The Smart Set

The alluded-to Hyde Park renaissance, as of three days in, hasn’t been terrifically dignified, but dignity, at least producing dignity at a positive deficit, isn’t really what i do, so well, prepare to hear about some undignified things. I half expected that the third, prophesied return to hyde park would run more like arriving in the provincial capital, but since i don’t have the internet and i keep leaving my phone at home, i have no idea if i’ve been summoned to the tax collector’s house for dinner, pear brandy, whist, &c.

:: The unquestioned first-quarter highlight was yesterday afternoon. I insinuated myself into having $15, went to jimmy’s, watched 30 minutes of browns-packers, excused myself minus the $15, and then went to the point, where i swam to the buoy drunk and then sat on a rock for a while feeling less than grand. i spent the next six hours napping in an extremely hot apartment with several pots of coffee and spot applications of scotch where i saw a need developing.

:: hyde park has apparently been invaded, or incursed, by mod rockers. except they seem to be wearing polo shirts and khakis (dress slacks!) where i would have gone with a skinny suit and or those giant royal navy coats with the fake fur hood trim. or anoraks or something. you know what kind of coat i am talking about, don’t use small quibbles to destroy my larger point. which was that i saw two people riding scooters and a third scooter parked, in a marketing capacity, outside of what appears to be a mod-themed business in the space underneath the 57th st. IC traxz. “once is a pattern,” as we have learned from our BQA readings.

:: i bought an electric typewriter that works extremely well for $1, in addition to a towel rack for $3. i predict one of these two things could be instrumental in me actually writing works of fiction, and then having to transcribe them from typed non-internet paper to internet paper.

:: talking about feelings is a Special Treat that i like to avoid, or have liked to try to avoid recently, but i will wallow in it here for a moment with you all. i don’t know who to credit with this analytic tool i am about to introduce, but i think it was andy martin; anyway, we’re all familiar with the idea of a formative nervous breakdown that provides direction for the rest of your life; i feel like i am waiting around for my nervous breakdown and it’s not coming, which means i can’t even get spots on my lungs that result in my magic mountain, i’m just waiting for my spots to be awarded, so i can worry about getting rid of them. also, i thought i already had my formative nervous breakdown? certainly i could have seen that there could be non-formative breakdowns out there.

:: Aesthetic triumph of baseball
Can’t really bring myself to give a shit about football anymore; you might try to blame that on some kind of obligation to root for a Trent Dilfer-centric team, but I think I am going to blame it on anomie or creeping terror. There’s an aesthetic side too though. I specifically hate people who try to say that baseball is a lasting and poignant expression of american poetic cliches because of its visual aspect. there’s nothing cosmically correct about a 45 degree wedge with irregular edging that has goateed men mincing around the narrow point of, nor does the visual action of baseball even remotely function as a metaphor for manifest destiny or white flight (well, maybe that) or the destruction of native peoples, or capitalism eating a wild mustang with hoisin sauce or something. What that was building towards was that baseball uniforms and players, despite being largely unattractive, are much less unattractive that a lot of things, including the other professional sports, and I have started wearing my shirts with the top button undone.

What i realized, when running through the practice-steps logic for my argument about baseball, is that i really just like the Indians and i vicariously receive religious ecstacies through their manhandling of Kansas City and other lesser gentlemen. I’m pretty clearly out to waste time here, so I have to go, but know the following things pilgrims:
:: I still work at a liquor store, where I do something like racial profiling to determine whether or not I should waste the energy/altivez/triforce involved in gross, undisguised retail warfare.
:: I don’t mind the retail warfare part that much, it’s mopping that gets me down in the mouth
:: Read hofrat hagen on how good books TV your shit up. I have been experiencing roughly what he speaks of with Nathanael West, and the first 30 pages of The Confidence-Man, the self-apparent goodness of which somehow took 95 years to actually, um, get noticed by anyone.