short attention span stories

Schematic

2009-05-28T09:34:00.001-07:00

Projects Galore!

2008-06-23T16:36:00.001-07:00

So, I've decided to have a different blog page for each of the crazy projects I am working on and dedicate Short Attention Span Stories to just that: stories.

Some projects are complete, some are works in progress. I intend to complete them all, or in some instances, to continue.

As you can see, the links are here

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Thank you all for always being supportive of the crazy ideas that float in my head. I hope I can corral them all here and put them in some sort of order for myself and for you my friends and family who I love.

NEW BLOG!!

2007-08-13T17:24:00.000-07:00

Hey kids! - There's a new story posted on a new blog - a collaboration between Ms. Franco and me. Check it out!

It all Began in St. Pius

It's a fun read and there's pictures too, great pictures.

Maury the Mortician

2007-07-26T15:50:00.000-07:00

The local anesthesiologist killed the patient with a turtle bite, and in doing so, she involved Maury, the mortician, in her convoluted world of intrigue, cheesecake and porridge. Who knew?

2007-07-09T12:58:00.000-07:00

.............to paraphrase
...................she said nothing else

"I think you're dreamy" was enough

............but he never returned her call.

"This could've been something. We
..........................were
.......................so.......so
...................very...close."

.............fuck.

..........................g.
..........................7/7/07

2007-07-09T12:51:00.001-07:00

Mary the republican was beautiful:
long hair, ample breasts, thighs of sugar.
She taught me the art of punctuation and
dissection of living organisms.
I almost forgave her.
Almost.

g.
7/7/07

Clump

2007-06-28T18:04:00.000-07:00

There is a clump of mascara on her eyelashes as she explains to me the rhetorical perspective of her pet iguana, who she aptly named Gomez. She blinks and she has trouble opening her eye, but it snaps open as the iguana looks at me without interest. I only understand every third word she says and it sounds more like a song I heard on a boat when I was three as it made its way through Niagara Falls. The woman drifts away and I continue on my way to the supermarket on Polk and Clay- the Big Apple Discount store, where the oranges are pretty and the rice comes in bulk. As I exit, the flowers in the front of the store look sad and in their indignation, dispose of their colors and expel them into the air like perfume, stinging my eyes and turning the world into a kaleidoscope.

- word provided by MV

Hollywood Fire from My Office

2007-05-08T14:45:00.000-07:00

Detection

2007-05-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

“I concur.”

That’s all he tells me (sometimes he says “kinky is the way for me” but only during the most inopportune moments, so it doesn’t count).

Would you prefer Indian or Thai? - "I concur."
Peanut butter or Chocolate Chip? – "I concur."
Your place or mine? – "I concur. "

The detection of his volatile emotions is key in understanding this man completely, wholly and without a doubt. I use a portable radio with a large, obtrusive antenna to decrypt the true intentions of his stare and the meaning behind his agreeability. Every Sunday I print out a report which extrapolates, through complex mathematical equations, the intricate and often juxtaposed articulations of his brain and at last I can retrieve meaningful answers to my inquiries: Thai. Chocolate Chip. His place.

He doesn’t seem to mind me following him around with the apparatus as long as it doesn’t accidentally pick up signals from the local radio station or disturb his aging cat, who, I’ve come to realize through long hours of research, doesn’t really like the hard-wood floors or the color orange.

Although the truth only exists in the algorithms of the past and I am constantly made to wonder about the present, I am fascinated by the notion of a future guaranteed to be laminated with long hours of solving the calculus that is him. That, and the French radio station I pick up every once in a while. Oh-la-la.

A parking space made just for me

2007-04-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

(County of Los Angeles - PARKING ONLY FOR DEPARTMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH)

One Night at an Art Show

2007-03-28T12:25:00.000-07:00

Not so long ago, I went to an art show and took some pictures of what I found interesting. Not that I didn't find the art interesting, because it was awesome, I just didn't think I could take any pictures of the art so I took pictures of the other stuff.

This guy below here is one of the artists. I kinda like the picture.

More ceiling stuff.

Moonshine

2007-03-22T11:10:00.001-07:00

There is a small, violent man living in the upstairs apartment. He likes to pace back and forth, between the kitchen and the hallway closet. He coughs loudly on every third step. Sometimes, when it's really quiet, I manage to hear him whispering under his breath and say little things that make my belly rumble.

I know he is a violent man because just last week, I heard him yell at his meatballs for losing their shape in the pan. "I don't want no meatcubes!" he screamed as he threw the pan and the sizzling "meatcubes" out the window, giving Lopez, the janitor, third degree burns and a concussion. He didn't deserve that, but taking into consideration Lopez was a boxer, he's had his share of concussions. And he is no looker either, so no harm done really. He also beat up his next door neighbor with her cat a couple of weeks ago, but, she was asking for it, and don't get me started about the cat.

If I stand on my breakfast table and move the light fixture ever so slightly, I have a perfect view of the kitchen and the hallway. I can see him in his anger writing little blackmail notes or erasing the signature on a stolen credit card. I have a perfect view of his dilated black eyes staring blankly at his empty refrigerator deciding whether he wants orange juice or a jar of moonshine for breakfast.

A while ago, when he left his apartment one day to do some more violent things in the world, I drilled a little hole above my bed to get a better look at the other rooms. I discovered that he sleeps on a soiled mattress in the back room and has a large collection of Mad Magazine. He sleeps in the nude and he twitches his nose while he sleeps. An hour or so after he passes out, there’s a barrage of cussing and rambling punctuated by a loud scream: “Porker!” and then silence.

Unfortunately, when drilling into his bathroom floor, I ended up under his bathroom cabinet so I don’t have a good view, but the smell, oh the smell, manages to filter into my apartment. I will try again when he leaves for work tomorrow at 9 am.

He is a violent little man and I love him.

Meteorite Love

2007-03-19T17:20:00.000-07:00

Tabulating the constant barrage of inter-spatial fragments of meteorites and planets would take Ilsa 3 years to accomplish, particularly if she keeps biting her nails and knitting her father a sweater. She chose a turquoise green color for the sweater and matching scarf to make sure he will never wear them. That way she has ammunition to guilt-trip him to death, or at least until Easter Sunday...but she's not promising anything. Her brother Charlie had the best guilt-trip ammunition on the planet, but he blew it when he married that hippie girl, stole their father's mini-van and made their way to India.

and that's that.

Orphan Pete

2007-03-19T15:21:00.001-07:00

Sometimes Pete refuses to dream of me, particularly when I steal his arithmetic book. All I want to do is play with the numbers and figure out what x is really all about, but he won't let me borrow it. So I have to steal it. But if that means he won't ever dream of me, then I will never add or subtract or figure out the volume of a sphere in motion again.

The Woe

2007-03-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

When I was in France, hitch-hiking my way across Louisiana, I came upon a desert dune where the monarch butterflies came to digest the insects of the Amazon. There, in a torrential rain, freezing outside of the Vatican, I fell in love with Gordie Johnson, of the very well known Thompson family, and declared my love for her as I rested my head briefly on my pillow. Sometime later, a hurricane wiped out the town of Sevilla and eradicated smallpox, while the population suffered a very successful orange crop. The children were inconsolable, but I tried to tell them to eat their enchiladas quietly and never, ever, let the dandelions know your secrets.

Dave

2007-03-16T16:57:00.000-07:00

The mortician noticed that Dave had a very Greek nose: beautiful, compact and fruitful. She was very saddended by the deep worry-wrinkle on his forehead and imagined him laboring over a matzo ball soup in the kitchen of his Deli. The science experiment of it all - the 1 inch matzo meal balls dropping to the depths of the boiling water, only to rise seconds later and bobble at the top, slowly growing to the size of an orange. Bobble. Bobble. Bobble.

On his hand, he had a mole in the shape of the state of Arkansas and she tapped it three times with her index finger. She wondered what color were his eyes. Were they blue? Were they Hazel? Were they like her own, brown and dark and full of intention? She didn't really want to know, after all, his fingernails were clean and his belly button was in place.

She figured Dave was one in a million and no older than 53.

Beast Hunter

2007-03-16T16:22:00.000-07:00

Instead of torturing the beast, Kit decided to roam naked in the fields behind his house and howl at all the people he encountered. In the end, only a single malodorous vagabond happened to walk by, taking Kit's half-empty milk bottle with him.

My Trip to Miami

2007-03-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

As you very well may know, traveling with me is an adventure. Traveling by myself is an adventure, but there’s nobody there to witness the chaos that surrounds me. So I am going to share with you my latest business trip to Miami Beach.

Everything was fine all day Friday – my flight was on time, no delays, a little turbulence but nothing to write home about, my luggage arrived safely, etc. I had a nice dinner in a swanky Miami Beach restaurant and off to bed in a quite scary and not very clean hotel room with a lovely view of a parking lot. The TV and the air-conditioning worked, so I guess it wasn’t too bad.

Then embarrassment began. While I was waiting in the Filmmaker’s Headquarters at the film festival where I was, a great Mexican Actor who I love (because he’s a great, great actor), walked in to get tickets to a film. I turned to my co-worker and whispered in his ear “Do you know who just walked in?” and he said no. And I said “You don’t recognize him?” and he said no and then I started to blush for some reason. Then because I knew I was blushing, it got worse. I started to sweat, I felt light-headed, the room was spinning and all this time I am turning red, redder, REDDEST! I don’t know why, but I couldn’t stop it. The festival coordinator was looking at me like I was a freak. A documentary filmmaker who I had just met was also looking at me funny. My co-worker wouldn’t cooperate with me and try to calm me down. I was so very embarrassed because I think the actor noticed and laughed at me a little. I am such a TOOL.

Then, we went to the screening which started at 10. We arrived at 9:30 and there was nobody there, and we were very surprised and worried. “Why isn’t anybody here?” I said as I looked up and saw the name of the theatre “Lincoln” and I felt the little wheels turning in my brain: “Wait. That doesn’t sound right. Lincoln…Lincoln…” and then it hit me – “The screening is at the Colony Theater not the Lincoln Theater!”

Luckily, the Colony Theater was only 3 blocks away! So, we made it.

Our sold-out world premiere extravaganza was super successful. The audience loved the film about this wonderful Cuban singer. Here’s a little clip of her singing (not from the documentary)

Here are a couple of pictures of the Colony Theater, my way:

Then we had a little reception at a local cigar bar, and everybody had lots of fun - we drank, we ate, we were merry.

Afterwards we went to the Shore Club Hotel, where the Miami SKYBAR is stationed and had a couple of drinks!

Then, the nightmare began.

My flight back to Los Angeles, via Charlotte, NC, left Ft. Lauderdale at 12:45 pm. I was at the airport at 11:30 and I saw that there were very long lines, but I didn’t pay attention since I was over an hour early. I checked my bag in after like 20 minutes at the curb, no big deal and then I go inside – The lines are incredible. Hundreds of people sitting on the floor, some of them crying, some of them yelling. The chaos was overwhelming. Apparently, the incredibly astute folks at U.S. Airways, decided to switch to a new computer system that day…a SUNDAY…with hundreds of people getting off the multiple cruises that just docked that day. Yes. They picked a SUNDAY!!!!!!

However, I had already checked my bag in outside (I don’t know why more people didn’t check in outside, I mean, it only took me like 20 minutes) so I could go straight to security and move along. There was a sign on one of the lines that said “4 Hours Waiting from This Point On” and there were like 500 people beyond that point. It was incredible. I felt bad for them, and I told a couple of them to go outside, but the line outside was already 3 times as long as it was when I got there.

So I get to the gate and the sign says my flight is delayed, but there were letting people in, so I gave the attendant my ticket and I proceeded to board the plane. I sat in my assigned seat, I put my book in the pocket in front of me, I prepared my pillow, rested my head and prepared to take a nap when I hear the man next to me say “Man, I can’t wait to get to D.C.” “WHAT!!!! This plane is going to D.C.!!!!”

So in my embarrassment and hurry to get out of there, I left my lovely book (which I was enjoying very, very much) in the plane, but at least I had escaped a certain disaster. I went outside and told the attendant I had gotten on the wrong plane and he looked at me like I was an idiot, which I was, I admit, then he scolded the other guy for not checking my ticket.

My flight was delayed 2 hours. Meaning, I would miss my connecting flight to L.A.

So I waited, bored, with no wonderful book to read, and I began to test the camera feature on my phone once again and took some pictures. The couple sitting in front of me got so upset I was taking pictures that they gave me a dirty look and moved away. Here’s the picture:

That’s the man’s feet. Maybe they did have reason to be mad. I don’t know.

When we began to board, finally at 2:50 pm, there was a large crowd waiting by the gate, and this lovely, older man, who just landed and was in a very good mood, stops by me and exclaims to no one in particular: “Will you look at that? What is this line for? What are all these people waiting for?” The girl next to me wanted to kill him. I stopped her.

So, the flight to Charlotte was uneventful. We actually made it in record time. I was thinking “I just might make my connecting flight yet.” We land, the plane stops and the captain announces that we don’t have a gate and that we might be waiting for a long, long time to get one. My dreams, and the dreams of many in the plane, were shattered. Children cried; a lady with a little bird in a cage let everyone know her bird might die. It was quite depressing.

Ten seconds later the captain says “Nevermind. It seems like we are very lucky, because a gate has just opened up!” (Not an exact quote of course).

I run out of the plane, look to see if my flight to L.A. had departed and to my lovely, and wonderful surprise, it too was delayed and it was leaving in exactly 2 minutes!!!

I run to the gate and find a chaotic mass of people, with no boarding passes yelling and screaming at the U.S. Airways guy, who in turn, is yelling and screaming too. And because I am a very selfish person who doesn’t think before she speaks I exclaimed very loudly “I made it! I made it! I can’t believe it. I am making my connecting flight!” to the horror of the people on stand-by who were hoping that my flight didn’t make it so they could get on. No one was happy with me, so I retreated to the back of the line and smiled all to myself. “Ha!”

The flight then was very uneventful – They still wanted us to cough up $5 for a sandwich (jerks).

So, all in all it was a very fun trip with lots of fiascos and laughs.

Anyone up for traveling with me? I promise it’ll be a good time.

Tantalize

2007-01-18T15:21:00.000-08:00

There was a corrupt monastery manager called Gustav who refused to let the young monks harmonize during the day because it would tantalize the forest creatures who lived in the surrounding area. One day, one of the very handsome and well put together monks, decided to act against the manager and torment a squirrel with his harmonies of beautiful hymns he had learned in the past. The squirrel concentrated on eating his little nut while the monk filled the air with his beautiful voice and suddenly, after he had completed his song, the squirrel let his nut drop and fainted. Gustav heard the whole thing from his crowded office in the back and ran to the monk, but he was too late. The squirrel had suffered a stroke and was never able to use the right side of his body again. He just ran in circles, round and round the little nut until he dizzied himself into a stupor and threw up on the monk’s feet.

The monk never sang again.

Lummox

2007-01-17T15:19:00.000-08:00

Young Hilda Reyes was a manic depressive goose who lived somewhere near the Himalayas. She wrote me often and in her letters, sprinkled with a rotten perfume that gave me hives, she would often describe her husband the rabbit:

Yes darling, the incessant humming of his rheumatoid arthritis is at once aggravating and admirable. The lummox causes me great grief and great love simultaneously. How incredible are his whiskers…how awful his musky smell…and yet, he’s my love…my rabbit…my friend.

3 Minute Exercises

2007-01-17T15:07:00.000-08:00

The following stories have come to be due to a certain exercise I used to practice when I had writer's block, which is what I have at this moment...a block so monolithic I can't even see my lonely typewriter anymore. The poor thing hasn't been touched in weeks because I just can't bring myself to sit there and have nothing come out of me. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to finish Legumes Vol I and Vol II - two books of really short and tiny stories using the same method - and I only have about 1/2 of the stories completed.

So, I asked my dear friend to give me a word, any word that came to his mind. Then I gave myself 3 minutes to write a story. This story in particular is not very long or very interesting because I was interrupted various times by work, but the whole point is to just write whatever, whether it makes sense or not, in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way and keep doing it until your writing muscles are all nice and relaxed and ready to do some serious non-sensical writing.

It's a fact. So don't judge or take it personally...it's just an exercise.

Thank you.

Tim

2006-12-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

The trinket Lili found in the street across from the Piggly Wiggly was all her own - shiny, silvery and green. Upon closer inspection, she found someone had somehow squished a little white bird inside the little circular box and left it there for Lili to find and love. She named him Tim.

The little bird lived inside its tiny home and provided comfort to the little girl when her parents fought, warmth when the nights were cold and a lovely song when Lili felt blue. Many years later, while Lili sat on the grass watching the sunset with Tim beside her, the lovely song that came from inside the trinket suddenly stopped and Lili knew the little bird was gone as the stars began to appear in the purple sky all around her.

Boots

2006-11-06T21:06:00.000-08:00

Sometimes Eddie called me into his room and reprimanded me for eating his grapes the night before. He would look at me with his droopy eyes and indulge me in the history of grape theft – from early Egyptian times to the wonderful world of today. I listened and rocked back and forth with my hands behind my back and all I could think about were the grapes I would surely steal the following week when Momma went shopping for groceries.

Once he was done explaining why Sugar Ray became a boxer, he would tell me to help him get his boot off – the left one. He always had a hard time, so I did, help him, I mean. I would pull and tug and he would groan and kick until the darn thing came off. He would take his ostrich leather boot and look inside, then he would take one long, strong whiff, and finally we would say “Goodbye, gracious.”

Oh Eddie. I always remember him, just like that - passed out on his bed, clasping his boot tightly to his chest and then the long, disturbing wheezy snore that would be sure to follow.

The Emu is on Hiatus

2006-11-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am sorry to say The Emu Report is on hiatus until further notice. There are circumstances beyond our control. I hope you can understand.

Thank you for listening and for your wonderful support.

The Emu Report 2

2006-10-02T11:44:00.000-07:00

The second installment of The Emu Report has been posted!

It is all about our experience in L.A. and naturally, PORN.

The link is as follows: http://theemureport.podshow.com/

You don't have to subscribe to the service to listen, just look for EMU3 and click Play It!

You can email us here if you want to send us some comments such as "Please Stop, You're Embarrassing Yourselves" or "You're Great, Keep it Up" (I need encouragement).

Thank you again to all of you for your support. I know I am a crazy person with lots of crazy ideas and I can bombard you with crazy stuff, but this time you can blame Jesse too.

PS. Please feel free to forward this message to people who you think would enjoy it!