I Got Two Trust Funds and a Microphone

Hail to thee our alma mater
here's our praise to you
guide art thou in youthful school days
banners gold and blue
Raise your voices, swell the chorus
sing of gold and blue
Alma mater we adore thee
and we'll aye be true.

GO CATS GO!

Look, folks. Let's make no bones about it. I grew up rich. My family lived in a 4 BR house in the nice part of Tarrant, AL, called Tarrant Gardens. We had central AC and Vac. That's right, bitches. A vacuum system in the fucking walls. We had a family van, front AND back yards, dogwood trees...and a dog! We ate out at Pizza Hut and went to the movies at Cinema City almost every week. And when I was old enough to drive I would go to the mall every Saturday in the swank-ass Oldsmobile Cutlass that had once been my dad's company car and I'd buy a cassette from Camelot music and either a poster or a t-shirt from the India Shoppe. Oh, did I mention that my dad was the MAYOR of Tarrant. Yes. And he had a designated spot in the bleachers at all Tarrant High School football games; 50 yard line, top row, right under the press box. During the homecoming parade my dad would ride on the firetruck and wave to people, meanwhile I'd get a triple-decker ice cream cone from Kessler's pharmacy, just because I could. Do you know what an ice cream cone with Butter Becan, Black Walnut and Pralines 'n Cream tastes like? It tastes like privilege.

Now, if you're reading this and thinking to yourself, "That doesn't sound so rich..." you're probably the sort of person I don't want to know. I saw a comedian not long ago tell a story about his childhood of wealth and extravagance complete with opulent home, wait staff and the kind of entitlement that would make a member of Shinnecock blush. I think he expected his candor on the subject to humanize him. It didn't. In fact it pretty much made me write him off, until I considered the fact that from someone else's perspective, I seem that wealthy. (Hell, a good half of my family thinks that I'm rich simply because I live in New York.) When I say my dad was the mayor of my hometown, I think it's quaint and funny. But to a lot of the kids at my school I was a Rockefeller, and they hated me for it.

Visiting my hometown is like exiting the witness protection program. I've had former classmates come up to me and say, as if not a day had gone by and not a lesson had been learned in the thirteen years since we graduated, that Tarrant is really going downhill because of "all the blacks and Mexicans moving in..." (although of the Mexicans, they do concede that they really keep up their homes despite the fact that there are 14 of them living under one roof). The last time I went to my high school's homecoming pep rally, the white and black students were more divided than ever and the school itself looked like a fortress of doom. It's no wonder that kids there are more interested in smoking pot and joining gangs than they are in art, education or sports. They're already treated like convicts so why even keep up the veneer of having aspirations.

Tarrant itself was an industrial boomtown, springing up around heavily polluting factories on the north end near the Birmingham "International" Airport. Most of those factories were closed in the '70s, but the town remained, perhaps breathing a little freer, but nevertheless bereft of a purpose other than the momentum of, "well, we're here now." As a suburb of downtown Birmingham it might make sense, but downtown Birmingham is struggling to revive itself as well. Businesses are just beginning to creep back into the once vacant buildings and a tentative, urban housing boom is underway. As Birmingham dusts it's knees off and brushes its teeth, Tarrant might find itself a newly gentrified lady, too. The last time I drove through there (in our rich New York-plated, gas-sipping MINI Cooper) I saw a guy who went to school with my sister working on renovating the beginnings of a bohemian-esque coffee shop and art gallery. Maybe that won't do anything for the 14-year-old thug consistently getting booted out of homeroom, but perhaps it's a start.

At any rate, I started writing this because of a photograph I found. I did a google search on "Tarrant, AL" and came across this:



It's the rock quarry that sits maybe half a mile from my old house in Tarrant Gardens...you know, the nice section. In fact, my old house on Enfield street is pretty much dead center at the top of the photo. Our driveway was riddled with cracks from the daily blasting. I love that the nice section of town is situated between the airport and the quarry. You grew immune to the noise it was so common. As a matter of fact, I never noticed the sound of planes overhead until late 2001.

But that's just it. It's all a matter of perspective. Am I relatively rich? Yes. Am I relatively poor? Yes. Am I relatively unique? Yes. Am I relatively common? Absolutely. So what's the point of looking down on anyone for having either more or less than I had or have?

Because I'm an asshole, and I think I'm better than you.

But I'll be willing to bet you the three dollars I have in my pocket right now that you feel the same way about me. How do I know? Because you're rich enough to have a computer and you have enough time to kill to read this blog.

Entitled douche bag...

Excuse Me, Sir?

Last week I didn’t write an article. I tried, but I just couldn’t make it happen. I had an idea about lambasting movies centered around a clearly retarded main character that no one will admit is retarded because it's an attractive female (i.e. Flashdance or Pretty Woman). Then I had an idea about making a list of my 10 favorite New York comics who aren't currently on comedycentral.com (Craig Baldo, Andres du Bouchet, Sean Crespo) but I had a hard time whittling that down, too. I tried to begin writing my opus on Hooper, but that's too big a project to tackle in a mad rush to post something, anything. In short, nothing worked.

One of the reasons I agreed to do the Friday column is so I could get myself back into the habit of writing. From about age 12 through college, I pretty much wrote every day. I always had a journal with me. I was constantly jotting down ideas, writing essays, horrible, horrible poetry…in retrospect it’s probably all crap, but it was work. And that’s all that mattered. I wrote a lot, I read a lot, I painted a lot. That was who I was.

Today, I’m still constantly working, but not as much on anything even approaching art. I layout PowerPoint presentations and publisher’s letters at my day job. I fix-up logos and flow copy into newsletters to make a little extra money. I futz about with HTML, CSS and XML code in an effort to make this Web site look and run better. There are brief moments of actual creative output within all of these activities, but when I look back on it, I don’t really see anything with any artistic weight to it. So I set some goals for myself recently. Obtainable goals. Write an article a week. Actively collaborate with other creative people. Put Drink at Work on the map. Produce a comedy show. Start making short films with the equipment that’s been gathering dust next to the Dyson vacuum cleaner in my closet. And slowly, tentatively, all of those things are beginning to happen.

And I’m so fucking tired. Right now I’m sitting in a diner on my lunch hour, hopped up on Tylenol Flu, trying to focus on sizing and color-correcting photos for the 20D blog, scheduling some work time with one of our other columnists, planning my evening of taking more photos at comedy and music shows, stressing over hearing back from a band for the Drink at Work show, and I’ve just realized that I can’t remember what I ordered for lunch. Grilled cheese? A salad? The falafel platter? All I want to do is curl up on the vinyl booth and fall asleep with a cushy pillow and a sip of water.

The waiter never brought my water. I’m suddenly in a Kids in the Hall sketch. “And I never got my water…” The waiter looks as stressed as I feel. Every time a customer asks for something he gets this sad, “what now?” look on his face. I smile at him when I ask if I can have my water with the split pea soup I apparently ordered.

I don’t mean to whine. I’m not unhappy. In fact, for the first time I really feel like I’m taking advantage of the fact that I live in New York. Aside from my day job, I want to be working on all of these projects. But the problem is, I’m not anything in particular. I’m not a comic, I’m not really a writer, I’m not really a Web master, I’m not really a photographer…I’m just this nice girl who works hard. But on what? And who really cares? I'm not even that nice.

Plus, my resentment of my well-paying and benefits-offering day job is beginning to disgust me. How hard is it to go into an office everyday and sit at a computer and do your job? It’s not hard at all. It's just...what's most apt...disenchanting. And I live for being enchanted. New York is enchanting. Great comedy is enchanting. A phenomenally good rock band that is about to be huge and they're just such nice guys you want to take them home with you and play cards is enchanting. Being in love is enchanting.

The meeting scheduler in Microsoft Outlook, conversely, is not.

I also ordered a fried fish sandwich. He left off the tartar sauce. Crap. Now I have to bother him again...I don't know if he'll be able to take it. He hates his job more than I do. At least I don't have to talk to people most of the time. But the waiter, he's got a section full of crabby people who just want toast and an egg cream because they ate breakfast at 10:30...why are you eating again then? He's probably got a student loan and an angry boss and snippy waitresses who, let's be honest, are a lot better at this than him. And he's got me, taking up room by myself at a table with a ridiculously large laptop that he's trying his best not to spill marinara into as he shimmies past...and I never got my water or my tartar sauce so he's sure he's not getting a tip.

Little does the waiter know, I'm not the sort of person who won't leave a tip. And I'll smile at him even though he put my fish sandwich on a crusty roll instead of the soft hamburger bun I now remember ordering. The fish is going crumble out onto my plate and lap and I'll still be hoping his day gets better. I'm too tired to not feel bad for him.

Spalding Gray wrote a novel called Impossible Vacation where he made the point that he was never quite where he wanted to be, and when he got where he wanted to be he found that he still wanted to be somewhere else. I wonder if that feeling is what eventually did him in. We can't live like we play chess. Sure you have to plan ahead, but you also have to be in the moment. If you're focusing entirely on what your next seven moves are you'll find yourself by game's end with an empty board and nothing but bad memories. I don't need a vacation. I need sleep. I need quiet. I need to be here now.

Crap...I need more water. This isn't going to end well.