there has to be a morning after

the only things keeping a certain friend on his feet today

Best Part of My Day So Far

The V-35 Beechcraft Bonanza.
250 Knots of high per, v-tailed hotness.

Today's Mood, In Music Form

If you know, then you know. If you don't know, your ultimate loss.

(Tank! by Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts)

11. My Best Inventions.

1. Me, new and improved.
2. The Blonde.
3. The Winning Team.
4. That drink I can only remember how to make at 5am, after the doors of the bar are locked.
5. The future.
   
6. The Redhead.
7. The past.
   

10. Lists I've Yet to Write

1. Questions I'd Love to Ask People Who Are Gone.
2. Sea Change Moments Past.
3. Worst Ways to Die.
4. Mistakes in Human Form.
5. Reasons to Have and/or Lose Hope.
6. Best Moments Yet.
7. Great Ideas John and I Have Yet to Act On.
8. Places to Go Back To.
9. Reasons for Everyone who Has Gone to Move Back to NYC.
10. Tv Shows I've Yet to Create
11. Thematic Analogies on Which to Not Base Books.
    
12. Things Which You Think Are Cute, But Which Are Not.
    
13. Best Phrases in Which to Use the Word "Pants."
14. More Lists I've Yet to Write.
    

In Which We Are Even More Pretentious Than Usual

The word "unpretentious" has been buzzing around my psyche for a couple of days now, popping up with a statistically unlikely frequency in conversation, overheard tv dialogue, reading materials and the like.

I'm going to do away with the bulk of my normal rant on the completely asinine logic of striving to be "un-"anything. I attended a dinner once not so long ago which featured a talk by his (dubious) honor Justice Scalia, in which he extolled the virtues and wonders (I shit you not, without a hint of irony or apparent recollection of HUAC, Sen. Joseph McCarthy etc.) of the fact that we have the word "un-American" to describe all those things which he finds distasteful.

Suffice it to say, after his witty, if completely disheartening, talk, I remained convinced that if the best definition one can muster for their beliefs is one that exists solely in opposition to something else that someone else has bothered to actually do, think-up or create, one is generally a complete and generally unconvincing ass.

Which brings me back to Do. I suppose my starting point was this: have you ever heard someone derisively scoff at the pretentiousness of a person, act, thing, who was not themselves somehow "creative," or "artistic" or an "intellectual?" Isn't the act of extrovertedly seeking unpretentiousness the most pretentious act of all? Is it not the most effete of self serving distinction drawing to privilege one's own approach to music, art, lit, or behavior over that of others? Who could possibly be the more pretentious asshole than the person scoffing at how something has become too distasteful to them for its commercialism, pretention, or the like.

Not sure where I'm going with this, other than to wonder who is the bigger asshole: the asshole, or the asshole who derives pleasure from pointing out what an asshole the first asshole is. One of these days we're all going to have to get back to living a life that is not so navel-gazingly meta-reductionist analytical all the time. Something is to be said for seeking one's own simplicity, rather than seeking out examples in others that allow one to define oneself as "uncomplicated."

Daddy No Want Me; I'm Gonna Take A Bus To Reno.

Shake: "Yes, I have banged hundreds of broads, internationally. But know this: I wrap my rascal two times, 'cause I want it to be joyless and without sensation, as a way of punishing supermodels."

Who'd a thunk a 6 foot tall talking milkshake could be based on my life? Who'd a thunk it.

9. Today's (Midair) Lessons

1. If one is to send money, send a bottle of wine or two along as well; "take the edge off cold charity" as Graham Greene said.

2. I want a Gulfstream. Even one of the smaller models shall do. If you have the means I highly suggest pickinng one up.

New, Improved Address

Point your browsers at wellfoughtbottle.com from now on to get here. New and improved!

First Substantive Post

My brain hurts, my leg hurts, my everything hurts. I didn't sleep well last night, I didn't lose sleep for reasons as fun as I generally prefer, and I am not at present undisputed captain of my own ship of fate. At best I'm a Fletcher Christian-type character in that role, with nothing more than a thinly charismatic grip on a sex-with-Tahitians-crazed rabble of mutineers aboard a ship whose true captain has been put to sea.

Worst of all, I'm not in charge of my own travel plans.

One thing I've learned about the good life: there is exactly one problem with traveling via private jet, and that is if you are not the owner of said jet, you are the owner's bitch. There is a pithy metaphor in there somewhere but I've not the energy this morning or the yet the resurrected chops to plumb its depths so I'll leave that work for the student.

The questions I've gotten so far from a couple of people to whom I've mentioned this return are generally of the why did you stop, where did you go, and why come back now when this is so fucking pointless. Well, as to the first, boredom and other commitments, as to the second, no comment, now or ever, and as to the third, an attempt to re-institute some writing discipline and to keep the more extraneous tangents out of the manuscript as I work on The Cancer Years.

Also, there is a lot of stuff that I don't understand, and my questions will not be answered till I ask them, questions that eat at my very soul, like "Why is Rachel Ray? When the fuck did that happen and why didn't one of you stop it?"

For the couple of people that keep telling me you miss the stories and general bad behavior of NITBC, no worries, I'm back in old form. Mayhem ensues, apologias end, and from this point forward the Winning Team is back in action, out of retirement and ready to go.

How could it not be when Jill is handing out dirty pop-up books left and right, and Heather (sadly lost to LA this past two-year, but at least giving us a base of operations around the corner from Barney's Beverly Hills) is planning a 24-hour blitzkrieg assault on NYC's liquor and boy supply this weekend.

Fun. Daddy. T-Bird. Away.

8. People Of Whom To Be Very Wary

1. People who follow the title Doctor with a given name and no surname.
2. Family.
3. Women who know the contents of your underwear drawer.
   
4. Agents.
5. Oneself.
   

7. Best Things That Have Happened So Far Today

1. Toast. Toast. Toast.
2. Realizing that the hot hooker/murder victim on a back episode of CSI: Miami is someone I used to date (lookin' good, Liz).
3. Publishers bearing offers.
   

Best of the Weekend

Santa gave dirty gifts, trust me.

6. Things I Love About The Season

1. Waiting for the first snow.
2. Flying to the tall states to find the first snow early.
   
3. Thomas' "A Child's Christmas In Wales."
4. My new Blackjack, an early self-gift.
5. The International Debutante Ball, and related festivities.
6. The Hot Toddy, in all its wonderous variations.
7. Watching anything other than Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th
8. The cold Atlantic turning even darker blue.
   

5. Best Nights To Go Out

1. Tuesday.
2. Sunday.
3. Wednesday.
4. Monday.
5. Thursday
6. Saturday.
7. Friday.
   

4. Places I Vaguely Remeber Being This Weekend

1. LIRR to NYC.
2. Mmmm, Bond St.
3. Mmmm, Pegu.
4. Mmmm, some place I'm not supposed to name.
   
5. Some party on the Upper East, thrown by some girl I don't know, who works for some publication that I can't remember, for some occasion of which I was not aware.
6. White Rabbit, looking at the world from the bottom of the rabbit hole.
7. Home, with little notion of how I got there.
8. The L trn to bklyn, asap.
9. Jill's kitchen table, decorating naughty holiday cookies which everyone was too full to eat.
10. Daddy's, discussing custom rapid prototyping rigs, Kid Robot, moves to sf, and getting hired on the d/l.
11. Marshall Stack, again as always, collecting and catching up with all the kids, tracking down an errant swede.
    
12. Getting chastised for leading a gaggle of late niters the wrong way towards 87.
13. Some stranger's apartment as the sun rises.
14. The VIP at Hiro, realizing I'm the only straight man in the room.
15. B-8.
16. Winging away from NYC towards worlds vast and various.
    

3. A Few of Life's Great Joys

1. An unexpected party.
2. An unexpected love.
3. Nutella.
4. Cold air, warm blanket, good book.
5. One drink too many, one hour too late.
6. Joyful, not indulgent, excess.
7. Douglas Adams.
8. Unexpected undergarments.
   
9. The fact that this list could never be close to complete or comprehensive.

2. Alec Guinness' "My Name Escapes Me," Wisdom Learned and Remembered

1. Merula is a beautiful name.
   
2. Guinness' description of morning light from his window must have been what I read (first time through the memoir) just before starting my first book.
3. Even the greatest of the great fret away their days worrying at the bare threads of their work.
4. Given enough time and distance, one can even fail to recognize themselves.
5. Days are to be lived, not planned.
6. Reading is the joy of life.
7. Engagement is the opposite of aging.
   

1. Things To Which I Might Resolve Myself Come the New Year

1. Collect, only collect, and never again pay interest.
2. Be over and done with it, then, there, her, all.
3. More carbs or fewer, but no half measures.
4. No talking about tomorrow, only arriving at each place and moment no more than fashionably late.
5. Never fail to stand when a lady approaches or departs a table.
6. Booze and women of questionable virtue.
   
7. Read, but never name check, Ibsen, Coleridge, Wordsworth et. al.
8. Locate and secure a source of "Fuck You Money."
9. Forgive it, then, there, her, all.
10. Be done with and have sold the second novel.
11. More late nights, more early days.