oooh, things

I realized I misnumbered my last entry in this series, but I don't care. That should show how much I care. Who cares?

It's...

Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things

60. Hardcore, ass-kicking, take-no-prisoners, damn-the-torpedoes, there-but-for-the-grace-of-Moose writing sessions. I just love 'em. Today I nailed the rough draft of the paper I'll present to the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences this November (yes, after breakfast). I was in Arrgh-Me-Hearties, Eat-Yer-Hearts-Out, Leave-It-All-On-The-Stage, Hyphenate-Effusively Mode for about four hours, knocking the heck out of this paper on intersubjectivity, online community, and so on. Hoo, boy howdy. That felt goooood.

I tend to write in bursts, or rather binges, fueled by adrenalin or whatever else I've got, and the feel of those sessions is one of the main motivations I have for writing. I do some of my best work this way, I think. Back at UNCC, we used to write late at night, essentially breaking into the writing lab on campus and using the Macs long after hours, crashing through papers and keeping the energy flowing by writing side gags about anything that came to mind.

In grad school, I wrote like this all the time. Lancelot became my cat, and I became his boy, during my comprehensive exams, when I spent 6-12 hours every day for a week writing essays to respond to the exam questions, with music, coffee, sandwiches, and the cat my constant companions. I never felt more alive as a writer than the third day of comps, during the 9th hour and the 13th loop of James Brown's Greatest Hits, with Lance in my lap, my left leg bouncing out the beat, juking through Heidegger.

It's the only way to travel.

59. Stand-up comics. I just love 'em.

Well, some of them. I am on the whole fairly forgiving of stand-ups, whom I regard as intellectual cousins, rightly or wrongly. My favorites tend to work in absurdity, non-sequitir, and satire: Lenny Bruce, Eddie Izzard, Lewis Black, and of course George Carlin.

But lately I've had Ross Noble stuck in my head. This is dangerous, and more than a little frightening. I'm not sure that Ross Noble should be allowed in the house. Why should I be hanging around with the image in my head of someone having won the Lick the Dalai Lama contest and proceeding to do so, proclaiming (as Ross Noble does in his show): "BWWWUUHUHUHUHUHHUHHHHH!! SALTY!!"

It's weird. It's captivating. I can't explain that. Please don't ask.

58. People I recognize but can't tell from where. I just love 'em.

Do you know these people? You encounter them in some innocuous, ordinary setting, but they're definitely someone you've seen before. Where? You have no idea. You can't find the memory, no matter how you rack your brain. But you know them.

Clerk at a store? Dunno.
Dental hygienist's friend? Nah.
Once collided shopping carts at Safeway? Possibly. This is a common experience, after all.
Spent an afternoon in court together, waiting for your respective attorneys? Who hasn't done that? And what wonderful and interesting people we meet in courtrooms!
At a Midas, waiting for them to screw up your exhaust system for 80 bucks? It could be!

So many people play walk-on parts in our lives that eventually someone is going to play more than one role. It's meaningless, but it's still disconcerting. Didn't he catch a cab in Boston in Act II? What's he doing in San Francisco in Act IV? Aren't they from Michigan? Weren't they at the lake? Why are they cutting us off in traffic? Hey, weren't you...? No? Then, what the - ? Whatever happened to your schnauzer?