Marc
Minus This Cold
Reading a Scooter McBoober post never fails to make me smile. I mean, seriously, Good Charlotte does blow. My roommate Ryan punches me everytime he hears me singing that ridiculous song of theirs, and the only reason I sing it is to make him mad, so it's kind of a Catch 22. But still, it's absolutely horrific. I can never figure out what that ultra-punk/mega-goth guy in the band (the guitar player) is supposed to be exactly. Goth? Punk? Alternative? Fishnets? Mohawks? Eyeliner? I think Jon Stewart said it best when he said, "Wha?!"
Scoot's got it right, too. Who gives a fuck about internet-indie-credibility. He and Zach and Matt all have it coming out of their asses, as far as I'm concerned. At least they all got to grow up in areas where independent record stores existed, and where they were able to catch on to the stuff back when it was still underground, and still new. Scoot, for fuck's sake, went to a Gauge/Cap N' Jazz/Braid show (I believe) in a basement in the Chicago suburbs at one point. Not bad for a guy who tried to push a Something Corporate cd on me last time I was at his place up north, right? Sheee-it.
But enough of that. As the title states, "Minus This Cold" I'm actually feeling pretty good these past few days. I finished a bitching paper tonight, which was only supposed to be four pages, but ended up being six. Can I get a "holla"? Sometimes, and I don't know how I do this, but I'll sit down and just start writing and writing and writing, and next I know there's a whole boatload of information from my own fingers on my computer screen, and I'm sitting back in my chair thinking, "Where the hell did that come from?" I've still not been able to figure it out.
My last critique for my creative writing class went exceptionally well the other day, too, which did nothing but brighten my week. There's nothing like the feeling you take away from thirteen strangers sitting in a room telling you just how much and exactly why they enjoyed your piece, or what they got out of whatever you decided to write about. I'll have to admit that the comments comparing me to other notable works of either fiction or movies, like TheGuyWhoOnlyKnowsHowToBeMean ***1*** comparing me to Stephen King's Thinner***2*** and someone else comparing me to Being John Malcovich and someone else saying David Foster Wallace over and over again, got a bit old. To quote: "I'm me! Nice to meet ya'!" Right?
The thing that was really shocking about all the praise, at least to me, was that I hated my piece up until that class. I was expecting to get totally ripped apart on it, and told that I was a no good hack, basically, and that I shouldn't write anything ever again. But, obviously, that's not what happened because, let's face it, I'm typing this, and you're going to read it, and that means that, for better or worse, someone, once again, encouraged me. As Scooter pointed out during our long trip to New Orleans, "Marc, you're always looking out for praise, aren't you?" Damn right, I say. Aren't we all?
***1*** This is a guy I will never figure out. He shares way too much personal information about himself. Thoughts about suicide. Thoughts about his wife, about his abusive father, about his possibly-suicidal teenaged child, about his dead dog, etc. The list just goes on and on. Finally ... FINALLY! he writes a piece in that class that I don't hate. Probably because it had something to do with his own life, instead of his other two attempts in which he landed one in the ridiculously morbid science fiction category, and the other within the cornfield murder mystery category. But this new piece, which was actually fairly well written for only being two pages long, was fairly poignant, intense, and disturbingly dark. Mostly the latter because he referred to the people in his own family, and used a personal slant on the topic, and at one point even (to me) seemed to talk about suicide. I assumed he was the main character, and brought up my thoughts in class, saying something along the lines of, "This is disturbing, especially because I saw the spectre in the mirror as, from what you've said in class, your abusive father, and the main character as you, and that's why the whole suicide image really hit home to me and frightened me so much. I hope this is only fiction, and I hope that you're okay." And, I don't know what happened exactly, but this became a turning point in our relationship. Suddenly he's my best buddy, and he's grabbing me after class and saying, "thank you" in this very true, very deep way, and I don't know what to think. This is the same guy who told me he couldn't get excited about my last story because I was an amateur who couldn't decide how old I wanted my characters to be, and even went so far as to say "I couldn't get excited about this piece if a naked woman holding a Bud Light jumped out of it". Yet, during my final piece, he's telling me how he spent hours reading it and disecting it and putting it back together, and how the form I had written it in was the absolute most perfect way to go about it. And that he wanted to marry it (It being my last piece). I just don't understand, and I don't think I'll ever want to.
***2*** which he swore, up and down, that I had to have read while writing that piece. Too bad he didn't see me close my eyes for a split second, grimace, and shake my head. Fuck Stephen King. Fuck him up his fat ass, I say. I've only read two things by him, both before I ever made it to high school -- The Eyes of the Dragon, because I was into fantasy books; and that short story, The Langoliers, because my dad told me to -- and they both sucked. I've never looked back.
Minus This Cold
Reading a Scooter McBoober post never fails to make me smile. I mean, seriously, Good Charlotte does blow. My roommate Ryan punches me everytime he hears me singing that ridiculous song of theirs, and the only reason I sing it is to make him mad, so it's kind of a Catch 22. But still, it's absolutely horrific. I can never figure out what that ultra-punk/mega-goth guy in the band (the guitar player) is supposed to be exactly. Goth? Punk? Alternative? Fishnets? Mohawks? Eyeliner? I think Jon Stewart said it best when he said, "Wha?!"
Scoot's got it right, too. Who gives a fuck about internet-indie-credibility. He and Zach and Matt all have it coming out of their asses, as far as I'm concerned. At least they all got to grow up in areas where independent record stores existed, and where they were able to catch on to the stuff back when it was still underground, and still new. Scoot, for fuck's sake, went to a Gauge/Cap N' Jazz/Braid show (I believe) in a basement in the Chicago suburbs at one point. Not bad for a guy who tried to push a Something Corporate cd on me last time I was at his place up north, right? Sheee-it.
But enough of that. As the title states, "Minus This Cold" I'm actually feeling pretty good these past few days. I finished a bitching paper tonight, which was only supposed to be four pages, but ended up being six. Can I get a "holla"? Sometimes, and I don't know how I do this, but I'll sit down and just start writing and writing and writing, and next I know there's a whole boatload of information from my own fingers on my computer screen, and I'm sitting back in my chair thinking, "Where the hell did that come from?" I've still not been able to figure it out.
My last critique for my creative writing class went exceptionally well the other day, too, which did nothing but brighten my week. There's nothing like the feeling you take away from thirteen strangers sitting in a room telling you just how much and exactly why they enjoyed your piece, or what they got out of whatever you decided to write about. I'll have to admit that the comments comparing me to other notable works of either fiction or movies, like TheGuyWhoOnlyKnowsHowToBeMean ***1*** comparing me to Stephen King's Thinner***2*** and someone else comparing me to Being John Malcovich and someone else saying David Foster Wallace over and over again, got a bit old. To quote: "I'm me! Nice to meet ya'!" Right?
The thing that was really shocking about all the praise, at least to me, was that I hated my piece up until that class. I was expecting to get totally ripped apart on it, and told that I was a no good hack, basically, and that I shouldn't write anything ever again. But, obviously, that's not what happened because, let's face it, I'm typing this, and you're going to read it, and that means that, for better or worse, someone, once again, encouraged me. As Scooter pointed out during our long trip to New Orleans, "Marc, you're always looking out for praise, aren't you?" Damn right, I say. Aren't we all?
***1*** This is a guy I will never figure out. He shares way too much personal information about himself. Thoughts about suicide. Thoughts about his wife, about his abusive father, about his possibly-suicidal teenaged child, about his dead dog, etc. The list just goes on and on. Finally ... FINALLY! he writes a piece in that class that I don't hate. Probably because it had something to do with his own life, instead of his other two attempts in which he landed one in the ridiculously morbid science fiction category, and the other within the cornfield murder mystery category. But this new piece, which was actually fairly well written for only being two pages long, was fairly poignant, intense, and disturbingly dark. Mostly the latter because he referred to the people in his own family, and used a personal slant on the topic, and at one point even (to me) seemed to talk about suicide. I assumed he was the main character, and brought up my thoughts in class, saying something along the lines of, "This is disturbing, especially because I saw the spectre in the mirror as, from what you've said in class, your abusive father, and the main character as you, and that's why the whole suicide image really hit home to me and frightened me so much. I hope this is only fiction, and I hope that you're okay." And, I don't know what happened exactly, but this became a turning point in our relationship. Suddenly he's my best buddy, and he's grabbing me after class and saying, "thank you" in this very true, very deep way, and I don't know what to think. This is the same guy who told me he couldn't get excited about my last story because I was an amateur who couldn't decide how old I wanted my characters to be, and even went so far as to say "I couldn't get excited about this piece if a naked woman holding a Bud Light jumped out of it". Yet, during my final piece, he's telling me how he spent hours reading it and disecting it and putting it back together, and how the form I had written it in was the absolute most perfect way to go about it. And that he wanted to marry it (It being my last piece). I just don't understand, and I don't think I'll ever want to.
***2*** which he swore, up and down, that I had to have read while writing that piece. Too bad he didn't see me close my eyes for a split second, grimace, and shake my head. Fuck Stephen King. Fuck him up his fat ass, I say. I've only read two things by him, both before I ever made it to high school -- The Eyes of the Dragon, because I was into fantasy books; and that short story, The Langoliers, because my dad told me to -- and they both sucked. I've never looked back.
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