El Jay

LiveJournal

2005-06-09 02:06:00
|______|
After midnight in the mall parking lot it doesn’t matter how you drive. I just cut across the lot. Why obey lines?

I’m going to aim for this Starbucks cup set on the ground. Missed. I’ll hit this next cup with that brown paper bag next to it. Wait, that’s not a bag.

- – - – - – - -

I drove over it. I hadn’t hit it, had I? I didn’t feel anything. Why was it just lying there? What the fuck was going on?

I’ll turn around.

- – - – - – - -

I turned around and saw the animal crawling away, using only its front paws. I set my headlights onto it as it settled and laid on its side.

I walked up to and stood over the kitten. Its lower half seemed flat and paralyzed. It was moving its paws. Its head was moving, but it couldn’t lift it.

I sat down next to it. Its breathing was definitely restricted. I noticed that its claws were extended, and it was clawing at the air. Just fighting to stay alive.

It looked at me. I noticed the blood coming from its mouth. Was this its ninth life?

- – - – - – - -

There aren’t any animal hospitals open. I’ll be paying through the teeth for this. There’s no collar on it. It’s just a stray. Its breathing got more shallow.

I started petting it. I just wanted to let it know that not everything is bad in the end. It was at least a month old.

It meowed. I kept petting it. Something would surge through it and make its head jerk around, but I kept petting. It purred.

Then, when I least expected, it quit breathing.

In Living Color

Damon Wayans and David Alan Grier (interchangeable)

(image via laughyourspleenout)

If I had known the Cha Cha Lounge sold In Living Color trading cards I would have shown up with my rainmaker bills.

I can’t hardly recall the important political and social events that shaped 1990-1994 (I was 5,6,7, years old you get it you get it) but I can remember being obsessed with the In Living Color characters Homie the Clown and Fire Marshall Bill.  I wasn’t supposed to be awake at 11PM on Sundays.  Or did it air on Fridays?  Not being allowed to stay up late meant I had to hide the fact that I watched it by closing the room door and lowering the volume. It also meant I had to figure out what the racier/racial jokes meant on my own… and that I couldn’t videotape the show.

I wore out a lot of VHS players and my parents wasted a lot of money when I came along (I’m 1 of 5).  Music videos, commercials, Liquid Television, 120 Minutes were all programs I recorded with permission.  I shamelessly loved MTV programs.

Regarding In Living Color though, I had one shot to memorize catchphrases and mannerisms.  I had to pay attention when watching so I could perform them on the elementary playground the next week.  My older brothers and sister encouraged me to act out my Vera DeMilo impressions for their own personal amusement.

My sister (who has a good 20 years on me) fondly remembers that whenever it aired, everyone in her apartment complex would have their windows/doors open be watching.  My sister painted me a portrait of what it was like to watch, nay, PARTICIPATE in pop culture. Here’s what she remembers:

Sunday night, no wait…I think it was like Friday!  Heck, I really can’t remember.  BUT, yes you are sooooo correct, it was totally funny to hear the echos in the apartment complex.  I swear the whole place was totally cracking up!  Guess, I lived in the ghetto near LAX!  Okay, we lived in Westchester at the Belford Apts., 2nd floor and 2nd apt to the corner where it turned to the right.  So the apts. continued on our left (if standing at door looking out) and then one apt. to our right then there was a little stairwell, then the apts continued into the next apt bldg., but there was an opening and trees in front of our apt and there was a pool that we could see from our bdrm window…

I gift her a(n) In Living Color DVD set for Christmas every year.

Stay Puft, homie

so wrong it's right

This is my friend Danny’s tattoo.  He is better than you.

It's all about the Jeffersons, baby.

2010

Handwriting sample

 

Dear,

see back of photograph

Little parts of me are leaving and hurting and healing over and becoming something else, becoming a stronger part of me, memories forever etched into my soul, moments reenacted for eternity, and tremendous pride swelling throughout my spirit.

• I hope you never smoke that cigarette, Mike.
• I still listen to that tape.
• Yes, I was excited for Conan O’Brien.

Gnarly brah

Whenever I think about the impossibility of physics and the multiverse and string theory and consciousness and other such things that my pitiful uneducated human brain made of meat can’t possibly comprehend, I remember that I’m stuck in the Universe where I co-exist with Narwhals.