Haven't Got the Faintest I.D.

It's my last day at work. One thing I'm finding weird is parting with things I've been trained to find essential for 3 1/2 years. I just gave my i.d. pass to the HR person -- a pass I had to struggle to remember so many times.

In a minute I'll enter my week of last job numbers and then my book for recording my job numbers will go in the trash. My boss persuaded me to use a calendar for the job numbers and it organized my life amazingly. It was one of the few areas of life where I kept things in order.

Sniff!

It's just that office life trains you like a dog to function efficiently. If you aren't efficient by nature ... well, you see where I'm going with this.

On the other hand, Dr. Johnson said the only good ideas were born out of idleness.

Right on.

I'm looking forward to letting my mind drift the way it has to to let creative ideas filter in. You have to sit around a ton. You go for walks but not power walks. Wanders, more like. WIth pastries.

Admire Me

I’ve always wanted to try standup because all my life, no one has ever said, “You’re really funny! You should do standup!” and I believe in doing the opposite of whatever people tell me to do. Like ages ago, my dad told me I should look deep into my heart, figure out who I really was and then follow my heart rather than ever conforming to the crowd. And I’m like, “Fuck you, Dad! I’ll do what I want!” So now I’m this big conformist. I’ll do anything anybody else does. If someone jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge, I’ll jump off too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s really scary, and I hate it, but if other people are doing it, I’m there.

I still don’t have very many friends. I’m starting to wonder if maybe people don’t like conformists. It’s not always the best way to act, I have to admit. For job interviews, it’s not good. They go “What do you consider your strengths?” and I’m like “What do you consider your strengths? Because those are probably mine too.” Or: “What is your worst quality?” Last time I said, “Well, like you, I mispronounce a lot of words, and I’m kind of fat.” So not only do I not have many friends, I have a really hard time getting jobs.

So where does someone with low self-esteem, no job and no friends go in the world of dating? Well, if you feel horrible about yourself and you have no self-confidence, the best pool of people to look into dating is fetishists. If you answer a fetishist's personal ad, they're just so welcoming! It's not like the regular personal ads guys, the ones who want to know if you have "clearly defined goals," if you "know who you are." Agh! What if you don't know who you are, and what if your goals change constantly? Well, you should answer a pervert's ad, because that stuff will never come up. A pervert just wants you to feel comfortable so there's a chance you'll do even an approximation of his perversion. That's what I call a fun date! Shouldn't the goal of a date be to have a nice time? Because with regular Internet dates, it seems like the goal is to establish yourself as a person of worth and substance, like you're applying to a prestigious graduate school. But you're also fun! I think both poles represent impossibly high standards. I'm hopelessly depressed almost all the time. I can't in good conscience describe myself as "fun." But neither have I achieved anything. So I'm a write-off in the world of Internet dating.

But perverts will never make you feel bad about any of that. They're totally thrilled that you're planning to spend even half an hour with them! They keep thanking you for "being so open." They're really great guys, most of them, with just a few quirks that are manageable for the most part. And they're better than those "have clear goals" snobs! I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be urinated on than condescended to. But I think I'm preaching to the choir here.

You Know Something Is Happening But You Don't Know What It Is

Last night I watched Studio 60, the new show by Aaron Sorkin. The Times reviewer gave it a reverential review and I've liked Sorkin's work in the past -- well, I liked Sports Night. I didn't watch The West Wing because it seemed creepy -- like a shiny idealized reality, close to our reality but all buffed and honed into sappy perfection.

Studio 60 is about the behind-the-scenes action at a show exactly lik Saturday Night Live. If I'd thought about this premise I might have had the sense to give it a miss. Is there anything the public doesn't know about SNL at this point? The drugs, the feuds, the coups, the giant egos, blah blah blah.

The stupidest thing of all is that Studio 60 starts from the premise that the SNL-like show has become stale and insipid, which the real SNL has too. So they're going to revive it, led by the uninteresting and mono-noted Amanda Peet as the new president of "NBS." Ooo! I just realized this has some of the same starry-eyed idealism that was the formula for the enormously successful West Wing. Only, has anyone noticed something infinitely less interesting is at stake, namely the fate of Saturday Night Live?

The show is presented in the kind of suspensful, fast-moving style Sorkin has patented, and everyone runs around like something exciting is at stake. Which if you were working on the show, maybe it would feel like. But it's hard enough to watch SNL these days -- are we now going to watch a TV show about its mediocrity? Is American culture finally disappearing up its own asshole? Or did that happen a long, long time ago?

Laugh, Damn Your Eyes

I realize that lately my blog posts have been about as funny as a crutch. Here are a few of my jokes from Week #1 of my class. Laugh it up!


A priest in Amsterdam phoned in a fake bomb threat to a Madonna concert, hoping to prevent the star from re-enacting the crucifixion scene. Reached for comment, Madonna said, “If they’re going to phone in cheap fake bomb threats, I might have to resort to doing something cheap and fake myself.”

Stanford University is the latest organization to ban all gifts from pharmaceutical companies to doctors, even mugs and pens. Many gifts have already been recalled, since it was discovered that they can cause high blood pressure, renal deficiency and being a scumbag.

First Lady Laura Bush is organizing a conference to improve reading skills in the world’s most illiterate countries. Mrs. Bush said her program would address every illiterate population, except “the neighborhood kids,” i.e. the many disadvantaged children living near the White House, “because they are armed.”

Tolstoy Rules

I can't upload a picture today.

As the date for me to leave my job approaches, I'm grateful I have books like Anna Karenina to read. There's so much life on just one page of that book that it could make the most cynical and despairing person want to get up and dance.

Last night's comedy writing class was less of a debacle than last week. I was still mute and idea-less, but I was more accepting of that state. We all had had to write 25 jokes each, and we read them out loud to the class. I knew it would help me feel more like part of things to share my jokes. I didn't enjoy reading them aloud, though. I don't like the sound of my voice and I always think other people feel the same way. But even though I spoke in the strangulated whine that has dogged me since childhood, people laughed at some of my jokes. I got a small taste of the joy comedians feel when a joke "hits" or whatever.

I've been reading Moshe Feldenkrais on cross-motivations. He invented a movement therapy based on the idea that we learn a certain way of responding to stress when we're very young, and our bodies store that information and continue to react in the same way. Eventually we become prisoners of compulsions and inhibitions all stemming from childhood. The way to undo them, he says, is to retrain the body which will then communicate to the mind. Rather than talk therapy which believes the mind can let go of patterns on its own.

I find Feldenkrais's ideas very interesting. He says many people are dogged by cross-motivations, and don't realize how this is ham-stringing them. I suppose the idea isn't that far from Freud's concept of the unconscious. But to Feldenkrais, it's a matter primarily of the nervous system. Retrain your body to let go of one habitual movement or tension and your whole being will let go of one compulsion or so.

Feldenkrais says if you are clear in your motivations, you can accomplish things easily. Voltaire wrote Candide in 11 days, he points out. That's inspiring. I wonder how long it took Tolstoy to write Anna Karenina. Different people, different jobs, as David Brent would say.

Colin, We Hardly Knew Ye

I fear stardom has claimed another victim -- Colin Farell. Did anyone see him on David Letterman last night? He was in pretty rough shape. He said he'd quit drinking, but he looked bloated and blurred, as if that last hangover hadn't really passed on. He tried to rustle up his old charm but he was stumbling over words, repeating phrases and actually sounding remarkably drunk for a sober person. I wondered if he'd just switched to pills.

It's a shame because his charm is still visible, and he seems like an honest and sincere person. David Letterman asked him point blank, "Would you say you're an alcoholic?" and Colin replied in his lovely brogue, "I wouldn't be categorizing myself that way or any way. I'm a human being with many flaws." The audience applauded. It seemed so sincere. And sad. Because he seemed ready to go back to drinking at the drop of a hat. Dave said, "Does it feel like you might return to it in, say, ten years?" and Colin agreed emphatically, later amending it to "One year, Dave, let me say one year."

I'd like to say something sentimental and offensive about the Irish and drinking, and since I'm half Irish I'd like to excuse it that way, but it seems too stupid. I'm inclined to think far too much in racial stereotypes. There was a Scotsman in my comedy writing class last night and he kept coming up with funny, smart ideas and rattling them out in his darling accent without the slightest self-consciousness. I thought, They are just genetically superior, after centuries of better education or something.

Also, watching Colin Farrell, I was drinking beer myself, thinking, At least there's drinking. It was the only thing I could think of as a way to deal with the fact that I had just discovered, during 3 excruciating hours, that I have quit my job for nothing because I am not funny. There was not one thing on earth that could have kept me from drinking after that class.

Partly the problem is that I have a terrible time talking in groups of strangers. But last night in addition to shyness I found myself mentally null. I had no ideas, over several long hours during which people were supposed to throw out ideas. And most people did. They spoke up confidently, calling out idea after idea. I pondered the sluggish blankness of my brain. Was I, actually, kind of stupid? Was it just the presence of others or am I actually not a quick thinker? Maybe I'm a just a doughty scholar after all, I thought miserably, wishing I was sitting in a literature class where nothing witty was expected of me. Or is it just having anything expected of me? I always clutch under pressure. I can play tennis perfectly well until we decide to play a real game -- at that point, I start dumping everything into the net.

I had known the class would be lively and competitive in a way I'd find hard. But I still wasn't able to sit tranquilly in the presence of so much mental liveliness and detach in a non-egoistic way. Partly because my own rash investment in this life was mocking me. It began to seem almost comical to me, except that very little felt comical to me, that I had quit my job and then discovered I can't think on my feet, can't talk when other people are around, lack a normal human compass for experience (I am constantly wondering 'What are they talking about?') and don't know what's going on in the news or politics or on TV or with Paris Hilton. Not that I want to be a wisecracking jokesmith who always has a Paris Hilton zinger on the tip of her tongue. That's what was making me wonder why I had chosen this path.

But this is just a test of all the things we battle all the time. Ego, competitiveness, self-defeatism. I have to keep going in there and feeling like a dumbass. I know I do. It'll get better and if it doesn't, the whole thing is already seeming hilarious to me in itself.

For God So Loved the World

If you want to reach my cousin Marjorie, you have to call her at home –- she won’t use a cell phone. I know, but it gets better. She always answers. She’s always there. Those two facts give you some idea of what we’re dealing with here.

Marjorie is just not clued in. We were having coffee in her shabby-in-an-uncool-way neighborhood the other day and I was telling her about the Outsider Art Fair I’d just been to. It was awesome! There were all these simple, adorable dolls and rocking horses, and then stuff that just looked like bad paintings, not ‘outsider art.’ What's the difference between bad art and Outsider Art anyway, when you get down to it? I couldn’t tell you. But so I describe the art fair to Marjorie and when I’m finished she just gives me this blank look and asks, “Was it outside?”

I stare at her to see if she’s serious. Then I realize she has honestly never heard of Outsider Art.

Is it because she’s from New Jersey? But even people from New Jersey—don’t they, sometimes, pick up a newspaper?

So I’m like, no, Marjorie, Outsider Art is art by weird people, people totally outside the loop. Everybody knows that. Where have you been living, Neptune? You can make a lot of money doing this art, I’ve heard, if you’re handicapped or old or anything else that makes you totally beyond the pale. But the main thing is, it’s very hip and happening. I tell her all this and she just nods, like I’m telling her about a new TV show and she could care less because she doesn’t have a TV. Yes, you heard me.

Marjorie has always been weird. When we were teenagers she asked me if the band Fine Young Cannibals were really cannibals. I guess she didn’t pay much attention to pop music because she was in that bizarro choir, that shape note thing. Shape notes – is that a code or something? Because all notes have a shape! Whatever. She hardly had any friends, but what did she expect? She was always in these oddball groups or up in her room, making houses out of popsicle sticks. I’m sure that’s going to make people want to hang out with you!

She’s never done normal things. You know how everyone says they’re thinking of going into the Peace Corps? Well, Marjorie really did—she was in Africa for three years. How do you get a job after that? What’s your skill set, digging holes? When she got back, she didn’t have a clue. She was wearing these awful sarongs or whatever, these colored wraps, and I’m like, Marjorie? We’re on Lexington Avenue, we’re not in deepest Mali or Bali. Why don’t we go into Bloomingdales and get you some new clothes? And she’s like, “These are my clothes. I don’t need new clothes.” Maybe they brainwashed her in Africa. Because this is New York, it’s 2003, and everyone’s wearing slim-cut black flared pants and beltless trench coats. That’s what they’re wearing, I’m sorry. I don’t make the rules!

As for dating, oh God. For ages she was single and we all thought she was gay. Because you know, she’s never done anything normal in her life. But that was fine. We’re all, oh, she’s gay, that’s cool. Because being homophobic is just, forget it. Nobody’s homophobic anymore. But then she starts dating this freak. He has really long hair but not in dreads, which are cool, but in, I’m serious, braids. My sister Jillian is like, oh please don’t let her bring him to my wedding. He’ll be in the pictures! My mother is like, “I know, what a mutant! Thank God you girls are normal and not dating losers in braids.” And we all hugged. But not for that long, because that would be weird.

I think Marjorie thinks it’s fine to be the way she is but what it is is, it’s lame. If you can’t look around and figure out what’s going on, why should anyone have anything to do with you? I mean, why would anyone want to know someone who’s never heard of Outsider Art?