Beat Jeremy Coon

Kidz

As I continue my battle with Jeremy Coon, and bungle every opportunity at success I get, my thoughts turn to having children and achieving revenge through them. Some call this "living vicariously." I call this my only chance.

Rachel and I talk about what our kids would be like if we conceived them naturally, without donors or genetic engineering, and the results we imagine aren't pretty. Here are some possibilities we've discussed, all equally troubling:

Infant Death Syndrome kids

Retarded kids

Kids with brown eyes

Kids with eczema

Kids who are circumcised

Kids with concave chests

* Suicidal kids

Kids who eat candy

Kids who go to school

Kids who believe in Santa, don't believe in God, do believe in an afterlife, yet hypocritically dismiss reincarnation as "unscientific nonsense on stilts"

Kids who have sex

Babies who smoke

Kids with different politics than ours

* Those other possibilities are scary and probably inevitable, but this is the one that freaks me out the most, because I'm sure of it: any kids Rachel and I have will be dissatisfied with the world's injustices and will kill themselves before they turn 18.

Maybe not all of them, ala Virgin Suicides, but at least one or two (we're going to have five, Rachel, and that's that). In a sense, it's every parent's secret dream for their child to die a virgin - but when they are 100, not when they are 16.

Knowing that all the effort you put into raising kids into their terrible teens would be tragically wasted gives one pause. Especially women, I would think, since they have to birth the bastards.

So should Rachel and I have kids, knowing for a fact they won't tolerate how fundamentally disappointing the world can be, and will take their lives by their own hands?

Will the joy they bring us in their early years before those sad, premature ends be worth it? Kids are known for their "toddler wisdom," looking at the world with naked, uncorrupted eyes. Wasn't it a child who proclaimed "The emperor has no clothes" when everyone else quietly deluded themselves? Yeah, but it was Hans Christen Andreson - an adult - who wrote that fairy tale. He made the child say that.

Most "toddler wisdom" usually amounts to confusion over phrases that have corrupted, contradictory, or otherwise complex meanings. "Why do they keep them alive if it's called the death penalty," a toddler might ask. I could have thought of that. In fact, I just did. I want to hear what my genius adult kids would have to say. Alas, I'm afraid that is not in the cards.

No matter how brilliantly we teach them, no matter how deftly we navigate the ideal balance between freedom and discipline, no matter how macrobiotically we feed them, no matter how extensively we expose them to the world's varied countries and cultures, no matter how much we shelter them from the unnecessary cruelty of life (public school), once they see that the world as a whole doesn't live up to their glorious visions of what it could be, our kids will kill themselves - sloppily, bloodily, painfully, and without a note in sight.

When I first told Rachel this, she was disturbed and sad. Now she thinks it's beautiful.

Granted, it's also possible we could have creative, well-adjusted kids with blue eyes and school spirit who would live forever.

But is it worth the risk?

I don't know... Rachel?

An open letter to someone I'm not avoiding but who thinks I am (you know who you are, and now my readers do too)

I try to make most of my phone calls in the walking distance between the subway and wherever I'm going. To be sure, that's not the hugest window of time that's ever existed in the world. But it helps me stay reasonably on task. There's a place for everything, and phone calls are for when you're transitioning between locations and can't do anything else. When you're home, it's time to get cracking. But I think some people - particularly my really good friend Carrie.Anne - are getting frustarted with me.

I just listened to one of her messages last night, a damning accusation that she'd made a couple of nights before, but which I'd convinced myself I was too busy to hear. Honestly, I could have set aside a few seconds for: "Are you completely avoiding me?"

I tried to call her back at the point where Bedford turns into Nassau, but for some reason it wasn't ringing. Hey, I called other people and it worked, so what could I do? Well, in retrospect, I could have called her home line. I just now thought of that. If I could go back in time and do that I would. But I can't. And now it's the daytime - time to work on the blog, maybe write a poem, or transcribe some notes. Though if Carrie.Anne called me this very second, it's conceivable that I would answer.

Because I'm not avoiding you. I mean, technically, yes, I am avoiding you. But I'm not avoiding you. Sure, I did hang out with Yasmin for a few seconds... because she caught me just as I was leaving work. I hung out with Michael Vaingauz once.... to plan future short film projects. I see Joe and Brooke a lot, but I live with them. And yes, I talk to Rachel- from my house, even - violating my basic phone strategy. But most of those conversations start at the subway. And, you know, she's my girlfriend.

My friend Tammy has tried repeatedly to make me see some "INdie Rawk" ("Indecent Rawk" is a more apt description for that noise) with her. But have I gone? Not for a second. Full disclosure: I did tell her that if she waited outside a venue in my neighborhood between two of the sets, I'd stop by for a chat. Didn't end up working out, by the way. Yes, you played someone named Tammy in Stuck in Delaware. But Tammy's name actually is Tammy, and I'm still giving her the brush.

Okay, okay, I hung out with Emily DePrang, and will continue to do so. But I'm going to hang out with you again too! Who did I hang out with my first night here? The one and the only: you, yourself, and thou. That was no accident. All this not hanging out with you stuff is. This is a big city. It's far too easy to lose your way. Friends forever no matter what, even if I avoid you until the end of time (which I won't)?

Schadenfreude in the City

I had a sobering day at work today. I started to wonder again if I was employable at all for anything. Sure, it was only my second day of training, and I was sleep deprived and had a bad headache. But I still entertained doubts about whether there was a job in the world I could be happy doing. My future seemed dark. So dark, shades would only make matters worse.

But then everything changed... my shift ended. Seconds later, thinking back on all I'd gone through, I realized that none of it was particularly impossible, and that it would be a fun job once I got it down.

But the real morale booster was when I went out the door and found my old friend Yasmin waiting for her band mate (and probably lover) Brian to get out of the bathroom. They had just eaten at Angelica, and apparently the food had gone straight through Brian. Either that, or he'd also eaten the day before - had just now finished digesting that previous meal - and was coincidentally ready to expel it after his  Angelica Kitchen Tempeh no Tofu Extra Sea Veggies Dragon Bowl. I hadn't met Brian at that point, so I didn't care. I was just shocked to see Jasmin. You see, last I'd heard, she was in Los Angeles.

"I thought you were in L.A.," I said politely, not wanting to salt any wound.

"Yeah, well, I'm in New York now," Jasmin said.

Ha! Clearly Jasmin failed miserably in the City of Angels, and now she's resigned herself to moving to New York out of desperation! Her defeat is my triumph. Thanks, Jasmin!