He Who Laughs, Or The Complete Idiot's Guide to Intimacy

(ISAAC is in bed, trying to sleep.)

“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.

(ISAAC rolls over.)

“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.
ISAAC: Christ.
“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.

(ISAAC puts a pillow over his head.)

“INCEPTION”: (leaning in close) BUM BUM.
ISAAC: (throwing off the pillow) Will you please cut it out?  I’m trying to sleep.
“INCEPTION”: You finally saw me. And you’re having trouble sleeping.
ISAAC: It’s the heat.
“INCEPTION”: It’s my intricacies.
ISAAC: Your what?
“INCEPTION”: My twists and turns.
ISAAC: It’s your horns.
“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.
ISAAC: Enough already, get out of my head!
“INCEPTION”: (sitting on the edge of the bed) Lots of people have been thinking about me for days.  It’s okay, let it happen.
ISAAC: No, I’m good.  Just want to go to sleep here.
“INCEPTION”: I’m a modern classic.  I’m here to save summer.  I’m here to blow your mind.
ISAAC: (sitting up) Hold on a second.  You’re a decent movie, you’re entertaining, and you certainly have a lot of great visual and technical things going on.  The Joseph Gordon-Levitt spinning hallway fight?  Incredible.  But you are not a modern classic.
“INCEPTION”: Oh, but I am.  Have you been on Facebook lately?
ISAAC: Your script is infuriating.  Leonardo DiCaprio’s like, “This is how this all works,” and Ellen Page is like, “Wait, so that must mean this also happens,” and Michael Caine’s like, “Beware, keep in mind that it also works this way,” and Leonardo DiCaprio’s like, “Great, to reiterate, remember when I said this?  Just want to circle back and underline that again to make sure you understand the mechanisms,” and Ellen Page is like, “Ah, yes, I think I’ve got it, but I want to say it all again and you tell me if I’ve got it,” and I’m sorry, that is not storytelling.  That is reading us the assembly instructions to Mouse Trap for two and a half hours.
“INCEPTION”: How do you know you aren’t dreaming right now?
ISAAC: What, you’re performing inception to plant the idea in my head that you’re a modern classic?
“INCEPTION”: Perhaps.

(The scene changes. Suddenly ISAAC and “INCEPTION” are sitting in an empty movie theater.)

“INCEPTION”: I had my architect build –
ISAAC: Ellen Page?
“INCEPTION”: Yes.  I had her bui –
ISAAC: Is she gay?
“INCEPTION”: I didn’t ask.
ISAAC: I hope she is.
“INCEPTION”: She built us a movie theater in which we will watch all of the other summer movies, so you can see that by comparison –
ISAAC: Well, that is not fair.  If all you ask is that we compare you to, what, “The Last Airbender” and “Knight & Day,” then of course we will think you’re a modern classic.
“INCEPTION”: BUM BUM.

(The movie theater doors swing open.)

“INCEPTION”: The projections of your subconscious are here. They must want to protect you.
ISAAC: Not protect me, per se.

(“INCEPTION” looks up.  Thirty JAKE GYLLENHAALS enter the movie theater and sit in the surrounding rows.)

“INCEPTION”: What the fuck?  They’re all Jake Gyllenhaal.
ISAAC: Yes, this is true.
JAKE #1: Have another popsicle!
JAKE #23: I want to get my hand stuck in your thick, coarse hair!
JAKE #16: Your eczema is adorable!

(The JAKE GYLLENHAALS begin undressing.)

“INCEPTION”: What’s going on?
ISAAC: It’s a thing we do.
JAKE #11: I have the most chest hair!
JAKE #9: Nuh uh! I have more!
JAKE #21: Feel mine!
ISAAC: Gentlemen! I will get to all of you, I promise.

(JAKE #29 rolls out a tarp.)

“INCEPTION”: They’re all going to have sex with you?
ISAAC: Yes. (checking his watch, to the Jakes) Ten minutes each, fellas — I was up late playing Mario Kart, so the circadians are not on our side tonight!
JAKE #14: All right, but is someone going to be actually watching the clock tonight?  Because last night not everyone got an equal amount of time. And if one of us isn’t happy, the group isn’t happy.
ISAAC: (to “INCEPTION”) I never should’ve let them unionize.
“INCEPTION”: My kick should be happening any minute now and I’ll be gone.
ISAAC: Not so fast, modern classic.  You lured me into a dream, and this is what happens in my dreams.  Sorry.

(ISAAC slips off his pants and underwear, straddles “INCEPTION.”)

“INCEPTION”: Whoa! 
ISAAC: BUM BUM.

I was invited through a friend to be a “blogging expert” at a corporate brainstorming session yesterday for a company I’m not allowed to name. 

The session was in a loft in Tribeca with white walls and white ceilings and white floors and orchids in vases and an organic juice and snack bar where ten percent of the proceeds benefitted Doctors Without Borders.  My expertise, however, benefitted No One. 

I was terrified, on the spot in front of a bunch of attractive, crisply-khakied finance people, rambling on.  I’m pretty sure there was one person of every race there.  Someone had a British accent, another a German.  It was like a Benneton ad, the Brangelina clan grown up, a “We Are the World” clip instead named ”We Run the World.”

The woman moderating my session did her level best to extract core values from my blog’s story and reappropriate them for the very corporate task at hand, but there was pretty much nothing she could do with this moment:

INTERVIEWER: So what tricks do you have for expanding your audience?
ISAAC: Pictures of hot celebrities.
INTERVIEWER: What?
ISAAC: I’ll put up a picture of Zac Efron, and if someone’s Googling him and finds my blog as a result, the hope is that they’ll scroll down and continue to read.  I mean, I also enjoy the pictures, so the reward is two-fold for me.
INTERVIEWER: I see.

No one laughed.  I went home and ate cheese.

One of the weirder videos I’ve seen, and that’s saying something.  Is this what people in relationships do?  Good thing I’m single; I’d pee everywhere.

Apparently there’s a whole tickling fetish community.  I’m not well-versed in fetishes that aren’t shame-based.  Can someone clue me in?

THE TKTS BOOTH: Um, did you just fart in me?
ISAAC: Oh my goodness, I was hoping you didn’t hear that.
THE TKTS BOOTH: You know I’m a pod enclosed in glass.
ISAAC: Yes.  I’m really sorry. 
THE TKTS BOOTH: Like, no smell can escape me, it can only sit and mature in me.  I’m a space age dutch oven.  God, I’m going to stink now.  You’re lucky none of my guys heard that.  How’d you even get in here?
ISAAC: I work in a box office?  I’m dropping off tickets?
THE TKTS BOOTH: “Jersey Boys”?
ISAAC: No.
THE TKTS BOOTH: “Wicked”?
ISAAC: No, I’m Off-Broadway.
THE TKTS BOOTH: Get the fuck out of here.

Believe it or not,
I’m single.

And have I got an Odditorium
for you.

Admission is free
for men
with hairy chests
who, in deep
resonant
timbres,
patiently offer directions
“to Ground Zero”
to groups of fanny-packed tourist ladies.

My god,
you’re so hot you’re giving the heat pit stains.

That Odditorium?  It’s my apartment.

Step right up!
After a glass or two of wine
I do a somber and piercing
“Hello, Young Lovers” in my living room,
self-accompanied on the keyboard.

My roomate’s in China on a trip,
so reprises are limitless and don’t need to be
textually-founded.

Step right up!
Last night I ate a pound of grapes,
and this morning
things were
not
right
with me.
Tonight I ate the same amount
because in addition to organized religion
I also mistrust food portioning.

Step right up!
to the biggest oddity of all
in my apartment:
your absence from it.
My empty bed,
what a freak.

The plot thickens, the music gets harder.  I am not pleased with where I’m at; I mess up on something different every single time.  Again, though, nice to have a project.  I even bought a binder to put the sheet music in, and you know I love buying things.

At 2:30 in the morning:

Cucumber is clearly the color choice of A-Gays.  Thank you, Ken.

Two summers ago I’d assigned myself the project of learning to play Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” on the piano and, as many of my self-assigned self-improvement projects do, it fell by the wayside.

Today I was listening to Janelle Monáe, who samples it in my favorite song of hers.  I dug out the old dusty sheet music and the old dusty keyboard and spent a good two hours struggling to play the first two pages of it.

The fruits of my labor:

A pretty pathetic attempt with a suspect tempo.  But it’s fun to have a project.

I was on Manhunt the other night and found the very charming and literate profile of a young man “looking for a date, and if sex happens afterward then that’s great too.”

I wrote to him:

What a lovely profile you have.  I wasn’t prepared to see a profile like that on here, but now I have to say hello, as you’ve appealed to my non-base desires as well.  How are you?

He wrote back:

thanks for your kind words, but unfortunately your profile is not as lovely.  too sex-focused.  kind of a turn-off.  sorry.

I ran to the kitchen to console myself with a pomegranate popsicle, which prompted melted from the fire of my mounting annoyance.  In my bedroom again, I wrote back:

OK, usually I wouldn’t press a “thanks but no thanks” any further, but I must say that yours would be a fair criticism of my profile if this were Match.com.  Cut me a break, I’m doing material that’s appropriate for the venue.

He wrote back:

okay, i’ll give you a shot at me.  tell me in one sentence why i should have a crush on you.

I wrote back:

No thanks.  Have a good night.

You know what’s kind of a turn-off for me?  Having to audition for a chance at some guy having a crush on me when he’s oblivious to simple context clues.

It’s Manhunt, you simpleton.  So what if you like Joan Didion?  Joan sees the forest for the trees.  She’d never list her favorite authors in her Manhunt profile.

I love this:

I was just sitting on my bed working on a script when I spotted my neighbor across the alley and up a floor changing shirts, getting ready to go out on the town.  He has a body on which you could do laundry.  I was listening to a bootleg recording of Bernadette Peters singing “Send in the Clowns” and it played to its finish as I watched him.  It seemed fitting.

I wonder if he’s ever glanced down.  God, what he has possibly seen.

Just saw “The Kids Are All Right,” which is a great movie with a great script and great performances, especially from Annette Bening.  ANNETTE BENING!  It’s not easy to do what she does.  Give her an Oscar!  She should’ve won for “American Beauty.”  Just saying.

He’s the Spanish goalie and she’s a correspondent for Telecinco and they’re dating.  Personal Life + Work Life + Momentously Joyous Occasion = Happy Tearful Kiss:

I don’t speak Spanish, which is of no consequence because I also don’t speak Soccer, so I’m just going to sit in aww of that moment.

I’m in the midst of four days off from work and, seeing as how I have absolutely no money to my name, I’m spending those days at home with Netflix Instant, a pile of books, and the Maxwell House South Pacific Blend, which obligates me to hum “Some Enchanted Evening,” up the octave, every time I brew it.

I cannot stop watching “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.”  A serious bulk of my day includes third-wheeling it with Benson & Stabler.  Hey, it’s a way to be out and about in the city.

Thanks to everyone who sent this today:

Several times now I’ve had this dream in which I go about my day until I suddenly remember I own a dog and I’ve forgotten to feed it and walk it for weeks, and there’s sheer panic as I race back to my apartment to find it.

Um.  What does that mean?

This morning as I was walking to the train I saw a mother with a double stroller and a man literally playing tug-of-war with a camera.  I thought it was domestic bickering until I got closer and heard,

WOMAN: Give it to me!
MAN: No!  There’s nothing on it!
WOMAN: I saw you taking pictures of my kids!
MAN: I was taking pictures of the street.
WOMAN: Why would you want a picture of the street?
MAN: I’m a photographer.
WOMAN: Then let me just make sure.  If you have any pictures of my kids, I’ll delete them.
MAN: Oh, come on, lady!  Let go!
WOMAN: Don’t make me call the police!

As much as I would have loved to lurk and see how that played out, I was late for work.

« »

I ran down into the subway station, where the downtown A train was being its typical batty self and sitting stalled on the track, empty.  I began my usual walk to the end of the platform and I noticed the conductor, still on the stalled train, making huge gestures with her arm.  As I neared her, I realized she was gesturing to me.  I walked to her window.

“First things first!” she snapped. “You really should not be listenin’ to your headphones while you’re out in the world.  It is incredibly dangerous.  You’re shut off from everything around you; you could be completely unaware of something goin’ on that could threaten your safety.”

She paused for effect, and I cobbled together a humble apology, shocked to have been so fully owned by an MTA employee, not to mention one that was delivering useful information as part of her smackdown. 

“I’ve been trying to get your attention,” she continued.

I didn’t mention that in eight years of New York living hers was the first plea for my particular attention made by any MTA employee and that was why I’d assumed her gestures were not meant for me.

“Downtown trains are on the uptown track,” she said breathlessly, tuckered out from speaking to me so severely.  I thanked her and she shrugged.  “Really need to put them headphones away,” she shouted as I walked away, slipping them back into my ears, because, honestly, if I’m going to die, the last thing I hear might as well be Gavin Creel singing.

« »

On the train I sat next to a man eating a bagel and reading Slaughterhouse Five for what I can only assume to be the first time, because he grew so excited to turn each page that he finally got cream cheese on my pants.

I will admit to squealing when Elaine Stritch says of my friend Seth, “He’s talented in his own right, I can tell.”

One for the books:

HSN LADY: I think of you, and I immediately think of sequins!
LIZA MINNELLI: Oh, thank you!

The breeze shooting down Fort Washington Avenue tonight
was like an olive branch,
a slow exhale from the mighty lungs of the Hudson River Valley,
an I’m sorry I’ve been so hot,
a ssshhhhhh.

SUMMER: I’ve arrived!
ISAAC: We know.
SUMMER: I want to stand close to you.
ISAAC: No.
SUMMER: I want to get all up on you.
ISAAC: No!
SUMMER: Good googly-moogly, gimme, come here.
ISAAC: Stop it!  You’re making me sweat.
SUMMER: Yuh huh, yuh huh, gimme.
ISAAC: Oh god, your hands are so warm, that is –
SUMMER: Let me touch!
ISAAC: Jesus, that is — that area is off-limits!
SUMMER: Honk honk!
ISAAC: Oh, come on, it’s the morning, it’s the start of the day.
SUMMER: I hate sleeping in.  I feel like I’ve wasted the day.
ISAAC: Well, thank you very much, now I’m a sweaty beast.
SUMMER: I won’t stop until your glasses ride the sweat slide down your nose.
ISAAC: There.  They just did.  You happy?
SUMMER: Now go down into the subway station.  I worked hard on the air down there.  I hope you like it.
ISAAC: I can’t wait.
SUMMER: And wait until you get to hot-as-hell midtown.  Midtown is my pièce de résistance.