Jeff Phillips's Blog, page 9

Marshmallow-y

Tonight I will be reading at You Me Them Everybody's 8x8 at The Hungry Brain. 
It's supposed to snow tonight, but I still hope a lot of people come out. Events that still get a good turnout despite inclement weather are some of the warmest, communal get-togethers. Forgive the cheese, there is some sort of magic in those flakes hitting your head, not holding you back, you got a reading to go see damnit! I've noticed myself grow cheesier as a person in humor and just general conduct. And I'm okay with that. I'm nearing my 30s and will probably be a dad in the next 10 years. My personality is not that of a rugged, intense dude. I'm a somewhat marshmallow-y fellow. 


I'm reading two new short stories. In one of them, a character drops the "n" word. I'm somewhat nervous about dropping the "n" word in a public place. I am indeed white, like a marshmallow. It may be rather jarring, and goofy being flung from my mouth.  We'll see how it goes.

A Taunt to the Rygodancish

To the leader of the Rygodancish forces,
I do not address you by name, because (by time I write thisand send this via foot page to rush off to our messenger pigeons that I am sureyou would shoot and waste your bullets on) you will probably have removed yourcurrent general for another scandal of gay misconduct. I cannot keep up withyour shifts in leadership due to poor appointment choices to begin with. Alittle advice, do your research and learn how to read people. I can send yousome book recommendations, but I understand this letter will be enough of areading challenge. I avoided using big words. Just sound it out if you have to.
Anyway, I originally wrote this letter in blood, for it is awar letter. But the rain storm that came out of nowhere bitched up and bled thebloody language etchings into a pink sheet of mulch. So from memory I had toretype the ranting of my blood lust and put them on digital ink instead. Therain storm also seemed to bring on a form of bird pneumonia which fucked withmy coop of messenger pigeons hidden in the mountains of Anguish Bugging. I haveno problem telling you of their whereabouts now. Go take a look! At theirrotting carcasses and puny bones! It is but an omen of the devastation I can'twait to pop down upon you. The best way to deliver this to you will be throughan anonymous tweet account, so search hash tag losing and be sure to refreshbecause there might be things I want to add along the way.
I wrote this letter because I like to lay down my intentionsfor all to see, even the opposition, your ugly mug. I have been incrediblymoody lately because my government privatized health insurance once again aftera great transition into Papa Kako Care but then decided one year into the programthat it couldn't afford it any longer in face of a looming new budget deficitcreated by the expense of the war I waged against you. So, my therapy is nolonger covered, nor my message therapy, so these knots in my shoulders aremaking me a pissed off war monger and I am craving the devastation of yourmilitary. I want it to be a sickening row. I want to skull fuck your men andfeed them to my new messenger pigeons whenever I get around to perusing the petstore and falling in love with a dirty little bird that I just have to takehome. You might not know this, but I have feelings. Not for you and your raceof pallid flat faced back-deck monkeys, but for little animals that don't haveobnoxious sayings, unlike your peoples and their unrelenting need to reinventpopular mumbo jumbo. Really this war is about inspiring the Rygodancish to shutthe fuck up. And to devastate your currency so 3% of the Papa Kako Partyshareholders can enjoy the surge in the share prices of our new PeaPashcurrency. It's complicated, but the old currency is backed by shares in yourRygoFilet currency, and by crashing it, the PeaPash currency transition will bepushed forward due to urgent necessity.
So, in short, I want to thank you in advance for taking awhooping so I can be the war hero who brings economic stability to the NewRepublic of Papa Kako. May hell hath appropriate accommodations for your thickskull. I hope they drain your t-cells and marrow and feed them to the souls ofmy dead messenger pigeons. And I hope you get to watch. And I hope they've beenfed very well, so they eat slowly. And I hope in hell birds have the ability tolaugh. Cackle even! Cackle in your thick, flat, probably pock marked face(because stereotypically the Rygodancish have bad acne in their teens, we knowhow terrible you looked when you lost your virginity).
I hope it rains blood when we hit the battle fields, in aseries of run down industrial parks that will create the right creepy mood. Please@tweet me some incantations I can use to invoke the demons to make the rainblood wish a reality. I know your people are lazy witches. I once read inNational Geographic an article about a Rygodancish girl who cast spells to gether chores done. And we all know you guys are all the same. And don't be shyabout tweeting this to me, for if it does rain blood, the blood will help smearand bring some color to your soldiers pallid skin, so they will at least diegood looking. The only way to die with honor is to not look completely buttugly when you die. I can't wait! I can't wait! I can't wait! I have severalfashion designers on hold to dress your corpses for our little ghoulish beautypageant we will host the day after your slaughter, which incidentally will beAll Hallows Eve. HAHAHAHAHAH!
With no regard for you as a person,
Colonel Fat Wrist the III
P.S. If things should not turn out to my advantage andlong standing wishes, and you somehow do wind up the victor, which is a fatchance in anorexic hell, please also accept this letter as an apology, and goeasy on us if we survive in any capacity to become residents at your smellyprison camps. In fact, you best treat me and my troops as one would be treatedat a weekend spa retreat, or I will kill myself and my ghost will be aperpetual cold tornado in whatever bedroom you occupy for the remainder of yourstupid days as a little worm turd.
May the Good Lord bless you and fuck you. 

Little Pleasures

Id. Gratification. The pleasure principle. 


No matter one's beliefs on the purpose of life, pleasure is at least a pretty damn important additive. It's important to give into temptation every now and then.


I took a walk in the bitter cold then came inside and took a hot shower. The expansion of my circulation melted my interior with glee.


Mexican music playing from the next door neighbors. Made me think of summer, of family. 


Last night I got a good beer buzz going and watched an assundry of music videos on YouTube. This was after another solid Wood Sugars writer meeting. We're getting on those more regularly now so can keep developing new live sketches and new short films. 


Today I did more edits on my novel manuscript. I spent a good while on it and my brain felt a bit sapped after so I played Sonic Colors on Wii and then decided to walk to Walgreens to get cookie dough. Again, giving into temptation. I hope scientists develop a cure for diabetes. My sweet tooth is a good salesman. 


I sat here for a good few minutes trying to think up a good poignant post but this is the best splattering of wisdom I could come up with for now. I have been writing a shit ton though. That's where my brain has been spilling its juice. 


In a little over a week, Monday Jan 23rd I will be reading at the Hungry Brain in Chicago in the 8x8 show. You should come. We can drink IPAs together. 

Inflatable Black Matter

I had a nightmare in the classic sense last night. In my dream I had 8 kids, this wasn't necessarily the nightmare part. We lived on a farm and they went missing one evening. My neighbor farmer noticed a strange lurking figure in the stalks at night and researched him to be something of a diabolical wisp of black matter, inflating what looks to be a big snow suit made for a giant. I tried to puncture his suit with a shot gun but he was not an easy beast to aim at. He returned my kids to me so I thought we were all good, but in reality he had hypnotized my kids to hold me down at a certain point late at night so he could chew my face off. They tried this but I wiggled free and blew him apart with a shot gun after quite a struggle. I had to shake my kids to break the spell of this thing. When they all came to and apologized, we barbequed sausages for breakfast.


Somebody & Me invited us Wood Sugars onto their podcast last so we went a recorded that. It was indeed a blast, and we had such a lively conversation and swell improvised sketches that their may be material for two of their episodes. Pat and Rob of Somebody & Me are great guys and I hope we get to riff more in future. 


I took a shitload of valerian root last night along with melatonin. Usually parking is very easy to find on my street. But not last night, and I got stuck by someone trying to park that was obviously drunk by evidence of the ineffective angles  they kept trying to park at, and repeated, slow, sloppy attempts. My impatience had already started to get triggered on the way, getting stuck in clusters of cabbies trying to solicit drunk bar exiters. At one point I stopped to let some people jay-walking finish crossing the street, as they were standing in the middle of the road. They continued to walk slower than a turtle after a stroke and cars behind me honked. I can have loose fuse when it comes to driving in the city, and last night was no exception, I felt fired up! I was so fired up that I punched the seat next to me.  I found parking a few blocks away after circling some, and I knew I wouldn't be able to fall asleep for some time without the aid of something, preferably not beer as I was looking forward to a night not of drunk sleep. And hence the shitload of valerian root, and the vivid, angry dreams it gave me. 

Displays of Passive Aggression

We've been developing a new approach in the Wood Sugars Comedy group as to create an efficient and active process for writing, shooting, editing, and releasing a ton more short films in 2012.  We'll be meeting late into tonight to hash out some new ideas, riffing, and getting ball the rolling on these. 

Here is a recent one we've released based on one of our live sketches we did throughout our summer "Freak Show" format. We added a new character element to it. Please go nuts watching The Passive Aggressive Panic Attack. 




The passive aggressive concept led me down a memory lane to the time I lived in a storefront, The Manor, in Rogers Park. We had a continuous issue with people and dog's both peeing on my door. I'd be in there rehearsing with my theatre company and we'd hear someone walk up and unzip and piss would trickle down from under the door. Quickly I'd throw something, a roll of gorilla tape, or whatever was near at the door to scare them off and we'd give chase to the door, throw it open and they'd be out of sight. I hope I gave them a panic attack. 


One morning while my brother was visiting we left out the front to go get some breakfast. Thick dog shit clung to the front corner of the door on the outside. It took a lot of elbow grease to get it clean. And some gagging. I posted the following note to try to put an end to the pissing/shitting epidemic.  My brother took this picture of me. He was quite proud of me taking a stand.



Not the best photo, all I got though, the sign reads something along the lines of:Due to assholes and their dogs pissing and shitting on my door, SURVEILLANCE has been installed and police are on call and ready. And for those who still feel the urge to unzip and aim, scissors will also be ready.
It's a touch more on the aggressive/aggressive side than passive aggressive. I got a call from my landlord a few days later asking me to please take it down. 

The Mad Moon Dancing

The following piece appeared in the first issue of XIII Pocket's Seeding Meat. I believe it has all been sold out, printed back in 2008 and only sold via gallery events, theatre shows, etc., but I thought I'd share it here as it recounts a strange encounter I had on New Year's Eve back when I was 8 years old. It's semi autobiographical. If you want a copy of any of the old Seeding Meats hit me up, I may have a few copies leftover on my shelf. I also made a movie when I was 15 of the same title, The Mad Moon Dancing, this was 1997-ish? It was about a mental patient who has hallucinations of the moon coming down and eating him, leading to an escape/chase scene. I did some fairly wild special effects using a sheet of plexiglass to reflect an illuminated moon I made by painting craters on a glass orb normally used to encase overhead lights. It premiered as a finalist at the Maine Student Film Festival as part of MIFF way back. It survives on a VHS tape. If I ever get around to converting it to digital I'll post it here for shits and giggles. Anyway, elements from that little movie poked through in the following short story. 


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THE MAD MOON DANCING

By JeffPhillips Starry eyed dissonance sprang from histwitching, sweaty lids. The child was fast asleep for some time. Drifting intoa slumber well before the stroke of midnight, he missed the ball, the potential kiss of his neighborhood crush.Downstairs, the party still throbbed, experiencing the behavior of wilddrunkards become of his parents and their pals. Such a party was not his scene,yet.Nightmarish visions snatched apart hisREM sleep. A black and white mind movie jarred a haunt. Sleeping in an old woodhouse, the large white/silver disk of the moon's face turned to a rabid,predatory persona and crept up the front steps and loomed on the porch. Peepingin, the moon's eyes sized him up and licked its dusty lips. Petrified,paralyzed, magnetized by a chilly bed.  The front porch quickly rotted outfrom under the touch of the fleshy moon sand. The house crumbled like cardsmade from salt.  The moon sand sprayed into the child's eyes, furthertightening him with paralysis. With the old house down for the count, the childon the bed paled in weight to the gigantic, rabid, predatory moon which drooledhigh above the child. Each drip of saliva knocked the child in the face androughed him up. Lungs drowning. Eyes stinging and cloudy, the moon pounced.Moon teeth seized the child's head, ripped it from the neck. And the child'sconsciousness bounced back from the surreal to a sweaty, pulse heavy reality.Relieved, shocked, the child picked himself up and traded pajamas for corduroy.He emerged from his room, recovering from the horror of having been eaten aliveby the moon in some alternate, brain electric expanse. He peered down stairs from the balcony,and witnessed his father dancing a strange, baboon-esque jig. His mother laughedand spilled bloody mary mix on the man, Mr. Handraddy's lap. The child snuckhis way through the crowd of neighbors and parental friends who laughed andslapped him on the back, jesting with the boy for being up past his bed time.He snuck his way to the mud room, and fished for his boots and coat fromamongst the sea of others. Outdoors, the child found fresh air andfog. A chilly breeze rocked the trees and it looked fitting to the beat of themusic blast from the house he left behind. He looked up to the sky and foundthe moon hidden by clouds. At first relieved by its absence, a fear crept backthat it might still be watching, hunting. The street lay silent. His thoughts wentsoft with the peace of it for sometime. But soon thoughts and reverberated imagesfrom the day emerged in flash form. He remembered his mother chopping carrotsfor the dip, in the kitchen, listening to public radio. A news cast touchedupon the announcement of a man who escaped from the loony bin in theircounty.  The quiet streets and apparent vacancy did not last in itsprojection of peace with the alarming bulletin that rested all evening in theback of his mind. The moon in man form escaped the tests and attempted soothinganalysis behind white, sterile, padded walls to stalk the streets of this sorrycity. Just the child and a loose man inhabited the outer landscape. The restwere engaged with parties and winding down New Year's celebrations. The imageof loony bins reverberated a deep, scarring scratch in the child's perspective.Once his older brother told him of a time he and his pals trespassed into anabandoned nut house deep in the thick woods.  A hollow, creepy building.Then sounds, footsteps rustling. When one pal felt the grip of a hand grab athis ankle they darted. Racing to the sanctuary of a car, in the overhead lightthey found themselves covered in bloody scratches and finger prints in the wetblood. Overwhelmed and on the brink of wickedtears, the child was on the verge of steering back home to the party, desiringan exit to the safe watch of friends and neighbors. In the distance a figurecame bounding and skipping in the spirit of his prior dream. The child wasagain paralyzed, as though moon sand became a vapor with the fog, andpenetrated his eyes. Silent, barely breathing, the figure drifted closer andcloser. As it became more visible apart from the fog, what stood a shortdistance away from the child was a man in the flesh wearing only a diaper. Almost laughable, the child blurted out,"Its baby New Year!"The fellow approached and greeted thechild. One hand held something wrapped in tin foil. The other extended a handshake to the child. "Happy New Year," he wished. The man gazed at the child for a moment,then spoke again:"Want some salami?"Not interested, the child shook his headwith the gesture of no."Want to smell it?"The strange diapered fellow did not waitfor an answer, but went forward with peeling apart the tin foil to wield athick wedge of spiced meat. He poked it under the child's olfactory organ. The child shrunk from the encounter, deep, disappearing into heavy fogand lived on, untouched. 

You Can't Control the Chipping Sometimes

I decided to do all of my Christmas shopping at local Chicago businesses. And I did, except a couple of items at a Barnes & Nobel (as some of the small local booksellers didn't have the intended items) but I still feel good about supporting a book store, period, in these times. Among others were; Eclecticity, Bookcellar, & Marbles. I found some gems in Marbles. I could spend a fortune in Marbles trying to get smart. Soothing classical music played, which studies have shown is good for the brain. An all around brain booster, that place. I spent a good chunk on gas to hop around town, so what didn't go to Amazon.com went to Shell. 


My girlfriend and I left for Minnesota Saturday morning, trying something different. Instead of leaving Friday night after work, like we usually do, getting stuck in both rush hour and jams of others leaving town, we took naps after work and struck out at 2am. I couldn't fall asleep for the life of me, despite a bath. For some reason thoughts of various birthday parties popped into my mind, and I couldn't remember for the life of me what I did for my 27th birthday. And it bothered me because I started to feel like my memory is getting fucked up and I thought about spending more money at Marbles to turn that around. Then I started waxing nostalgic on the interior. See, I grew up in Maine from age 10 to 19. My mom has since moved to Michigan. So holiday trips to see family now point us either to Michigan or Minnesota. Which is great! Some swell places to visit. But I started thinking about how I will never get the opportunity to spend time in the house I grew up in ever again. And I got really fucking sad. Little things husked in my sense memory, like the back deck and cluster of pines behind the house. The gnarled tree I used to climb. The rotting tree fort and the compost heap I made with scraps of wood and chicken wire. The feel of the carpet on my toes, the half wall between the kitchen and the family room where news papers were stacked, the finished basement with cold white tile, a jukebox, a bar, an unfinished section of the basement with ski wax ground into the pavement. I desired to have a lucid dream where I just walked around in that old house, like a ghost, but I couldn't fall asleep. Now, it wasn't the most enchanting house in the world, it was a very ordinary residential 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath house. But nonetheless it was the place where I spent 10 years of my formative years, and tiny little things that I took for granted happened, all creating an ether of forgotten warmth...and then the worst of it is, I started thinking about how even though I've gone through 9 or so Christmases since my dad's passing...it really sunk in that I'll never get to spend another Christmas with him again on this Earth.  Unless he were to drift down as a ghost. Which may not be a complete impossibility. But all of those ghost hunting shows portray such spirits as pissed off or sad or anxious and I wouldn't want that kind of Christmas for my dad. 


My good friend's little brother got married over the weekend in our old hometown of Auburn, ME and there was a pre-wedding party a few days before Christmas at one of the brew-pubs, Gritty McDuffs and I felt a bit of jealousy towards all of the old peers getting to grab drinks and catch up. Something I didn't really think I'd care about at the time of high school graduation, but I do after all feel some interest in the course of their unfolding life stories and seeing it via Facebook is such a tepid leak.


I did have a great Christmas with my girlfriend's family. We enjoyed some great traditions, like crab legs for dinner on Christmas Eve, Vietnamese food a few days later. They were all very generous with gifts and we had a jolly time talking, playing games, just being together, that sort of thing. 


Burning into my late twenties I'm realizing more and more that life moves fast and some things don't get swept up into the time ticking churn. Childhood burns its wick, and some of the wax of its glory doesn't stay stuck to the table. Some of it gets chipped away. But you look at the table next to you and see your buddies getting to play with old wax of theirs that no one chipped away and you feel weird. You can't mad. You can't control the chipping sometimes. 

The Laughing Problem

When I was a young child, I used to sometimes laugh for no reason at the dinner table. The inexplicable nature of the stimuli that sparked the laughing made me laugh even more. It got uncontrollable at times, especially when a friend was over for dinner or lunch, that energy would egg it on. I would sometimes be made to eat the remainder of my meal in the bathroom if it got annoying enough. 


My friends would tell me that I had a laughing problem.


Over the weekend, through Christmas party ale drinking and hang over recovery meditation, I had some moments of uncontrollable giggles. They felt good. It reminded of those younger days when I was made to feel weird about inexplicable chuckles. I realize now that was a great problem to have. I'd like to have more of that problem. The laughing problem.

Cake Frosting Tear Drops

I've been watching a lot of space documentaries lately. The Universe is in my Blockbuster queue. It's made me thing about how creative and destructive space is at the same time; black holes engulfing, stars ejecting fused elements, clouds condensing to become stars, meteors smashing bits of dust off of a m0on, which later becomes another planet's moon, etc. Indeed it has inspired me to incorporate a bit of destruction in my own writing process. In fact, the process of revising my novel is very destructive, stuff being chopped, sentences being bashed and rearranged. 


I started writing a new novel this week. I had been wanting to since the summer, an idea brewing since then. But I waited because the summer was busy, and then I moved. And then I thought I should wait until I have my current novel finalized. But really I need to spew down this new prose. My current novel is at a point where its feeling like a destructive process, as mentioned above. In a good way, maybe. But I felt the need to get this new idea in pen. I'm writing it all free hand, in a notebook. This excites me because computers are starting to remind me of business, and I start thinking of e-mails to follow up on, etc. I like the unplugged feeling of writing by hand. I like getting to a feverish point where my hand hurts. I also like the feeling of exploration that comes to me when jotting shit down with pen and paper. Which is what I feel like a first draft of a novel should be; an exploration, not a final product. When I did more acting, it used to frustrate me when directors treated rehearsal performances like it should be the final show. It's not. It's rehearsal. It should be about exploration. 


I feel like my revision process is a black hole right now. And my new writing project is the white hole.


I could go on and on about space. I almost had a mini panic attack in the bathroom at work this morning when I tried to think about what existed before the big bang. Certainly something other than a super dense primordial atom. Can something really be created from nothing? Which leads me to think that the big bang may be the off shooting matter from some other universe. No beginning? The ancient gets more ancient. The thought makes me dizzy. I had dreams last night that hinted at some absence of matter. Black space, small specks of things happening. My brain had no framework to compare it to reality other than a planetarium with a dim bulb. 


I also had a dream that I was at my high school reunion. I stepped in some cake frosting that had fallen to the floor and everyone pointed out that it looked like crusty cum had smeared on my shoe. It was humiliating. Cake frosting tear drops. I woke up depressed. Are such embarrassing events really that depressing in comparison with planets out there getting ripped apart by magnetars? It gives me hope that getting made fun is really actually a chill time. 

Turban Tan's 2 Year Anniversary Thoughts

Today marks the 2nd anniversary of the release ofmy novella Turban Tan. Books deserve birthdays. Below is the main character,The Drippy Man celebrating.

Two Years Later, Some Thoughts.
Turban Tan began as a piece of spontaneous prose, thrown uphere on this blog in fact. I developed it some more for one of the Seeding Meatreleases, written almost as a play, with dueling philosophies on the parts ofThe Drippy Man and The Dry Advisor. As the economy continued to hover in arecession throughout 2009, I became quite interested in economics, thecomplicated facets of it, of derivatives, CDOs, mergers. I wanted to playaround with an economic "drama" of sorts and The Drippy Man character continuedto surface in my mind.
I became interested in dystopian literature as a sort ofeconomic ghost story.
I liked the idea of starting not from his race to escape afucked up world, but of exploring his tendency to go back to it after beingoffered a sanctuary. In a lot of ways I think people are masochistic. We makethings harder on ourselves than need be.
Below is a video of me being really excited about this book. 




This is 2 years ago. I look pretty much the same. In fact I am still quiteexcited about this piece. I'll be the first to admit that it isn't a perfect pieceof literature. But I hold fast to the fact that it is a wild, unique crack atdystopia, at a fucked up spy novella, at a novella in general. Though flawed, I am confident in its fascinating trek from Maineto Dubai. The writing came togetherfairly quickly when I set out to expand it into a novella. I had a lot of shitfloating around my head from reading the news more actively than I ever hadbefore. Turban Tan is a bit raw, simple, ambiguous, and I appreciate aspects ofthat. The novel manuscript I'm currently working on, I've been working for twoyears now. I'm in a bit of perfectionist mode, chopping, refining each sentencestructure. I'm less reckless as a writer now since Turban Tan, for good or ill.I suppose every writer goes through phases of development, after all, I'mworking on strengthening my craft. Yet something I learned from my high schoolathletic days, sometimes you get worse before you get better, while the musclesrip and grow and ache.
Enough of my thoughts. Turban Tan is swell. It has an orangecover and a strange story told from a strange, coded point of view. You should buy a copy! I really think you should! For your back pocket and for yourOccupier's stockings. You should also eat cake today and read a book for atleast a little bit.
I'll be getting drunk tonight. I hope you do as well andoffer a little toast to The Drippy Man.

















Buy a copy and read it too!