brick…

so the bastard was watching homicide…

and meldred's childhood project was going to be demolished and he keeps a brick of his time there.

and it reminded me of the time I was drinking at the shoreline of the house of usher.

and after I finished the beer I was having, I got it in my head to stuff the bottle with sand.

pleased with myself I proclaimed to the mofo, the chairman, the communist and the highlander that regardless of how this shakes out, I keep some of the land that the house of our family stood on was mine and mine forever.

I keep this bottle of land in a garage in forest hills.

if you try to take it, I'll cut you.

interesting addendum on the matter.

the jackass who bought the house of usher may have been foreclosed upon.

i'm okay with this.

—the bastard

finnegan's wake

on Sunday, the family of the house of usher celebrated a life.

showed some movies the bastard had never seen.

translated these events to the wife as she doesn't know the massive as much as some do.

took the piss as well.

nemo was a storied guy.

and the best way to celebrate a life is to tell the stories.

especially the ones never told.

the babby got to play with her family.

which she doesn't do as often as the bastard likes.

and I came to conclusions.

ASIDE: the chairman and the prince of darkness adjourn to the inner sanctum to chat. what about? none of my business. I just took care to keep the babby out of their space. grown ups need they time.

the bastard takes his at night. he takes it with the voices.

they do this as the prince has always taken an interest in the welfare of the chairman. I've always been glad for this.

you see. it's because the bastard didn't have mentors growing up. he had adults telling him shit.

not listening to shit.

not shepherding him through his career. I woulda been a damn insurance salesman if not for sheer force of will and a damn good skill set.

nah.

the bastard instead has contemporaries or perhaps professional betters. benevolent souls who have offered the benefit of their knowledge and experience and during the hard times, a drink, a kind word, and for some, a carry over the worst.

and for that I'm grateful.

this is what I learned at finnegan's wake.

—the bastard

the pipes...the pipes are calling

"Lo there do I see my father. Lo there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers. Lo there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them, in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live...forever."

nemo was a painter.

nemo drank diet cherry pepsi because he was diabetic.

my mom says i look like him.

nemo was the second born.

so am i.

nemo is the first of the magnificent seven to leave the fold.

he left this morning, in a hospice in cape coral.

my dad tells me he didn't go there quietly and i'm glad in a way. 

i'd prefer to run before i go down if i can.

most of all though, his name was danny and he was my uncle.

rest well.

—the bastard

down with the ship

so the bastard has this uncle...

and he's not doing so well.

well, he's dying really.

and now the mind reels

when captain nemo used to live in shirley which may as well been in florida anyways,

sitting on his barstools as a kid.

him sneaking us point fives which wasn't my first taste of beer but it was more sanctioned than sneaking a sip of dad's bottle of schmidts on a friday night.

nemo sneaking the mofo onto grandpa's boat knowing full well that the dinghy was overloaded past capacity.

nemo spinning tales of sticking his fingers in the mash to piss off my aunt.

nemo sharing the attic with dad because they were 7 under one roof.

the magnificent seven as mom refers to them.

here's a tale. 

dad and nemo are sleeping in the attic on the hottest night of the year and all they have is a fan.


the fan blows between their beds to keep both slightly less than sweltering. and doing it badly.


dad falls asleep.


wakes up in the middle of the night in a pool of sweat  to find the fan had been turned away from him.


begrudged, dad decides to sleep out on the porch instead.

upon the retelling of this tale, nemo lets out a throaty laugh that sounded like an old prospector.

but louder.

so loud.

so infectious.

captain nemo laughs like a man who loves living and now that he's dying the bastard can't help thinking that he'd give anything to be able to dish more dirt.

tell more stories.

make us all laugh about how well he fucked with his siblings.

and how much...

despite it all...

they'd love love to hear him tell it right now and laugh about it along with him.

—the bastard

…on the wind and distant shores

"Lo there do I see my father. Lo there do I see my mother and my sisters and my brothers. Lo there do I see the line of my people, back to the beginning. Lo, they do call to me, they bid me take my place among them, in the Halls of Valhalla, where the brave may live...forever."






as the wind rushed down the stairs of the 7 station at vernon-jackson and it hit me in the face.

and then the bastard was at 30 minutes from the north Irish border at the grainen of aliech

and the wind told him that he would have been 88 today.

and he'd be looking for a wide brimmed hat.

grandpa was quirky that way. sleep well father of my father.

and I will see you at the end of all things.

I'll bring the whiskey.

—the bastard

lissen mistah tuhkee…

thanksgiving came to Brooklyn early this year.

and the chairman was serving it up; good eats style.

complete with lattice apple pie.



and missile attacks



and a good time was had by all.

this is a good thing.

it's like getting an extra bit of turkey before the main event.

except I feel like hell because I'm full of food.

good show chairman. good show.

—the bastard

…scotch and water

"you know what?!", said Joe, 'lim gonna tell you the secret. I'm gonna tell you the secret of how to drink at a work party."

"what you do I order a scotch and watah, and throughout the night you keep refilling the watah. the drink will stay looking like scotch and watah and you'll look like the hardest man in the room because you've been drinkin' scotch all night"

Joe was a lawyer.

Joe was in the corps.

Joe was always quick to tell you a good story, or cut you down because he thinks you put on a little over the year.

Joe was also my great uncle.

and Joe knew how to make one hell of a martini or so he'd tell you.

he'd tell you he'd make a double when he'd get home from work and he'd get comfortable for the night.

and that's how I'd like to think how it happened last night.

he made a martini. maybe a double. and he sat in his favorite chair, one last time.

got comfortable in his favorite chair and closed his eyes and slipped away.

here's my fondest memory of Joe. during my divorce, I took the railroad home to my parents house. and Joe coincidentally took the same train home only I didn't know it until that night.

at that time.

and there he was in the front car with 4 or 5 of his coworkers, owning the conversation, these younger folks hanging on joe's every word as he gestured wildly his eyes wide open. he was positively electric.

and then the train pulled away in to night.

and I went home to sit in the basement.

i come from a large family.

we are fucking legion.

and I don't see any of them nearly often enough but when I did I loved seeing Joe and his wife Martha who was my favorite smoking buddy. but now family gatherings will be different out east. and it saddens me tonight.

funny thing though, the bastard was at a 40th birthday party last night and I was poured a glass of scotch on a pile of ice and thought of him briefly, hours before I got the call.

—the bastard

...on pop quizzes

...special tintin related jackassery edition


dear mr. vernon:

we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. but, we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. you see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. but, what we found out is that each one of us is


a crazy old guy . . .


and an injun . . .


and a pirate...


and a belgian villian . . .


and a sheik.

does that answer your question? sincerely yours, the breakfast club.

actually, we were in this restaurant the bastard like to go to and the accountant and i were drinking a potent ale called la chouffe. the mofo was drinking duvel which is french for devil (a testament to the potency of the beverage. my ladyfriend was drinking seltzer because if she was drinking beer, she would be acting very irresponsibly for a pregnant lady.

anyway, the place is decked out in belgian comics, mostly from the adventures of tintin. but inevitably, the bastard had to hit the head and was possessed to take photos of some of these heads.

what else would one do while taking a crap?

upon getting back, the mofo adjourned himself to do the same. i told hime that their would be a quiz when he got back. upon doing so i showed him these heads and asked which on was his favorite.

ok you had to be there. go to hell. but i thought of the above mentioned bit of movie trivia while trying to sleep it off on saturday morning.

oww

—the bastard

phone check...

"ring ring"

"ring ring"

"hello?!?"

"phone check."

"whu?"

"hi i was just doing a phone check."

it never mattered if the conversation really continued and sometimes maybe it would have but, every time grandpa got a new phone, he would re enter the numbers into the phone and then proceed to call said family member to make sure he entered it correctly.

he was an interesting fella.

taught me how to row. taught my cousins how to steer a boat in open water. taught most of us how to life a big goddam dock into and out of the harbor.

more often than not, the bastard got out of doing this as the dock became a reality when i was an antisocial teenager and i hid out alot.

but today's father's day and he would have been 86 by now. and he'd still be soing phone checks.

the chairman called up stuck in traffic and we talked about it a bit.

maybe get a family event together for his 10th anniversary of not being on this earth.

the family doesn't get together that much anymore.

at least not without a fuck ton of effort.

but maybe if we do, we could all wear wide brimmed hats to the event.

the man sure did love the sea.

—the bastard

...on the fall of the house of usher 6

...special wedding edition

the the one of the chairman's sister got married this weekend.

and we all went but we decided to go hunting as well.

the chair had told me that his mother's side of the family do their best to keep their very important guido roots held up on high.

and yesterday was no slouch, for the bastard spotted his prey before the ceremony even started.

QUICK SIDEBAR: one of the editors of killing stuff monthly had gone caribou hunting in alaska and had to be flown in by bush plane and he had remarked that as he flew over the valley, there were hundreds of caribou just hanging out in the valley in plain sight. the thought here was that one could really get jazzed because you knew that a kill would be inevitable.

and this was how the bastard felt as he was about to spend several hours near his target. i was so jazzed. the chairman was jazzed. hell, even the mofo(r.i.p.) was jazzed. fish in a barrel, it was.

this character was majestic. his formal wear decks complemented his awful matlock suit quite innappropriately.

but the chairman's family could not take credit for this for their only enyertainment value of the day was when my ladyfriend pointed out this large headed gentleman who had struggled to take his suit jacket off for close to 10 minutes after the ceremony. coincidentally, the chairman had pointed out his date's drunkeness to me later as i pointed out how she looked like she was wearing a red silk garbage bag as a dress.

but none could take the day away from our guido matlock. our hates were off to him as well as his date who either dressed him or had self control enough to not ask him, "are you sure you want to go out looking like that?" good for them. good for their bad taste. and most of all ,good for my disdain.

—the bastard

...on the fall of the house of usher 5

a couple of weeks ago, my father had informed me that the house was finally closing. not my childhood home but the family's house. the house where we all congregated for the holidays. the house where afterwards i would get headaches from the smoke of being stuck in traffic and listening to the doo wop shop with don k. reid. the house that the chairman started his career in after he moved back from the wilds of connecticut and decided that there had to be more to life than a workaday job and a fucking pension. the house where uncle acid played sgt peppers by the beatles on 8 track until the damn thing exploded.

no.

wait.

that was on vinyl. we destroyed magical mystery tour somewhere in the middle of blue jay way. anyway this was the house where alot happened and now it belongs to some chucklehead from arizona i understand.

i hope that now that it's over, shit can be put aside. one can't go back in time but, a bastard can hope for shit can't he? i also hope that the new owner finds my goddam star wars figures. we buried them in the sand on the beach like 30 some odd years ago and we never saw them again. also, open letter to the new owner. dear sir, treat the damn place with respect. someone's family grew up there.

—the bastard

...on the fall of the house of usher 4

so the phone rings this morning and it's my father, the shrink. now the shrink called me yesterday too. he told me that he wanted me to come over for dinner last sunday but he couldn't get it together and that's cool, the bastard hasn't been so much with the phone calls to the rents lately, life has been going on around him and it gets busy. the shrink understands this. the shrink is also getting used to the fact that the bastard is dating again (yeah, i meant to tell you that but, i didn't, so there) and that's a good thing.

but i digress, so the shrink calls me up this morning and he tells me that the house is sold. i asked, "our house? no wait, grandpa's house."

"that's what your brother said"

well, these things happen. one would think that the natural progression would be that the grand parent's house was the item to be sold but we all kind of want(well i at least kind of want) the rents to move out of their place. the old hood is constantly in flux and one would think that your parents would eventually abandon your childhood home for greener pastures. i guess we'll see about that one day. the mofo tells me that the north fork is where they might go. it's where they go for their anniversary every year. it would be nice that in the face of the family's house sinking into the mud to become the house for some other family. 12 johns will now go away soon just like the family's old headquarters in bellerose. it becomes the stuff of family stories, "remember that time at the big house (what we called the bellerose house) where the three of us argued with the three of them over something stupid that children argue about?" remember misty and bonnie (grandma and grandpa had irish setters), and how they scared the crap out of us? remember that fucking great dane they had at 12 johns and how i tried to ride him like a horse when i was nine? the boat? not the blue one but grandpa's first boat? remember the salty smell on the back lawn in the morning at low tide? yeah, i remember. hell, i couldn't forget.

—the bastard

...on the fall of the house of usher 3

and so it ends. the family treks west for greener pastures. the cycle ends. and so it begins. the family heads west for greener pastures. the cycle begins. now that the bastard's family has headed out and i back to the box i call home, the lowe, has left parts forest hills for the west and his apartment will be the artist's new base of operations. this has been a long time coming for the artist as he has been holding down the basement of 12johns for a little while. even longer than he lived at the family's house, the artist has done his time for the family. many docks were put in and taken out of the harbor by the artist (and whichever other chuckleheads from the family that showed up that day) which is why the mofo and i have acquiesced control of the grandchildren which my dearly departed grandmother referred to as "group 2" in her end time delirium (but that is another story).

so the artist has also arranged that i pass my landlord's (the stutterer) number to his sisters with the interest being our family repopulating the q-borough. starting with forest hills. i figure what the hell, if you find a vacant apartment on your block why not try and fill it with someone you know rather than have some hipster move in and make you feel old and uncool and of course price you out of the neighborhood with trustfundy goodness. this'll be real interesting for me. i never really visited my family very often before the troubles and i visit them even less now that they are done (mostly because the old man needs to come to grips with it and i don't want to do it for him). but now i'll have family on the block. we'll see what happens.

—the bastard

...on the fall of the house of usher 2

...toilets the size of cadillacs

so i get to come in last monday and listen to someone talk about how they hung out with a friend of mine who's been blowing me off for like..um..two months or some crap. the bastard is good with it, people can choose whoever the hell they want to hang out and i ain't always pleasant. ask the nice lady. i wasn't pleasant for damn near 10 years. oh well. anyway, the bastard deems monday a total wash when i gets the call.

"hey bastard, how's it going it's the accountant. i'm in town on business. didn't your mom tell you"

"oh accountant, i was gonna call you last week but i.."

"didn't?"

"right. but, i was gonna." you see the accountant is one of the three from california. my youngest cousin out there and the only one who comes to new york on business. we don't mince words when we have the goods on one another, so we start working on some...

"dinner plans?"

"dinner plans indeed. i know a good spot. meet me at the office when your done with whatever it is you accountants do when you come here on business"

we meet up at a joint that chicago jerkface introduced me to called the chat 'n' chew. if you're ever in town, they make kick ass fried chicken. anyway, the accountant and i go over the events of the past month as well as the three year backlog of talk that we haven't had since she was last here. the waitress felt bad interrupting us with the silly things like, "would you like something to drink?", or "have you decided what you'd like to eat?", or any other thing that wait staff does. don't take it personal lady, we only haven't spoken in three years. after this we hit the old town bar. second oldest bar in nyc after mcsorleys. they have urinals the size of fucking cadillacs in the place. plenty of room to...well you get the idea. it was during this time in which the accountant and i were drinking like our family does that i realized that maybe her sister, who we could call palo alto might not be right about how the family will go it's separate ways when the house of usher comes down. we'll still talk, and we'll still drink, and we'll still have old times. just not with big ass urinals all the time because i can only go to that place so many times before i look like i don't know other bars on this rock.

—the bastard

...on the fall of the house of usher

well as the mofo had pointed out, we had a death in the family. now i toyed with the idea of funeral blogging but, the bastard just thought it would be just too disrespectful of me to go through with it. the bastard trys not to get too out of sorts at funerals. they are always really surreal expreiences for me. ever since great grandpa's funeral when i was a child, i always found it surreal. you step outside of your body and put a suit on and you talk about how the only time you get to see your relatives is at weddings and funerals. and the sad thing is, it's true. the bastard's family is large. very large. and i don't see the lot of them most of the time. it's mostly my fault but i'll get to that later. i was talking about surrealism. not the magritte kind either. i never really felt like i was ever reall y present at a funeral. that was until the cop was murdered. cops name was paul. he was lah's uncle and he gets his name in here because a murder shouldn't be forgotten. he was murdered by a scumbag named patrick bannon. he gets in because, well you get the picture. anyway suddenly a man i knew, who i saw a week prior at a family party was dead and i never was not in my body at a funeral ever again. now i have to keep my shit together at these things.


the problem with being part of a large family is that they also fight. fight over stupid shit. and the stupid shit in question is this house. the family's house. the sight of many christmases and thanksgivings and easters and it was the sight of the beginning of the end of these kinds of gatherings when grandpa passed away in 2000. now the family's house will be sold and no doubt be bought by some yuppy schmuck who will hang bad art off of it and render it unrecognizable to the family that knew it and breathed life into it since 1978. it'll all be gone soon and with it i feared the family. we'd really become like those who only see each other at weddings and funerals. hell, i have cousins that don't even know me that look at me like a stranger because of my own introversion. i made a promise to myself on this dock. grandpa's dock. the dock that was hauled out every winter and hauled back in every spring (now granted i didn't do the hauling, the upside of introversion is you seem to get out of these things). anyway, knowing what seems like an inevitablity, i told myself that while i was an awful grandson, i would try to make it right. i would try to do better next time. while i'm seriously mulling going to vegas for thanksgiving, i'm going to try and do better than just weddings and funerals. i gotta. when all is said and done, all you have left is your family and while 45 weddings and 45 funerals might seem like alot of family gatherings, i don't want it to be like that.

—the bastard