very much want to write it, but I don’t believe that I’m ready to write a screenplay by myself just now.  Coming up with all of the characters, their names, backstories, the minutiae that make them real for the viewer, the differences in opinions and world views, the twists of plot that keep the viewer enthralled.  I don’t know that I have what it takes to do all of that at this time.    So what I would like to do in the meantime to prepare myself is to offer my services as a comedy writer through my networking connections.  Though I don’t think I could write a marketable screenplay myself at this time, I could help others flesh out ideas by contributing dialogue and plot points in a teleplay or short film.  We’ll see what, if anything, comes of that.

The band is headed to Las Vegas this Friday, then two shows in Tempe, Arizona on Saturday and Sunday.  I am excited to take the music on the road again, not to mention putting my non-smoking to the test with two very tempting obstacles: road tripping and Las Vegas.  More than anything, though, I’m looking forward to performing again.

I watched “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” last week, starring the incomparable Gary Oldman.  I had misinterpreted its plot before going in, so the movie delivered something completely unexpected, and not entirely welcome, for me.  But Gary Oldman was astounding, once again.  He had little in the way of powerful dialogue, and presented some of his finest acting through his face, alone.  He seriously didn’t speak for the first twenty minutes of the movie.

The first recipient of my charitable donations in 2012 will be Cancer for College.

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COPD a feel

Posted on 12/30/2011 by ericmcclanahan

This morning, I couldn’t breathe.

Don’t misunderstand me: it’s not as though I had difficulty breathing.  I couldn’t breathe.

So yeah, the NY Resolution is getting started a few days early.

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“Roll the windows down / this cool night air is curious”

Posted on 12/29/2011 by ericmcclanahan

Resolutions:

1.  Write more in 2012, whether it be here or Twitter or Facebook or even getting back to playwriting or fiction.  Just put words out there.  Perhaps an observation a day?  Who knows?

2.  Make more music.  Moosejaw is kicking ass, and we’re showing no signs of stopping, but Macy only released three songs in 2011.  A poor showing, indeed.

3.  Quit smoking.

4.  Donate more to charity.  We’ve discussed this already, and if I can successfully quit smoking, I can use that money to donate to charity.  (To clarify, charity isn’t a stripper; Charity is.)

That’s it so far, but like any well-written document intended to persevere or direct one’s actions for a forseeable future, I’ll leave it open for amendments.

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Christmas, Christmas Time is Here

Posted on 12/16/2011 by ericmcclanahan

So, I’ve been doing some thinking as I am wont to do while walking from point A to point B, taking the wide world in through my hyper-sensitive eyes, and I’ve come up with a New Year’s Resolution.

Declaration of Intent: I am creating a charity budget.  I have discovered that I earn more money than approximately 70% of Americans, yet I give considerably less than 1% of my annual income to charitable organizations.  I have decided to amend this injustice, and in 2012 I will create a budget specifically for donating no less than 1.5% of my annual income to charity.

It just seems right.

My other resolution is to dress up in a suit more often and sing for Meredith.

In other news, Meredith and I went to The Quiet Storm, Live last night and it was delightful.  On the bill for that night with my haphazard rankings on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being atrocious, 10 being “OMFG, that’s incredible!”): Jon B (2), H-Town (7), Surface (6), The Force MDs (3), Al B Sure (3), and Brian McKnight (5,000).  Seriously, if you get the opportunity to see Brian McKnight anytime (hehe) soon, do it!  His show is incredibly intimate and a salute to fine music, all around.  And he’s funny, too.

Christmas is next Saturday and I just have one question for the blogging community:  What the fuck should I get for my wife?  (and don’t say Keytar; I’m already considering that)

And the forum is open…

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