09 May 2006

the BYOBRACELETS party.

(a silly 1st draft excerpt from my book)

I’m not sure if I really knew this or was just convinced of it, but I was sure you had multiple bibles laying around your house. My eyes ran immediately to the dark, crooked corners—on top of the fridge, under the floorlamp—looking for bibles. You would have, given your penchant for ironic lifestyle, tucked them neatly away, in multiple locations, like even grown men do with porn because the fear of mother finding the stash again never goes away. (Pay no attention to the porn behind the curtain.) I was having a hard time, and just as my biblical enthusiasm was about to expire, I made another pass through your bedroom and decided to check the bookshelf above your bed, just for the hell of it. Sure enough, there was a glaringly green, softbound NIV bible. When I returned to my spot on your lawn I set the good book down in front of me and it flipped open to a page in early Matthew, bookmarked by a many-folded sheet of glossy paper. The paper was ancient and astounding for the rush of memories it brought back—it was a copy of an invitation to the Finals party you threw. It was the last party I was to attend at your house, and, except for the time I did mushrooms and had, like, 3 hours of nirvana followed by 5 hours of hallucinating that a swarm of demon tadpoles was swirling through the air around me, that night lives in my head as the closest that the best of times have ever been followed by the worst of times. But I had forgotten about the invitation, a simple black-and-white print on nice paper, and it made me laugh.

The BYOBRACELETS Party

WWJP Where Would Jesus Party
At Fats’s House in Montecito, this Saturday


WWJC Why Would Jesus Care
Because He’s fully human, and finals are next week, and He fully needs to blow off steam.

WWJA When Would Jesus Arrive
Before things got too crowded, like, around 8p

WWJW What Would Jesus Wear
A Smuumuu (part smock, part muumuu)

WWJD Who Would Jesus Dig
Everybody: because He’s the Son of Man, which is like a Man of the People only way cooler

HWJG How Would Jesus Groove
Modestly at first, but when it was time to jam He would take the dance floor to a place of Divine Freakstasy.

...

and she’s lovin’ him with that body I just know it.

this is the last P from a critical annotation on the Stories of John Cheever -

In all, Cheever’s deft irony—and in particular his style with its plain-but-optimistic delivery—brings to mind a comparison that on its face may not seem complimentary: the pop music of the first half of the 80s. Driven by guitar licks that were choppily upbeat and vibrant melodies that brimmed with pep-rally emotion, the chart-toppers of this era had themes that were at best uncertain and most often hopelessly morose. Whether it was Rick Springfield pining for Jesse’s Girl (“And I’m lookin’ in the mirror all the time, wondering what she don’t see in me! [Hurray!]”) or Styx and their Too Much Time on My Hands (“I’m so tired of losing – I got nothing to do and all day to do it [which is radical!]”), the ironic pairing of style and content was ubiquitous. And, whether they’ve thought constructively about it or not, people love this. It’s why, for the foreseeable future, when you walk into a casino anywhere in America you’ll have a one-in-three chance of hearing a Journey song playing on the overhead speakers. And it’s a fundamental part of what works so well with Cheever. His stories are often sad, and never do they overflow with hope, but his style and cheerful delivery carry us on. The next story will end more happily; No sweat, we'll win it back at the craps table.