Bullshit

Here’s something I stumbled across, written probably more than ten years ago. AND STILL HILARIOUS.

Dear People of Hoboken,

As one of Hoboken’s literati, I have been scanning the pages of the local papers for my name on what can only be described as an obsessive basis ever since an interview with me appeared in the local newspaper, the “Current” last March. Unfortunately, there have been no other mentions of me since then. This distresses me. Although I am sure the local Hoboken papers are not causing me this distress on purpose, it remains a fact that the Hoboken free press teased me with a week of interest in my existence and then, just when I thought they were serious, dropped me like a hot potato for the next “flavor of the week“. I think you people owe me something, especially when you consider how much money I spend in the local bars, which is a lot, unless I can convince someone else to buy me drinks. Which isn’t easy when your face isn’t on the front page of the local newspapers, dig? So we come back to the central point: how can the Good People of Hoboken help a guy out and get him some free cocktails?

I have also noted, in a not-totally-unrelated-although-it-might-seem-so-at-first matter, that Hoboken does not seem to have a Poet Laureate. This really stuns me, as most class-act municipalities and nations have one. I had to go look up who the Poet Laureate of the United States is, and it’s Billy Collins, which is startling because, when you think about it, everyone’s first reaction to that is probably “Who in the world is Billy Collins?” No relation to Phil Collins, Billy, according to the Library of Congress’ web site, “…is Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College, City University of New York, where he has taught for the past 30 years. He is also a writer-in-residence at Sarah Lawrence College and served as a Literary Lion of the New York Public Library.” Which basically translates to: A man who has not left a college campus in almost his entire life, and probably has forgotten what other human beings look like. Likely Mr. Collins peers out from his darkened lair with his fishbelly pale eyes stinging from the direct sunlight, and then he composes haunting poetry about how he hates all the Normals who mock his Phantom of the College existence, which he then mails off to the President. Who doesn’t read them, because our President can’t read.

Which brings me back to my point: I would like to be named Poet Laureate of Hoboken. There are many reasons for this. One, I would be a lot more charismatic and interesting to talk to (especially over a few gratis rounds of Killian’s Irish Red at, say, Stinky Sullivans, on you) than a freakish shadow-monster like Billy Collins. Two, I live in Hoboken and am the first person, apparently, to think of the idea. Three, I have crippling bar debts that threaten to force me into sobriety, and I could really use some sort of stipend from the government. Four, I think it would be very cool if I could introduce myself at parties by whipping out a striking business card that read, simply, JEFF SOMERS, POET LAUREATE OF HOBOKEN. Finally, I have actually written poetry, and while none of it specifically mentions Hoboken, quite a few deal with the horrors of hangovers, and that could arguably be symbolic of Hoboken. Here’s a sample Haiku:

“A DTs morning,

rats in red smoking jackets!

why do you mock me?”

I would appreciate the Good People of Hoboken‘s help in bringing the “Somers for Poet Laureate” movement to the attention of our mayor, whoever that is, and the other illuminati who run this city. It’s the least you can do after I helped you sell all those papers back in March 2001 without so much as a thank you.

It’s a Metaphor. For Me. DO YOU GET IT?

SO, here was my morning:

At ~6AM I was in bed, having an unusual dream involving a cousin I didn’t recognize who refused to leave my house. He kept slinking around and grinning and every time I told him it was time for him to leave he would smirk and saunter away. It was probably Sean Ferrell invading my dreams. Again.

At some point I realized that in my dream my doorbell was ringing. You know where this is going. My doorbell was actually ringing in real life. I woke up to find myself smothered by cats, none of whom seemed to like this new idea of me getting out of bed. Getting them to release me was like conducting negotiations with warlords in a language you don’t understand.

In my skivvies, I answered the door. It was a neighbor who’d gone out for a run and locked himself out of the house on the coldest, wettest, snowiest morning ever. Serves him right for exercising. My neighborly duty done, I went back for another hour of sleep.

HELLO I MUST BE A MORON

Upon waking, I discovered a leak in the living room, in a spot that’s been leaking no matter what we do to fix the problem, for centuries now. It is some sort of Eternal Leak, placed there by god as a fixed point in time or something that can’t be changed. It’s frustrating.

Knowing that sometimes our gutters on the roof above get frozen and this contributes to the problem, I grabbed a broom and hauled myself out the window onto our second-floor roof to do battle with the gutters. I carefully stepped around the skylight, cleaned the gutters as best I could, then turned and saw a cat about to leap through the window I’d left open.

Our cats are not wild animals. They are fat, lazy, aristocratic animals who think they can wander on the roofs in the snow for a while and somehow not get lost and freeze to death. So I panicked, and began running for the window to prevent disaster. And my feet went out from under me, and I fell backwards, right onto our skylight, which promptly cracked open like an egg. How I didn’t wind up dead on the dining room floor below remains a mystery. It might have something to do with that fixed point in time I mentioned.

SO now our skylight is wrapped in a blue tarp and I am preparing to write checks to contractors. Probably for the best. That money was just going to get me into trouble anyway.

My Next Meeting with My Agent (Artist’s Conception)

So, I had an adventure. Not much of an adventure, just something slightly more exciting than my usual evenings which are filled with liquor and muttering and bomb-making and throwing things around for the cats to chase while The Duchess demands that I watch whatever awards show is on that night. (There are now 1,356 awards shows on television. True fact.)

It’s been really cold up here for the past week. Not, you know, Kill-Me-I-Live-in-Minnesota-for-Some-Reason cold, but cold. I’d recently been featured in the local alt weekly paper (hey, read the interview here!) so my neighbors on our little cobblestone street have been offering me awkward compliments of the “Jebus we all suspected home arrest or perhaps mild brain damage and yet you have written books for money” variety, which is nice.

The Duchess and I had gone out to dinner with some friends from the block and we were sitting on the couch afterwards watching someone – Taylor Swift, Idi Amin, who knows – accept an award of some kind when I got a call from a neighbor asking if I knew anything about boilers.

“Boiler Makers? Absolutely!”

No, boilers, as in, those thingies that heat the house. The neighbor in-between us lived with her elderly mother and their boiler was stopped working and it was about seven degrees outside. I knew what this was: This was a Call to Manliness.

The Call

There is, as there is in every neighborhood, that one older man who everyone calls for help with things. I am not that man, but that man was out of town and so they called me on the slim hope that I would know what to do. So I strapped on my trousers (after locating a pair) and headed on over to my neighbor’s house, where I was greeted like a conquering hero.

Did I manage to get that boiler lit again? I sure did. It’s not rocket science. You turn the switch to PILOT, you light a match, you start thrusting the flame around until you figure out where the pilot is and pray you don’t set yourself on fire (because of course you’d been drinking a bit and so such things are entirely possible if not entirely probable and now that you think about it several of your ancestors died from setting themselves on fire when drunk), then you hold the button for thirty seconds, let go, and if the pilot stays lit then the thermocoupler is working and you turn the switch to ON at which point the flames should leap up to start, you know, boiling.

So, I was an hero. As I left, my neighbor kept saying how amazing it was that a “famous author” had just fixed her boiler, and I kept looking around to see one and then realizing she meant me. Now, when people say “alcoholic author” or “asshole author” or even “failed author” I generally know they’re referring to me. But the famous part? Not so much.

Although at least now I know that if this writing thing really doesn’t work out, I can always get into boiler repair. And finally set myself on fire while drunk just like the Ancient Somers’ that came before me.

Almost Done.

So it’s the end of the year again, that totally made up and random moment in the incomprehensible existential flood we call life where we decide that this day is an ending and this day is a beginning. Or, as I like to think about it, The Week When I Can Day Drink Every Single Day and No One Organizes an Intervention.

As a writer I must naturally write everything using words because I am told constantly that because I’m an author I must have some sort of sacred holy love for words that I’ve had since before I was fully formed. Because writers can’t just be smart assholes with a penchant for dialogue and daydreaming, we have to be Holy Fools who are constantly covered in ink and muttering story ideas to ourselves. So! I will write out a Year in Review for 2013 to put everything into context. What happened? Why? What did it all mean? You lucky ducks. Let’s take it month by month:

January: Started off with a really great dinner and some drinks, then quickly trailed off into disappointment and chores. My life was changed forever when I discovered via a re-watching of The Sting that you can’t smell Vodka on your breath and thus my Year of Drinking Dangerously Began.

February: Publish my 7th Novel, Trickster. No one bought it and the Year of Drinking Dangerously became disturbingly literal. I ate falafels. I may have battled sentient garden gnomes and saved the universe, but the evidence is sketchy and boils down to a blurry photograph that’s either me wielding energy beams against giant arachnids or me falling down a flight of stairs while holding a flashlight. Also: I made several dozen Harlem Shake videos and forgot to post any of them. Also, my amazing agent sold my 8th novel, Chum. I got the news as I was preparing to perform Daffy Duck’s trick you can only perform once, complete with Devil Costume. Which I am still wearing.

March: Annoying yellow skin tone dating back to Week of Day Drinking 2012 finally faded to a healthier pink hue. I celebrate with several rounds of Tequila Fanny Bangers and wind up back in hospital where I am kept for six weeks for experimentation due to the fact that all evidence points to me having died in 1989. Had a chip implanted that plays Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke whenever I enter a room. Am just starting to regret this.

April: Celebrating the decision to finally remove Jay Leno from our televisions, I overdo it and find myself in May.

May: Somehow the highlight of May 2013 was an Eddie Money concert in New York City that, against all odds of sanity, I attended.

June: I decide that this writing thing isn’t working out and that I need a new goal, which turns out to be to get Amanda Bynes to call me ugly. Efforts are ongoing. At some point I went to Ikea to buy some shelves and lost about six weeks of subjective time.

July: <in Ikea screaming; shoppers think I am a ghost. Google “Ikea Ghost Jersey”>

August: What began with a triumphant escape from the Ikea time warp using a DIY sonic screwdriver curdled into existential horror as I had Yet Another Birthday (YAB). Next year: No birthdays. My wife, The Duchess, begins singing songs from The Sound of Music in preparation for the Christmas season. I go slightly more mad.

September: A sweet, fat cat dies, and we fill his spot here with a demonic creature we name Homer Spit. Homer proceeds to ruin everything. He is ruining this post right now. I also find myself in Montana, of all places. It is cold and my gout acts up. GOUT. I can feel death’s icy fingers closing about me. Chum publishes and gets good reviews, but so far no dumptruck filled with gold coins (as stipulated in my contract) has arrived at the house. I hold a contest to give away copies of Chum and almost no one enters, which is … not good for my self image.

October: I went to NY Comic Con and was swallowed by the gaping, apathetic maw of pop culture. Signed a gazillion books at the Pocket booth and saw things I cannot unsee.

November: The Duchess and I celebrate one year without a hurricane turning our house into a swamp by getting pants-shittingly drunk and singing sea shanties. At some point I have a meal with author Sean Ferrell that doesn’t end with sea shanties for the first time in our shared history. It ends, however, in shame, right as scheduled.

December: I write a Year in Review post. No one reads it.

I have not actually watched Taken 2, which is the sequel to Taken and which has basically the same plot (as sequels must): Liam Neeson is a retired intelligence/black ops badass just trying to reconnect with his family who gets kidnapped by enemies and forced to break out his murder skills in order to save himself and his daughter and wife from the clutches of evil non-Americans. As a sort of subtly jingoistic “American Murder Skills ROCK!” kind of story, the original was entertaining mainly because Neeson is an unlikely but effective action hero: He’s big in a loose-limbed way but also conveys intelligence, allowing me to believe that he’s a man who knows what he’s about when it comes to instantly analyzing a room full of toughs for the best way to American Murder them all. It helps that the setting allows Neeson to always be swathed in voluminous sweaters that can hide the fact that he doesn’t have a Van Damme sort of body.

I’ve seen snatches of Taken 2 on cable these past few weeks, and I was struck not by the badassery of 60-year old Liam Neeson or the cynical way the sequel repeats the basic premise of the first film, but by how Maggie Grace runs, especially in this scene:

This clip doesn’t really give you the best view of it, but trust me: In this scene Maggie Grace is supposedly a 20-something girl in good shape who is running for her life. And Maggie Grace runs like she has an invisible bear riding on her shoulders, or like she’s secretly a 909-year old woman with two hip replacements. The complete lack of urgency and believability in the way she runs in this sequence is simply shocking: Whatever thin verisimilitude the movie had built up to this point was destroyed by the fact that the bad guys could have played a game of gin rummy while Maggie huffed and puffed her way across the rooftops and still managed to catch her. Probably as she carefully and slowwwwlllly made her way over a low wall of some sort.

Seriously, it’s like watching a training montage from an old Police Academy movie.

Now, I can accept the fact that Maggie Grace was hired for her looks rather than her athletic (or acting) skills. In the first film, where all she had to do was play “on heroin” and “in lingerie” that worked just fine. But running? Man, a few million bucks in CGI would not have been wasted in making her look like she had ever run before in her life. Like, ever.

Or, you know, go old school: Stunt double. No shame – well, yes, there is some shame in this, but it still would have helped the scenes tremendously. Because Maggie Grace runs like she is a much larger person that we just can’t see, like Jack Black looking at Gwyneth Paltrow  in Shallow Hal.