"You're Tearing Me Apart, Lisa!"

The Room is an amazing cult phenomenon that I absolutely could not avoid being swept by. What sets this film from many other “so bad, it’s good” titles is that its cult status has transformed it into a participatory movie, much like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and has become the larger factor of the hilarity pulled from watching it. From yelling insults to throwing cutlery (“Spoons!”), this celebrated disaster has my ticket for its monthly screenings at the Sunset 5. More than a year later, I still find myself pushing the envelope of my own enthusiasm.
Even hanging out with my friends in the overwhelmingly long line is always a riot, as seen here:

Revitalize the Quiescence

I'm awfully frustrated with the inability to write as of late. I've composed works here and there, only to have completion left astray. Under my belt is a collection of work waiting for me to resume, inaccessible due to technical restraints--that being said, I've made it a point to resolve the issue and finally get the gears oiled up again. So, my quest for a literary muse continues and I foresee myself reveling in loose syntax, idioms, and curious rhetoric to jump start regrettable dead time. I suppose one can only look within for such inspiration...and cease an afflictively staunch habit.

Destruction, The Joy of Rebirth

"What is this? An empty space? An empty world?
A world where nothing exists but myself?
But with only myself, I have nothing to interact with.
It's as if I'm here, but not here at all.
It's as if I'm slowly fading out of existence."

...why?

Without others to interact with, you cannot truly recognize your own image. In the act of observing others, you may find and recognize yourself. Your self image is restrained by having to observe the barriers between yourself; your self image is restrained by having to observe the barriers between yourself and others. And yet, you cannot see yourself without the presence of others. Because there are others, you can perceive yourself as an individual. If you are alone, then you will be the same without others. For if this world is only of you then there will be no difference between you and nothing.

By recognizing the differences between yourself and others, you've established your identity as yourself.

Horoscopes Under Eyelids

Most people spend their lives immersed in three modes of awareness: waking, sleeping, and dreaming. But there are many other modes that have been explored down through the ages by the pioneers of consciousness. Some of them aren't very interesting to me - like those sought out by people who use cocaine or methamphetamines, for instance - while others are states I aspire to inhabit, like lucid dreaming, deep meditation and a visceral perception of the fact that love is the fundamental law of the universe.

I need a driving curiousity to tune in to realities that are currently outside my field of vision.

BRB

"Let's do lunch," they'll say.
Reliability's on the menu
and you'll order, of course--
"Hey, that shit sounds good."
And with good faith you'll ask for it, only to have the waiter tell you,
they stopped serving it at two.
I only wish that,
after they tell you to "Heeey, call me sometime!"
and their phone number becomes a one-way service line to their voicemail--
you see them on the street, or a store.
And when you call them and see them ignore your call right in front of you,
you approach him or her and say,
"Hey, you self-righteous piece of shit!
You speak truths in blogs,
perform and model on webcams,
write love letters in text messages,
create digital memories
for a metropolis-revolving life,
yet you don't know the HTML code
to grow a pair of balls?
Or maybe you only send courtesy through MySpace messages."
These disconnected beings
wandering my city,
these kings and queens
deluded with monarchies stuck up their ass
with Louis Vuitton bags as fake as their rapport
and as empty as their promises;
but "fuck it," you say.
Just like a song gets stuck in your head,
it's a temporary plague that comes and goes;
suck the venom out and spit,
because that's all you can really do.
Well, I suppose the reason why it doesn't snow in Los Angeles
is because you're already bombarded by flakes every day.

Through The Rubble

hello
young man
you've been sitting against this wall
caressing the cracks with your thoughts
forming a bond with the tough concrete
because you say
nothing else is solid.
you looked at me
and said that
you were living the days through
tracing the slab
with a tongue birthed from
anti-perseverance
towards the clockwork and social impositions
that make fighting self-destruction
so hard.
goodbye
young man
the mold outgrown from your back
has kept you
from pulling yourself up
because we both know that
nothing is solid.

Tonight's Winning Numbers

Heading to work one morning, I happened to walk pass one of the homeless folk of Downtown, as I often do. She stood in front of the 7-11 convenient store on the corner of Olive and 7th St., hunched over and leaning on the ever-present, trademark shopping cart that accompanies most "street wanderers." She had stringy, blonde hair covering her face - only you could hardly tell through the layers of dirt caked onto it, from the scalp down. She wore a collection of clothing on her back, stacked up to the black bubble jacket on top; these were also thick with dirt, the tatters and tears showing off through the ends. I grimaced as I caught sight of her bare feet: long brown toenails that came to sharp points at each end and muddy, heavily calloused soles.

The faded blue handle bar on her cart read "Rite-Aid" and on top of the enormous pile that filled it was a big, spread-open sleeping bag that reminded me of the one I used as a kid. Maybe it covered clothes, trinkets, soda cans or more sleeping bags, but it sure didn't shelter anything that would justify what was in her hands. Bent forward, elbows on shopping cart handle, she clutched a lottery scratcher ticket in one hand, as the other feverishly swept a penny back and forth on the surface, with no restraint to slow down or stop. The top of her dirty, yellowed thumbnail was covered in silver shavings and the sides of the ticket collapsed into two creases on each side from her firm grip. Her green-brown teeth looked as if they sought blood, digging deeply into a chapped and flaking lower lip while bloodshot yet concentrated eyes darted back and forth, almost keeping up the pace of the sweeping penny.

This homeless woman, caked in dirt, was spending money on lottery scratchers - not just the single one in her hand, as suggested (upon second glance) by the crumpled losings that peeked through the plastic shopping cart frame - rather than food, a pair of sandals or even a bar of soap! Was this chance encounter a sign of our force-fed hope gone out of control? Or was this a skewed reflection of our festering greed overcoming the basic needs to get by, even when living on the streets of Los Angeles covered in shit with a Rite-Aid cart as a sole lifeline?

Whichever one it may be, all I know is that my face had just been slammed into the concrete floor of cold, raw humanity.