Hello everybody, it’s Jason, the guy who for some reason you can’t seem to get through a single day without running into. So… how’s it going? How long has it been since you’ve seen me, a couple weeks? A day? Maybe more like ten minutes? Wait—am I actually in your living room now? Weird. Anyway, no matter how long it’s been since we’ve talked I’m pretty sure you’ve heard me mention that I’m moving from Watsonville to Santa Cruz.

In fact, it’s highly likely that I’ve brought it up even when the topic of conversation has nothing to do with me. Most of our recent conversations have probably gone something like this:

         “Hi!”

         “Oh—hi, Jason.”

         “How’s it going?”

         “Alright, I guess. I’ve been worried lately, my mom’s been really sick, and we can’t afford—“

         “I’m moving to Santa Cruz!”

         You get the picture.

Anyway, I’m posting this blog as an opportunity to get the word out to you all in the hopes that one or two of you may feel charitable enough to help me with the move.

But first, let me put this move, and how important it is for me, into context.

Many of you have already been to my farm, and while it may have a great view I promise you living here is not what it’s cracked up to be. We moved up to this house with an unreasonable amount of acreage in Watsonville about eight years ago. The plan was to start a little homestead and provide most of our own food, so that we’d survive if the infrastructure ever collapsed or if humanity was mostly wiped out by something scary and not at all crazy and paranoid, like a major earthquake or an invasion of plague-carrying, undead marmots. Hey man—these things happen all the time. The point is, we were trying to learn how to do things ourselves, as opposed to relying so much on first-world, privilegey things like supermarkets, gas-powered vehicles, or actual paychecks.

So we gave it a go, raising animals, putting in a huge garden, and doing all the things homesteaders are supposed to do to at best chug along with a healthy level of self-reliance, and at the very least not die, shivering and emaciated, in a rotting barn.

But after a couple of years I began to realize something that I should have known all along, something that was probably obvious to everyone.

I cannot do any of the things.

I mean, look at me. Do I look like someone who should own a tractor? Or a chainsaw? I shouldn’t even be trusted with a hammer, for fuck’s sake, and I’m expected to whittle my own dining room table, kill and butcher animals, and, I don’t know, make toothpaste out of beeswax, thistle juice and a live duck? And not only can I not do any of these things, I never enjoyed even trying. I hated being out on the “farm.”

But now that’s all going to end. Soon I’ll be right near downtown Santa Cruz, a place where I only need to walk a few minutes in any direction to find beaches, restaurants, clubs, and soiled, lifeless bodies strewn across the sidewalk in front of my favorite olive oil store. That’s right, I can finally leave behind years of isolation, loneliness, alcoholism and despair and enter a new, more normal phase of my life where there’s just the loneliness, alcoholism and despair.

And don’t let anyone knock downtown Santa Cruz, either. It may not have the pastoral charm of the country and more crime, but at least I’m less likely to die by getting run over by my own tractor or by being eaten alive by a family of bobcats.

So here’s, finally, the point. I could use some help moving. Not just heavy things, either; there’s lots of little things too. We will be moving on May 30^th and 31^st. It’s a Thursday and Friday, but most of the actual moving will be on that first day, the 30^th. I would love it if anyone of you had any time at all to pop over and lend a hand. I figure that we’ll be around most of the day, so that if anybody wanted to help at any time there’s a good chance we’ll be there and the doors will be open.

I plan on having plenty of snacks on hand, and of course beer, but I’m sorry to say that we won’t have any mescalin or peyote this time as I finished them both, along with all the hard liquor, on Mother’s Day. If you’re around in the evening I’ll grill something, and I promise it’ll be food I bought from the supermarket and not something I murdered with a rusty tractor wheel out behind the barn while little Sarah watched, frozen with terror.

Actually, and I mean this, you don’t even have to help us move. Just come on by to say hi, see the house, and grab a bite. Or maybe you’ll just want to case it out so you and a friend can come back late at night and rob me. That’s what my aunt Marguerite always does when she visits.

So I’m talking to you Leah, Megan, Anthony N., Ariel, Michelle, Danielle, Sam, Jonah, Zach, Eve, Anthony M., Josh, and whoever else. Many of you have already seen the new place but if you need the address I can message you. If you can’t or don’t want to make it, it’s totally fine. We all know this is just a ploy by me to get people to come over. No big whoop.

Best, and thanks!

Jason

I’ve often had to wonder, as I’m sure we all have, just what kind of person I am. Am I the happy type? A fun person? Someone who always sees things in the best possible light? Or would it be better to describe myself as a negative, darker sort of person? You know the type – am I sullen? Do I brood? Sometimes even I’m not sure.

When you think about it, oftentimes the kind of person we are depends on the time of day. Find me in the late afternoon in a leafy park, for example, when the sun is shining, children are playing, and birds are doing their what-not all around me, and I’ll probably look pretty peachy. I may even be barefoot, skipping through the grass. Who knows?

Other times of the day, it turns out – maybe I’m not so chipper.

For example: when you have a job like mine, you often find yourself having to pull shifts you’re not used to, shifts that you wouldn’t call “normal.” For the past couple of months I’ve been coming in for six AM, which means waking up much earlier, in the dark, and I have to admit it brings out a different side of me. A side that, it turns out, is just the right fit, at least in terms of meeting my daily requirements of emo-type thinking.

I may seem a barrel of laughs during the day, but it’s probably true that I’m the kind of person who likes to spend a good amount of time alone in the dark, brooding silently. This could be why I prefer winter time. When you do the math – loads more darkness. In fact, I’m beginning to think that daylight is overrated. I imagine it’s because that’s where most of the people tend to hang out.

So yeah, I wouldn’t turn down a couple extra hours in the dark, particularly in the morning. There’s always nighttime, of course, but I’ve found that the PM hours are more conducive to things like rocking back and forth with your head in your hands, or standing in front of the refrigerator replaying the day’s humiliations over and over while eating a good percentage of your body weight in soft cheeses. So waking up before 4:30 AM, when I don’t have to leave the house for at least an hour, is actually much better for me. A fresh start, if you will.

The problem is all of this early-morning brooding winds up taking its toll on the old psyche. I don’t know about you, but once I get settled into a dark room at 4:30 AM with my sage green Weezer Snuggie and a hot cup of the previous night’s Avgolemono, sad and weird thoughts start to present themselves. Turns out it’s quite lonely being alone, and add darkness to the mix and there’s no telling where the mind is going to wander. Me, I tend to visualize myself in another, entirely fictional life, a life with no family whatsoever and a job doing something sad and mildly terrifying, like minding a haunted lighthouse or editing YA novels.

It doesn’t end when I leave the house, either; the drive to work in darkness is an extra half and hour of brooding. Of course in that case there’s usually musical accompaniment, as I’ve got a whole bunch of sad and weird things to pop into the CD player to help me along. There’s the Fiona Apple, Radiohead and Bright Eyes kind of stuff, but if I’m really interested in feeling lowdown it’s hard to beat Tom Waits. I’ve been partial to his record “Alice,” which I highly recommend if you’re driving to work in the morning and also happen to be wondering what it might feel like to lie bleeding to death in a rotting pumpkin patch by the light of a full moon, surrounded by faceless, laughing strangers. Just listen to “Poor Edward.” You’ll get the gist. The song “Watch her Disappear” is actually my favorite, because it manages to convey an achingly romantic and sexy sense of longing for someone unattainable while also making me want to die in a pumpkin patch.

And speaking of moons, well that’s just another thing I love about waking up so early. As it happens these last couple of months have blessed us with what seems like an endless number of freaky lunar phenomena. January alone had two Super Moons, and let me tell you – if you haven’t driven up to the hills of Santa Cruz at 5:15 in the morning with one of those babies leading the way then you really haven’t lived. I know it’s out of character for me, but I was even inspired, after a particularly moon-lit commute, to dash off a spot of poetry about the whole scene. Wanting to write poetry is of course a pretty big flaw in just about anyone’s personality, of course, and usually leads to no good, so ultimately I gave up after only one stanza. Take a look and you’ll see why:

If I could sing while I follow the moon

to work this morning, while in blackness blooms

a single crocus breaching soil

to spar with passion’s perfect foil

I’d sing, oh love, I’d sing…

Boy, would I fucking sing.

Bad poetry aside, though, I really did enjoy these solitary mornings in the quiet dark. I use the past tense here because as of this week my hours have changed, and I’m up with everyone else now and driving to work in full daylight. Yeah, I know, it’s a pretty big change for me, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. I may not be skipping through the grass, but there are people everywhere, birds singing, and lots of sun. I’m even kind of happy. It’s just…not the same.

I guess I’ll manage. At least until that job at the lighthouse opens up. Until then…

-J

As a dad, I’ve spent the better part of the last decade denying myself innumerable pleasures that I had taken for granted pre-fatherhood. “Normal” things like spending late nights out without having to pay a sitter, cooking with pepper, completing full sentences without interruption, partaking in monthly HOA-mandated rituals that involve body glitter and anesthetized marmots, and watching The Great British Baking Show in the nude while eating a quart of full-fat sour cream with my bare hands are just a few of my former hobbies that I’ve grudgingly had to live without.

Okay, so I still do that last one, but the point is, we adults with kids give up a lot. And one of the sacrifices that we tend to overlook is perhaps the most common, and obvious, and effects us daily, if not hourly.

We stop swearing at home.

I admit, ever since I was a stripling I’ve had a terrible mouth. Never in front of mixed company, mind you, but still. I was probably raised that way, if not by my parents then by the aunts, uncles, and even grandparents I spent a lot of time around. I mean, those guys worked pretty darned blue.

Of course I swore all through my teens and twenties. But then I got married, we had Sarah, and everything changed.

Sure, I still employ toe-curling profanity at the usual off-site locations such as work, in the car, and on the floor of my gym’s group shower room every day, but at home, with the exception of an example I’ll share with you in a moment – nothing. Honestly, it’s like our house is a place of purity, a hallowed edifice not to be stained or blasphemed with something as base as vulgarity. You know, like the Duomo but without the art. Of course I’ve gotten used to it, but the truth is I’m not sure I’ve ever truly come to terms with the sheer volume of pure verbal filth I must have bottled up inside of me around the house.

As alluded to in the previous paragraph I did get a glimpse of it a couple of years back. I was unfortunate enough to succumb to a debilitating bout of vertigo, an affliction that, at its nadir, found me gasping for air and sobbing on my bathroom floor one night, paralyzed with unspeakable amounts of pain and terror and experiencing what at the time I was entirely convinced was a massive stroke but what was later referred to by my doctor as something he called–rather dismissively, I thought–a “panic attack.”

Psh. Like that’s a thing.

Anyway even though I couldn’t move a single pinky finger that night without feeling like every atom in my body would explode with levels of pain akin to what I imagine the experience of belly-flopping into a thousand white-hot suns would provide, I somehow managed to alert and awaken Lizzy on the second floor (in retrospect it was probably all the screaming). She did the sporting thing and called 911, and after an excruciating ten minutes or so of indignity and agony the EMTs arrived.

I guess I was just naive, but even in my delirious state I assumed that, once I was able to convey to these life-savers through a series of gurgles and grunts that I was unable to move any bit of my body, at all, then they would get up from where I lay on floor, step away from my soon-to-be carcass and, after consulting each other briefly and tactfully out of Lizzy’s earshot, agree that it would be best that I not be moved. I mean, that seems fair, doesn’t it? The way I figured it, for them to shrug their shoulders, cast a sympathetic eye at Lizzy and respectfully tip-toe back to their idling ambulance would have been the work of only a couple of minutes. Pretty easy money, if you ask me.

But no, these EMT types tend to be the tenacious by nature. Where you and I might look upon a tightly curled up man hyperventilating on a bathroom floor with his face frozen in a silent scream and think, “Well, that’s a shame. Looks like not much can be done here. Back to Pictionary!” these guys look at it as an opportunity to act decisively. Faced with a man who wants only to not be moved, they naturally think of moving him. Strange, I know, but there it is.

So they insisted–rather curtly, I might add–that I take measures to get up off the floor. Of course I refused, but perhaps they were unable to translate my guttural wailing, or didn’t see the Morse code in my darting, terror-stricken eyes. Either way they persisted, and let me tell you that whatever it was that previously had kept me from being able to use my words eventually decided to call it a night, and I soon unleashed upon the hapless EMTs what can only be described as a curse-laden torrent of invective and abuse. I mean, I managed to conjure words that I’m not sure are even legal. Longshoremen, had there been any around, would have blushed.

Eventually and with great effort they did, somehow, get me up off the floor, through the kitchen and out the side door to the ambulance, but believe me when I say that every inch I shakily traversed was accompanied by the most terrible and foul things ever to have been spoken by someone who only hours earlier had told his eight year-old daughter a bedtime story involving kittens.

So if I learned anything that night it was that deep down within my soul is a guy who really misses his expletives. And who can blame me? It’s been a long time, darn it, and I’m beginning to think that a few choice words here and there around the little one wouldn’t be such a bad thing. What’s the worse that can happen? Is she going to start ticking off her schoolmates on the playground? Will she obstinately question her Montessori tutor’s parentage in colorful terms? Tell her piano teacher to fuck off? I highly doubt it.

And if she does? Well, so what? I swore a lot as a kid, and look where it got me.

Aw, crud.

Well, Christmas is over now, and in less than one week it looks like I’ll be able to say goodbye to 2017 and greet the New Year. I have to say, all in all, this last year has treated me remarkably well.

But before I get into that I feel that I should recap; some of you may remember that there had been published, some years ago, excerpts from my personal diary (check the archives). This was done without my consent and under the erroneous belief that I had somehow perished in either a fight with a gun-wielding quadruple-amputee, or in a fire that – according to the intro to the published diary – consumed my “home, garden, and life-sized wax figures.”

Most of this is not true. There was no fire, I am not dead, and damn it all my wax figures are not life-sized (they’re 7/8^th scale). The guy with the gun (street name: Nugget), well, that happened, but I was only maimed, not killed. Now – how the excerpts had come to be in a stranger’s hands has never been revealed to me, nor has the reason for the publication. I can only assume that some rival held a grudge. Consequently, I had no one to sue and was forced to confront the newspaper that published the excerpts with threats of legal action. But who knew the Canton, Ohio Repository had access to such big-time lawyers?

Anyway the point that I’m trying to get at is that while the story of my demise was untrue, I have to admit that the content of the diary was, in fact, written by me.

The truth: Lizzy did take Sarah and run off to the Batu archipelago with Marcos, the pool-boy (not our pool-boy, someone else’s). This life-changing event set me on a downward spiral that manifested itself in many terrible ways, not least of which was the introduction of Prancercising® into my daily routine, and the week I spent in bed in the dark, sobbing and covered in sprouted Kamut.

But, as they say, all wounds eventually heal. I did meet a woman along the bike path in Long Beach, and for a while I thought that our relationship would be a game-changer. Ultimately, though, her lengthy criminal record, lack of a home address, and inability to communicate in anything other than grunts proved a deal-breaker.

Also true: a film was made based on my novel on the migratory habits of the Black-tailed Godwit. Sadly, though, the actor C. Thomas Howell proved an ill fit for the subject matter, particularly considering the challenges of playing not one but two major roles: the heroic male lead Riz Gluant and his 4 year-old niece Dakota. There are some non-disclosure issues here, but let’s just say that after the ninth on-set meltdown the production had to be suspended. I just feel bad for the director, Dustin Diamond, who was trying in good faith to turn a new corner career-wise after so many years playing “Screech” on Saved by the Bell.

But that was years ago. Last I heard, Lizzy left Marcos and has taken Sarah to Paris, where they are both wildly successful snow-suit models and are dating the same man, a twenty-two-year-old Mime named Guy (pronounced like “Ghee”) who busks next to a dumpster behind the Fragonard Perfume Museum. They seem happy.

But back to 2017. Over the years I have become increasingly disillusioned with life in California, particularly in regards to the people there just being cool with everything and constantly saying things like “it’s all good,” and “no worries,” so last January I decided to take the leap and finally relocate to a place where I know I will be happy and where I will be accepted for who I am. Maybe you’ve heard of it – it’s an “Intentional Community” in an unincorporated patch of fallow land about 50 miles west of Tobyhanna, Delaware, populated only by Native Americans with a paralyzing fear of Bundt cakes. That they have accepted me – I mean, I love Bundt cakes! – is remarkable. It’s not much, but it’s home.

And I have, against what seemed like terrible odds, found love again. She makes acorn flour all day and wears the pelt of an albino Marmot on her head. Her name is Adsila, which I’m told means “Gathers Blossoms.” However she won’t let me touch her and calls me “Mafu-shanna,” which I’m told means “Hides Behind Bush.” Still, though, I am happy.

Professionally, I’m fine. I’ve stopped writing novels and essays and prefer to restrict my literary output to tiny, meaningful things that I scratch into the port-o-potty walls. I never get any feedback, but I, personally, think they’re pretty good.

So that’s been my year. In just a few short days I’ll be celebrating the start of 2018 with all the members of my new community. I’ve looked into it, and apparently they spend New Year’s Eve engaging in a meaningful, contemplative ritual that involves interpretive dance, chanting, homemade lotions, over-cooked noodles, and lots of male nudity. I can’t wait!

Oh, and I’m hoping they’ll let me bring my wax figures! Fingers crossed!

Happy New Year!

-J

I sometimes wonder how well many of you know me. Oh, you’re probably aware of my myriad successes in any number of fields – for example you’ve no doubt marveled at my ability to write and direct flawless, Oscar-winning films. You’ve also likely seen me on TV winning countless debates with some of politics’ heaviest hitters (George Will actually cried). If you’re lucky you’ve eaten at my four-star restaurants (the words Moules à la crème Normande and Mignonette de poulet Petit Duc ring a bell?), and if you’re really lucky you’ve seen me sell out Madison Square Garden with just a microphone, a Hyperbass Flute and some oven mitts.

And I haven’t even mentioned my parkour videos.

But do you really know me?

Here’s a bio no one has ever asked for: since I started this blog I have been a resident of California. We moved here back in 2006, just months after Sarah was born, spending seven or so years not too far from L.A.  before becoming disillusioned with the area – specifically its complete lack of natural, green habitat, my inability to get even one paycheck in the independent film industry, and the likelihood of dying in a riot. We then moved to the Central Coast, just south of Santa Cruz on Monterey Bay.

That means that we have been Californians for ten years, but before that I was a life-long resident of the Northeast, born in 1971 in a small town in north-central Massachusetts, just near the New Hampshire border. If this sounds to you like an incredibly exciting time and place in our great country’s history to be spending one’s formative years then I feel it’s my obligation to tell you something.

You are absolutely correct.

Kidding!

I grew up in Townsend, Massachusetts, about 50 miles west of Boston. Population around 9,000. It’s your typical small, leafy, and occasionally spooky New England town wherein nothing too exciting ever occurs other than the daily commute on rte. 119 to Boston, some run-of-the-mill teenage townie antics, and the occasional triple murder. My first job, at age fourteen, was for the Cemetery Department mowing grass, raking leaves, and digging graves. Average stuff.

So average, in fact, that my home town was recently the subject (that is, if you call 2011 recent) of an article in the Boston Globe that ranked Massachusetts’ towns by looking at several typical statistics – population, age, income, crime, sexual deviancy involving quadrupeds, the likelihood of being chased by hoards of high school football players wielding damp towels as weapons – and found that Townsend, more than any other town in Massachusetts, placed pretty much right in the median on just about everything.

In other words the town I grew up in is, statistically speaking, the most average town in the state.

Of course as I said I grew up in the 70’s, which, come to think of it, is a decade that can actually be called above average. That is if you’re looking at metrics like divorce rates, bad governing, soul-destroying home décor, alcohol and cigarette addiction, casseroles, and child molestation. But hey, we got to ride bikes without helmets! Let’s hear it for the seventies!

As a young stripling my elementary school was Spaulding Memorial, a large, brick 1930’s era monolith that for reasons unclear to just about everyone still to this day sports a menacing, black metal bat (the flying mammal, not the baseball thingy) atop its weathervane, looming over the children below. Does that sound sinister? Well take a look and you tell me:

Nope, not sinister at all.

My High School was North Middlesex Regional High, the population of which included the teenagers of neighboring Ashby (lots of forest, pop. 3,074) and Pepperell (the bad side of the tracks, where I learned to smoke, spit and almost have sex, pop. 11,497). I don’t really recall my teen years at NMRHS as a time in which I was particularly productive and/or successful at anything, but then again, who is (that is, besides lots of people)? As far as I can remember I wasn’t particularly popular, but nor was I unpopular. I didn’t get great grades, but I also didn’t flunk out. Didn’t do sports. I just kind of was.

You know, average.

Anyway, even though Townsend is in many ways a lovely town I left it for good once I hit eighteen, escaping to the big city of Lowell, MA for college and then, after a few years here and there, the Boston area before marrying, spawning, and then coming out West. Being a true New Englander I will always miss the Northeast, but it’s not as if I don’t get plenty of chances to get back there. In fact, I still occasionally visit family, though only when there’s a funeral and I have enough miles.

And hey, so what if it’s a literally average town? It produced me, and as the first paragraph of this post clearly outlines – and if you’ve forgotten it already I strongly recommend that you read it again, it is quite good – I’ve accomplished tons.

If that ain’t above average then I don’t know what is.