Jeff Phillips's Blog, page 5

The Election Day Exercise Schedule

I exercised today! Naw, naw, didn't go to the gym. But I did exercise my right to vote. Though I recognize this is only one smidgen of our duties as citizens, and that there is so much more I can be doing in my community, to continually participate in democracy. And I hope that no matter the outcome of our fevered contests, whether it's national or local, no one rolls over and plays defeatist like it’s all over. That's what pansies do, not 'Mericans. Get up and educate, respectfully persuade with your well thought out findings. Don’t blitz or relay messages you haven’t digested. That’s how propaganda gets its foot hold, tipping our emotions up and over like dominoes. Politics isn’t a football game, though it’s become its own genre in the entertainment industry, a hybrid of competitive sports and soap opera. Fascinating stuff.
If your party doesn’t win, instead of proclaiming half the nation a bunch of idiots, ask yourself if you did what you could to effectively communicate the meaning and consequences of your beliefs. 
Democracy isn’t a once a year thing when we show up at the polls. Let us get involved with our communities and get creative. Politicians are not our saviors, though their rallies draw the kind of reverence typical of a mega church. Election season is the Easter when the believers show up.
I’m just as guilty of all of the above as all of you. I am trying to be a better citizen. We can all do with a little reevaluating from time to time of the effectiveness of our citizenry, and better fend off societal rot.

Wicker Spook

Halloween is here. But spooky moments do their work on other days. In the mood of this holiday, I'd like to recount an experience left unexplained.

In 2004, I was roommates with my good friend and now Wood Sugars collaborator, Donny Rodriguez. We lived in a basement in Wicker Park; cheap rent, drafty, rat infested. On one occasion in the dead of winter we were both at a friend's party. Donny decided to leave before me, he said he was either going to his girlfriend's or to the apartment. He wasn't sure. I said okay, see ya later man. 

When I got home and unlocked the door, I couldn't open it. I double checked that I had indeed unlocked it. I had. The door handle rotated. As far as the deadbolt, I had in fact turned the key away from the door frame. I heard it click. It still wouldn't open. Thinking maybe he had returned to our apartment, I knocked. No one came to the door. I knocked on his window, to the right of the front door. No answer. I called him. It went to voice mail. Panicked, it was cold out, I threw my body against the door a few times until it gave way.

I found that there was a third lock in place. We had a metal latch similar to what you'd use to close a bathroom stall, where a bolt shaped rod dips into a hole in the door frame, and you rotate the rod up and back, clasping the thumbtack shaped handle into a gap in the metal to hold it in place.  We had never, ever used it.  A deep gouge had marked the door frame where it had ripped along after I had body checked the door in. I called out to Donny, checked in his room, he wasn't there. If he had in fact come home and locked it, he couldn't have left. We had bars lining across our windows. In the rear of the unit we had a storage room with a little door out from there to a backyard. But there was an accordion style iron grate locked via combination lock from the inside. 

Whatever locked that clasp had to have done it from the inside. And no person visible was inside. 

Later that summer I was watching a movie during a hot, humid afternoon. We didn't have air conditioning. But I felt a quick cold chill run through my body. Then the kitchen light went out. I got up and checked it out. The light switch had physically been lowered. I was able to turn it back on, it wasn't a burn out situation. 

As I mentioned, it was a rat infested shit hole. Quite a few rats had lost their lives in traps. Maybe their rodent spirits never left. Or, this Donny character we're all friends with is indeed a specter still fucking with us. 

Post Production, Pressure and a Partisan Viewing Party

We've been idle on the short film front Wood Sugars-wise so we decided to do the 72 Hour National Film Challenge. The procedure was: Friday night we were assigned a genre, a prop, a character name and a line of dialogue. Then we had the weekend to write, shoot, edit, and send our DVD entry post marked by the end of the day Monday. You'll see the particulars of our assigned components soon enough, hopefully we'll be selected in the top 15 to be hosted on their website, in which case you'll get to vote for the best. If not, we'll release it somewhere. We're proud of it. It's our most action packed piece yet. 

I wish I could tell you some crazy filmic horror story that would put us on par with Hearts of Darkness: The Making of Apocalypse Now but it was a smooth production. Actually, I don't wish that. The stress of that would not be good for something I'm going to talk about here in a minute. But ideas were flowing well Friday night in our Wood Sugars pitch/writing meeting. When we sat down to write, words and beats flowed. And Saturday we found a beautifully weird patch of woods along the Chicago river accessible by a running trail to shoot an "outskirts" scene. The Original Mother's Bar was very nice to accommodate us with use of their bar before opening, and their offices. Cast and crew members were on time, quick to learn lines, and deliver. As a result, we all had a blast, and we were able to create something cohesive without any arguments or meltdowns. We all got a little sleep too. Much credit goes to Eliaz Rodriguez, who has really set out to develop himself as a freelance videographer, so his experience organizing other shoots and pumping out concise edits in a short amount of time has grown extraordinarily. And because of his reserve in staying up late to stitch the piece together and make everyone look good, I was able to show up, write a little bit, act a little bit, and do some minimal production stuff. To really dig in and play a part in a scene without the mental balance being tipped toward other production tidbits was quite cathartic. 

The most stressful scenario for me was when we shot a train track fight sequence, we had to hop the fence and shoot along the Metra. There were of course some signs saying "No Trespassing." When a passing Metra sounded its mega horn, Donny and I were fearful of us being called into "authorities" and I kept thinking "a fine for trespassing is not what my finances need right now." But we got it done without hassle. And it's a swell sequence.

After work on Monday a co-worker and I went to an event at this space in Chicago called 1871, which is this rad place on the 12th floor of the Merchandise Mart, basically a shared office space where small digital start ups can pay a small monthly membership and have a slick work space, and access to a community of other like-minded entrepreneurial folks. We've been to some lively events there before, but with the final presidential debate and the Bears game, it was a thin crowd. There was this machine there that calculates blood pressure, body mass index, etc. So I tried it, and it told me I have High blood pressure, 153/101. When I looked it up later, I saw that my score is pretty damn close to Stage Two Hypertension. I'm realizing that maybe I need to fucking watch it. My health that is. Who knows, the machine might have been fucked up, I did have about 5 glasses of wine beforehand. But, I wouldn't be surprised if it was dead on. I do stress easy. I'm a worry wort. I let little things get to me, sweat the small stuff. 

But what did I do right after? My co-worker and I thought it would be interesting to go to the bar English where the Young Republicans of Chicago get together to watch the debates, to check it out, for shits and giggles. A good idea for a man with high blood pressure? It wasn't as rowdy as I expected, although they were quick to clap for Romney and guffaw at Obama. It had the same fervor of a football game, and ho, behold, on a TV screen right next to one casting the debate, was the Bears/Lions game. A different form of two on two. If the debate footage was turned off and the viewers kept their same reactions, it would be fitting that perhaps they were just watching the football game. I do get the gut sensation that national partisan politics is just one big fucking sporting match-up. 

There was a Black man in the corner by the pool table watching it all. He wore a full Cubs uniform, in fact I think he might some guy who does that often, that's his thing, wearing a Cubs uniform around town, I feel like I've met him at a bar before. He clapped after Obama's closing remarks. And I wanted to join him. But I didn't have the courage, not at a place like the gathering of Chicago's Young Republicans. So I winked at him, like thinking I was letting him in a little secret, that I was an Obama supporter too infiltrating this little meetup, but I don't think he saw my wink. I think he just saw me look over at him, like I was a little partisan dick shooting him a glance to stop his enthusiasm for the current administration. 

I finished my beer and left, thinking about how I might put into motion the lowering of my blood pressure.

I've begun eating oatmeal every morning, and am starting to do deep breathing exercises throughout the day. And I've stopped drinking coffee after lunch. My 5 or so cups a day might be what's egging the high score on. I've switched to tea. Update: I feel a little calmer. But I also feel more depressed.

Comotopia

Back pain caught up to me throughout the week; a combination of sitting at a desk most of the day with negligent posture, and an accumulation of items in my man bag (books, sweater, hat, Chicago Readers) weighing down on my shoulder during my commuter trot. By Friday it was a distraction. So I distracted myself with a hot shower, lathered up my back with an herbal alternative to Icy Hot, and then sat in my lazy boy recliner with my massaging heat pad I got last Christmas. It put me in a trance. I kind of sat there all catatonic, with my mouth open, just looking at things, for possibly a couple of hours. 

I then decided to fill the void in my sedated brain with hours of videos on YouTube about conspiracies surrounding The Secret Space Program. I was kind of hoping when I'd drift off to sleep that I'd get to lucid dream explore old structures on the Moon left behind by the ancients. There's this one video on YouTube called Aliens Come From Hell that showed pretty convincing footage of an Apollo Space crew exploring some Moon ruins. Supposedly top secret leaked footage. My catatonic Friday energy suspended my disbelief for the evening and so I sauntered around outside for a few minutes hoping to look at the Moon in awe and think about that place haunted by aliens but it was cloudy. 

I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore and went to bed but I didn't have these trippy Moon dreams. I think I dreamed I was in a traveling theatre troupe stopping off in my mom's town of Lexington, MI and my dream's super-objective was getting my mom to cook some very heavy feast. And I think she did, which put me into a mini coma in the dream and I didn't remember any other dreams after that.

Thought, Character, and Crises

Two big causes of economic problems seem to be rooted in: 1) lack of understanding of finance (both personal and business). 2) lack of ethics. Many lack one or the other or both. Those who lack number 2 often use it against those who lack number 1. These people are mixed in the workings of both the public sector and private sector. So to say either or knows best without acknowledging this perpetuates a back and forth war of ideology. And doesn't remedy any roots of problems. Perhaps a step toward giving future generations a leg up is to actually incorporate addressing these roots as required courses in public school. I know in my K-12 experience I was never taught anything about loans, credit, retirement savings, insurance, etc. I was lucky to learn this from my family, and through their advice when suddenly having to deal with it. Many aren't so lucky as to have family to fill in this gap. And schools may teach manners and basic citizenship, but what about an in-depth study of ethics, and situations in the history of the market place, where disregard of ethics caused serious, harmful consequences? We can try whatever quick fixes political parties want to fight for to boost the economy. But if these elements of thought and character aren't developed further, harsh crises will always be ingrained in cyclical, moody monetary swings.

Votary Nerves - released!

My latest novel, Votary Nerves , is now available. The soft launch has rolled forth. You can order it in paperback and for the Kindle . I might be biased here, but you should totally buy a copy. It's nutty, it's strange, it's personal. And it would mean a lot to me if you read it, maybe dog eared a page or two.

From Votary Nerves:

My dreams that night did not condone rest. Ever see a man with translucent skin? I did. I have dreamt of him many times before. Bright images ticked and shined through his epidermis. And he was loud. Static danced and burned my eyes and I wanted nothing to do with him. He was the terrorist I liked to call Televisor. He was apt to pin people down and force them to watch his heartbeat the images of Nagasaki in repeat. He desired to do this until everyone resigned to go live in a world built from television scraps that grew from the Earth by copper vines. I blamed the dreams on my dad for thinking it necessary to collect televisions that bulged our retinas.

I've Got Some Nerve

Some news.

The novel manuscript I've been tinkering with for 3 years now has come to completion. Votary Nerves is coming around the corner.
In 2009, while I was revising Turban Tan and prepping it for publication, I decided to do the NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) that November. So I set a little chunk of time each night to pound away at something a tad stream of conscious. I started to pre-plot and outline an idea but threw it out in favor of surprising myself.  And I feel I successfully surprised myself. The only notion I had in mind to explore was "high school" for better or worse. I had at the time realized I never wrote a story revolving around a high school aged character. Even while I was in high school, I was writing about adult characters, because I thought them more interesting. At the time I had just watched Freaks and Geeks on DVD and re-watched Twin Peaks. There was a sort of fresh recklessness I found myself drawn towards through watching high school characters get themselves into trouble. In remembering my high school days, despite the lack of actual stakes in the grand scheme of things, at that time in my life, everyday was fucking vivid. And so my interest was piqued in that sort of naivety, and a perspective infused with curiosity and a tendency towards hysteria. 
So I started writing, and soon a story emerged involving the death of the narrator's father. I myself lost my dad to cancer the summer after I graduated high school. I didn't necessarily set out to write about that, but things spewed, and a different exploration dug itself into my story. A fantasy evolved. After my dad passed away, I experienced little waves of inexplicable anxiety. But I felt I handled that period of my life with some semblance of grace and even temperament. So I thought while writing, what if I handled that anxiety with extreme resignation to my quaking nerves? Out of all of my fiction so far, this one is the most personal. It's certainly fiction, but there are autobiographical nuggets peppered in throughout, and that makes it actually pretty scary, for me, to release. But I decided it was time. The proverbial "they" say to do thing that scare you. Well, here we go.
The first draft was raw and all over the place. It took some time to reshape and fine-tune into something readable. It morphed into some other variations. I played with a section of it to perhaps try as a solo performance piece, and even played with a screenplay version. Both were helpful in developing the voice and action of the piece, but ultimately I brought it back to prose form, because I felt it was the more appropriate medium for experiencing the story from the narrator's head, especially with some of the cerebral, hallucinatory aspects I wanted to keep.
I recently wrapped edits, artwork, and formatting for this bad boy. The release is imminent. 
Notes on the release. There will be a soft launch and an official launch. The soft launch will be very, very soon. Soft meaning, you can order it in paperback and Kindle editions via the internet. The official launch will be in early 2013 and will involve distribution to independent bookshops and a big launch party followed by a little book tour here in Chicago. If that goes well, maybe I'll run around with it in different corners of America.
Stay tuned for my baby, Votary Nerves.

Poon Men

Today, athletes caught doping are left with widespread shame, and in some cases, life time banishment from competing. I don't necessarily feel sorry for them, they cheated. However, it is a game they have dedicated themselves to, and dope tainted life blood should have some sort of recourse. The story of the redeemed athlete is a highly charged one.

Let's look to the effects of space travel for a second. Space men must spend considerable time exercising lest their muscles deteriorate due to zero gravitational conditions. Sinews become strands of jelly.

If we wish to be draconian in our sporting consequences, when the days of easy space departures and arrivals are part of our infrastructure, I predict a system of reprieve and amnesty for physical short cutters in the athletic-sphere. 

In a platinum made moon, a small capsule for a scrunched body, an athlete can spend in orbit of the Earth for X amount of days, restricted from exercise, until his muscles have deteriorated. Then, when he returns to the ground, his training will be re-set. If he wishes to be a champion once again, he must re-invent his musculature.

There will be a subculture of these athletes knocked back a plethora of pegs, self made underdogs, training to get back to where they were, if possible, and beyond, if possible.

Reality TV can launch its own game system, following these disgraced competitors, these platinum moon-men, or Poon-Men, turn their sporting sins into a feat worthy of a new multi-billion dollar docu-drama genre.

Since athletes are masochists, deteriorating muscle in outer space orbit will not tickle their minds as painful. They will be tempted to cheat as to be kicked into this circuit, or better yet, paid by a sponsor to plunge into the challenge regardless, even if they were most pure in their resume of competitions.

Spectators will be glued to the handicapping process because the story of the come back kid has always been more compelling then the seeming alpha male who was born an ace at the game of his choice.  Someday, we'll have the technology to do epic things with the downfall of an athlete.

The Guts of Education

Dear politicians, 

I don't fully understand your plans for education. At least in the sense of how they're going work for the betterment of a learning environment. 

So, getting ahead?

In Chicago, 160 schools don't have libraries. Is not addressing that part of the plan to help kids meet and exceed reading standards? How do you get kids excited to explore books and foster their reading skills? Especially since there aren't any Borders around, don't use free market economics to say they can go to the store and get some books. Especially in the case of poor kids. Many don't have playgrounds for recess, or gyms. Running around and playing has been backed by psychologists as important for developing creativity. By limiting such, as well as art, music, drama. Is this how we're going to prepare the next generation of innovators? And on another note, keeping health care costs down, by allowing a lack of opportunity for physical fitness for many youths slide, will this prepare them for a healthy lifestyle, or does diabetes, heart disease and obesity not weigh down health care costs?

Back to the topic at hand. Longer hours, less pay, larger class sizes for teachers and punishing them if their students don't do well on standardized tests. Bogging teachers down, exhausting them, riddling them with fear, is this going to keep everyone sharp in the classroom? Is this going to attract the best and the brightest to make a career in the classroom, or should we take advantage of the good nature of dedicated teachers who already donate extra time outside of scheduled classes and chastise them for not doing enough? Mush mush!

I don't know...if you have information proving that these things promote academic success, do sell us on it, please. Instead of harassing teachers behind closed doors and villainizing them when they stick up for themselves. You talk about how times are tough, how we need to share in the sacrifice. Rahm Emmanuel, his school board, his CEO, his executives all have their salaries preserved and off the cutting board. 

Anyway, I'd really like to know how your education plans are going to work. It's all rhetoric with a framework of cheapening, at least as far as what you're currently showing us. No real specifics are being laid out by your campaigns, aside from an agenda of trimming and scaring teachers while waving pictures of children with puppy dog eyes. Ah, the emotional appeal, kind of a redundant tactic. Lipo-suctioning the guts out of educational resources doesn't excite me personally. Show us differently, please.

Sincerely,



Jeff Phillips

Elephant Conquest

My sophomore year of high school I felt the itching of rebellion and drifted into a subtle bad-ass stage, or I should say, attempted to promote the appearance of one. I didn't have the balls to really get in trouble, but I did little things to sprinkle my angst into the world. When the new Super Wal-Mart opened, my friends and I would go there, fill up a shopping cart with ice cream, some perishables and other items throughout the store and then just leave it in some aisle. I justified this asshole move to myself since I worked at CVS at the time and my favorite task was restocking the returned/discarded bin around, so I could zone out and not talk to people. 

I also found myself apt to doodling. I particularly enjoyed drawing big, powerful elephants. I thought it was a beautiful animal, thought it could maybe be my power animal. I would doodle these elephants using a sharpie on the cafeteria tables where I had study hall. I fantasized that if I was ever working some corporate job, the greatest rebellion would be to max out the company credit cards on the purchasing of many elephants to be delivered on the vicinity. A kind of fuck you for no specific sake, fueled by the movies that came that year with anti-corporate tones; Fight Club and American Beauty. Amped up by the Fugazi albums I was absorbing. 

I wasn't truly sure why the elephant was this power symbol to me. I could look to other cultures and their spiritual representations. Ganesh for example, the elephant headed god in Hinduism. The collective subconscious maybe. I changed my AIM screen name to RadElephant. But when my friends noticed and asked me if I was Republican because I was so into elephants, I was immediately embarrassed by my oversight. I had forgotten this beast was the symbol of the Republican party, and here I was spreading their image around thinking I was cool, thinking I had a thing of my own. And if you're not a young republican, whoa man, being young and thought of as a Republican kind of hurt. Especially if you thought you were parading anti-corporate ideals. What a fucking misunderstanding, I thought. Why'd they have to go claim that beautiful animal, man? But I wasn't rooting for the other side necessary, I was voting for Ralph Nader in my school's mock election. 

The two party system is a chess match of driven blockage, finding opportunities to push through moves. But democracy isn't, or shouldn't be a mashing board of opponents knocking down the other side's pieces. Democracy should consist of many voices, having a say, and coming to a reasonable accommodation of each other's liberties and wishes. Democracy, if it were a game board, should look more like a Chinese checkers board with all the marbles intermingled, independent in one's own pock space, multiple views competing, just as fierce, yet co-existing beside a marble a bit different from itself because it has to interact, it doesn't have huge mob of buddies to back its arrogance. I speak like a Millennial, in the gyst of "everyone is a winner" because that's what democracy is, correct? Everyone having a say? Being a participant? Shouldn't capitalism thrive off of more options? Or does plan A or B suffice for our desperation? Platforms pieced together by desperation, because previous platforms laid the groundwork for desperate situations. The longer the two party system persists, the more losers we will accumulate, players checked and placed aside, forgotten about, because the game then focuses on taking down the other's King. One side muttering "dirty, bleeding heart liberal..." and the other muttering "heartless conservative greed ball." Each piece is pressured into accepting the aspersions of their side and bouncing fiercer ones back. 

Like a football game in perpetual overtime...

Stalemate, exhausted eyes, pissy spirits that don't want to play anymore but are obliged to keep on tearing up the grass while supporters pin on them their championship dreams. 

I am a political news junky in the way one is hooked on a soap opera.  The political arena is indeed a soap opera, but with actual consequences.

But the reasonable players keep my attention and earn my enthusiasm. And there are those players not so reasonable, they become villains, but not before declaring their opponent the villain.  They're less so playing for an underdog's cause. They're playing to win for themselves, maybe because there are certain monetary stakes, reelection funds, and that obsession makes for inconsistent, sloppy moves. The idea of winning becomes too important, fantasies of knocking out the opponent is the objective at hand. It causes them to drool it excites them so damn much. Solid strategy goes out the window. I like seeing smart defense when the offense is erratic. Bill Clinton's speech at the DNC was delightful.

I'd like to see a third party called, The Reasonable Party. Strength in conviction is a virtue to a degree, it's important to stick up for what we believe is right, apathy isn't a good option either. Standing up, voicing opinions is respectable until one party becomes blinded by the full speed of their quest that they forget other's have points of view. And rather than bolster up their own cause with supporting evidence and case studies, the energy of one's conviction is spent on belittling other perspectives because they may not understand them, or realize that asking to be understood themselves may be an effective strategy, because if another side is so fervent against them too, perhaps they aren't being understood either.

The fervent dream of an elephant conquest for an elephant conquest's sake is civically nauseating. And without effectiveness, much like my rash markered etchings on cafeteria tables. The recent Tea Party rally cries reminds me of my own rebellious immaturity at age 16. Perhaps the party should go all out, max out their coffers on a parade of elephants, shitting in the streets, making a dire mess of everything, so the extremism will mellow post overdose.