Around Christmas 2004 I was in Vegas with my mother in her mobile home for the holidays, just me and her and her sleeping a lot because her heart disease was slowing her down to stop, although we would not know this until a couple of months into 2005.
The day after Christmas, my mother slept and slept and slept.
I waited and then I didn’t. Decided to give myself a treat and at 8:30 A.M. I drove in her beat-up car to a casino on the Strip. I wanted a nice breakfast, or an American Breakfast, something I couldn’t get in Europe, something that would clog my heart values at least through lunch.
I went to one of of so-called classy casinos, The Bellagio, which I thought might have an upmarket breakfast the day after Christmas. I didn’t know America and its ways anymore. I was just guessing the possible.
Entering, there were less bells ringing or money tingling slot-machine sounds. Compared to other times, I could even say muted, if muted were a word that went with Vegas.
I went breakfast hunting and walked by one, two, three closed restaurants. Four, five, six closed themed mini-cafés. Where was my post-Christmas day breakfast hiding out? This was America; everything was on offer 24-hours a year. Seeking breakfast down another corridor, I spotted midway down a line of people waiting. A-ha. I walked down to checked where the end of the line went, wanting to know what kind of breakfast I could expect.
It was a compact, hole in the wall ice cream joint. The only place open for breakfast in the whole casino. People came out gripping tubs of ice cream covered in melted chocolate sauce. They sat at thin, painted white wrought-iron tables, and with large plastic spoons, they devoured their Sunday morning breakfast with a scary, steady concentration.
I left before 9 A.M. to find a Denny’s or another casino or nothing at all, I don’t remember anything else about that day. Except muted. I remember muted, though.
Archive for December, 2009
Story – One day after Christmas and ice cream
Saturday, December 26th, 2009Self-Portrait of Someone Else — novel re-issued
Saturday, December 19th, 2009Announcing the re-issue of the novel, “Self-Portrait of Someone Else”.
Chapters of the novel will be available for free download soon.
To read reviews when it first appeared (N.Y. Times, others).
Here’s a 47 second audio clip of theFirst sentences of novel Self-Portrait of Someone Else.
Free audio clip of “Case Study—Business & Identity”
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009Here’s a free audio clip of the entire chapter, “Case Study—Business & Identity” from my self-help humor book, “How to Find Yourself (or a reasonable facsimile)”, available at www.hidden-people.net.
It runs about 10 minutes. It features the author with some help from Richard Wells and Helena Snow .
Ta-da!...the link to listen to “Case Study—Business & Identity”: Business & Identity
The Role of the Anatomy in the Search for Self – excerpt from “How to Find Yourself…”
Monday, December 14th, 2009Here’s a chapter excerpt from my book, “How to Find Yourself (or a reasonable facsimile)” called The Role of the Anatomy in the Search for Self.
Hope you have .pdf installed.
Have fun: The Role of the Anatomy in the Search for Self
Favorite excerpts read from “How to Find Yourself…”
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009Yes! Actual readers reading their favorite excerpts from my humor book, “How to Find Yourself (or a reasonable facsimile)”. Listen to the best bits read out loud!
This is the last in the series. Many kind brave foolhardy friends and actors and the mainly naive gave of their time and talent for a number of videos wherein they were being wonderful. What I had hoped and planned and aimed was amusing stuff. Just to see. Anyone buying anything was a big extra. But to the people who starred & made these videos worthwhile–double cheek kisses.
I’m not big on selling. It’s why I’m where I am today. Where that is will remain undisclosed for now. But I like fooling around in a serious way. And these videos were part of this, to use a horribly fashionable word, “Process”. And I’m trying things out as I launch this publishing company. What works best, what works less. What I feel like doing, what I’m capable of doing.
Oh and that’s it for How To for now. I’ve been writing and posting a lot recently; will tomorrow, too. Things popping, but I will have some series playwriting to do between now and the beginning of 2010. Rehearsals begin in a month and I got…no, that’s for tomorrow (after this evening’s final auditions).
To the point here! Watch the video here.
Leave comments–here or YouTube–pass this around! Rate it five stars and hug me online!
Read some excerpts your own self, free of charge (!):
A case history… The False-Self-Actualization Syndrome…of a man who found himself too quickly….
It’s tough being a kid…How to Find Yourself during Adolescence…it’s all in the footnote…
This could confuse the philosophically rigid.The Moral Dilemma of Finding Yourself
A story – The woman who said Fuck You
Sunday, December 6th, 2009She’d gotten up early that morning and began the day walking up and down the stairs of the three floors of her house shouting one phrase, “Fuck you.”
She said it with vigor. “Fuck you!” She said it on every floor. Three fuck you’s, one per floor. And every one she meant. She did it again. Three floors, one phrase. Almost methodically. As though she was a business person with a To Do list, or a mad woman who had stopped taking her medication and could feel again.
She had a fuck-you for every floor of the house.
She only half-owned the house with somebody who was no longer there. So all her fuck you’s were for the house. For all the friends who said they loved her but didn’t. And for all the love spoken about but might as well have been shouted fuck you’s.
She continued going up and down the stairs, slowing a bit, getting tired, with time and redundancy. Eventually, the fuck you’s were coming out with less conviction. They were evolving from wrath to bathos.
The New Year was fast approaching and soon she knew she would be be shaking off the dust of her annual resolution. Which was, “If things don’t get better, in ten years I will kill myself.” But things were going to be different this year. She was turning over a new leaf. This year, her resolution would be, “In nine years I will kill myself.” The preface of her phrase, If things don’t get better had received its unbending answer for years. Now “in nine years” was a plain and simple resolution.
On the third floor she stopped yelling fuck you. She stopped after fuck and never got to the last you. Her decision causing an abrupt warped peace.
She went to the kitchen on the second floor to make herself some breakfast. Like a placid condemned being eating her last meal. The first of the last for the next nine years.
Laughing at a How To
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009Another week, another quick entertainment.
No Zombies this week. Just people laughing. At my book. Like good actors/friends carrying out their jobs. Video link
You can buy this book on Amazon, any Amazon, in your neck of the woods/world. Go to Amazon.dot-whatever, type in my name in the book section. It’ll pop up, along with ANOTHER book which I’ll be hitting some lucky souls over the eyeballs soon, too soon. (If that was too vague and lazy, see direct links way below on this post…got to do everything for you folks….)
Meanwhile, want to read the intro to this book? Well, here’s some. In fact, I’m going to be posting very regularly, probably every Monday (but that’s not a promise–I’m putting this together) maybe both audio and text chapter samples…so if you want to know when these are posted please CLICK THE RSS feed on my Blog page so you’ll be automatically warned, and warmed, and wonderful. (Man, organizing you readers is like herding cats, but someone’s got to do it….)
Anyway. Sample chapter to read. Start of How to Find Yourself….. …. Beginning of How to Find Yourself (or a reasonable facsimile)
Various links to Amazon & the How To book….
USA
UK
CANADA
FRANCE
GERMANY
JAPAN
(Yeah, I know, but who knows?)