guilty of making Tom Cruise movies, or what if Clark Kent was Gaetan Dugas?
So... yeah. It's exactly like Mark Danielewski rewrote THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE. Wait, fuck that. It's exactly like if J.G. Ballard wrote BACK TO THE FUTURE, except he decided that the whole story was a Zombie Movie and an AIDS Satire, also.
No, I'm not kidding. It is exactly like that.
It's also exactly like The INVISIBLES, or MEMENTO, or the NEW TESTAMENT, where there are parts that you forget don't make sense, where things happen solely because It Would Be Totally Rad If They Happened, and Reason Be Damned.
Needless to say, I am talking about RANT, the newest Chuck Palahniuk book. Much like CROOKED LITTLE VEIN, it is written as if you never read anything else they've written. All his tropes are on full display. Yes, one of the characters is SHOCK also one of the other characters. Yes, there is another stunt whore. Yes, there is another man in a burning wedding dress. Yes, there are even fight clubs. Yes, I rolled my eyes.
Totally repetitive isn't the right words, but it's the first that comes to mind.
Because what seperates RANT from CLV is what Palahniuk does when he comes back to his (perhaps by now poisoned) well. RANT reads like Palahniuk had finally become the writer he almost was for so long, and tried to do it over again, reinventing and subverting his own cliches. And somewhere in the process, he was beaten with many, many hammers. And then his broken brain started typing.
The result undeniably vivid, and also a complete mess. It totally changed what I thought about Palahniuk. Hell, now I don't know what to think of him at all.
People of the internet, hear me now. I am about to dispense with some deep and practical wisdom up in this piece, Confushizzus-styl33. This knowledge came hard won, so peep this:
Iffen you are engaged in an activity involving ladders, do take care not to run up and down them, especially if you have an erection. You may stub your cock on the highest rung, and go flying headfirst right over the damn thing. This is possibly eleven times more uncomfortable than it sounds, and a kabillion times funnier to watch.
This is much more dangerous than merely walking under a ladder, boner or not. OSHA should maybe put in on a sticker, or something.
I'm half-dead of sunstroke, I'm getting in screaming matches with the homeless insane, and I have my own apartment. I guess it's official: I am actually back in Vegas.
The new apartment is wee. It is a simple box, and with my meager possessions stashed away, it seems suprisingly desolate for a space so small. At a glance, it is a cell, a spartan chamber, a place of supreme and noble isolation. This impression dies when you notice the gigantic Chrome Fetish Batman Pinata in the corner. Make no mistake, children: This thing is ginourmous. It is actually taller than the girl who gave it to me. It is a monstrosity that annihilates the space, it overwhelms any sense of design or mood. No matter where on Earth it is placed, that place becomes The Room With The Chrome Fetish Batman Pinata and nothing else. There's some sort of Situationist thing happening, some sort of space-affecting-psychology type stuff, but I'll be damned if I'm going to articulate it.
INTERIOR DESIGN TANGENT: Last weekend, in a honeymoon suite on the Ghetto End of the strip: The room was completely bare except for:
1) A large mirror.
2) A jerrycan of gasoline, half full. and
3) A goddamn gigantic pile of rubble. Not old drywall, but straight up rubble.
There's a story there, and I'm not sure if I care to know what it is.
In any event, job goes well. I have developed a (not entirely unexpected) capacity for pure destruction, and an unhealthy attatchment to getting up at the ass-crack of dawn. My cat, her campaign of Unrelenting Dog Murder now over, now has nothing to occupy her time. She refuses to leave me alone, and I don't dare sit at my desk chair for fear of one of her claws-out lap-leaps that Chen Xao-Tian of the Nine Lotus Shaolin Academy would probably call the Flying Ballsnagger.
Taking off for a couple days to go hang out with Dom and Izzy and watch Baby Sister get married. I'll send more from the road.
Currently
listening
:
Powder Burns
By
The Twilight Singers
Release date: 16 May, 2006
New job working with the Maryland Parkway Mafia, and the cat is doing well. She has offically added Josh's dog to the Set Of All Things With Kickable Asses. My attempts to de-fat her are hampered because she just keeps snacking bits off the dog.
Other than that? Josh and I are Ozzy and Harriet. Our life is basically just like this:
Flikr uploader completely cornholed this shot order, so I'll wait till I get the others, then rejigger them into something that makes some sort of sense.
went off like a son of a bitch. Fun was had by all, and everyone was walking around showing off their bruises like they were Badges Of True Radness.
Which of course, they were.
I've got Heather and Adrian's pics. Imma set up a flickr site with all of the battle pics tomorrow, send yours to me via iamnotagun at the gmail dot com and I'll set em all up.
Huge thanks and hugs to absolutely everyone who showed up. You all kicked ass, and if you had half the good time I did, then we threw one hell of a party.
Special thanks to my Generals:
Seana Allen, first general to break the gender line, who braved a storm of chain-of-command-breaks and went on to lead a kickass team. Also: The other brains behind the whole shebang, without whom this never would have happened.
And Matthew Sorvillo, bantamweight miracle, who, when singled out for destruction by one of the biggest bruisers on the field, took his repeated and grievous punishment like a goddamn man. That motherfucker ate contusions and shat out victory. He's a stud.
next fight's in a few months. Hope to see you all then.
