Upwards and onwards

One of my favorite movies is this 3-minute French short, "Perils of Love." I actually played it during my interview a few years back to get hired at the high school where I taught in Chicago. For those of you unfamiliar, it's available for watching on YouTube.

I had a dream the other night - actually a half-dream, half-awake composition, which is the best kind - that was animated in the same style. So I wrote it as a short short story, "Stairs." I was trying to invoke that animated feel, but it is a 1st draft, which of course means it is terrible.

You can read the story here.

--- Oh, and update re: the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Competition. My story for Round 1 placed in 7th Place (out of my group of 24 writers). My next story for Round 2 will be judged and its score combined with Round 1 for a total score. The Top 5 writers from each group by combined score go on to the next stage, so I'd have to do even better this time around. But either way, it's an excuse to write. And drink! That's what writers do.

Frogger That Shit

So we started with nothing, right. I mean, think about that. Some of you may have done it, some of you may not; this was my first time doing it. Look around your apartment, or house, or nerdbasement, or jail cell, what have you. Now think about it being entirely empty. The things that will be immediately apparent (as gone) will be the furniture, of course, so if I move across the country with nothing but two pieces of luggage (mostly full of turkey paninis), you think, "Oh, he has to buy new furniture."

But what about towels? What about toothbrushes? Sheets? Pillows? Underwear? Lamps? Dishes? Soap? Underwear?

In New York City, people like me don't have cars. In New York City, people like me pay 800 dollars a month plus utilities for 1/2 of an apartment in a rundown roach building in an industrial warehouse area of Queens, right, and we will fucking like it. Like a fat kid likes quiche (he likes it, he loves cake).

So you show up to a completely empty apartment and your method of transportation is the subway. Now there's 2 games going on:

Game 1: The Opportunity Cost Game. You can carry one thing home from the store today, and therefore not another thing. So what's more important tonight? Some supplies to make dinner? A pillow to rest your head on? A toothbrush to get ready for bed with? The new Jake Gyllenhaal / Michelle Monaghan thriller out on DVD so you can see the setting of Chicago AND Michelle Monaghan's amazing tongue-in-cheek and simultaneously completely sincere hotness + a box of tissues so you can clean up afterwards? I think the answer here is pretty self-evident. I needed the jumbo tissues.

Game 2: The Farmer, Fox, and Chicken Game. Jeff and I ended up at Target, because when you just need to fill a place, you go to Target. Well, naturally, you buy too much stuff (because you need everything), but how are you going to get it home? We're talking, there's a shopping cart with a room-size rug, a shower curtain, detergent, dish sets, organizer shelves, a kitchen table, some chairs, groceries to last the week, bedding, a heavy TV stand, some iced lattes, so on. We're holding onto the sides of this cart so the stuff doesn't topple like a Jenga tower.

Well the Target's on floor 9 of this like 20-story mega-mall citadel, and as soon as we check out, the cashier is like, "You know you can't take that cart out of the store, right?"

"Lol wut?"

Okay, so we have to get all this stuff out to hail a cab.

"The exit on this level only goes to the parking lot area. You would have to call a cab and tell him to meet you at this entrance and pay for his exorbitant parking fee just to pick you up?"

"Really?"

"No, they won't do that."

So we have to go down to a lower level.

"The shopping cart escalators are out of order."

"Should I go hire stereotypical Latino day laborers from in front of Home Depot and have them come carry everything down on their backs?"

"We close in five minutes."

It was like a real-life adventure game puzzle, from like Myst. I was gonna have to find the hidden heirloom tomato in the store to throw it at her manager which would distract him from the security cameras so I could pull a female saloon dancer disguise from the clothesline undetected and seduce the swashbuckling pirate by the dock into providing some new leggings for Corporal Klinger so BJ and Hawkeye could fix the M*A*S*H's liquor still. It was fucked up, is what I'm saying.

I had to apparate with it, I had no choice. Fuck the muggles.

Home is Where the Harry Says: Part 2

So it's the weekend of the Big One: Hurricane Apocalpyse - the New York Armageddon 2011, and we're on the subway back from getting rejected at the one good apartment in the city, and Jeff is like "What non-perishables should I stock up on? How much water should I store?"

And I'm like, "I have this one half of a Vitamin Water left in my fridge. I figure that's enough."

But the British anchor on CNN at the pizza place while we're having a slice that night is like, "OH MY GOD IT'S AWFUL OUT THERE. AUDREY IN MANHATTAN, ARE YOU BEING EVACUATED RIGHT NOW?"

And the reporter, against a light drizzle is like, "Er.. yeah, I mean, they told us to move further in... in Manhattan... Cause we were at the shore."

"NEW YORKERS," the anchors said, looking intensely at the camera, "GET THE HELL OUTTA THERE!"

I'm calmly calling landlord listings online trying to set up some more viewings when Old Man Bloomberg goes ahead and shuts down the entire public transportation system for the weekend. My next call is to a broker named Harry, with a New York accent and voice that make me picture a violent version of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

"THIS IS HARRY, WHO THE HELL IS THIS"

"This is Jake, um, I was calling about the apartment -"

"HOW THE HELL YOU PLAN ON GETTING HERE, JAKE"

"The train? I guess"

"YEAH IF WE GOT ANY MOTHERFUCKIN TRAINS, I'LL TELL YOU WHAT, YOU COME TOMORROW IF THERE'S ANY TRAINS AND YOU CALL UP YOUR MAYOR, TELL HIM HE'S A PIECE OF SHIT"

"Um... I can probably tell, like a comptroller or something. I don't know if I can reach the Mayor."

"HAHA I LIKE YOU JAKE. BE THERE 8:00, OR I'll KILL YOU."

Click.

When we showed up, early in the morning before the train shut-down on Saturday, he was standing in the rain, about 400 pounds with 6 teeth and a gold chain the size of a chimpanzee. It takes him about 2 hours to get up the stairs to show us the apartment.

As we're filling out applications in the back of his car, Harry says, "SO HERE'S THE DEAL. I'VE BEEN IN JAIL, MANNY THE OWNER, HE'S BEEN IN JAIL, WE'VE BEEN IN JAIL TOGETHER. BEEN PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T WANT TO PAY RENT, WE THREW HIS SHIT OUT THE WINDOW, WE THREW HIM OUT THE WINDOW. YOU'RE LATE ONE TIME, WE LOOK PAST THAT. YOU'RE LATE AGAIN, WE'LL FUCK YOU UP. IF YOU'RE LATE A LOT WE'RE GONNA KILL YOU. WE'RE GONNA KILL YOU, YOU'RE GONNA DIE. DON'T FORGET AREA CODE ON THE CONTACT NUMBER THERE ON THAT LINE, A LOT OF PEOPLE FORGET THAT."

Now this is the New York I've dreamt about.