Last night I get super stoned and leave the house to see an 8:45 showing of Napoleon Dynamite at 8:41. I can't believe my luck turning down the alley that the arthouse Garden Cinemas squats in back of, at exactly quarter of nine. Then reality sets in. It is fucking Disney World queues with cars. Standstill streams in every vein of the lot. Takes me but a second to realize my mistake.

Fucking Faren-fuckin-heit Nine E-fuckin-leven. Michael Fuckin Moore. Rich art fucks with pink sweaters tied around their necks and their homely wives tied around their arms. I've missed eight minutes of the movie time I find a spot, but have you seen the trailers for the film? I doubt I'll be mystified without the opening scene.

The sweaty bald guy behind the ticket glass squeezes out to tape a SOLD OUT sign to the window. Farenheit 911 is sold out, he yells to the lemmings outside. A man next to me in the sardine can lobby tells his wife, "that guy outside offered me a hundred bucks for our tickets." His wife lights up, "Really? You wanna do it?" "No, let's see it. I wanna see it," he says. And I smile on behalf of Mr. Moore. Then the guy's wife, "You know how much beer we can drink for a hundred bucks!?" And I smile on behalf of all the drunk people I know.

I walk in on Napoleon Dynamite as he boards the bus to school. He ambles to the very back seat where a kid pops up and asks, "So, what are you going to do today Napoleon?"

"WHATEVER I FLIPPIN FEEL LIKE, GOSH!" He snaps back. The whole crowd erupts and I duck into a dark corner seat. Napoleon quietly takes a He-Man action figure out of his backpack, ties a string around its neck and chucks it out the window. It bounces savagely behind the bus like an old cowboy dragged by a horse. THAT, is what Napoleon Dynamite felt like doing today. And if that's funny to you, if buck teeth, big glasses, retro-words like Flippin and Gosh are funny to you. Then Napoleon Dynamite is hilarious.

So I'm high as a bird, just enough distance between me and all the other theater attendees to feel comfortable laughing my ass off, when one of those cocksucking couples walks in. Those artsy fartsy fuckers who, even in all their artsy-fartsiness still probably don't know half the shit I do about artsy fartsy films. And I'm not even artsy fartsy. They are no doubt ill-prepared for the Bush-doc's explosive opening and I'm sure they just bought tickets to Napoleon because anything at the art house simply must be better than all that Hollywood shlock at the multiplex, Francis. They are also ill-prepared for a movie where attention spans need not apply. I try to muffle my constant laughter because they are just too close. And then finally, when the laughter of everyone else begins pounding them from all sides, they scamper out like pussies. What's going on Francis?! Why is everyone laughing at that stupid red-headed boy? I'm SCARED!

Napoleon Dynamite is funny as shit. It's also quite nostalgic for anyone who went to public schools in the last twenty years. Who hasn't hoarded food from the cafeteria to eat it later in some boring class? Who never had a Trapper Keeper? Who hasn't had a crush turn them down in a way that seems more harsh than a simple "sorry."?

"Where were you last year Napleon?"

"I TOLD YOU. I WAS IN ALASKA HUNTING WOLVERINES WITH MY UNCLE!"

And more and more and more of the same. Hysterical.

Up from my Boston Globe crossword puzzle -where for the second week in a row the majority of the few answers I got were all related to movies- I could see Cancer Mike down the street, hunched and gesticulating in front of the Cold Stone Creamery, telling someone about his cancer. Asking for money. I backed my stool up to hide it behind a big brick pillar so he wouldn't see me.

No sooner had I celebrated that tomorrow would be my first Sunday brunch off since I started, did Bob waddle out to me on the stool and say, "Ja-ruh-ME, we got a problem."

Seems Johnny, the busboy who trained me had been run off the road by some hooligans who smashed his face in with baseball bats. He was in intensive care with massive structural damage to the bones in his face. Airlifted to Yale.

How in Christ's holy name do you hit someone in the face, repeatedly, with a baseball bat?

Not twenty minutes after that phone call did the Brewhouse recieve another saying Thoma, the beloved seventy-year old dishwasher, had been mugged on a train. This is where I live apparently, the goddam jungle.

So, I'm working now. Pulling doubles all week. Guess I can't really complain, my face is still intact.

Knock wood.

I cut a swath through the Brewgirls on my way in today, smiling and Hi Darlin-ing them all as I filled my glass of ice water and curled my stool like a barbell. It was off to the parking lot where I prayed for rain. Well, really just prayed that Cancer Mike wouldn't hobble up and 'cap my head' with his 9mm. Prayed that he wouldn't show at all. I consciously left all my money at home so that when he did show I could pull my pockets out, flop them over my jeans like droopy dog ears and say sorry. No matter what sob story you wheeze into my face today doesn't change that all I've got in my pockets is lint.

My call for rain was not unfounded, I wasn't praying that The Nothing would roll over a perfect sky, tear open the sun and cry all over South Norwalk; just that the gloomy grey tease would stop sprinkling and really rain. Then I could go home.

So I thought.

The sky opened up and my smile opened up and I curled my stool and clomped inside. Only to get the runaround from Lou and the dryest of dry humor asking, "Don't you have an umbrella? What, you think it's just supposed to be sunny every day?" Then he disappeared without ever giving me any clear answer as to whether I could get the fuck out of the Brewhouse.

I find him downstairs and in a strange bonding moment we lightsaber joust like Luke and Darth with huge umbrellas. Then he hands me one, dead serious, and asks me to go back out there. So I do. Not one to complain, I'd rather the stark visual of me on a stool in a torrential downpour at the lonely end of the parking lot eat at Lou's mind until he calls me in, rather than whine like a bitch about the rain.

Then, a little help from the Heavens. Lightning. Sharp cracks of it followed by thunder only two Mississippis after. How pathetic I must look, like a sad clown under a one man tent. I've got Travis' "Why Does It Always Rain On Me?" circling my mind and the big metal tip at the top of my umbrella begging the sky for a taste of electricity. The door swings open and Lou waves me in.

VICTORY!

He asks me to wait twenty minutes and if the rain doesn't let up- fuck it.

So I find myself in the employee bathroom downstairs sitting on a broken chair reading Chuck Klosterman's, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs where he goes on a tangent about how When Harry Met Sally fucked people up. He writes...

"...It implies that two platonic acquaintances are refusing to admit that they're deeply in love with each other. When Harry Met Sally cemented the plausability of that notion, and it gave a lot of desperare people hope. It made it realistic to suspect that your best friend may be your soul mate, and it made wanting such a scenario comfortably conventional. The problem is that the Harry-met-Sally situation is almost always tragically unbalanced.. Most of the time, the two involved parties are not really "best friends." Inevitably, one of the people has been in love with the other from the first day they met, while the other person is either (a) wracked with guilt and pressure, or (b) completely oblivious to the espoused attraction. Every relationship is fundamentally a power struggle, and the individual in power is whoever likes the other person less. But When Harry Met Sally gives the powerless, unrequited lover a reason to live. When this person gets drunk and tells his buddies he's in love with a woman who only sees him as a buddy, they will say, "You're wrong. You're perfect for each other. This is just like When Harry Met Sally! I'm sure she loves you- she just doesn't realize it yet." Nora Ephron accidentally ruined a lot of lives."

I'm going to see Napoleon Dynamite now.

I saw my best good friend Christian on television today. Cooking Philly cheesteak salad with his dad. And though he didn't have that natural relationship with the camera the way I do; though the glow of him in that room probably didn't make the crew weep into their open palms -quietly, so as not to ruin the take- the way I do. He did look super pretty. Great hair great jaw.

Just leave the real magic to me brother.

Christian is in Florida and so our Netflix queue has changed drastically. Top priority went from weed watchers like Along Came Polly and Bad Santa to a hodgepodge of 70's classics like Easy Rider, Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, Badlands, The Last Picture Show, Dog Day Afternoon, Harold and Maude, etc. The myelination process in my brain must be seriously kicking right now, insulating all the nerves with fatty white matter like an electrical cord. It happens about this time in life, 22, so I read. Helps the signals zing down the nerves quicker; they say you don't really make any clear decisions until about this age and suddenly- shit -I want to watch all the movies that seemed like a box full of boredom a year or two ago.

It started with Taxi Driver. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Taxi Driver. What a phenomenal fucking picture that is. What a phenomenal fucking actor Robert DeNiro is.

So, last night I bolt home after work and start scrolling the cable guide with new eyes. Like a man zapped back from the brink of death who sees everything more vivid and beautiful. And a title that would have normally flitted by unnoticed gets caught highlighted.

Dirty Harry.

Clint Eastwood. 1971. Definately a classic. I never saw a frame of it in my whole life and still I could muster a "Do you feel lucky, punk?" impression, just from the whisper of its phenomenon. So, I bake some new potatoes, heat up some gumbo, bake myself and sit down.

My first- well, 2nd -conscious foray into the films of the 70's. The time when movies said something. Stopped being glitz and glamour and started being real; and wouldn't you know it I'm fucking digging it. Clint was a bad ass. I cracked up watching Dirty Harry chew a bite of his hotdog throughout an entire gun battle in the street. And tell me, am I the only person who sees the resemblance between Hugh Jackman now, and Clint Eastwood in his hey?






So, right around the middle, right around the thickening plot and clues leading Harry to the Scorpio killer, in walks Jimmy and George. Plastered. And wouldn't you know it they plop down on either side of me frothing with tales of the city. This is my fault of course, I made the conscious decision to watch the film in the living room rather than my bedroom. Jimmy can't even contain his smile, he lets it pop all over the place while he tells me how "boss" they were in N Y C. I say that I'm watching Dirty Harry for the first time ever and try to give Jimmy the hint by staring straight past him to the TV screen. Well, Jimmy's not big on hints. You can yell into Jimmy's face that he's already told you a particular story five times and he'll chuckle, light a cigarette and tell you again.

So, I missed the middle.

After George passes out and Jimmy clomps downstairs stoned I look up to see Scorpio paying some black man two hundred bucks for something in some seedy old building. The black guy says, "Damn, you really want two hundred bucks worth huh?" And Scorpio says, "Every penny." So I'm thinking, all right, our serial killer's got a nasty drug habit, nothing unusual there. And then he sits down, the black man very calmly tells him to relax... and then starts beating the living shit out of him. Hard, real punches right upside his face. Dull smacks and cracks and screams.

Goddam killer paid the black dude to mash him up so's he could pin it on Harry.

All in all I dug the film. I use the timeless phrase "dug" in replace of "enjoyed" to keep the theme alive. I understand the success behind it the same way I understand the Lethal Weapon movies and Die Hard. Working class bad ass. Who can't get behind that?

Like father like son. Happy father's Day Daddy-O

I can remember when the concept of not feeding strays was introduced to me. I was baffled. But mom, that cat is fucking starving. That bag-of-bones dog is super hungry. It was explained to me -as we sat the tuna and water dish on the front stoop anyway- that feeding strays makes them hang around. Makes them come back for more. Well, the concept finally makes sense. But not in the animal kingdom. Nope, not to me. Dogs and cats don't decieve, they don't take advantage of generosity, they only rarely bite the hand that feeds them. People decieve.

Cancer Mike takes advantage.

I read somewhere that one in three Americans gets cancer. And that one in four dies from it. Nothing freaks me out like a good old fashioned cancer, and I've lost people to it as most everyone has. So before you read on; before you think I'm carcinogenically insensitive, understand that I understand what a devastating disease it really is.

Also understand that even cancer, with its voracious appetite for all things human, can't even eat the deception out of some of the bodies it takes over.

I've dubbed one of my stool regulars Cancer Mike, not because it is an easy association, but because week after week, as if I've forgotten, he likes to tell me that he is, "still dying of cancer." Likes to smoke cigarettes in my personal space and expect sympathy. The first time he ever ambled up to me he seemed amicable enough; said hello shook my hand sucked one last drag off a tiny butt, and as he squished it under his shoe he said, "I got cancer. I'll be dead in a month."

That was over two months ago. And it isn't just the cancer with this guy. It's suicide attempts, his daughter died, his sister gets beat up, his girl takes his money and burns him with cigarettes. Today, his brother died yesterday. And guess what? He is still dying of cancer. One week he asked that I take down his phone number, he watched over my shoulder as I wrote the number and the name Mike into my book. "Write down 'Cancer'," he said, "So you'll remember." I told him I'd remember. How could I fucking forget. And what kind of cancer, he has never let on. Why he needs train money all the time with beer on his breath is a fucking mystery. I guess they give free beers to people with cancer. Not train tickets though.

And still, as my mother and father's son, who am I to judge? Who am I to call a stranger a liar? Call me gullible, or a pushover, but whether or not he does have cancer -and looking at him, listening to him wheeze it's certainly possible- doesn't change that I know he is homeless. I know he is a stray. And I have a history of feeding strays.

Three bucks one week. After a teary-eyed "I'm scared" and a request for a hug it was ten bucks the next week. Then five. Then seven dollars. He is a mangy dog with one exception- he knows he has sad eyes. He knows it works. Dogs just know they're hungry.

And I don't play that shit. Not for eight straight weekends anyway.

Michael Salvino is a short thin man with chronic swollen hands. Every time I shake them I feel if I squeeze too hard the tips of his fingers will pop and spray me with blood. His eyes are half open, his teeth are half gone. His face is worn and weather cracked. One Saturday, with weekend well-offs strolling the streets smiling, Mike insisted on showing me the way he used to kickbox. A forty-six year-old man chopping and kicking the air while people stared. Huffing to catch his breath when the routine was over. He's got old faded tattoos, one that he says signifies that he was in 'Nam, it looked something like a knockoff Mickey Mouse. He can't get through one self-centered sentence without stopping to ask if he's bothering me. If I mind if he talks to me. But it never feels like a question. More an insinuation with a question mark at the end. And how much chemotherapy can a person go through before they start losing their hair? He swears the chemo is killing him and still he's got thick golden locks that even I'm jealous of. Today he wanted me to help pop his dislocated shoulder back into place. Dislocated in a car crash the night before. If I am to take him at his word, God is really pissing in Cancer Mike's mouth.

That's two family deaths, one suicide attempt, countless beefs with his girlfriend, who burns him and beats him, takes his "paycheck" and -lest I forget- he found out was pregnant today, which might not even be his. There's the car crash, the dislocated shoulder, the police problems. Some kids at the bus stop socked him in the jaw for no good reason and he is still. Dying. of Cancer. All in two months.

And recently he's been getting creepier. Giving me a rosary blessed by a priest because he loves me and I "saved his life," just before he asks for train money of course. He'll hold out a hand to shake and then kiss mine when I give it to him. Then tell me he's no queer. Tonight he went to steal a hug and kissed my neck. Scratchy and stubbly and a real invasion of my space. I've done nothing but listen and give to this guy, and I'm way fucking sick of it. He knows that on Friday and Saturday nights I am chained to that goddam stool, and now I dread what was once five hours of alone time and an easy fifty bucks.

Tonight he told me he has a 9mm and he wants to cap his head. All I could think -after thinking he might come kill me on my stool- is that he could sell that gun for at least a hundred bucks.

If he ever stops coming around maybe I'll scan the weekly obituaries. Maybe I'll find his name and maybe it'll say cancer. Maybe I'll sigh, relieved. Not relieved that he was dead, just that I wasn't the victim of a clever bum these last few months. Relieved that I won't have to worry about him the next few.

There's a lot of land art up here in CT. Just huge abstract steel sculptures, curved and bent in artsy angles and jammed into the ground on the side of the road, in parks, on hilltops and in medians. From I-95 there's this one big piece of oval art that glares down from some distant mound of weeds and rocks; looks like a huge deformed Cheerio. Knobby and textured, like an old prop from Honey I Shrunk the Kids. We've seen it up there for months.

Last night I sat in the metal-lined middle of that big piece of stupid art. Had a great three-sixty view of Norwalk, great conversation with a great girl. There was wine and walking and talking all night. Goodnight.

Great night.