And How Blog

Get It Right, One Time

2011-04-27T02:18:00.002-05:00

A week flies by so quickly and I look around and think oh jeez where did that week go? It's warm out and the breeze is strong. Parts of the country are being whipped by brutal winds but in New Orleans it's just the wind off the river and the sun shining down. On Easter Sunday we sat on the river and watched small boats become big boats then become small boats again and squeeze underneath the giant Mississippi River Bridge in the distance.

In my childhood I'd visited with my parents and we sat on that same pier in that same spot and when my mom went to take a picture a gutter punk stood up and yelled, "DON'T TAKE A PICTURE OF ME!" and my mom said, "Okay but you're not in it anyway." I asked her why the kid didn't want his picture taken and she said he might have been a runaway. Now I'm the runaway. But you can take my picture if you want.

Seeing God in Signposts

2011-04-21T00:41:00.005-05:00

I run a Twitter account for Patti Smith quotes, @ThePattiSmith. I started it back in August just after I left New York and moved to New Orleans because I searched for one and it didn't exist. Besides spreading Patti's wisdom to my now more than 1,500 followers, it also obligates me to be constantly reading Patti Smith interviews, old and new. I've seen her voice develop in interviews from the mid and late 70s, right after Horses was released and its influence began to spread, all the way up to 2011, when she's a National Book Award winner for her memoir Just Kids — a book that changed my life profoundly. Patti, her music, and her written work was one of those things that came along at just the right time and was just what I needed. I'm writing this from New Orleans today in large part because of her influence. I often refer to her as the Patron Saint of Young Artists, and she is.

While preparing today's Patti tweet, I read a quote from a recent interview that has stuck with me:

"Life is filled with those kinds of signposts. I believe in these things, you know, fate. Of course, fate is like a secret friend that helps push you on into life. I often think of those things. One can think of them for the good, and one can think of them for the mistakes we've made. I try to keep it balanced in my mind that you know that's how we get through life. We have our free will, but a lot of fate and a little bit of luck."

This is my exact outlook on life, fate, the Universe and its odd way of working. About a week from now I'll "celebrate" the one year anniversary of leaving my journalism career in New York. At that time my friends and I were all Patti obsessed, craving the life of art and work she lived in the Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe and what was left of the Andy Warhol gang. We idolized that life and time, even knowing that it will never be like that again, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But we can at least try to capture that spirit in the way we live our daily lives, and in our own budding work.

I recently finished filling a journal I started last April, about a month before I left my magazine job. Reading back, I was so unhappy at that time. I wished desperately for no responsibilities, for no worry of money, to just have time to think and meet people and listen and read and write and just... be. An opportunity presented itself and now, nine months into New Orleans, I've had exactly that. But it's coming to an end, and at an appropriate time. As of April 28, I'm on my own again. I've found a new job, a place to live that I'll have to pay for, and I have to be a real adult again. April 28 will be the one year anniversary of my last day at Fast Company.

The Universe is funny like that. I often put my thoughts and hopes out and see if anything happens. Sometimes it's almost instant, sometimes it takes a long while, but most of the time I do get some kind of response. I can now see why things that didn't work out didn't, and why things that did work out did. Not that I don't have questions — this last year of my life has been one massive question mark, and continues to be. But things seem to be shaping up and the future/present is looking good.

This whole month I've struggled with making a decision: to move back to New York or to stay here in New Orleans. After weeks of thinking, writing, talking to friends, I finally made my choice: stay here. It feels good to make that commitment to myself, to have something solid. I've been so confused, but for the sake of my own sanity I finally had to pick one, and staying seemed like the right thing to do. I just didn't feel I was finished with New Orleans yet.

But my life here will be somewhat less traditional that the life I pictured for myself three years ago when I graduated college. I was talking about corporate-type jobs with my mom a few days ago and she said something that I've known about myself but needed to be reminded of: "You've always been more of a free spirit than that." It's true. I value structure but can't foresee myself sitting at a desk day in and day out for the rest of my life. I did that for two years and look where it got me. As it always has been, my life will be a series of adventures and experience not defined by the cultural norms. I'm not failing because I didn't choose to climb the traditional corporate ladder, no matter what high school counselors and undergrad advisers have told me. People may not understand my choice to work at a locally owned vintage clothing shop and have an open availability for projects that come along, and sometimes I may feel somewhat embarrassed that I don't have a traditional job three years out of school. But what is traditional, and why do I feel I need it? Finding myself and my own core is so much more important to me. And, as my mom pointed out, it always has been.

The choice to stay in New Orleans and pursue my own non-traditional "career path" has been so, so difficult, and I've labored hours, days, weeks over it. But I'm forging my own path now, looking for indicators of my own direction, and, as Patti so eloquently alluded, trying to see God in signposts.

Fate Ordains

2011-02-23T02:57:00.001-06:00

Why you smilin at me like that? You better quit it. You're gonna make me go crazy, smiling that smile. I knew somebody with that same smile once but baby you wear it so much better. So you better quit before I steal it. Yeah that's what I said. You're offerin it up like it's yours to give away but keep that up and it'll be mine. Mine now. You heard me. Don't play coy, that doesn't—you better quit it! I swear to god you're makin my knees weak darlin. I'm gonna fall right over you, I'm gonna trip right over that smile and take a tumble on down and you're gonna be stuck, stuck with this piece. Now you gotta quit it with that smile again. Damn.

I Married An Addict Once

2011-02-21T03:06:00.001-06:00

I married an addict once and we had a very happy marriage and never fought until that word came up. That was a sad day. I'll never forget it. I just asked him point blank hey are you addicted? And he just stared at me like I'd just killed his child. Our child. And I guess in a way I had because the only thing we'd created together was that marriage except for some stupid pottery or something. So we fought but without words, he just walked out on me and he had never done that before.

We lived on for a while after that and tried to make things like they were once. We faked it real hard but finally he said he thought it was over and all I could do was agree. We didn't fight then either, we never used words except good ones and when bad ones were supposed to come up neither of us could say them. I don't think I thought them and I don't know if he did either. We thought we had something pure but I guess we could only get to a certain level.

After that we just talked on the phone, we never actually broke it off just lived years until we faded from each other's lives. What is it about addictions that people can't take? Why does it change everything and why do we have the capacity to ignore it for so long. It's not even like I was ignoring it in the proper sense, I don't know if I even knew it was there until a few days before I brought it up, I noticed some suspicious behavior and even that wasn't bad.

I don't know if I never should have brought it up or if we would have lived on like that forever or if something else would have broken us, but I suppose if everything happens for a reason this was supposed to happen this way. Still I guess I have some regret about it, because his addiction was one I shared, and one we shared together.

His addiction was me, so I guess in the end I broke us and I guess I've always know that was true.

Capitol You

2011-02-11T17:30:00.003-06:00

High flying

free falling

spiral

downward through dark

depths Emerging

fully formed and

beautiful with son shining

from the ground

Peace together the

fragments and a

life itself forms,

like slanted edges

forcing through the

unknown, something

new and different

and better for

all of us

DNA spiral baby calm

down and Out of

our control this ride

It spins round and round

on a broken black

surface

tainted but true blue

Throw it away if

you can

Exact Change

2011-01-04T04:02:00.001-06:00

We spent an hour talking of the future of smartphones, the Internet, the cloud, digital media, and how advanced it would all be, so soon. And then I walked through the cold to the elevated train and heard but never saw it passing overhead. I ran just in case it stalled, but it didn't, and the cold air sank into my chest and made its home there for the next hour. I breathed hard, and saw every breath.

I walked from one end of the platform to the other, looking out at the view of the Manhattan skyline from Queens and thinking what a great view it is. Several bridges, all lit up, and a skyline from an angle I'd never seen it before. The Empire State Building was still lit red and green for Christmas, and I turned around and then turned back around and it was turned off. It was 2 a.m. I wished I seen it turn off, like flipping a switch when you leave a bathroom. Click. The world's most famous building goes dark, every night. Literal clockwork.

A ride and some walking and a transfer and two trains later I was back uptown, back in Harlem, but I didn't know my apartment number and it was past 3 a.m. We'd spent so much time talking about amazing technological advances that my near-dead phone died as I tried to make a call. Late at night (or early in the morning), cold but not too cold, I stood on the stoop looking at the door and wondering what to do. Three third floor apartments, none labeled with the proper name. I tried 32 and 33 briefly but skipped 31. I don't know why.

In my pocket was exactly one dollar in change: three quarters, a dime, two nickels, and five pennies. I walked back to the subway station to find a pay phone but there wasn't one. Across the street at a bodega there was, though, and I avoided three shady men stalking a corner to get to it. I dialed the number, the only friend's number I know by heart, a residual left over from the days when we didn't rely solely on digital address books, but she didn't answer. 'I'm here but don't know your apartment number,' I said to her voicemail. 'I'll be waiting on your stoop. Please come down and get me when you get this.'

I paced patiently, weighing options and willing her to wake up and see I wasn't back yet. Twenty easy minutes passed. I stared at the buzzer. I pressed 31. Thirty seconds later, the door buzzed. She lived in 32. Coincidence is funny like that.

We'd talked for an hour of technology and the future, and then I was stranded by it and used a payphone for the first time in my life. Welcome to 2011.

An Echo Stain

2010-12-23T23:58:00.000-06:00

Men in the form of dogs chase him into the treehouse and he runs so hard it hurts to breathe. Cornered, five of them on one of him, his only defense a stone-white sheet. They vary in size. He picks up the sheet and slings it around the smaller dog, wrapping him up in it and slamming him against the wall. The dog makes no sound. The largest of the five stands over the smallest, protecting it. There are no teeth, no snarls, just a tackling of sorts. He goes for the second smallest, a Chihuahua, and tries to shove him out the window. The dog yelps and screams and pushes back, trying to hold on. The whines echo.

He wakes up and knows it's over, finally. The sun is shining and it is warm out. Through his blinds he sees a blue sky and scattered checkerboard clouds. They welcome him back. He is so sad, and breathes. It was only self defense, and they were men. He feels like he could cry but he doesn't. He never cries from dreams.

He knows it's gone, the weight has been lifted, for now. He is himself again and is ready to be. That sun, that warmth, is for him, and he will use it. Today he will think and be and live. Today he will be happy.

Hoover, Damn

2010-12-15T03:41:00.000-06:00

In retrospect everything is brighter but what kind of retrospect can you have at 24. We think we're so big but we aren't. And we think we're so smart but we aren't. There's that certain feeling of unhappiness that sits on my shoulders at almost all times in my life and I've always thought I could push it off but I'm beginning to think that maybe I can't. Maybe happiness is just a high and the rest of it is just life. And things aren't romantic and the streets don't sparkle and everyone you meet isn't your soulmate.

I don't want to be that person just making it through the day, just taking it one day at a time, because that's so fucking depressing. One day at a time? One day shouldn't be enough. Things should be so great that you never want this day to end. Yet I find myself wishing I could close my eyes and wake up in month and have this all over and done with and settled. But that's settling, my enemy.

I believe in living in the moment but what if the moment sucks? And what if the moment isn't as good as you planned it? What if what you're supposed to do is get a shitty job and have a shitty marriage and raise a couple of shitty kids? When do the good moments happen? Happily ever after doesn't exist, it's just one more stack of problems. That's why sequels always suck. You left the story with a happy ending and some asshole executive forced some asshole writer to make up a problem. And yeah it's realistic but realism is depressing.

These aren't real questions they're just my mind playing devil's advocate with itself. I'm beginning to see why people cheat, or lie, or why people do drugs. These things aren't in me because I so value truth but I can see why.

This is a deep pit and I do not like it. I wish I had a past a present and a future but sometimes it seems like all I have is a vacuum.

Relativity and Drawing Hands

2010-12-13T02:10:00.000-06:00

I'm lopsided right now. Unbalanced. It's cold and windy and wet outside and I long for the late nights when I rode my bike through the French Quarter, the warm humid breeze swooshing around me and a beer rattling in my cup holder. The sky glowed orange then and I was so certain in my directionlessness, and confident that everything was working itself out for the better.

Now the sky stays grey all day and all night and a frigid wind whips around every corner. And it's wet and chilling and depressing. I don't want to go out, I want to stay in, and now I'm so lacking in that confidence. I feel like I've had so many false starts that starting over would almost be easier. And while believing in an overall sense that everything happens for a reason, I wonder what that reason is and wish it would reveal itself to me.

This year has been my favorite year of any I've ever lived and so much has happened to me, both inside and out. But it's left me with a strange wonkiness that I'm not sure I've felt before, and choices I made I have to wonder about. But not really. It's just the greyness talking, suffering from orange withdrawal. I'm sensitive to it right now and I want it to be over, but I know that when I look back even this will just be a snap of a memory.

We push through the difficult times knowing good ones are both behind and in front of us. But it's cold and windy and wet outside and I long for the late nights, riding my bike inhaling the Mississippi. What's the good without the bad and how would you recognize one without the other?

There's a flicker of hope burning behind a paper thin wall but it's delicate and must be tended to. I know this is short term but when you can't get your footing everything gets turned upside down. No one wants to live in an Escher forever.

Downs Man

2010-12-05T16:23:00.000-06:00

December heat goes
up up down up;
a stiff breeze blows
through
Fortune teller waves her
hands filling my
head with spam; it aint
true, maybe
Broken out, about to
break out;
breakaway, no fast
break breakfast
Rock around the
clock tiks toks all
night; missing hours
of sleep then
A dream of life; it
isn't mine but
it might be;
Yours.

Lest Some of My Soul Should Never Return

2010-11-28T17:03:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling contemplative today and it's annoying. I must have dreamt of New York because I woke up with the city on my mind. Less of the place, more of the feeling. Especially the feeling of early 2010, when I was confused and anxious and eager to move from the corporate world to a world of production. And I did that for a while, and then I moved to New Orleans and my job was settling in, learning the city, finding friends.

The nickname Big Easy is appropriate because the lifestyle here is that of extreme ease. There's no pressure from anyone to do anything. And I haven't done much. I sleep a lot. Usually I'm in bed between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. and up around 3 p.m. I don't know how I manage to sleep 10 to 12 hours every night of the week but I do, and I used to function, and well, on half of that. But my body has fallen into that pattern and I need to get it out of it. A job would help that.

Most days here are very good. Today is not such a good day. I woke up feeling creative energy stirring, but not the creation kind, the mid-project kind. But I'm not really mid-project except for a few writing attempts I love one day and hate the next. I believe I am talented and meant to write but my follow-through is lacking, and my work ethic is shit.

Maybe people my age aren't supposed to be free to work on whatever they want because they have no outside drive to do it, just an inner. With no reason to get p in the morning why get up? With no one breathing down your neck to complete something, why do it? With no one to bounce or hone ideas with, how do you know what's worth working on and what isn't? Self-editing is difficult for anyone, but it seems especially so for someone with so little life experience.

School is an easy answer, except deadlines loom too soon and it takes so much pre-planning. How do I know what I'll what to be doing in nine months, much less nine days? Do I want to sign myself up for a two-year contract now?

I find it so difficult to believe that a job for me to put my energy out there exists. My experience in New York, having my dream job and all the disappointment that came with it, may have killed the idea of a dream job actually existing. I put so much into the idea of that job and when it wasn't that anymore, it may have killed a piece of my soul. It will grow back or something else will take its place, but it hurts, more than I realize. Most things hurt more than I realize.

I miss my apartment in New York. The electric blue walls, the sunny open windows, the fire escape wrapped in white lights. I don't feel like I have room to stretch here, and there's no space to call my own yet. It makes work difficult and sleep easy, living in a white box lacking in any charm or personality, a temporary void of a space.

This is such a beautiful city, full of amazing people, and I love living here. But I'm lacking in distinct purpose, which was the goal nearly a year ago. Mission accomplished. Now I need the next one.

This is my 300th blog post, and as such:

This is the road by which I fled,
When the rebels had reached the west end of the city;
And terror, ever since, has clutched at my vitals
Lest some of my soul should never return.
...The court has come back now, filling the capital;
But the Emperor sends me away again.
Useless and old, I rein in my horse
For one last look at the thousand gates.

--"Taking Leave of Friends on my Way to Huazhou" by Du Fu, ancient Chinese poet, from 300 Tang Poems

On Your Feet, Oh

2010-11-23T15:28:00.000-06:00

Drop drop drop with building
force, round and round in
a spotlight from the heavens
shining down on its chosen
children
Movement through words, through
beats, energy pulsating under their
feet, chomping at their heels but
unlike Achilles they are not
weak
They go
round and round oh
round and round,
round and round oh
round and round
till victory

Snippets from IM: A Fowl By Any Other Name

2010-11-22T21:51:00.000-06:00

Meghan: have you watched the anne hathaway SNL yet?
Zachary: yeah she was awesome
Meghan: i basically hate anne hathaway
Zachary: omgggg!!!1 i love her!!
Meghan: like
Meghan: she was funny in the skits
Meghan: i think she's a great actor
Meghan: but in between skits
Meghan: i was like, i wanna stab you
Meghan: she's sooo dramatic
Meghan: and not in a good way
Meghan: she thinks she actually is anne hathaway
Zachary: like from shakespeare?
Meghan: yes!
Zachary: lolz
Meghan: she's like waving her arms around and being annoying
Zachary: you are ridic
Zachary: im calling fowl
Zachary: like the bird
Zachary: im calling it over to shit on you
Meghan: LOLZ
Meghan: i just belly laughed
Zachary: me too lolx

LBO Productions Presents: Love Sand, a Short

2010-11-17T13:00:00.001-06:00

Watch larger on the LBO Productions mini-site, or see it in HD.

Love Sand has taken its time to settle with me. A solid script written by best friend and creative collaborator Meghan Blalock and filmed over a few weeks this past summer in New York, it consumed me for a while. Too much, apparently, as I had trouble looking at it after some 40 hour of rough editing. With months and a move behind me now, I finally felt like I was ready to finish the very last little things and put it out there. It became unfair for me to hold it for my eyes only after so many generous friends put their time and effort into it.

So here it is, my second short, my first narrative fiction short, my first "major undertaking" in filmmaking. None of the crew on this film has any affiliation with or training from film schools, just a love for movies and a gut instinct. We didn't have fancy cameras or sound equipment, expensive computers or editing software. The budget on the whole project was about $7 for a pack of cigarettes. It's just a bunch of kids in the city making work for the sake of making work. Is there any better reason?

I won't go into the film itself except to say I have a love/hate relationship with it but am very proud. To everyone involved, my sincere thanks, and my sincere apologies for holding onto it this many month. To Jenny, my constant companion in love, life and art, who I can barely breathe without. To Meghan, a person I've seen grow in every way possible over the years we've known each other to become someone I'm proud to call my friend and collaborator, and whose body of work I look forward to living and experiencing. To Haley, who gave her all over and over in the role and who was no doubt born to do it. To Chris, with a dedication like no other and the easiest guy to work with. To Jon, who graciously lent us his good looks and physicality and then paid for it with an unknown grass allergy over the next week. To Brittany Bell, who I miss constantly, and Brady, who is down for anything and I'm so glad I know. And to Harry, who made time in his crazy busy schedule to scrape dirt under his fingernails and sit in a puddle of piss for an hour, lending me his talents time after time. You all trusted me with this silly 'why not?' of an idea and gave everything to it, and now this New York story is ours to share.

I've embedded the short here but the blog layout only allows for it to be so big, so I suggest you go on over to the LBO Productions mini-site and watch it in its big screen glory there, or see it in HD at its home on Vimeo. I hope you see it, and get it. There's nothing but truth behind and inside it.

Pledge and Seek

2010-11-16T14:28:00.000-06:00

The weather is beautiful though we're smack in the middle of November. It's cool and 70 with a gentle breeze. I like writing about the weather, and thinking about it, and experiencing it. I like being outside, and I get depressed when I go nocturnal and don't see the sun for a few days. And I always wonder why I'm depressed and as soon as I realize it's due to my lack of sun I'm almost instantly over it, knowing that tomorrow is another day and the sun will come up again and I will take it in.

I walked the six or seven blocks to my favorite coffee shop. I rarely walk because I'm usually on bike, but the bike is in the shop for its check up until this evening so I took it on foot and it was so nice. I forget I like walking. I feel dirty in a car, like I'm wasting something. I suppose the only thing you aren't wasting when you drive is time. I try to bike but it takes a lot more effort, and the end destination has to be worth the ride.

There's so much foot traffic in New Orleans. It doesn't look like it when you zip by in a car but when you sit in one place it's person after person minute after minute. Except at night, when most of the town is completely deserted and it looks like a post-apocalyptic zombie movie. You almost expect to turn the corner and see hoards of maggot-ridden flesh eaters chomping down on a poor, defenseless hipster.

I ate fast food today because I haven't in a while. Now I have heartburn.

Videopost: Tits & Tats; or The 2010 Lollapalooza Video

2010-11-09T02:25:00.001-06:00

I haven't made a video in a while, and this blog has shifted from my general life to my apparently much more ambiguous narrative writing style over the last few months. However, I'm still a person, I still have friends, and even after a long break, I still make videos.

Here's my most recent, featuring video taken in Chicago when Meghan, Jenny, and I trekked up/over from our respective homes and stayed with Christine. Oh, and there was that little Lollapalooza thing. (Remember when I won free tickets?) And some bitch named Lady Gaga was headlining. Whatever.

The video's length is longer than previous videos because it's part road trip, part Chicagoland, part Lollapalooza, part general friend summer silliness, and finally part slice of said Gaga concert. So it's five, five, five videos in one! Click here to watch in marvelous HD, or watch the embed below. I hope you enjoy.

Dream of the Lost, Dream of the Damned

2010-11-06T05:46:00.000-05:00

He told me I was so sexy and I both knew it and denied it. Men told me this often when we were in this position, and how nice my ass was, and just how fucking sexy I was. And I believed that they believed that, and even though I didn't see it, I was used to it and used to playing the part. And he ran his fingers over my entire body all night and I liked it so much, even though I knew it was hollow.

Sometimes being so self-aware is a curse.

• • •

We sat in an anonymous bar and talked shit about people we knew mutually. I brought up a girl and her new boyfriend.

"Oh you mean that kinda stupid girl?" he asked me.

"Oh, well, yeah. But I don't think she's stupid," I said. Until I reconsidered for a moment and realized, yeah, she was pretty simple. I was blinded by the want to be her friend because she seemed like one of those people I always thought I should be friends with. But then my real friends show up and they're nothing like the people I think I should be friends with. They're better, and I can't see it. Until I do.

"Yeah," I said, "I guess she is kind of stupid. I never saw it but now I do." And then, "She really is stupid." I attributed her boyfriend to their mutual stupidity and decided they would live out their days of simpledom happy and ignorant and never change a thing.

• • •

I ran my fingers through my hair and rolled restlessly in bed, coming down from a vodka drunk that could have lasted longer but didn't necessarily need to. I laid in child's pose, like in yoga, the sheets pushed aside, and I thought of the rising sun spilling over the river once more, and myself there to see it again. And I thought about money and how vapid it makes people, and how uninteresting it is. I can talk creation all night but money can only get me so far. People hide behind money, behind perceived sexiness, behind alcohol. People are always looking for an excuse to get out of their comfort zones, but if we all want to leave them so badly they must not be so comfortable.

I like to think I'm on a noble pursuit of truth and I bring it up often. "The truth," I say, "will shine through." I hope to god it will but what do I know, about truth or about life?

No one knows anything but we all fake it until someone believes us.

Upstream Salmon Swimming, Not

2010-11-02T03:13:00.003-05:00

It was time to go, and it was time to go. We floated effortlessly upstream against the current, opposite of those jumping salmon, hovering like on a cloud and it was easy. Up and up and up we went until we hit what looked like the top, the cap on our individual tub, and the stench was horrendous and unbearable and our bodies started to whither. It took root of us and kept us where we wanted to be but didn't and when we cut we bled and bled because it was us and we were it and the puddle echoed as it dripped. A fleshwound not unbearable but painful became a scar we'll never forget but must move past, and the teenage dream was unknowingly realized.

Things change and friends have superpowers. Drawn together like boxed magnets sitting next to each other on a shelf and none of us even knew it. But the truth shone through, shines through, and you know this has all happened for a reason and you're all better for it. If it wasn't supposed to have happened it wouldn't have happened, and a growth would still be living.

He smiled a lot and talked, and he told him what he wanted to hear and he felt good. Mine for a night, at least, he told him, and he knew he meant it and so did he. He pulled out Horses and he told him he'd fuck him and he did. Horses made him do it. Horses made me do it.

Dark grainy nights and sweet smelling mornings, humidity overcast skies a spectrum of ten million colors, better than anything we'd seen before. At 4 a.m. things seem so bleak but here it's only 3. And we're lucky.

We went, he went, they went, I went. We spent the night in tight small places underneath construction uptown like a cave where men grew closer. It feels hard but one day it wont be this easy and we'll all wish for the good ole days before life existed. A movement dead or questioned but not a movement at all, a spirit that lives and hangs above us. We will figure it out, one day.

You Are In Draft

2010-09-29T06:50:00.003-05:00

You are up, with the sun as it peeks over the river spreading outward over the water, over the streets, over the city, brightly. The crickets fade, the cool breeze wanes and you saw it all happen, from east to west.

You hear the voice of your dead great grandmother in your ear. "Do you know, I…" she says, fading, over and over. "Do you know, I…" "Do you know, I…" Her voice is so distinctive, you remember it like you heard it an hour ago but it's almost been a year now. Do you know you what, Lois? You want to know.

You fancy yourself a nice coffee but coffee means work and you want to put that off. You read Fitzgerald again: He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky. "I know myself," he cried, "but that is all." You didn't expect that.

You brush your teeth and you think of how quickly the days pass. And how slowly the days pass. Didn't you just do this? Was it an hour or a month ago? Or both.

That clock ticks forever but its hands never move. You fear the clock.

For $4 a Can I Can Brew My Own PBR

2010-09-25T04:49:00.002-05:00

They jump from one sinking stone from another, these flying, floundering kids, armed with liberal arts educations and a will and a drive to create but lacking the money and means necessary, surrounding themselves with the art of old, of beatniks and lost generations, wallowing in what they did before and how they wish they could do it now. But things are different, they say, things are just so damn different now. Nobody wants anything. Nobody respects anything. Nobody reads, writes, needs, lives for anything anymore, not like they did then. It's just a world of self-obsessed social networking brats who couldn't feel a real emotion if they even understood the concept. The economy in the shitter, a whole system of politics built on keeping people down, a whole world built on pieces of paper representing gold nobody needed or wanted back then. Or so it seemed. Everything's easier in retrospect and today is harder now than it will be later but it's hard nonetheless. In memory this all feels like it never happened anyway. In memory it's already over.

This cloud of thought sat over me and I was slowly rocked to sleep by a rumbling old subway car that hadn't been swept out in who knows how long. Alone in the car, buzzing on beer out of my budget, drunk on the endless possibility of life, or the life I had always been told I'd have one day. And I believed it. Is this that life? I wondered. Maybe it is and I just can't see it from the inside. Maybe when I look back I'll see I've had the perfect life all along. What is the perfect life anyway? Whatever. I saw myself shooting through a tube spiraling like a bullet firing out of the etched twisting of a gun. Bang, subway cars flowing through a network of blood vessels keeping New York alive. Or not. New York was dying in my eyes, controlled by money and pretentious millennials who aren't worth the space they occupy. I know I’m one of them but I don’t want to talk about it. Sometimes you have to face up to what you are but keep it to yourself. Otherwise you crumble like a stale Pop-Tart. Who picked PBR and how did it spread through the hipsters and why? For four dollars a can I could brew my own fucking PBR.

Why does this island feel like a crooked mouth, Central Park the perfect hole slowly sucking me like a joint, my soul intaken and outblown in a fantastical whiff of smoke, disregarded. Another one chewed up and spit out, she said. Well fuck you. A woman boarded the train with her baby. At three-thirty in the morning. Unacceptable. Or, I don't know, I don't know her situation. It just seems unnecessary. I don’t want a baby now but later. One day. I fell asleep and in a dream saw my childhood dog alive again. She walked up to me wearing a collar with a different name inscribed on it. She'd run away, not been run over, and she had loving new owners now but she was back. And I cried and cried and I felt my chest inhaling and exhaling so heavily and I grabbed onto that smelly little dog with her black head and her black tail and her white body with black spots and she smelled just like I remembered her smelling. She wasn't dead she was happy in another home and two pretty little girls took care of her and gave her a good name and ran around with her in the yard like she liked, and she ran in big circles around and around and stood guard and ruled the neighborhood dogs despite her small size. And I cried and cried a lot more.

The subway took that turn, loudly shrieking and slicing side to side through the tunnel. It shook me awake, and good thing because my stop was next. Walk through the station up the stairs through the turnstiles up the stairs and onto the street and smell that familiar sickly sweet smell of trash piles on the street and Spanish food swirling out a nearby smoke pipe. Twenty-four hour food was a godsend but one I rarely participated in, as tempting as it always was. I imagined walking down winding streets, getting lost in them, with no little blue dot on a map to guide me. Here the streets didn’t wind much anyway. The glory days, I thought; Ah, the glory days. Were things easier now, or too easy? Hard to say.

Home again home again the twist click of the door knob, so familiar. I stumbled around the kitchen and into my bedroom, gathering a water glass and filling it up in the kitchen. One thing about New York is the good water, even though one time I saw a thing on the History Channel that said the pipes that bring the water to the city from some spring upstate haven’t been cleaned since they were put in place like a hundred and fifty years ago. Meh. Still tastes good. I set the glass down loudly and it echoed through the small kitchen. I hit my toe on the cabinet as I turned around and I wondered if this is what it feels like to be clumsy, sober. That must suck. I drank the water and left the half-full or half-empty glass, take your pick, on the counter and I went into the bathroom. I stared at my face in the mirror, tousled back my hair and posed. Then I laughed at myself, smiling. But I don’t like my smile so I stopped. Heavy sigh. I was in bed now, lying there, looking out at the hazy moon from my window. Yeah, I could actually see it, that wasn’t a dramatic description to make it seem more romantic. No, I thought about how the moon moved and how weird that was. Like one minute you’re looking at it and then you look away, and you look back and it’s in a different spot. So bizarre.

I passed out and this time I didn’t dream. In the night a headache came and went but I slept through it and he never knew it existed. Sleep is weird when you think about it. Hey, let’s all go get unconscious for a while, we need to recharge our batteries. Yeah, the day lasts 24 hours, but we can only really handle about 16 or 17 of them, mostly. And good thing we have the big soft squishy things to lay down on, it makes this so much easier.

Scattered Thoughts on Fucking Symbolism

2010-09-19T04:49:00.000-05:00

Fucking symbolism. New Orleans is slamming me, ramming me with it.

I borrowed Hemingway's A Moveable Feast from the New Orleans library, took it home, opened it, and a postcard-size map of the Paris subway system fell out. Two thoughts: 1) Are you trying to get me to Paris, Hem? Preparing me for the eventual, perpetual trip? 2) I hate public transit right now, so perhaps you're trying to keep me away? Finished Feast, my first Hemingway and an amazing book that caused many a fight between myself and the author. How have I gotten through 24 years of liberal arts education without a Hem hymn?

Back at the library, I knew I wanted some F. Scott in my life so I picked up his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to pick through. Also got Kerouac's On the Road again, since I drifted away toward the end, too consumed with my own book of New York life closing to end his. And since Fitzgerald is so close to Faulkner, I picked up his As I Lay Dying, my first foray into old William. (Again, I ask, how did I make it through four years of Ole Miss liberal arts without a single Faulkner?) When I got home and opened it up, a postcard fell out. It read, "Maybe you're not special." What? What are you telling me, New Orleans?

I finished decorating my once-bleak bathroom. I chose a black and white New York theme, with a postcard of the Williamsburg Bridge framed and sitting next to a wire sculpture of the Chrysler Building that my parents bought me before I moved, knowing it is my favorite building in the city. Opposite the sink I hung an old piece of cheap Bed Bath and Beyond art I got on damage sale, but I ripped the white away and inserted four photos taken from my old office at 7 World Trade by my best friend, who I pine for. A black and white skyline greets me daily, reminding me of where I've been, what I left behind, what made me who I am today. Finally, I hung a clock on the wall to complete the space. It used to hang in my living room at 312 in East Harlem.

I was brushing my teeth tonight and could hear the clock ticking away, but when I checked the time, it was hours off. I watched it for a moment. The second hand was ticking, but not moving -- the time was the same as when I'd set it 14 hours earlier. A ticking clock, frozen in time, in my New York bathroom.

In my bedroom hangs a clock from my old room at 312, and even after the move it works fine. Coincidence that the New York clock is frozen and the New Orleans clock works? Sure. But fucking symbolism.

Fucking symbolism...

Crawling Up the Leg of History

2010-09-17T00:01:00.000-05:00

There is an unending stream of ants crawling through my New Orleans apartment. I don't know where they come from, where they're going, but when I sit on the loveseat in my room every so often I feel the slight tickle of an ant that has made its way past my foot and up my leg. They never -- or rarely, I suppose -- bite, they just go on their way, and my leg happens to be in the way.

When this first started, I felt so bad for the little bugs. I didn't want to kill them simply for sharing the same space. They don't know they're trespassing, and it's brazen to call the space more mine than theirs in the first place. But time passed and my humanitarianism passed away. Now when I feel or see one, I pinch it with my thumb and forefinger, squeeze, roll, and flick. Invisible ant carcasses litter the carpet, casualties of a war neither of us knows we're in, or wants to be.

In fifth grade I thought I might be an alien, and, somehow, I found someone who thought he might be one too. Logically, we decided we had to be from the same planet. We never named it that I can remember, but I do remember making up stories about what it was like on our homeworld. On Boy Scout trips we shared a tent, avoiding the other Earthling boys, conversing at a heightened level. I never had any shame about my own alienism and I often told other people of it. Of course, this didn't go over well, but it never bothered me -- not much did, and not much does.

My friend was a year or two ahead of me in school, and after a while summer was over, Scout camps and trips were put on pause and school resumed. One time I saw him in the hall and brought up the aliens, and to my surprise he didn't keep it going. He wasn't mean and he didn't make fun of me, but it was obvious he had put that behind him.

I still knew I was an alien, with or without my brother. I lived among my human classmates, hiding behind a human-shaped mask. I called out for my motherworld to reclaim me. It's not that I was unhappy on the human world -- I was quite happy, in fact -- but I wanted to be home, with my kind.

A decade later I wonder if I found it or forgot it. I suppose I still live as that alien, and I still call for the homeworld, now realized as some enlightened state of being or writing or art, to reclaim me. Meanwhile, my old friend calls for the human world to reclaim him from a hole in hell, where he serves thirty years for child pornography and molestation of a 12-year-old boy.

But what are we but unknowing ants, crawling up the leg of history -- a leg that just happened to be in the way -- before pinched, squeezed, rolled, and flicked.

Nola Night, Haze Overhead

2010-09-16T14:31:00.000-05:00

These streets, they speak
whisper in shadows, edging,
encouraging to go, go,
go
Orange haze sits on shoulders of
the brethren,
drawn into that warm embrace
only described as true magic
Pollution you say, but it's
something more,
a spirit lingers after hundreds
of years of haunting
us
Lonesome and quiet, spin
through this life on black
wheels carrying a heart of
gold
Spills forth from deep inside,
from sitting, soaking, aging
wine born from the
deep
Feel it reverberating, thick
air carrying heavy messages filled
with promise
Hands out, palms up,
accept
it

My Purified Eyes

2010-09-13T20:14:00.001-05:00

I am doing laundry and drinking purified water from a Brita pitcher. I took a shower and my hair dried fast. It usually does, especially if I don't use product. I'm lucky to have this long, thick, effortlessly shiny hair. Sometimes I run my hands through it, and it feels so soft, and it's so long, even being male and at the age where men start to lose their hair, and I think how nice it is and how lucky I am. A question on dating sites asks what people first notice about you and I usually write my eyes. But it's probably my hair. Men don't wear their hair long enough. I like long hair on men, especially tied in a bun in the back. It's not a look I want for myself, but it's a look I like.

Sleeping in someone else's bed always leaves me with a fucked up sense of time. And self-worth. It's so easy to find intimacy—I can be difficult to get to know, but I find a certain reserved intimacy easy. Too easy. My counterpart might mistake this for love, or a spark. Usually it's not.

If love, or I suppose sex, is one of the most basic primal needs, why does it leave me feeling so off afterward? Except with you.

There's nothing quite like a cold glass of purified water, free of the metals and minerals that run through New Orleans water and leave a dry taste in your mouth.

I wonder what a cold glass of my mind, purified, would look like.

These Streets, They Speak

2010-09-10T13:57:00.000-05:00

Childhood Dreams in a Cardboard Box

2010-09-09T04:06:00.008-05:00

I'm jealous of love stories, I suppose. There's nothing like the reckless abandon of love, when nothing else matters but you and them, when the trivial day-to-day things you do are the most important in the world. A lover's existence is a selfish one.

I don't have love stories. I have encounters—with love, with sex—but more so I have surroundings, childhood memories, observations of the present, feelings, friendships. I think of the people who constantly have a lover, or even a stable of them. So many of them believe in their own love. Can they not see what I see, or are they just simpler? Or can I not see what they see?

"Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous." A line from Frank O'Hara, given by Hannah Miet in an audio recording. I long to feel that sense of adventure again, but something just doesn't add up for me. People come and go, mostly unnoticed.

Is it a passive hope or an active faith that one day love will hit me? The former came from me and the latter from Meghan, and though they were produced with the same definition in mind, upon deeper examination I have to wonder if my subconscious was speaking for me. Which is it?

It's 4 a.m. The taste of off-brand Cinnamon Toast Crunch lingers.

As I Live and Bleed

2010-09-07T03:49:00.002-05:00

You get to know yourself a little bit better, a different side of yourself, when you move somewhere new, alone. I think about that Hemingway quote a lot: "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." Moving is bleeding, in its own way.

There is a lot of inner monologue. You talk yourself into and out of things. Should I go for this midnight bike ride? Yeah, why not. But maybe it's not safe. This isn't New York. The streets will be empty in most places. But that's okay, isn't that what you want? Yeah, I guess. Okay. Yeah, I'll do it. Should I Facebook message that friend of a friend I met at a bar the other night? I don't want to feel like I'm a friend mooch. But I do want friends, and we seemed to be on the same page. Is that weird? I guess I will message him. But what if he doesn't message back, and then I run into him later? Will that be awkward? Will I even be going out later?

There are a lot of doom scenarios. You forget that you've actually done this before. Several times. And not just moved, but moved with no one waiting at the other airport. Time passes so quickly, and so slowly. A few hours go by and you realize you haven't said anything out loud. And if you have, you've been talking to yourself. Is that weird? Talking to yourself? Then again, isn't thinking just talking to yourself, inside your head?

There are the days when you stay inside. You know what's a fun project? Watching the entire second season of Dexter in one day. You feel accomplished and free of social pressure. Who needs friends when you have Netflix, a cord hooking your computer to your TV, and a big ass couch? And tons of soda and leftover tacos? Who cares that people you know in the city are out, and people you know back in New York are all together. Oh, is it time to shower again? Didn't you just do that? Oh, that was three days ago. Where does the time go? Pan to the couch.

Then there are the bursts of confidence. Where you decide, yes, you will go out, yes, you will message that person, or yes, you will text a friend and see what he is doing, or yes, you will go to a bar, sit down, and have a drink by yourself. Yes, you will talk to a stranger. Because back before the Internet, and back before texting and Facebook, people just went out and met each other. They had friends back then, and you want friends now, so get out there and make yourself available.

This is why you came here. To put yourself in these situations, for the writing, for the consuming, for the living. This is where you thrive, in new situations. And you do. This soon into living alone you shouldn't know this many people, or have met this many people you actually like, or have more than one or two people you can text to grab a drink. You're doing exactly what you wanted, except instead of the three-month movie montage you had in both your predictions of your happy future and will have in your memories when you look back, you're living day to day, and it's far less glamorous.

You talk to yourself a lot, and sing to yourself a lot, and eat a lot, and sleep a little. You consume a lot and put out a little. You explore a lot and hang out a little. You bleed.

But it's a good bleed. Because you made the cut yourself, and you did it on purpose.

It's a Blog-Eat-Blog World Out There

2010-08-31T13:22:00.003-05:00

Curbed still has its hard on for me. They posted about me back in October of 2008 when I wrote one of my first posts about East Harlem and gentrification. They really liked that I called myself the "face of gentrification" and have bestowed the title on me once more, this time in response to the post I wrote the other day about why I left New York.

The piece itself is fine. Snarky, of course, because all bloggers (including myself) resort to snark when they don't have anything to say or are just being lazy. That's fine. Most of the comments, however, can be tagged under 'extremely hateful' — more than one wishes I'd gotten mugged or beaten while in New York. Classy.

Curbed is like Gawker in that it breeds commenters who have nothing to do but refresh refresh refresh the site all day, who get some kind of satisfaction through being a dickwad on every post. I like Gawker, I like Curbed, but the community those blogs and others like them create is toxic and nothing to be proud of. But everyone is entitled to his own opinion, and commenters can have their fun taking it out on me if they wish. However, I will say two things about the post and its comments:

1) It's easy to take 100 words out of a 1,000-word post and make anyone look like a jackass. Yes, the piece was "lengthy," as Curbed notes, and yes, I did write about quitting my job to see Lady Gaga, but this post is the epilogue to a three-month-long series of posts about my relationship with New York, coming to terms with the fact that I wasn't as happy as I thought I could be and the realization that there are many other places in the world outside of the city. And about my relationship with New Orleans, discovering it again, remembering how much I've wanted to live here, and everything falling into place to make it happen. This was not a decision I made on a whim, I didn't give up on my dreams, I didn't fail in New York. I just opened my eyes and took advantage of what I saw — greater potential elsewhere. At least for now.

2) This one may sting sensitive New Yorkers a bit, but I'll say it anyway: if you're from New York City, you can't weigh in on what it's like to move to or from it. You have no idea what it's like to be from a small town in Mississippi, where families live in piles in one tiny area and spend their entire lives within 15 minutes of their mothers. Where there isn't opportunity everywhere, and where you're lucky if there's a Walmart within 20 minutes of your house. Native New Yorkers have no idea what it feels like to move to New York from anywhere else, and most of them have no idea what it feels like to move out of it. Living in New York is easy. The day-to-day life is not difficult. But I was falling into a pattern that I didn't like, so I left, and it was hard. A friend who is a New Yorker once said she wants to keep a New York virgin around at all times because of the way he or she allows her to see the city. Native New Yorkers will never see the city through my eyes, and I will never see it through theirs. But I wouldn't trade. So when I see someone retweet the Curbed story with "Really?" attached, and then see she is a Queens native who now lives in Brooklyn, I think one thing: you have no idea what you're talking about, no idea where I'm coming from, and you never will.

In my two and a half years in New York — 30 completely successful months where I did everything I set out to do — I really lived there. I'm proud of what I did, the work I made, the friendships I formed. I was out every night, I saw tons of theater, I met people everywhere, I went to bars and art shows and had parties and hung out in the parks and explored the city, rode the subway, rode the busses, used the libraries, shopped at the bodegas, spent time in the farthest reaches of Brooklyn and Queens, hung out in Staten Island, lived in Harlem and spent a lot of time supporting local businesses. I lived my New York life to the fullest, and one of the most disappointing things about the city was the number of people who were just living like boring slobs, where New York was just the place they happened to live. I've said it a million times and I'll say it again: New York City is the greatest city in the world. But not if you just sit in it. And I was never sitting.

Plastic Sacks, Cross Country

2010-08-30T21:23:00.002-05:00

Hannah Miet gave me a bottle of Tanqueray and a bottle of tonic as a going away gift. Gin and tonic is my favorite drink. When I packed my parents' truck for the move, I had to drain the unopened bottle of tonic — there wasn't room, and it was inconsequential. The unopened gin, however, made the journey to New Orleans with me, and, though still unopened, sits near me as I write this.

The tonic came in a white plastic grocery sack, the kind we call Walmart bags in the South. They used to be a weird blue color — not navy blue, not quite teal, but somewhere in between — but now they're just the regular semi-transparent white color of every other plastic sack.

A few weeks ago I was at my parents' house, in the room where I spent my adolescence. It doesn't have any of my furniture or decorations anymore, and now a guest room furniture set lives where so much of my development as a young man took place. I saw a flash of weird blue behind the antique dresser. It was a crumpled, balled-up old Walmart bag, resting between the wall and the dresser. Peaceful plastic, frozen in time.

The tonic came in a white plastic grocery sack, but the gin, picked up by Hannah at some old liquor store in upper Manhattan, came in a black plastic bag with gold fleurs de lis on it.

Sometimes you work hard, searching for that perfect metaphor. And sometimes the universe just hands you one.

Snippets from IM: Just Say No

2010-08-30T14:16:00.000-05:00

Zachary: ew
Zachary: all these mississippi gays are dating people SO much younger
Zachary: like people my age have boyfriends who were born in like 1991
Meghan: wjhreihrjklj3h4k3j4kj3hn4k2jl34nk2j3hn4
Meghan: NO
Zachary: im liiiike
Zachary: no
Meghan: just no
Zachary: im 24
Zachary: i will not date an 18 or 19 year old
Meghan: no
Meghan: no
Meghan: the 90s are the cutoff
Meghan: if you were born in the 90s
Meghan: i dont even want to be your facebook friend
Meghan: much less bang you
Zachary: so true

On Living 100 Lives; or, Why I Left New York

2010-08-25T15:23:00.006-05:00

People keep asking me why I moved to New Orleans. They give me weird looks. Old friends can't believe it. New York, they tell me, was synonymous with me in their minds. Two in the same. Because I hadn't shut the fuck up about it since I was about 11. I don't know what to tell them. Hell, I don't know what to tell myself. I never ask myself if what I'm doing is right because I'm confident I've made the right choice, but I do have to wonder why.

I graduated in 2008 with big, lifelong dreams of moving to New York and working in magazines. Within two months I'd accomplished those dreams, and though I navigated a disintegrating economy through layoffs and freelance gigs before landing my 18-month long stint as an assistant editor for a business magazine, I was in magazines the whole time, pitching, writing, editing. It was my dream.

Until suddenly it wasn't. I wanted to go to Lollapalooza so I requested a Friday and a Monday off. They granted me the Friday but refused the Monday. It was the bitter icing on top of an expired cake with a gooey problem-filled center, and with that I left my old life, and my old ideas of what life should be, behind. "I'm 23!" I told myself. "I'm too young to have some asshole boss dictating whether or not I can see Lady fucking Gaga in Grant Park!"

The move. Peace out New York.

Overnight I accidentally became a symbol of the new 20-something life in my social circles. To my friends, I was an odd sort of hero. I'd done what we all spent four hours a day Gchatting about doing. People told me they wished they could do what I'd done. When a close friend decided to leave her unsatisfying new career behind, she texted me that she was "following my lead." Another told me we should meet up and she'd buy me a celebratory "we're living our unemployed dream" beverage.

Yes, I quit my former dream job because I wasn't ready to grow up. And I still don't think it was stupid. Then I decided, hey, maybe magazine editor isn't my dream job after all, and maybe New York isn't my dream city! There's an entire world out there, New York is annoying me, and Patti Smith told me to go. Like I was actually in the room when she said go. That's all I needed. Plans were made, cross-country moves were undertaken and suddenly, bam!, here I am in New Orleans.

This got me thinking about what it means to be a 20-something in the digital age, where we spend more time communicating with each other than any generation before us, but less time engaging in actual face-to-face contact. Where our parents told us we were special and could be anything, and where we believe it. Where optimism reigns, making just enough money to cover rent and beer is acceptable, and where "settling down" is the enemy. Who the fuck do we think we are? Who the fuck do I think I am? I don't know, but my mission is to find out.

In New York, people think they've made it just because they've moved there. They forget the reason they came — to make art, to design fashion, to act, to make films, to write — because they get so caught up in the flash sex drinks drugs distractions of the city. When I ask an aspiring artist in New York what he's working on, he stumbles through some excuse about not being able to afford supplies. When I ask a young fashion designer what she's made recently, she carries on about her job as a retail assistant manager at some trendy Brooklyn graphic T-shirt store. But when I asked these questions to strangers I met in New Orleans when I visited for a week back in May — a toe-in-the-Gulf trial week — they were wearing their creations, they were carrying their sketchbooks and drawing in them at dinner. It was inspiring, and I got drunk on that legendary New Orleans magic juice.

A Mississippi sunset. Back in the South.

So that's why I left, world. That's why I left, me. I left as a sort of representation of hope that there is something better out there than what I was doing. Not blind hope, but hope I can seek out, discover, and use. I left because I got too comfortable. I left to challenge myself. I left a lot of people behind — dear, dear people who I think about constantly and miss even more often — but the ones who get me get why I did it, and I don't give a shit about the ones who don't anyway.

People always say we only have one life and we better live it. Fuck that. I want 100 lives. So here we go on number two.

Why Lack of Inspiration is All Right

2010-08-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

Since I left the city I've been feeling a bit uninspired. I know I just wrote yesterday that I'm in New Orleans and it's great and I'm inspired, and while that wasn't a lie, it wasn't exactly the whole truth either.

Friday night I opened the front door of the house I grew up in and the suction between the overly air-conditioned inside and the wall of humidity waiting for me outside pulled a few swarming gnats into the house. That was inspiring.

Last night I almost tripped on Frenchman Street because a section of the sidewalk was completely missing, ripped by tree roots. People had to wait on each other to pass because the tree was overtaking the sidewalk and the street. It was so warm, and so beautiful, and I was alone, walking these streets, listening to the people, to the city. That feeling was the reason I decided to move here. That was inspiring.

But my physical need to work, and to make work, seems lesser since I've moved out of New York. This summer was all creation all the time. I felt worthless when I was out drinking, like I should be at home working on something. I've been lacking that feeling this month, because I'm not settled and I've been traveling and all that.

But what I've come to realize is this: I am a writer. I need inspiration to write. But there are going to be high times and there are going to be low times. And that's okay. I look at the work of other writers and I get jealous that I didn't think of that. I question my own abilities, my own talent, successes (or lack thereof). And that's okay too. It's natural, and I need to do it. Everything in life is cyclical. Especially in my life.

I wish I could be less sensible so that I could wallow more in my lack of overwhelming inspiration, but that's not me. I know it will come back eventually and that I'll have so much I don't know what to do with it. For now I'm in consumption mode instead of creation mode, but we need that sometimes.

So here I am, left with a little twinge of that did-I-make-the-right-choice syndrome, with that I-don't-know-anyone-what-am-I-going-to-do-tomorrow feeling housed in the pit of my stomach. But it's okay. Because we can't be high all the time.

The Weary Pilgrim

2010-08-21T20:11:00.002-05:00

A friend asked me how I felt about being out of New York. "Do you miss it like crazy? Is being back bittersweet?" I hesitated. I didn't know. "Indifferent?" she asked. "Yeah," I said. "I think I am indifferent about it."

Up, down, left, right, forward, backward, sideways. This month I've been everywhere, a whirlwind of state lines and gas stations, take-out coffees and too much fast food. More than 3,500 miles in three weeks. And it's been awesome.

Now I'm in New Orleans, settling down for more long-term living. Job hunting. Friend hunting. Inspiration hunting. Mostly inspiration hunting, let's be honest.

My bank account is in the red, I've got $7.43 in my pocket, but I'm here, alive, inspired. And suddenly well-traveled. See?

I don't know what's next, and right now I'm in that weird transition where it's the weekend and my parents are both in New Orleans and I haven't quite mentally gotten here. But I'm looking forward to when I do.

When the windstorm calms down, what's revealed should be epic.

Note: Headline is a nod to Dolly Parton's Travelin' Thru; amazing lyrics, amazing performance. As always. Dolly defines national treasure.

Visions of the Future, or, Three Things My Past Self Knew

2010-08-03T15:44:00.000-05:00

I've been going through all my old school work and notebooks from elementary and middle school, which my mother so awesomely saved, neatly packaged by grade, in our attic for a day like this. Of the treasure trove of shit I've been though (which I'm sure will pop up here at some time or another), here are three highlights:

1: In which I'm a hipster, already, in third grade.

This WILL be my Facebook profile photo soon, for obvious reasons. The haircut. The glasses. The stance. The denim shorts. The EPIC T-shirt that I wish I still had. The fact that I'm student of the week. The fact that it's a Polaroid. The wood paneling. And the fact that I'm standing in front of a wall of New Orleans info, as the class is prepping for our field trip to Nola.

2: I may change places, but I'll always be the same.

I consider eighth grade the year I really came into myself. I figured out I was gay. I started exploring social life outside of my own school and fell in with a group of theater/art kids at the local community theater. My love for Britney Spears solidified with I'm a Slave 4 U at the MTV VMAs. I got my first job. And so on.

This questionnaire was filled out at the beginning of an English class in August 2000. I couldn't have written it better myself... well, my today self, ten years later.

What? Literally every piece (except that whole Southern Miss thing) is still me. I still love chicken and being stupid, I still love sleeping late, I still want a better job. Even back then I had a concept of self-growth and I believed in myself (maybe too much...?).

Clearly the most telling is the two lines, though. First, my final question is, "Why not?" An unknown toss to Andy Warhol, and my general outlook on life still today. And whose final destination is "to live in New Orleans and direct independent film." I knew I'd always had an interest in film, but I didn't know it stretched back this far. And New Orleans has always been a place I wanted to live, but I didn't know I was so set in it way back then.

If a creative's goal is to re-reach his childhood, to have that feeling of unrepressed, unjudged freedom you can only have as a kid, and to reach it through your work, it appears that I am on the right path. Every day I strive to be more childlike in outlook and mindset.

Or maybe I was just a really fucking wise 14 year old.

3: Even in third grade I was a rock star.

This illustrated journal entry from late third grade, about fifteen years ago, says it all. Peace, love, and rock'n'roll y'all.

The Clock Strikes One

2010-07-29T03:19:00.000-05:00

I am too much of a writer, sometimes, to enjoy my own life. My eyes see in passages; the way a tree blows in the wind, street smells wafting by, the specific way an old woman walks by carrying heavy bags of groceries. Then the fiction kicks in and I am the tree, I created the smell, I help the old woman carry her bags and we talk. She gives me advice. She can tell I'm at a particularly vulnerable time in my life, and she tells me I'm doing the right thing. But then I'm back, me again, creating characters to guide me from strangers who most likely can't. And since I'm at once the writer and the characters, I'm actually just giving myself advice from the two sides of my own brain. Still as lost as I was sitting on the stoop watching a tree blow, noticing a smell, watching an old woman carry groceries.

• • • • •

I showered until my fingers pruned. I didn't even know fingers could prune in the shower. But they did. It had been a few days and my body was disgusting. I washed my hair twice, as I usually do. Then I washed my body twice for the first time in my memory. An accidental baptism in a dirty New York shower. A dirty New York boy with his dirty New York feet. Feet in this city. Disgusting. But I washed it all away; the dirt, the sweat, the work. The drain stopped up, as it always does.

• • • • •

I rarely see a roach in the city, inside or out. But tonight I saw one on 106th Street. I didn't even have time to get grossed out because it took me so long to figure out what it was. It was a cockroach, run of the mill, old as the hills, other cliches of being old common. Twenty minutes later in my bathroom I saw a little inside roach. Another rarity—in two years I've probably only seen a dozen inside the apartment. Once again it didn't freak me out like bugs usually do, when they give you that heart-jump reaction but you act cool through it. I was calm, watching as it decided its next move. I didn't have anything to kill it with until I thought of the air spray under the sink. So that's what did it. Death by Fabreeze. A roach killed and covered by artificial air fragrance. It seemed fitting. Then the chemicals burned my nose and I coughed them out.

Life, Don't Let Me Down

2010-07-19T16:45:00.000-05:00

That MTA thing did it. It killed my dreams of New York. To me, New York is dead.

The reason I came here in the first place is because I wanted to be in the most influential, the most creative place. I wanted to be mothered by a city that has changed the world, that has birthed others who have made an impact. I wanted to be in the master class of life, and who better to teach that class than the greatest city in the world?

But it's fucking tearing me down. I loved it for the first few years but each day that passes kills my spirit a little more. This place is rough and tough and I knew it. But it isn't that I didn't make it here. I did. By society's standards at least. I felt more creative here than anywhere. I felt more like the person I believe I am meant to be. The opportunity was endless.

Until it ended. I didn't want what I used to want anymore. Money was everywhere. This city costs so much and pays so little, how can they really expect you to live like this? I filed less than $25,000 on my 2009 taxes, and less than $20,000 on my 2008. For what? Was I actually reaching the creative potential I came here for?

I don't know. But what I did come to realize is this: I can make $25,000 anywhere, doing anything, and it will cost a hell of a lot less. I don't have to spend 70% of my income on rent and bills. There are creative people everywhere. The New York I was seeking is a spirit, not a place, and there are people everywhere with that spirit. So I want to find them. And I have to leave to do so.

And now that there's even just rumors of a cap on the number of rides an "unlimited" Metrocard gives, and even just rumors of a fare increase to $100, I'm done. The subway was my favorite part of the city from day one. I love its maps, I loved the availability of the train, sitting on it, waiting for it, everything about it. When I first moved here I'd take the train one stop from 8th Street-NYU to Union Square and transfer to another line instead of walking just so I could experience it. Back then it was $76 for a monthly unlimited. Three years later it's $100, service has been cut, full lines have been wasted. I can't even get a crosstown bus after midnight anymore. It's too much. Or too little.

It's no coincidence I was in Patti Smith's presence when she told us New York wasn't ours anymore. ""New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling," she say in May. "But there are other cities. Detroit. Poughkeepsie. New York City has been taken away from you. So my advice is: Find a new city."

New York was my hero. But my hero wouldn't do this to its people, and especially not to its artists, its soul. New York, or the New York of 2010, let me down. I take the idea of the spirit I thought New York had with me when I go, seeking it out elsewhere, or carrying it with me.

Eleven days.

Two Summers, One City

2010-07-18T22:40:00.001-05:00

It was hot. Steaming hot. Hottest week of the year. It set records. The South is hot, but New York, when it's hot, is so different. In the South it's hot inside your body, the humidity eats you a live, hits you like a brick wall when you walk out of the air conditioning. In New York, it burns your skin. It's external, it's sudden. You're fine and then shit! You're really hot. Burning. Sweaty. Disgusting.

It was hot, and it was a Friday, and he was finally here. Two flights, a cab from La Guardia, an entire life packed into two bags. Or the potential of an entire life packed into two bags, an old life left behind, deliberately, purposefully. Quickly.

Standing in the median on Broadway and West 139th Street, waiting. An old woman walked by and smiled, kind eyes. She knew he was a newcomer. She remembered when she'd been one too.

He surveyed his new home, taking in the streets. They screamed New York. Everything looked exactly as it should. Duane Reade. Paul's Pizza. Yellow cabs zoomed by, outnumbered only by black coupe gypsy cabs. Fire escapes everywhere.

He loved the city, already, and he breathed it in, that sickly sweet smell. Life at its best, and he wanted to live it. To take it over. His destiny was met. This was it. And he was ready.

• • • • •

It was hot, like always, consistent, two years later. Hottest week of the year, though it didn't set records. His skin burned. It ached. He craved air conditioning but he hated air conditioning. Freezing, false. Sweaty. Sticky. Gross.

It was hot, and it was a Friday, and he was finally leaving. Driving to a new place, packing a life into the back of a truck. Leaving a lot behind, but taking the important stuff with him, mostly. He was sentimental, but it was easy for him to let most things go. He recognized when they had served their purpose.

Standing at a corner on East 103rd Street and Lexington, waiting to cross, waiting on the orange hand to disappear, signaling, come on. People swirled around him, anonymous, abrasive, loud. Quiet down, please, can't you quiet down for one fucking second? They didn't care about anything but themselves. They don't even move side of the side walk when you're walking toward them. They just stroll on by and expect you to move over. And he always did because that was who he was. And he hated that. He wanted to plow them down.

He walked the familiar street, the same corner store, Great Wok chinese, the same Finest Pizza Deli place. Trees were in bloom but it was all manufactured. Manufactured Manhattan. There was nothing natural about it. The bus barreled by. It was so loud, and clunky, and it whined up a hill. The same fire escapes hung overhead.

The tiny Mexican restaurant again. The closed Western Union, always closed. Looking up at the neon Edwin's Liquor sign. Buzzing, even in daylight. He stared as he walked.

The ladder was heavy, and it fell fast. There was a loud clash, a heavy thud. He fell, in slow motion, down, down, hands in front but too late, thud. He lay there.

The world paused. There was silence. His blue eyes were open. Slowly, a trail of blood leaked onto the sidewalk.

Commotion. People gathered, someone screamed to call 9-1-1. A hipster, a newcomer, observed the trouble from the other side of the street. An old ice man hobbled from his stand onto the scene. He knelt down, his aching knees, and asked, in Spanish, if the boy was okay. No response. He didn't speak Spanish anyway, even if he could respond. Eyes open, he stared, at nothing. The blood was a puddle now, the fire escape ladder pressing into his broken spine. But he didn't know it, and it didn't matter.

He loved the city, but he wasn't in love with the city. Anymore. The people. The smell. The trouble. It was too much, and not enough. But it made no difference now, because his destiny was met. That was it.

Script Preview: The Visit, Scene 2, Draft 2

2010-07-09T17:16:00.000-05:00

Here's a preview of one of the shorts I've been working on instead of blogging recently. Shooting over the next few weeks.

• • • • •

EXT. A NEW YORK APARTMENT BUILDING - AN HOUR LATER

Sarah has fallen asleep, leaning on the stoop railing. She's exhausted.

TREY, another 20-something, artsy, confident, gay,  comes walking up with his roommate Tom. They are laughing, being young in the city. They look at Sarah as they climb their stoop. She remains asleep.

At the top of the stoop, Trey and Tom talk, laugh, search for keys. Sarah stirs awake. She recognizes the voice, stands up and turns to face them. She is standing at the bottom of the stoop, looking up. She says:

SARAH
Trey...

Trey and Tom both look. Trey harder.

TREY
Yeah?

SARAH
Hey...

TREY
(after a beat, excitedly)
Oh my god, Sarah? What the fuck!?

He is excited, and confused. Tom stays at the top of the stoop as Trey quickly descends it. He grabs Sarah's hand.

TREY
What the fuck are you doing in New York!? Why didn't you call me? What the fuck are you doing here!

Trey laughs and hugs her suddenly. She tears up, hugs him back, laughs a little. It's a snotty laugh. She's so tired.

SARAH
I don't... I don't know. I just got here. I just... I just got here...!

TREY
Fucking Christ, my mind is like fucking blown right now. You are like literally the last person I would ever expect to find sitting on my doorstep. I mean W-T-F man, who just shows up on peoples' stoops in 2010?

SARAH
(laughing a little)
I know, I know, I just... I don't know...

TREY
Where are you staying? Why are you here? Tom, this is my fucking best friend from like elementary school man. Like fourth grade this bitch shows up in Miss Holland's class and it was just love ever since. Ohmigod, Sarah! You have to come in. Is this your stuff?

SARAH
Yeah, I--

TREY
You never did travel light, always carrying bags of shit around with you, like down the street to the damn Texaco station or whatever, ha! Jesus lord man I cannot get over you being here. Come up, come in, have you been sitting here long?

Trey picks up her bags and they unlock the door as Sarah avoids the tough questions and Trey keeps yammering. The camera stays outside as the front door slams shut. They ascend the stairs, as seen through the glass window of the door.

CUT TO:

TITLE CARD:

"THE VISIT"

LBO Productions Presents: Hello, Absurd World

2010-07-01T16:01:00.003-05:00

I know fellow blogger Hannah Miet, well, as expected: through blogging. Friend Meghan found her blog and began reading it, looping me in, and eventually the two of them met for drinks. Flash forward a few months and the three of us are on a 10-hour trip to New Orleans for kicks. After seeing the resulting video, Hannah approaches me about directing a pitch-video for an upcoming Kickstarter project she's launching, a book of her poetry published with donations from readers of her blog and fans of her work.

Of course I said yes, and Hannah pointed me to one of her inspirations, a Kickstarter-funded book called Coming & Crying. "I don't want a pitch video with me just talking to the camera," Hannah told me. I watched the C&C video and immediately got back to her. "I liked the video a lot," I said, "but I think we can do better."

So we met at an uptown diner to discuss the project over chicken fingers and messy salads and found we were on exactly the same page with visual style: grainy, black and white, all New York, all Hannah, general city absurdity, film noir, mysterious, subway trains. Essentially, Hannah personified and captured on film, with a little sprinkle of me in there. We picked a night and started shooting at 9 p.m. Then, at 4:30 in the morning, after trips around the Upper West Side, Times Square, the West Village, a few bars, and lots and lots of subway trains and stations, we were wrapped.

Then came the editing: two 8-hour nights, plus hors and hours sound editing, finding the right balance, perfecting the visual style. Not to mention the time our voice contributors spent recording several of Hannah's poems each. It's been more than a month since we first started kicking around ideas, and the day has finally come to show our work to the world.

So, enough jibber-jabber. Launching simultaneously with her Kickstarter project (which you should check out and donate to, like, now), I'm crazy-proud to present my first public work as a filmmaker, a non-narrative piece titled Hello, Absurd World, starring and featuring poems by the brilliant Hannah Miet, shot, directed, and edited by yours truly. See it below, or visit the short's page over at the new LBO Productions web site. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you support the cause from which it was born.

Of Underwater Cyclones

2010-06-29T01:19:00.002-05:00

He ran his fingers through her hair. "Fuck," he breathed. "What?" she asked. The answer, of course, was nothing. It was a bold move anyway. They didn't know each other that well, and they hadn't touched much. Except that time she brushed his thigh, hesitated, then let it sit for a minute. It was static.

But her hair was soft. Soft and brown and shiny. Definitely third day hair. She smiled and did one of those breath-out-of-the-nose laughs. Keep it cool, just keep it cool. But she could feel the cool draining out of her like someone had just pushed the drain lever down in the bathtub. Now the water would sound its gurgling call, gain speed, and climax with an underwater cyclone. When she was eight she would sit in the bathtub, real still, and wait for the aquatic tornado to form. Then she'd try to stick her finger into the empty space in the middle. It never worked. She was too clumsy.

It was just three days ago, when she was drying her hair, that she saw an underwater cyclone form in her clogged and painfully slow-draining shower. Maybe something really small won't disrupt the hydo-phenomenon. She reached to her shelf for a Q-tip, keeping her legs extremely still. She steadied herself, leaned, moved as little as possible. Q-tip successfully in hand, she bent and stretched her arm toward the drain, carefully, oh so carefully. But her right foot slipped. Damn. She was too clumsy. Next time. Next time I will be ready.

Now she felt her own emotional underwater cyclone kick in, her lack of keeping-it-cool overwhelming her. Her eyes began to tear up as she looked up at him. He was looking away, toward the projection, and she stared at his profile. Oh god, oh god, oh god. I can't be that girl. Keep it cool you god damn fool, just keep it cool. Ugh. But it was too late. A tear ran down her left cheek.

She darted to wipe it away before he saw. "Fuck," she breathed. "What?" he asked. The answer, of course, was nothing. He smiled and did one of those breath-out-of-the-nose laughs.

Three Scenes from a New York Day

2010-06-24T16:47:00.009-05:00

1:
I am running for the M15 bus, shoes slapping against the sidewalk, my eagle necklace threatening to fly from under my cut-off tank. The sun is shining. East Harlemites stare me down, wondering why the young white hipster punk who's invaded their neighborhood is running like a madman.

I reach the bus stop just before it pulls up. It stops, and I climb on. The driver looks ahead. My MetroCard beeps and I head toward the back. I sit. I inhale. I exhale. I smile.

I'll sort of miss this.

2:
I am sitting in the grass in Bryant Park, enjoying the sounds of running water from the fountain. The sunset was beautiful until six giant fluorescent stadium lights perched on a nearby skyscraper switched on and covered the park in a sheet of blue artificial light. Now the grass is a sickly green, and when I run my fingers through it I see it's not grass at all but sod—hair plugs in the scalp of what used to be an island.

I look up and see flashes from the observation deck of the Empire State Building, where tourists stood in line for three hours and paid $20 each to look down on me. I love it up there—I'd go every night if I could, but it's so corporate, so over-organized, so unnatural and uptight. They stripped the beauty and the ease from a landmark built for the people, that carries their name, all to make a buck or twenty from strangers.

New York traffic flows in and out like waves rolling onto the shore. Constant, pulsing in various degrees, forever. It echos off the buildings in the cut-out that is the park. Artificial comfort, of sorts.

The park is a trick—you still see, hear, smell the city, but you're on the grass, so it's nature, right? Meanwhile, a single block away, the flickering lights of Times Square catch my eye, pulling me from a wanted escape.

I am walking in East Harlem. The moon above is hazy, covered with clouds, glowing, almost full. They say the crazies come out two days before and two days after the full moon—five days of psychosis. I believe it. Especially here.

An old black man sits in a wheelchair outside the back door of a 24-hour fried food place on 104th Street. Walking by, it smells disgusting. It's hot, and a fan blows the air and the smell onto the street. The old man is deranged, holding a small boom box, Spanish music playing, his eyes spinning in side his skull. He doesn't look or talk to me, but he looks and talks toward me, not really saying anything.

I see the light turn at Second Avenue and rush to catch it. I make it as the blinking orange hand becomes solid, passing the funeral home again. I've lived next door for nearly two years and have never seen a coffin, until yesterday. A sign?

I wonder. About everything.

It's a Hard Nocturnal Life; or, Adjusting to the Freelance Way

2010-06-23T02:00:00.003-05:00

My eyes hurt. They are red, and dry, and I need Ben Stein to bring me that beach ball that changes from red to white with the pull of a mysteriously dangling string. I want to take my contacts out but then my glasses press into my pillow, and thus into my face, when I lie down. It's uncomfortable and prevents me from enjoying my streaming episodes of Xena on Netflix Instant. Not good.

My butt cheeks itch from sitting in a hard plastic chair all day. I just realized I haven't left the apartment in more than 24 hours. And that my knees are still black from kneeling onto the floor of the West 4th Street subway platform to get a shot while shooting a short film. On Sunday. It is now Wednesday. That's right, I have not showered. Oh, and I'm wearing the same t-shirt I wore Saturday night. And to said shoot Sunday. And around the apartment Monday. And all day yesterday.

Reapplying deodorant has become a mid-afternoon ritual. What's that smell? Oh, yeah. Shower? Nah. Click-click, turn the wheel to the Old Spice. All is well. You smell like a man again.

I see sunrise more days a week than I don't. Did you know it starts getting light outside before 5 a.m.? Yeah, neither did I. But it does. Every day. What's up with the sky's color right now? Oh, it's 4:45... again. Hi, sun. Guess I'm sleeping past noon.

Sunday I fell asleep at 6:45 p.m. and slept until 2:45 a.m., when I woke up, made some dinner, and stayed up the rest of the night and day. Twenty-four hours later I was finally getting to sleep, this time much closer to my 'normal' sleeping hours.

I've been setting alarms for seven hours after whatever time I go to sleep, and when I wake up 10 hours later with no alarm and no "alarm on" icon on my iPhone, I wonder, did the power go off? Did my phone reset itself? Or did I wake up and turn this alarm off with no memory of it whatsoever? How many other things have I done without remembering them? And why do I feel so entitled to my sleep?

Ha. Did the power go off. Remember when you'd set your alarm and the power would go off mid-night and you'd wake up to a blinking 4:27 at 8:30 in the morning? Do people even use alarm clocks anymore?

I want pasta at 10:30 a.m. and cereal at 2:30 a.m. I either get too much sleep or too little. I find that I need coffee in the morning more than I ever have before because I don't have a shower, getting dressed, a subway commute, or a forced conversation with equally miserable coworkers to wake me up. Now my coworkers are virtual and they don't care when I report in. It's something.

Oh, I just remembered, I did leave the apartment once today. After waking up around 11. I checked my bank account balance and—whew!—hadn't overdrawn yet. But when that diner went through and my rent check was finally cashed, I was going to be about 80 cents in the red. I gathered three dollars in quarters and two dollars in dimes, went to the bank, deposited the change, checked my bank account again and—whew!—the money was there. Subtracting pending spent cash, that's $4.20 in the bank. I can make it on that til Thursday, right?

I thought I'd get tired of this, or restless, but I'm not. I'm more productive now than I've ever been in my life. Writing. Directing and editing several video projects. Blogging, for money and for pleasure. Building websites. Reading. Sitting. Sleeping. Cooking. Walking. Watching. Thinking. I spend hours on projects I care about, and they're good because I have time and energy to spend on them. It's a great feeling.

I like this. I want my life to retain this level of productivity, this feeling of freedom, this peace. Yeah, I'm broke as hell, and I'm a bit of a homebody these days, but I'm happy.

All this at 23. How did I get here? And how can I stay forever?

Southern Roots Run Deep

2010-06-21T08:58:00.005-05:00

I don't have a lot of memories of my grandfather, who my sister Margaret and I have always called Pawpaw but who the rest of my cousins call Grandaddy, for some reason. He calls himself Pawpaw, though, like: "Oh me... Pawpaw needs to sit down;" or, "Oh me... Pawpaw wishes he could eat that cake your Mawmaw made;" or, "Oh me... never get old, Zac, never get old and fat like Pawpaw." He's always telling me to never get old and fat, though he's been both for as long as I can remember.

My grandparents are from Potts Camp, Mississippi, population 494 today. They dated in high school and married after. Four girls—Cindy, Sherrie, my mother Jackie, and Judy—came along, and then, some ten or so years later, a boy named Joey. I'm the second of the nine grandchildren they'd eventually have, the first boy.

A dad and his girls (Jackie, Sherrie, Cindy), pre-"Pawpaw."

Pawpaw always brought my sister Margaret and I each a bag of plain M&Ms when they'd drive down from Holly Springs to Brandon, four hours south. We'd wait on the front porch for them to pull into the driveway, usually with the Chihuahua Chica sitting on my grandmother's lap. Chica was best friends with my mom's dog from college, a little black Pomeranian named Nikki. "You wanna go see Chica? Go see Mawmaw and Pawpaw?" we'd ask Nikki. She always knew them, and she and Chica would curl up together and sleep.

My grandparents always kept big Brittany bird dogs. Still do. One of my strongest memories of Pawpaw was a time when, for some reason, I was tasked with holding back one of the big dogs while he fixed a broken fence or something. Originally I'd had help from a cousin or my sister, but my counterpart split and it was just me and the Brittany. But the dog was strong, and I was small. He jerked and pulled, lunging toward my grandfather. I planted my heels in the dirt path in their backyard, straining, but he still pulled me forward. I couldn't hold him, and eventually he broke free from my small hands. Pawpaw had to chase the dog down and tie him up. Then he came after me with a switch. It didn't hurt, it just stung a little, but I cried and cried and ran inside to my mom. I'd never seen my grandfather angry, and I've never seen him angry since.

Hunting with the bird dogs.

He probably doesn't remember that happening, even though he does have a strong memory, especially for his age and condition. He's always been extremely diabetic and seems to only get more so with age. He lost a toe when I was in college and had it amputated in Oxford, my college town, so I stopped by the hospital every day the week they were there to visit. It's possibly the only one-on-one time I've ever spent with them.

Soon after the toe he started on dialysis, three or four days a week, each a 4-hour session. Mawmaw loyally and patiently sits in the waiting room during the procedure. God knows how they get there—I'm sure he drives them, at least some of the time. He and my grandmother have always been a twisted tag-team of drivers—his sight comes and goes because of blood in his eyes and she is terrified of driving and never learned how. "All's clear, Jimmy," I heard her say a hundred times as he blindly pulled out onto the road. He has no feeling left in his feet, either, and one time his foot got caught under the brake pedal and he reversed into a tree. But, as always, everyone and everything was fine.

Over the hood of the car in the mid-50s.

My Pawpaw is a good, solid man. He's stubborn, like most of the family, and he'll sweep anything awkward under a rug, but he'll listen. And he loves his family. That's his picture at the top of this blog layout, him in the middle standing holding a little girl who his first child, my aunt Cindy. To the right is my great grandfather. My great grandmother, his wife who everyone called Mama Hart, always called her husband Boots, but when my aunt Cindy couldn't pronounce "Boots," he became Daddy Doo. The photo is from the mid-50s. I never met Mama Hart or Daddy Doo.

Pawpaw is so old now, and his health is so poor that I don't even get a phone call every time he goes into the hospital. It's routine. I'll probably never get to know him any better than I know him now, but it doesn't upset me. Because I do know him, deep down. Through the stories my mom told me growing up; through brown bags of M&Ms, dogs who were best friends, switch beatings; though watching so many insulin injections. And through the best advice I've ever gotten and will probably ever get: "Don't get old, Zac, don't get old and fat like Pawpaw."

Maybe an unlikely legacy, but an appropriate one, for him.

Wishing for a Downpour in a Gentle Storm

2010-06-17T18:06:00.019-05:00

It rained last night, but not like it rains in the South. Up here, I can't tell when it starts. There's usually a flash of lightening that makes me wonder if a streetlight blew, or if a neighbor flicked his lights on and off. Eventually a second strikes, and if I'm lucky there's a gentle roll of thunder following. I rush to the window and throw it open. I want to turn off my fan to hear better but know it will get too hot if I do. I smell the air and wait for the first drops on my fire escape. Ting, ting, ting...

I was in bed when the drops began to fall last night, sounding hollow pangs from my protruding air conditioner. I sighed. God, how I missed the South, how I longed to escape the city. When it rains in the South you know it. The air shifts. Hours pass, water flows through the gutters in the streets, the smell... Here the rain doesn't last. For an island, it doesn't rain nearly enough.

During our great thunderstorms in the South, especially if we got a tornado warning, my mom would go out onto the front porch. As a child the weather scared me, but with her there, hands on hips, everything was fine. The clouds claimed their sky, the wind blew through our hair. My grandfather worked for the National Weather Service when my mom was young and was forced to leave his four girls behind during storms. They stood on the porch and watched him go. During a storm in my own childhood, I asked, "What are you doing Mama?" "Just watching the weather," she replied. Now I stand on the porch too, my own hands on my own hips, like hers and her mother's before her, just watching the weather.

I slept with my head at the foot of the bed last night to be closer to my open window, listening to the rain, trying to smell it. Drops hit my window sill and splashed through the screen, lightly hitting my face. I remember wishing for a heavier rain, a louder one, a longer one. I fell to sleep almost instantly, gently; thunder rumbling, raindrops echoing off my mawmaw's tin roof in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

Five Poems for New Orleans

2010-06-14T14:39:00.005-05:00

I've been thinking a lot about New Orleans the last few days, so I dug through my notebook to find something relevant to post and found this set of five mini poems I wrote while I was down there a month ago. Here goes:

A Peace of Lower Garden District sidewalk.

Noh Lah:
Five Poems for New Orleans

I took you up and you took
me in, wrapping your large
arms around me in a humid
embrace that almost
choked

I drank you down—you
made it so easy—and
you seaped out of my
pores. Dark, Amber, Strawberry
Abita

When it rains you hold
water like a giant basin.
It flows, never stagnate, like
your spirit—always on the
move

Words flow here, down through
the sewer that is the
soul of the city. An alley
cat slinks by, an ever watchful
eye

It’s easy to slide from part
to part, like oil greasing a
dry frying pan. Cover each spot,
easier than it sounds, and let
simmer

Drunk on Possibility, Then a Sobered Reality

2010-06-11T12:26:00.006-05:00

I walked away from the the theater, a sprinkle of pep in my stride. It felt like one of those great New York nights, when the air is soft and cool, the lights are just right, the streets are wide open. I remembered what I saw, or felt, in the city back then, when every day and every night felt like this. When I was drunk on life here, on the possibility.

I walked the few blocks to the bus stop, drinking in the swirling beauty that is New York at midnight like I'd never experienced it before. Everything looked new, though I'd done this walk, this night, dozens of times before. The cafe across the street went through its nightly closing ritual. I saw the backlit sign turn off. Looking up, a large gold statue I'd never noticed before stood high atop a building. I breathed in the city and smiled. It felt good, even through my nagging headache.

Twenty minutes later I sat watching the second 4 train pass through the 68th Street station, honking loudly and persistently as it passed. Across the tracks a man was pissing. I could hear the sound of his urine splashing off a beam and running down into a puddle. Down the platform a little another man coughed loudly and sounded like he could be vomiting, but I couldn't see him and didn't want to.

Walking home, I was back in a familiar place, physically, mentally, emotionally. The city was just a place again, a place I needed to leave. The walk annoyed me. The people on the streets annoyed me. The sounds. The smell. The spell had worn off, just that quickly. I was sober again.

I believe in the power of oneself—not God, not religion, not fate. I believe the Universe will guide those who listen to it, those who are good and true. There is a way to make the best of every situation presented. But the thing that throws a wrench in every logical plan is love. Of people, of place. And, subsequently, the falling out of love. Because I don't know if I believe I can love one thing or one person forever. I don't know if I believe in forever at all.

Change is my lifeblood, it seems. And it's about time for another transfusion.

Things I Hate About the Internet: Wtf is "Over Capacity?"

2010-06-09T15:12:00.000-05:00

This should never happen. You're the second-biggest social network in the world. It should just never happen. And certainly not as often as it does.

The Universe Will Guide You, or How I Won Two Three-Day Passes to Lollapalooza

2010-06-08T10:27:00.000-05:00

I've been blessed with such fucking amazing luck lately. From my job giving me the out (and a severance to boot, literally) to quickly scoring a new job as a paid blogger to the front pit tickets to Lady Gaga next month to the $10 voyage de serendipity to New Orleans, the universe is really looking out for me these days. Another sign: I won a fucking Lollapalooza contest and a set of 3-day passes. SUPER BOLD ITALICS UNDERLINED WTF YALL!?!

So Lady Gaga is a headliner at Lollapalooza in Chicago this year, and of course Meghan, Jenny and I pledged to go. I didn't buy my ticket before my job sitch got shady, though, and at lunch yesterday was talking to Jenny about it. "I'm afraid I won't be able to afford it," I told her. She nodded in agreement—she hadn't bought her ticket yet either, we're both dirt poor, and a three-day pass itself is $215. Big money.

So when Lolla sponsored a contest with the band CutCopy last week, I knew this would be my chance. The idea was to print out the Lollapalooza logo and other little creatures associated with the festival and then scan them in with your face in some kind of creative way. As an example, here's (fellow winner) Ben's sweet ass entry:

Very cool. (See other winners (INCLUDING ME! WTF!?) here.) But I don't work in an office, I don't have a printer, and I certainly don't have a scanner. What's a poor young designer to do?

As soon as I read about the contest an idea popped into my head: I'd speak the word "Lollapalooza" slowly on video, profile, wearing shades, in front of a blank canvas, then cut it frame by frame, mess with it in Photoshop and Illustrator, put the letters of the Lolla logo into a speech bubble as my mouth moved, then ram it all together into an animated GIF file. I didn't know if it followed the rules or not—they only explicitly mentioned the copier once, and it wasn't anywhere in the "official rules"—so I just did it.

Here, check out the raw video:

And now here's what I entered, post-chopping-coloring-cutting-copying-drawing-animating:

A week later, here comes this DM from Lollapalooza headquarters itself:

Followed by this conversation with Jenny, who was still online, even at midnight:

Zachary: OMFG
Zachary: OMFG
Zachary: OMFG
Zachary: OMFG
Zachary: OMFG
Zachary: OMFG
Zachary: OMFG
Jenny: wow
Zachary: i wont the lolla thing
Zachary: WON, i mean
Zachary: WON
Jenny: WHAT
Jenny: are you fucking kidding me?!
Zachary: no!!!
Jenny: of course you did
Zachary: i just got a DM!!!
Jenny: jesus of course
Zachary: hold on let me make sure it's two passes
Zachary: i think it's two
Jenny: fucking christ
Zachary: YES
Zachary: IT'S TWO
Zachary: TWO THREE DAY PASSES
Zachary: YES YES YES JENNY
Zachary: YESSSSSSS
Zachary: OMFG
Jenny: FUCKING RIGHT
Zachary: i have to call you
Jenny: I"M SOOOO EXCITED I WANT TO GO OUT FOR A DRINK
Jenny: hahahahaha

So, yeah, basically there is no greater sign that I am supposed to be at Lollapalooza, that the universe supports me, that I'm on the right track.

Fucking right, y'all. Now THAT'S how I play this game.

I'm Quoted on Page Six!... of AM New York

2010-06-08T08:46:00.002-05:00

Remember a few months ago when I was quoted in the Comments section of New York magazine? Still so crazy. Well today I was quoted in AM New York, one of our free morning dailies here in the city, and this time they actually used my name!

Of the Mother, the Eagle, the Son

2010-06-07T17:18:00.006-05:00

I remember the moment the idea of leaving entered my mind. I took it with a gulp of anxiety in my chest, like when a racist thought shoots through your head and you think, Oh, god, do I really think that? That's how it felt, but at the same time, oddly freeing.

In a way, I was born for this city. Its streets line up logically, everything is accessible, it's an entire world within 13 miles or so. The world's most influential people live, lived, die, died here, and, hoping one day to at least earn a low ranking among them, it seems a natural fit. My whole life I have felt this is where I should be. This is my true home. This is my destiny.

New York is my mother, birthing me from her narrow hips, giving me life. I arrived on a Friday, the 30th of May 2008, ready to tackle the dreams I'd spent four years working toward. And I did—within a year, all my dreams had been accomplished. This worried me.

But what worried me further was the idea of leaving, and of others leaving me here alone, a lifer with lifelong friends who'd since moved on to other lives. Anxiety filled me one day and I pleaded with a friend: Please, promise me you'll be here, I'm so scared of being alone here, in this city, my city. Like a growth. I couldn't imagine myself living, or wanting to live, anywhere else.

I was happier and more myself here than I'd ever been. With New York always keeping an eye on her 21-year-old infant, I let the city's long avenues lead me where they would. To Harlem. To Spanish Harlem. To Columbus Circle. To Soho. To Tribeca. So many lives in so few years—the blessing and the curse by the greatest city in the world.

Most influential and ever the guiding light, the Chrysler Building reached out his claws for me and hung on for my own dear life. Don't let me go, I screamed, please never let me go! He promised he wouldn't, his eagle eyes glowing through the night.

But my soul is an agent of change, a flight risk, simultaneously blissfully happy and longing for the unknown. I used to say I didn't fear the dark but I did fear the unknown. Now I realize the unknown, much like New York once was, is just another land, just another life, waiting to be explored and conquered.

Then came that idea. Things were feeling tough, but I readied my resolve. And then: You could leave. What? You could leave. There's an entire world out there. You are free, like the eagle. Your soul will be your compass, and the universe will give its bearings.

Suddenly New York wasn't my dream of life anymore. Like a wall of light sliding back, back, back into the beyond, an invisible barrier torn down, and me, unaware of its existence in the first place, boundless.

New York rebirthed me, the me I was as a little child, the grasping artist who saw the world through sparkling blue eyes, who listened intently, who felt his way through life with words. I am that child again—this city allowed me to be. And now I will be her ambassador, a good son who spreads her message of art and expression, of creativity and collaboration. A destiny altered—or was it reclaimed?

I often tell people moving here was the easiest thing I've ever done, and it's true. This life is so natural, so easily gained, so quickly won. Leaving is easy too, but in a different way. I came to grow, and I have grown. I leave to grow more, and I know I will do so.

And I know the Mother doesn't resent me for it. She blesses me daily, kissing me on the forehead, giving me a pat and a slight push as I descend the steps of my stoop. A son never forgets his mother, and he can never stay away for long. But a son must also go out on his own and find a place for himself, the meaning of his own existence, the mother's gift to him.

We trust each other, and in that spirit, we both know this is right.

Born and Raised

2010-06-05T13:42:00.001-05:00

I wonder if this city has ever been as good as I want it to be. While I want it to be a town of magical art, it's really a town of immigrants, super poor people, super rich people, all jaded. How do we all do it every day?

The concept of living here one's entire life is so strange to me. And a little sad, really. When this way of life is the only way of life instead of just a way of life, how do you ever leave it? Do you know what you're missing?

Do I know what I'm missing? Am I missing anything?

Crosstown

2010-06-04T23:38:00.001-05:00

The bus was unexpectedly crowded, especially for a Thursday evening crosstown. He moved toward the back, eying an open seat between two large men. He sat, his bags between his feet, his shoulders turned inward to avoid touching his seat partners. He hoped he had enough beads.

The bus groaned away from the stop, then jolted suddenly, trapped behind a cab. A bike messenger squeezed by. The cab drove on, and finally the bus followed.

Next stop. A woman got on. She walked to the back, up two steps, sat down between two riders directly across from him. Their eyes didn’t meet.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a book. It was stamped New York Public Library. He wondered what branch it was from. The plastic crinkled as she opened to the first page. He couldn’t see the title.

She read, grinning almost immediately. He thought how amazing and bizarre it was that thousands and thousands of people were paid to spring words from their brains onto a page for other people to enjoy, or at least to consume. The woman laughed without making a sound. She wasn’t captivating, but she captivated him. Her pleasure was genuine.

Outside, the park flew by. The bus whined and moaned, the back section following slowly behind the front, a delayed reaction in slow motion. She read quickly, flipping the pages. He stared at her face as she took in the words, her eyes squinting, her mouth upturned at the corners.

Bus stop. The men on either side of him left. He scooted over into the left seat. She didn’t notice.

Two more men came to the back section, one large, one small. They sat next to each other on the back row. The small man’s feet didn’t touch the floor. They swung in the air as the bus pulled off again. He laughed in his head. He wondered if she would think it was funny too.

Another man came to the back, taking the vacated seat beside her. She looked behind her at the cracked window.

“Do you mind if I close the window?” she asked him.

“Not at all,” he replied, surprisingly cheery. She slid the window closed and smiled at the man. Then she was back in her book.

He watched her still, enjoying her enjoying the pages. He thought about the smell of the book, how it lived shelved with other old books for years at a time, their plastic wrappings pressed together. He wondered if they created static. He imagined a fat librarian receiving a snap-shock from a book and smiled. She smiled at the same time. She didn’t notice him.

She was the only woman in the back section of the bus. He gave each of the men a once-over, making eye contact with one. Their eyes had met before and would meet again, one of those weird instances where mutual connection is felt but not wanted or acted on.

She laughed silently again, absorbing the book’s words. He wondered who the author was. Maybe she knew him. Or her. Probably not.

The bus approached his stop, stalled by a red light on Third. It was cool outside, the leaves were changing. He wondered if she could feel him watching her. If so, she was doing a good job of not acting awkward. Or maybe she was just awkward all the time. She seemed sort of awkward. And that coat. What was she thinking with that coat?

Please exit through the rear door. He did. She stayed put, never looking up as he grabbed his bags and moved toward the exit. He looked at the back of her hair through the window as he walked behind the bus and waited for the light to change.

Stringy, he thought.

From the Desk of a Freelancer

2010-06-04T14:20:00.005-05:00

Back in February, when I was employed in a "real" job in an office, I wrote a post about my desk. Now that I'm officially a freelance journalist—livin' the dream, though without much dough—I thought I'd give you a little peek into my daily work/life space.

I Don't Know Anything

2010-06-03T17:02:00.005-05:00

Patti—Wanted to cry so bad, but my tears are inside. A blindfold keeps them there. I can't see today. Patti—I don't know anything.
—A note from Robert Mapplethorpe to Patti Smith

I'm in Patti Smith's memoir Just Kids, an amazing look into becoming a young artist in New York in the late 60s and early 70s, and a book every creator of my generation should consume as rabidly as I have.

As such, I've been working a lot, thinking a lot, planning a lot, constantly inspired by her words. It's exhausting and a difficult balance to strike with real life. I haven't left the house in a few days.

I can't get to sleep, then I can't wake up.

Transitional period blues.

Gays Giving Blood? Say It Ain't So!

2010-06-01T02:16:00.003-05:00

I wrote this post for my job over at Aol's QueerSighted, but since I took a sort of personal spin on it, I thought it would be applicable for AHnyc as well. I made the little graphic, too—pretty cute, huh? Read it on QueerSighted, or a piece of it here.

• • • • •

Only 30 Years Later, FDA May Take Steps Toward Lifting Gay Blood Ban

My high school had a yearly blood drive. It was a big deal, with a rally and posters and t-shirts, and the people who donated wore the little "I Donated!" stickers and were heroes for a day. I was one of the few in my grade old enough to give, so I did. I got the t-shirt, ate the cookies, wore the sticker. But I remember when the sweet little nurse got to that question: "Are you a man who has had sex with another man anytime since 1977?" she asked. I was. "No," I lied. And she took my blood.

I knew the question was coming. I remember the guilt I felt, sitting on the donation table, feeling woozy, watching my thick red life liquid a bag. I remember the anger that came after. If they don't want my blood, I thought, then I just won't give it to them! Nearly a decade later, I haven't given, and I'm not allowed to without lying. But I want to give, and I want to give honestly.

Sen. John Kerry and 18 other senators want me to, too. The group asked the American blood banks to reconsider the nearly 30-year-old ban on gays giving blood back in March. "Not a single piece of scientific evidence supports the ban," Kerry said. "A law that was once considered medically justified is today simply outdated and needs to end." The American Red Cross, America's Blood Centers, and the AABB-the country's three largest blood banks-also support the ban.

Finally, the FDA agreed to take up the issue at its Advisory Committee on Blood Safety & Availability meeting June 10-11 in Rockville, Md. But it's too early to get your hopes up-the FDA reconsidered in 2000 and 2006, meaning just four years ago it upheld the ban. The meeting is open to the public.

Read the rest, y'all!

For What It's Worth: May 2010

2010-05-31T23:00:00.000-05:00

May 2010
Bills & Utilities: $933.81
Food & Dining: $431.76
Cash & ATM: $420.00
Travel: $105.50
Subway: $89.00
Auto & Transport: $39.75
Shopping: $46.57
Fees & Charges: $25.00
Entertainment: $18.29
Home: $9.78
Health & Fitness: $5.22

Total: $2,124.68

The Great New Orleans Adventure, Episode 4: In Which It Rains and I See Inspiration Everywhere

2010-05-29T20:12:00.008-05:00

The adventure continues.

Friday
I intended to sit in the park and read Friday, but with my mom, sister, and dog Zoe just a few hours away without a key to get into the apartment, I slept until 2, made a salad, and waited around for them. Quiet time was nice. They arrived safely, the cable guy came to hook up the wireless Internet, my dad came home from work, and all was as it should be.

A post-wedding streetcar ride.

One of Tyler's friends was in town for his birthday, and the group being as they are, they decided on a costumed pub crawl, naturally. I rode my bike to meet them—though I sadly forgot about the costume part until it was too late—at a bar in the Quarter. From there we rode to R Bar again, hung there for a while, then walked around Frenchman Street, the Bedford Avenue of New Orleans, for a few minutes. It was all there: hipsters galore, tattoos abound, stacks of locked-up bikes, street food trucks, and constant music. It was warm, humid, relaxed. The thin layer of moisture that sits on your body at all times down there was present.

Next we were over to a place called the John. "Order anything with whiskey," Tyler told me. "These bartenders are known for their heavy hand." My $3.50 whiskey-diet was more of a whiskey-drop-of-diet, so I was sufficiently drunk. We hung out as Tyler played music on the jukebox and slowly—extremely slowly—sipped our almost-straight whiskey.

Need soap? Classic New Orleans bathroom.

Tyler and I were on bikes, so we made the 45 minute ride back to his place uptown. While riding through the Quarter, a car pulled out on top of me, bumped my bike, and ran over my foot. I was too drunk to notice, and with my bike (and myself) undamaged, Tyler and I set off again. Typical.

Saturday
My family went to the zoo while I was at Tyler's, so I met them later for lunch at a little pizzeria. We drove around for a while, out to my dad's office and the site of his engineering work (you know, the kind of stuff you do with your family). On the way back we explored some of the areas that were hit hardest by Katrina. Inside the city word Katrina is always buzzing, still always on the damanged minds of the citizens, but visual damage isn't as obvious. Outside, though, it's sadly still present, nearly five years later. Houses, many abandoned, still have water lines. Concrete slabs with weeds clawing their way through the cracks sit in the space full stores and restaurants used to inhabit. The former Jazzland/Six Flags New Orleans theme part sits abandoned like a gravestone.

That night my mom made dinner and we watched a movie together. The family was uneasy—my mom resented New Orleans because it's keeping my dad against both of their wills, my sister didn't like the city, and my dog Zoe was agitated in a new place. They went to bed and Tyler texted me that a local theater plays old movies at midnight on Saturday and was playing 2001: A Space Odyssey that night. I'd never seen it and thought seeing it here, and on the big screen, would be fitting. We got to the theater about half an hour early, so we walked through the neighborhood to a little bar and grabbed beers to go. The movie ticket was $8.50—a steal compared to the $12.50 of New York tickets. I liked the movie, but couldn't help dozing off a few times.

Sunday
I had breakfast plans with my family for that morning, but a Southern thunderstorm delayed them for a while. There's nothing like a storm in the South. You hear it, you feel it, water flows. New Orleans is like a giant basin, and when water falls in, the streets flood and cars get stalled in the middle of the lanes. It was beautiful.

When the rain died down we headed to the Quarter for beignets at Cafe du Monde and some wandering. After breakfast I had my parents drop me off at the New Orleans Museum of Art—naturally, when I'd checked on their exhibits, a Patti Smith photography show had just been put up. Destiny. "I'm sorry we don't share your interests," my dad said as he gave me a twenty for the museum. "I don't mind," I told him. It was a sweet sentiment, and a sign of how different I am from them, and from who I used to be.

I wandered the museum, eventually finding Patti, taking in her Polaroids. As I was spending time with one, I look over to the right and one of Andy Warhol's Mick Jagger paintings was peeking around the corner. Destiny again, my major influences hinting that I was on the right path.

Patti Smith, Self-Portrait, NYC, 2003.

Patti + Andy.

I rode the streetcar back to the Lower Garden District and met my mom and dad for lunch at Juan's Flying Burritos. I had the flying burrito, of course—chicken, steak, and shrimp. Hello. It was the first time I'd had a chance to really talk to my parents, and we started the conversation about New Orleans versus New York, why I'd want to move, how it would go down.

After lunch we walked home and my mom, sister, and dog packed up and left for Mississippi again. I was a little relieved—they didn't like New Orleans, but I loved it, and I wanted a few more days for myself.

On Hipsterdom: What It Is, Why It Exists, and Why I Can't Help But Be One

2010-05-28T14:16:00.007-05:00

Friend Jessie of 20-Nothings and I were discussing hipsters a few days ago, and the idea sprung about for me to write something explaining exactly what is going on in that universe. Originally the post was going to wrap into my New Orleans coverage (which I've slacked on this week, argh) and be a comparison between New York hipsters and New Orleans hipsters, but when I sat down to write it, an essay that more defies why hipsters exist and why some people are destined to become one came out. It still worked, I still sent it, and Jessie still posted it. Check it out on her blog, my first guest post for anyone, or just read it here now:

• • • • •

"Hipster" is a term I once despised. Everything about it: the word, the people, the god damn irony. But as I've been growing younger over this last half year, I've started to embrace my own hipsterdom, and I've started looking for it in others who surround me.

There's almost no way the creative subclass of our generation that has become Hipsters could have avoided it. Everything we subconsciously stand for—embracing the classics, paying tribute to the past, irony in all forms, taking life too seriously in a completely non-serious way (or is it the other way around?), free ideas, a taking-over-the-world attitude—was instilled in us from birth. Here, I'll use myself as a typical 20-something American hipster and you'll see what I mean.

Honestly, how could this kid have NOT become this hipster?

Growing up, I was in the gifted program at school, which told me I was better than "average" and grouped me with other "above-average" kids like myself. I was encouraged, both at home and at school, to try everything that interested me and to always strive for to be creative. My parents, classic baby boomers, grew up with disconnected parents who had survived World War II, and they wanted to be the opposite: embracing, nurturing, loving, encouraging. As such, they always welcome me home, they understand that I have dreams unlike their own, that I'm restless, and they encourage me to pursue everything I can. They always told me I could be anything I wanted if I set my mind to it, and I still think that now. Which explains why I hate holding a job more than six months, why I hate going into an office, having a boss to be responsible to, sticking to a schedule. If it doesn't "feel" right to me, it must not be right, and according to my parents it's my birthright to be happy at all times.

I grew up on the Spice Girls, on Britney Spears, on the Power Rangers, the Ninja Turtles, on Ren & Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life, Pete and Pete, Clarissa Explains It All. Every single one of these things is completely ironic, so how can I not be? They shaped my sense of humor. I love paying homage to the past, where authentic art and music still reined, because when I was at my most impressionable age, the "realest" thing around was Jimmy Eat World. And where my parents want everything new—a brand new house, a brand new car, brand new clothes—I need authenticity. I want vintage. I want to live in a "real" neighborhood in a "real" building, not a brand new high-rise in the middle of Times Square. (However, I do want my "authentic" place to have a nice shower, good plumbing, AC, a dishwasher, etc.—you know, the little things.)
Hipsters are stuck in this weird in-between world—we're used to the comforts of the American Dream, but we want to carve our own anti-American Dream, which in turn is just another version of the classic American Dream. It's not the freezer meals and suburban subdivisions of our childhood, but it's organic vegetables grown in our gardens out back and houses with what we call "character," which is more of a feeling than a look.

We want to feel this connection to the past, but in the Internet age what we're really feeling is the connection to each other. We're more socially active than anyone has every been—who goes more than half an hour without chatting, Facebooking, or texting a friend when their not asleep? We need to feel like we're right there, connected to everything. Want the past? Pull up Patti Smith on your iPod. Need comfort? Tweet at a friend. We don't like being alone, and we never have to be.

We don't just drive on the Information Superhighway, we built our house on it. (Actually, we bought an old house and renovated it, but same difference.) We have the ability to be obsessed with and completely consumed by something one week, then on to the next thing the next week. As such, we're mini-experts on everything and actual experts on nothing, filled with random bits of trivia that we're sure one day will add up to a way to make money.

We're the first generation expected to make less money than our parents, and the first expected to live shorter lives. We lack the loyalty that our parents had to one company. We don't respect the corporate ladder, we don't respect bosses because we often think they're "below us" intellectually. But we do respect creative thought, and when we recognize someone as impressive, as a role model or hero, we're with them for life.

We're extremely self-aware. We analyze every action, every feeling, every thought. Want to be a writer? Get a blog. A photographer? Get a camera. Want to be an actor? Put something on. We reject the traditional methods and pathways of creation because we were taught that we can just do it ourselves.

Americans today consume more than ever and create more than ever. But how much of it is valuable? Not much. And that's the main problem with our generation. Technology makes it easier to create than it's ever been, but it also makes it so much easier to just be a lazy consumer. It's easy to get jaded, to not think, to just live day-to-day.

But we're capable of so much more than that. We have access, we have information, we have technology, we have a weird worldliness; but most importantly, we have each other. We are each others' greatest resources, greatest sources of creativity and inspiration, of collaboration. It's so difficult to break down the barriers and get to know someone new—we all grew up thinking we're the greatest thing that's ever lived—but once we do, we find something incredible and unique not only in each other, but in the connection between us.

And in the end, that's what hipsterdom is about. It's connected creativity. Connection to each other; to the past, the future; to our heroes, our icons, our parents; to art and expression in all forms. Yeah, we're annoying, pretentious, pretty ridiculous. But we know this about ourselves and we embrace it.

So should you. Because there have been creative classes called hippies and beatniks, there have been movements called Grunge and Rock 'n' Roll. Now there's us, Hipsters, and over the next decade we will determine how the cultural 20-teens will be defined.

It's a big—no, epic (one of our favorite words)—responsibility. But our moms and dads tell us we can be awesome at anything. And we intend to be.

Things I Hate About the Internet: Hulu Advertising Mishaps

2010-05-27T17:03:00.006-05:00

We interrupt this regularly scheduled New Orleans post for another edition of Things I Hate About the Internet.

Now, I get that ads support things, especially things that are free. I love advertising. I love free stuff. I love Hulu, and I support the ads being there. But lately, Hulu has been making some changes.

First off, when a show opened it used to tell you who the sponsor was and start the show. Now they're showing an ad, which sometimes is a full minute long. I get it, I support it, but now that I'm used to getting my show without a one-minute delay, it's just that much more annoying.

Secondly, when an ad fucks up, I promise it's not my fault. Observe:

So you want me to email you and tell you that my ad isn't working? Hell no! Also, you need to write a link that lets me skip the effed up ad instead of staring at this black screen for a minute. Come on!

And finally, what's with the volume lately? I know there's a new law that says TV advertisements can't be louder than the TV show, which makes sense, but apparently it doesn't cover Hulu because lately the ads have been blaringly loud. Here's the thing, guys: I used to watch the ads, but now I mute them because they are uncomfortably noisy. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of advertising?

I love ya, Hulu, but get it together girl.

The Great New Orleans Adventure, Episode 3: In Which I Enjoy a New Town, New Friends, New Bars

2010-05-25T22:47:00.001-05:00

Somehow I had one of the best weeks of my life in New Orleans. It was serendipitous, really, that the events of the week took place the way they did.

Wednesday
After the girls left, I slept hobo-style in the airport for a few hours until my dad took his lunch break picked me up. At that time, the Lower Garden District, where he lived, meant nothing to me. But upon leaving, I realized it was sort of the Tribeca and Battery Park City of New Orleans—part old, part new, part rich, part poor, a good mix of bars and restaurants. The Garden District to the west was more like the West Village—trendy, classic, winding.

An old house in the Lower Garden District.

I knew I was in a new place with no friends for a week, so I did what any enterprising young Netophile (hey, I just coined that!) would do: I used social networking to meet new people. The plan worked, and by that evening I had a new friend Tyler to grab drinks with and show me around the hipster part of New Orleans. As it turns out, Tyler was good friends with one of my best friends from college, who had moved to his college town after graduating from Ole Miss. Small fucking world.

Tyler and I bounced around the Marigny—the Williamsburg of New Orleans—starting at R Bar, a typical hipster dive with $2 PBRs and the classic $5 PBR-Jameson shot combo. We then took our beers to go (to go, I say! TO GO!) and walked over to Always Lounge, a former gay cowboy bar turned regular straight dive with a sprinkle of glitter. The place was deserted but for one trio, but the bartender, an extremely personable leather-clad man who'd worked at the bar for decades, supplied us with $2 PBR drafts as Tyler and I hung out there and talked. He reminded me of my friends. I felt very much at home, already pretty much in love with with the comforting warmth and overall friendliness of the city. But the next stop sold me for good.

Trees, houses, streets Uptown.

Here's why: it was an uptown bar called Snake & Jakes Christmas Club Lounge. Yeah, you read that right. The bar was only lit by Christmas lights, the alcohol poured freely and cheaply, and best of all, you drink free if you're naked. A completely nude man and a topless woman were taking advantage of the special that night. I was sold, sold, sold.

Thursday
A day spent with myself, I slept late, then rode the St. Charles streetcar line from my dad's apartment all the way uptown and back to the Quarter. Once there, I spent some time wandering, sitting on the Mississippi River again, writing. Words flowed like they hadn't in a while. It felt good.

The St. Charles streetcar... named Desire?

A light rain overtook the Quarter and I sought shelter under low-hanging trees. I watched people, I read, I wrote—my plans to attend a poetry reading later that night would not be squashed by raindrops. Finally I decided to explore the gay section of the Quarter, pick a happy hour and hang out there for a while. I ended up at Good Friends, a nice little bar with great specials and a healthy crowd. I was the youngest there.

I pulled up a spot at the bar, but the bartender didn't see me. I waited. And waited. Oh, I thought, this is just like New York. The bartenders hate me here too. He finally saw me, eyes wide, and exclaimed, "Oh! I didn't see you come in!" Maybe they don't hate me here. He rushed over, asked what I was having, then stuck out his hand and said, "I'm Steve!" It was the first time in my life I'd been introduced to a bartender.

A Peace of Lower Garden District sidewalk.

I had a few beers and listened to the conversations around me. There were three groups: a group of two locals on my left, another of two on my right who were in town from San Francisco, and another guy to their right who'd been in the city for a year. Five out of the six had lived in New York for some period of time. It felt like a sign: this is a place of refuge. I talked New York, New Orleans, food, drink, places to go with them. When it was just the single and myself left, he told me he'd lived in New York for three years from 2006 to 2009, then moved down to Nola. He told me he missed the city, but mostly the people it contained, and that he'd found it difficult to get below the surface of the people of New Orleans. He told me he wasn't sure there was anything under the surface. I already knew there was.

I left the good friends of Good Friends and headed to the poetry reading, 17 Poets at Gold Mine Saloon just a block away. I won't go into it now, but the poetry I heard impressed me. I felt it in my being, radiating, bouncing around with electric energy inside me. I read a piece Hannah, Meghan and I had written together on the plane down. I told the small crowd I was in town for a week trying to decide if I was going to move to New Orleans from New York, and that what I'd seen that night was far more compelling than the few readings I'd been to in New York so far. "Let us know when you figure it out!" yelled the bartender.

Wandering the Quarter at night.

I grabbed some street food and waiting for the streetcar back to the apartment, ignoring the crazies, embracing the locals, trying to take in the day. Three nights in New Orleans and I already felt changed. The humidity wrapped its arms around me and I felt my childhood calling from behind and the future calling from in front, but both in this city.

The Great New Orleans Adventure, Episode 2: In Which We Spend 10 Hours Cruising the Big Easy (on Video!)

2010-05-20T15:26:00.011-05:00

Meghan, Hannah and I made it to New Orleans in a quick two and a half, and even with a 25 minute take-off delay, still made it to the French Quarter just after midnight. Then the adventure—and delirium—began.

Since my dad is living in Nola for work for a while, my parents bought me a ticket for the next week and I stayed in the city instead of flying back with the girls. A week of more adventure ensued, which will be recounted soon.

Will Zac hate New Orleans and never go back? Will his family drive him crazy when they visit the Big Easy? Will the brusies on the inside of his thighs made from riding his bike on the bumpy ass roads of New Orleans ever heal!? Find out next week in another edition of the Great New Orleans Adventure Posts!

The Great New Orleans Adventure, Episode 1: In Which We Book the 8-hour Trip to New Orleans That Changed My Life

2010-05-19T11:40:00.008-05:00

It all started with an IM from Meghan, last Monday, at 2:10 p.m. I was skeptic, as is my nature, but eventually came around. Take a look:

Meghan: holy fucking shit
Meghan: jetblue has all its tickets tuesday and wednesday for $10!
Meghan: you should go somewhere
Meghan: orrr ill take tues/wed off and we can go somewhere
Zachary: so you can go anywhere?
Meghan: $40 ticket to nola
Meghan: like $20 each way
Meghan: fly out tomorrow come back wednesday
Zachary: but we'd have to fly down one day and back the next?
Meghan: yeah that's the deal
Meghan: the deal is all remaining seats are $10 only today, tomorrow, wed
Zachary: right
Zachary: nola could be fun for one day
Meghan: well the thing is the flight gets in 11:45 tomorrow night
Meghan: and leaves 10 am wednesday
Meghan: baha
Zachary: oh lolx
Zachary: it would be awesome to go down wednesday for $10 and then come back like saturday or sunday but those tickets are already like $200
Meghan: right
Zachary: ah well. too good to be true it seems
Meghan: nola is one of the few that's not sold out
Meghan: i would do it
Meghan: i'd just have to take wednesday off
Meghan: because the flight is so late on tues
Zachary: what time is the return flight?
Meghan: 9:59am
Zachary: what time does it get in tues?
Meghan: 11:42 pm
Meghan: lolz
Zachary: so we have from 11:42pm to 9am?
Meghan: yes
Meghan: baha
Zachary: thats a neg
Meghan: BOOOOO
Zachary: if it was reversed it'd be perfect
Meghan: i mean bars in nola stay open foreverrrrrrrrrr
Zachary: dude
Zachary: we are not flying to nola for like 8 hours
Meghan: why not?
Zachary: we'd spend more time on the plane than in the city!
Meghan: lolz
Meghan: but it...
Meghan: it's $20
Meghan: two lunches at amish
Zachary: except isnt it actually like $80 with fees and stuff?
Meghan: no
Meghan: $41.40
Meghan: total
Meghan: both ways
Meghan: literally $20 a flight
Zachary: hmm
Zachary: okay
Zachary: i'd do it
Meghan: lolz
Meghan: you would or you will
Zachary: i will
Meghan: baha ok
Zachary: let's just do it
Meghan: lets just do it
Meghan: OMG SO EXCITED
Zachary: this is dumb
Zachary: but amazing
Meghan: YESSSSSSS
Zachary: i mean why not
Zachary: booking.......
Zachary: .....now!
Zachary: looks like we're going to nola tomorrow
Meghan: yessssss
Meghan: bahahah
Zachary: omg meg this is gonna. be. epic.
Zachary: no bags
Zachary: just one outfit
Zachary: EPIC EPIC EPIC
Zachary: this is epic
Meghan: EPIC
Zachary: hey i know
Meghan: ?
Zachary: let's go out in new orleans tuesday night
Meghan: oh yeah that sounds good
Zachary: k hang on i'll book
Meghan: k
Meghan: bahaha
Meghan: EPIC
Meghan: omg
Meghan: so. fucking. epic.
Meghan: lololzzz
Meghan: i am like giddy right now
Meghan: so stupid
Zachary: im like lolxing
Zachary: this is what life should feel like
Meghan: my mom's gonna be like wtfff you crazy bitch
Zachary: tell schmom to come down for benyayz
Meghan: bahah
Zachary: and then we come home and crash
Zachary: loves it
Meghan: yes
Meghan: omg
Meghan: dirty quarter dive 2010
Zachary: brilliant
Meghan: DQD2010

By 2:40, a half hour later, we were booked on a flight. And to make things even better, blogger and friend Hannah booked a ticket as well. The adventure begins...

Will the intrepid trio make it all the way to JFK on time? Will the flight to Nola be delayed, spoiling the trip? Will Meghan get sucked down the airplane toilet!? Find out tomorrow in another edition of the Great New Orleans Adventure Posts!

On Lady Gaga: You May Hate Her, But She's Inspiring a Generation

2010-05-11T15:05:00.004-05:00

It's easy, even trendy, to criticize Lady Gaga. And I understand why more off-the-cuff artists are speaking out against her. She takes herself too seriously. She's pretty ridiculous. She might be a machine. But the thing about Lady Gaga, and the reason she has literally taken over the world, doesn't really have anything to do with the person herself. She's a vessel for a spirit that this generation has been calling for, and she answered the call.

Take this sixth grade boy playing her "Paparazzi" at his sixth grade talent contest. Notice how the kids in the background aren't scoffing or making fun of him. They would have made fun of me if I'd done this ten years ago when I was in sixth grade. But he did it, they respected him, and now more than 20,000 people have seen him do his thang. Pre-Gaga? Probs not.

I think about where I was pre- and post-Gaga. She and I are the same age—she just turned 24, I'm about to at the end of August—and my life goals have completely changed in the year that I've been a fan. She celebrates art, creation, free thinking, and she encourages people to be weird if they're weird. I've always been weird, but my generation has been lacking in role models to tell us that was okay. Instead of a David Bowie I had the plastic Spice Girls and Britney Spears. Both admirable and amazing for what they are, but they don't make me want to be a different, or a better, person.

Lady Gaga does that for me, and for many people I know who are my age. She makes me want to live my life in a way that money doesn't matter, titles don't matter, only expression, experience, and creativity matter. And by opening my mind through an accessible pop star, I've found Bowie, and Patti Smith, and Andy Warhol, and all these idols and influences that I was missing in my life before Gaga. I read more now, I write more now, I think more now, I create more now. I'm more fearless than I've ever been. I am more me than I've ever been.

The credit can't realistically be given to Gaga as a human, but it can be given to those of us who grew up without her, longed for something like her, and created her. And it can be shared with people like this young boy who can grow up as themselves instead of growing into themselves later in life.

Can We Cut the Phony, Please?

2010-05-10T16:42:00.004-05:00

I'm so sick of bullshitting. It's one of my least favorite things about journalism. I have a story idea, I seek out your publicist, we play this lying game where we all say we're working hard, but we're not, and we all say we really care, but we don't, and it's all just complete and total bullshit. It's so gross, and it makes me feel toxic, but that's how today's professional world works. Even in applying for a job, I'm forced to spend a few minutes writing you some bullshit cover letter that says I'm responsible and dedicated and a self-starter responding to your bullshit ad about how you want someone who is responsible and dedicated and a self-starter. But the cover letter is bullshit, the resume is bullshit, the interview is probably bullshit because you're just running an assembly line of other bullshit interviews. There's no way to know someone's true self while trying to do it under the Rules of Professionalism, so I think those rules need to be burned.

Want to know the real me? I'm kind of lazy, but if you can get me obsessed with an idea or a project, I will not sleep for a week because I'll be too busy working on it. I value your opinion if I respect you. I'm loyal to my friends, I'm not loyal to my bosses. I want you to question me, but not yell at me. I like to use abbreves when I talk, but I won't do it around you because that isn't professional. I will spend a lot of time on Twitter and Gchat, but I'm better for it because if I like the work I'm probably brainstorming with friends about it. I like to come in late and leave late. My favorite time to be working is after 8 p.m., and my most productive thinking time is 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. I don't want a desk, I want a laptop and a Blackberry. I want you to like what I do. I want you to take me out to a drink because I want to respect you as a friend, not just a boss. I want to try new things, because before I was in seventh grade I learned how to use the computer, Microsoft Office, HTML, and graphic design by pressing buttons to see what they did. Let me experiment. Let me try a new format. Let me do some video.

The thing about Millennials entering the workforce is that we're your opposite. We're personal if you'll be personal. There are plenty of us who do want to be tied down and in an office watching your every move, but I work better when I'm set free and when you tell me I'm doing a good job. These things matter because we grew up with our parents telling us we could do anything we wanted, and they still do! We need you to tell us that too. We need you to be our mentor, on both a professional and personal level. We're easy to get to know if you will be open with us.

At my old job, people would email each other from within the office and stick to this bizarre "professional" email format. "Hey NAME, Would you mind taking this assignment?. I need it by EOD. Thanks! NAME." Why so formal? An hour ago we were talking about vadge and calling each other betchez. Why did we lose that? You see professional, I see cold, and it's such a turn off. My emails often looked a lot more like this: "Hey betchezzz can yall send me your contact info for those people we talked about earlier? I wanna make sure I keep a database. Mmmkthxbai." Because that's me. Maybe they see unprofessional, but I see a real person, and when I got similar emails I appreciated them.

Obviously the first day of work I'm not calling my boss a betch, but can't we cut the phony-baloney bullshit and be people, even in a professional environment? Working sucks, but if we're allowed to be ourselves full time, without shoving ourselves into some professional closet from 9 to 5, won't it suck just a little bit less?

MyNY: Let Me Just Point This Out...

2010-05-06T23:50:00.004-05:00

That will be all.

For What It's Worth: April 2010

2010-05-01T00:08:00.000-05:00

April was one of those months where I got paid three times in one month, so I was able to go a little crazy spending-wise. You'll also notice that I had to pay in $220 to the government, even though I generally make and spent less than $2,000 a month. Awesome.

April 2010
Bills & Utilities: $889.31
Food & Dining: $741.51
Taxes: $220.00
Cash & ATM: $220.00
Shopping: $171.61
Entertainment: $106.20
Subway: $89.00
Travel: $75.58
Health & Fitness: $61.24
Personal Care: $25.00

Total: $2,599.45

Dreaming of Life, Making This Happen

2010-04-29T17:41:00.003-05:00

Walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, seeking the only sun in Tribeca. I look around and think, this is mine. This whole fucking city belongs to me. I came here, I claimed it. I own it, now more than ever.

People are defined by titles. But what are we, really? We're obligated. We have to do it this way because this is the way the people before us did it, and this is the way they taught us how to do it. We have an obligation to society to act, live, dress, think, be a certain way. But what if that isn't enough? What happens then? I'm about to see.

A new phase of my life is beginning. A new sense of responsibility, of freedom, of love, of life. Of love of life. There's only me now. Me and this city. But the difference in me now and me two years ago, when I first fell to this island with big dreams of a textbook life, is that now I own this city, not the other way around. I own me now, I own you now.

I will make this happen.

Visiting Opposite Ends of the Gay Spectrum

2010-04-28T15:23:00.010-05:00

I've traveled the spectrum of gay over the last few days.

One one side is a bizarre experience I had Saturday night at the Williamsburg bar the Levee. Now, we love the Levee. It's your typical Brooklyn hipster dive bar, but the prices are spot-on for those on a limited budget—$5 shot and beer combos, $3 Yuengling, free cheeseballs instead of bar peanuts, and a snack menu featuring Frito pies and chips with French onion dip. The people are generally cool, there's a pool table and some arcade games, etc. Typical. So I'm hanging out with a few friends, wearing a grey tank top with a black vest over it, black jeans, the Jesus necklace I'm so fond of—nothing glittery, no shades inside, no women's shoes or anything, and even no eyeliner. Basically I look like a could-be-gay hipster. These two bridge and tunnel douchebags come up to me, though, and ask if they can take a picture with me. This happens sometimes when I'm out wearing something sort of outrageous or dancing on a raised platform with Meghan, but when I'm toned down like I was Saturday, most people don't bother me. I was drunk, so I took the picture with the guys, and my friends and I were all sort of like wtf? Only after they'd walked away did it occur to me that they were making fun of me. "See? You look nice!" one of them said as the other showed me the photo. He was patronizing me.

It was truly strange and completely unexpected. Stuff like this has happened to me, and is expected, in Mississippi. Subtle ways of putting me down without blatantly calling me a faggot to my face. But in a hipster dive in Brooklyn? When I'm not even wearing anything out there? I scoped the rest of the room and everyone was like me, just young 20-somethings wearing ironic hipster clothing but pulling it off. 'Am I really the most interesting person in this bar?' I asked myself. Because if so, it's a sad, sad day for Brooklyn. No, there's an equality issue here; these guys singled me out because I'm gay. I generally assume the best from people, and when things like this happen to me I'm always left a little stunned, realizing what just happened a little too late. Why would someone want to do this? What good did it do?

I got mine, though: On the other end of the gay spectrum, I totally made out with a dude at this gay bar down the street that same night. So suck it, assholes—you only left with each other and a picture of this fag.

On the way to work this morning, I walked past two black gay men walking arm-in-arm together in Tribeca (the businessy part, not the cool lower-Soho-like part). It's surprisingly rare to see gay couples acting affectionately to one another outside of the more gay-friendly neighborhoods like Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen. These queers didn't care, though, and walked together among the suits and businesspeople. It was like a sign from the universe that everything was in its place, that those fucktards were totally random, that this is New York fucking City and that here, if anywhere, we are completely allowed to be who we are.

Sometimes it's difficult to not feel a little uncomfortable or out of place in straight bars, or just in everyday life. But I, and other young gay men like me, have to realize that there's nothing wrong with being who we are. If I want to wear that I'm going to, and if I want to say that or do that or be that then I'm going to. I'm tired of slightly—and unintentionally, really—suppressing who I am because of the underwritten rules of society. I am who I am, and the more I embrace myself, the more comfortable I become in that embrace.

I'll have been out for ten years this December, and I've come a long way since when I was that 14 year old boy who didn't know any better than to be himself. But maybe I need to get back to those roots—that innocent naivety of not caring what other people think. Being gay is, if nothing else and among other things, a great excuse to be outrageous. I'm "allowed" to do so much more than regular people, and I should use that to my advantage. Easier said than done, sure, but last night on my way home from drinks with a friend I felt a click inside of me. Instead of wondering if the people getting on the bus knew I was gay or not, I just assumed they did and forced myself to not give a damn. I sat how I wanted, looked how I wanted, I was who I was and who I wanted to be.

Even at 23, with several years behind me but plenty more ahead, I'm still growing into myself. And it's hard. But I've got the city on my side, even if two jerkwads aren't. I don't hold it against them—they're just ignorant. But I'm not ignorant—I'm anything but—so I'm not going to hold it against myself, either.

Talking Space With a Space Legend

2010-04-28T13:55:00.007-05:00

A few weeks ago I interviewed this amazeballs woman named Jill Tarter, the director of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). I know you've never heard of her, but you've definitely heard of her work: Jodie Foster's character in Contact (pre-actually finding aliens (or not?) in the film) is based on her life. Basically, she's the shit.

Tarter today and early in her career.

My Q & A with Jill is posted over at Fast Company as a part of the Most Influential Women in Tech 2010 package, which is definitely worth looking through. In the meantime, here's a highlight and my favorite part of the interview:

FC: Beyond the green-guy searching, what's your message?
JT: My wish was to get all Earthlings involved in the search, because it gives me, and SETI in general, an opportunity to change their point of view. People realize they are part of one tiny little planet in a vast cosmos that may have other intelligent life out there, and that probably means that all of us here on Earth are far more similar to one another than Earthlings are to another intelligent forms out there. So even if we don't detect a signal, I think we can get people to internalize this Earthling concept and trivialize the differences among humans that we're willing to kill each other over. Anyway, that's my evangelical platform.

Um, I'm in New York Magazine This Week...?

2010-04-28T09:49:00.007-05:00

I was standing on the 6 platform at 103rd St waiting on the train to work, reading the letters to the editor section of this week's issue of New York magazine, and wtf did I run across but a quote from this very blog!

Omfg yall New York mag quoted me in this week's issue! Wtf right? Obviously I'm an avid reader and huge fan of the magazine—I blog about stories in it really often here and I interned for the website back in 2008—so this meant a lot to me. And even if they put that quote in there because it's silly and typical 20-somethingy, it's still undeniably me. Yay for that, yay for New York, yay for this blog.

On Doing Everything, and Nothing

2010-04-27T11:45:00.002-05:00

I'm a quitter. I've tried everything, and I've quit everything. When I was a kid, I played soccer for a week, took piano for a few months, art lessons after school for a semester. I was in band in sixth grade and was first chair trumpet, but I didn't pursue it again the next year. I did community theater off and on through middle and high school. I attended a live-in art school for five weeks my junior year, first as with a theater concentration, then a vocal music when that didn't satisfy me anymore. I took voice lessons for a semester until I won first in my category and was over it. I quit high school by graduating a year early. When I toured colleges, I did so as a graphic design student. By the time freshman year started I was over that, now undeclared, then education, then english, then finally journalism. Added in a minor in graphic design, took voice again, quit voice again. Worked in advertising design for a year, then quit that. Finally started working as an editor, and that stuck for the remaining two years of college. Now I'm ready to quit again.

I'm a quitter in my love life, too. I'm either obsessed with you instantly and forever, or we go on one "that was good" date, then a second, we hook up, and I disappear. I quit.

Now I want to write a book. Poetry. A television show. A short film. A feature film. Now I want to make music. Art. Installations. Paintings. Now I want to do graphic design. Book covers. Now I want to write a play.

The trouble, maybe the curse, is that I'm decent at almost anything I set my mind to. I get obsessed and consumed with a project, and whether I finish it or not, it will at least have the potential to be good. I'm a natural talent at anything with extremely good beginners luck. But after a short while, my interest fades and I've got some new project, idea, person, song, life to be obsessed with.

It's a constant and unending quest for perfection and ultimate happiness. But by the time I could potentially find that happiness I'm on to the next one.

America's ideas of a work life don't line up with mine. I'm constantly unhappy with work, which gets me down, which prevents me from doing good work. Sometimes I have little upspells, but they don't last long because work just becomes my obsession of the week and it soon fades. Something displeases me and I'm done. Maybe it's a rigid idea of what something should be like, and when it's not like that I'm on to the next beautifully rigid idea.

I don't take the downs well, though I know they're only temporary and that I'll be up again soon. I'm extremely logical, and I can figure almost anything out with time when I'm given the chance. You get me obsessed with your project and it's going to be amazing. If I'm not, it's just going to be passable.

But the obsession is not something I can force. I can't control what I'm into at this moment or that one, but it controls me. I spend time and money on it, mental focus, mental energy. It's a drug and the high is like nothing else I've ever felt. It's familiar because it's home and I've done this my entire life, but this means I'm slowly being buried in a landfill of unfinished ideas from the past two decades.

I need something to stick, but I'm worried it never will. I've done everything, and nothing, and something is always next. It's like dating, in a way, but worse because there's no one to blame but myself.

I don't want to be a quitter. I feel like I have a force of untapped creative potential if the right person or idea would come around and coax it out. Today I feel like that will never happen.

Things I Hate About the Internet, Part 1 of TK

2010-04-27T10:59:00.004-05:00

I'm reading a story on the New York Times' website, minding my own business, and one of their fucking automatic SEO keyword linky things pops up. The linked term? Ice cream. ICE CREAM. Read "more articles about ice cream!" it suggests. Really!? I hate the Internet.

Owen Pallett Keeps His Shirt On

2010-04-26T13:03:00.006-05:00

Photos by Jenny Anderson, obvs.

Owen Pallett is a role model of sorts to me. He's someone with a great talent, he's out as gay, and he does what he loves for a living but keeps it real. Jenny and I trekked out to (the horrendous) Webster Hall last week to see him play on his first tour since dropping his former stage name, Final Fantasy, and he was inspiring and just all-around great.

I'm a recent Owen fan, only knowing him from that time I stumbled on his video starring Alison Pill a few weeks ago, but watching him live took my appreciation of his most recent album, Heartland, to full-out love. The live tracks are different than the full-orchestra album versions (different in a good way!) because Owen only had one other guy on stage. He used one of those loop machines to create the different layers from the bottom up for each song and it really worked. I'll probably never get over how cool that technology is.

The best part about Owen was his personality. He's funny, light, and humble. You can watch him play and know he loves this life. He smiles a lot, and you can tell when he thinks a certain part of a song could trip him up but he always makes it through. His music is really cool, but that guy can play the friggin' violin man. That's where his natural talent shines the most.

I love when performers talk to the audience a lot, and he did. At one point Owen was jokingly saying he takes critiques and suggestions on how he can improve when I guy yelled, "Take your shirt off!" from the back. Owen didn't miss a beat when he quickly replied back "Uh, no." Basically he's just adorable.

Check out this video I took of one of the songs (ignore the zooming, I was trying out some Battlestar Galactica-style quickzooms at an inopportune moment) and you'll see how cool he was.

Videopost: I Wanna Hook Up

2010-04-23T13:36:00.004-05:00

For a while now I've been involved in my good friend Jessie Rosen of 20-Nothing's amazing productions of The Hook-Up Conversations, acting as a would-be stage manager, running lights and sound, offering advice where applicable, doing some graphic design work, and making this little 30-second commercial for the show. Take a look:

We have another show coming up in a few weeks on May 6th, so if you haven't been and you're in the New York area, come down to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Alphabet City, drop 8 bucks and watch these amazing actors work their magic with Jessie's brilliant and always-current words.

Jessie just moved out of the city for a minute in her ultimate contemplation of whether or not she needs to move to L.A. to make her dreams of writing for the screen come true. Sigh. Friends come and go so often in this city... It's one of the hardest parts of living here.

Cabs Look Like Yellow Ants from Above

2010-04-21T14:42:00.002-05:00

Looks like a shot of a toy city, doesn't it? It's not. It's photographer Olivo Barbieri's new show, with photos taken using some kind of crazy lens trick originally used to make shots of tall buildings taken from the bottom up look more realistic. But Barbieri took his shots from a helicopter instead. So friggin' awesome. More in NYmag and at the gallery site.

I Still Love You, Blog!

2010-04-21T12:22:00.004-05:00

I'll never let go, blog, I'll never let go!

I've been neglecting you, And How NYC, and I'm sorry for that. It's just that I've been writing a lot of stuff on paper lately (GASP!) and I've been working on a lot of poetry (DOUBLE GASP!) so my efforts are focused elsewhere. I still love you.

In Which New York Magazine Tells Me to Move Downtown

2010-04-12T13:30:00.003-05:00

This week's New York magazine ranks the top fifty neighborhoods in the five New York boroughs and ranks them according to percentage algorithm they decided most New Yorkers would place priorities on (housing cost: 25%, transit: 14%, nightlife: 4%, etc). Not being a typical New Yorker (schools: 0%, nightlife: 85%), I made my own ranking using their sliding scale. The results:

Two things to note: 1) On NYmag's list, Harlem/East Harlem are number 50 of the 50 rankings they published. Ouch. 2) According to NYmag, I need to live in the East Village, the LES, or the West Village, all ideas at this point in my New York life I'd be very interested in pursuing.

Of course, it all comes down to money and what I'm willing to give up—moving downtown will mean more rent and less space, and I do still love living in East Harlem.

Will reevaluate at the end of the summer.

Snippets from IM: Best Mom Ever (via SMS)

2010-04-08T20:28:00.001-05:00

Zachary: Does Pawpaw still have that green Volkswagen camper van in holly springs?
Mom: No they have that big silver airstream you pull behind a truck.
Zachary: What happened to the green van?
Mom: Traded w someone a while ago
Zachary: Too bad, I want it. Do we still own the 89 gmc truck?
Mom: No we sold it when i got my new truck. Your dad can find you an ancient vehicle if you need one!
Zachary: We want to take a 4 or 5 month road trip around the country and take photos and video and make art but we need a truck/camper/green vw thing. You know, typical crazy kid stuff. We don't want to grow up.
Mom: Why grow up? It is over rated anyway.

World Peace, YouTube Style

2010-04-06T17:30:00.004-05:00

One of my coworkers, the amazing Ellen, tweeted a link to "Where the Hell is Matt," the now two-year-old video where Matt goes around the world and dances this silly little dance with all these silly little people. It became an Internet sensation back then and now has almost 28 million views. When I watch the video, I can't help but get a little emotional—it's like world peace in four and a half minutes. So good.

If you haven't seen it, watch below. And prepare to be inspired.

Inspiration from Alison and Owen

2010-04-05T12:39:00.006-05:00

I remember when I first recognized Alison Pill in the film Milk a few years ago how taken I was with her. I'd seen her in something else before, but I didn't remember what (and still don't). Regardless, she spoke to me for some reason. Then she was on Broadway in The Miracle Worker, the first play I read as a kid in Mrs. Hines' fifth grade English class. I loved it then, and when I read it again later, but since the performance was less than stellar on Broadway and my taste in writing has since evolved, I was much less impressed this time. But Alison was brilliant, of course. She also popped up in one of Owen Pallett's videos, peeking in through a window and dancing with a bottle of Crush soda. When I saw that, the love was cemented, and naturally I had to pay tribute.

Owen is playing a show at Webster Hall on April 22 that I'm going to, hoping Alison is there so I can officially start stalking her. Just saying.

Inspiration and a Dream of Life

2010-04-05T00:00:00.005-05:00

If last weekend was that of creation, this was one of reflection and learning. Of discussion, of traveling the city. Meg and I sufficiently shredded some clothing and headed out to an indie dance party in west Soho on Friday night, which was fun but pretty tame due to the holiday weekend. Saturday was spent roaming, shopping, tattooing, and attending a gallery opening for Nic*Rad, a young Brooklyn-based painter whose current show is centered around the 99 most important people in media. Very interesting work, and he seemed like a cool guy. Then today there was more roaming, brunch, and a double dose of documentary.

We're in serious education mode here at the Commune, totally consumed with artists and creators who came before us. Today we watched the Patti Smith documentary Dream of Life, an amazing look at an amazing woman who represents the life we hope to live more than anyone we've come across. Then came the four-hour PBS American Masters documentary about Andy Warhol, the pinnacle representation of 20th century change through art. His inspiring, bizarre life gives me hope for my own, though admittedly I hope mine features far fewer drugs and gunshot wounds.

The lives of artists like these, the first of many many obsessions and inspirations to come (just downloaded Best of Bowie—is David next?) give me hope for my own future. It's easy to forget that I'm so young sometimes, and that I (presumably) have plenty of time. Not that I don't want to stop thinking, consuming, creating work, because I don't. But I need to be less impatient about making my mark.

For What It's Worth: March 2010

2010-04-01T00:07:00.000-05:00

March 2010
Bills & Utilities: $859.95
Food & Dining: $491.81
Cash & ATM: $200.00
Shopping: $104.11
Subway: $89
Health & Fitness $70.66
Entertainment: $50.41
Home: $30.52

Total: $1,896.46

Never Sleep

2010-03-31T19:33:00.002-05:00

I feel like I'm growing younger. When I turned 23, I remember feeling so, so old. And I guess I was, in a sense. I had graduated college when I was 21, moved to New York at 21, gotten a job at 21, gotten an apartment at 21. Twenty-three was old by those standards. But now 23 feels so young. I look around at some of my responsibilities and think, really? I don't want to do this. I don't want to sit there. I don't want to pay for that. I don't want to be there. I don't want to spend my time on that. I don't care about you. I care about me. I care about my life, my happiness, my expression. I care about how I feel, and I shouldn't have these feelings and these thoughts about my own life at this age. I'm way too fucking young to let you make me feel like this. And I'm way too fucking awesome.

I reject your ideas of what a grown-up should be, society. I reject the thought that it means a desk job and being responsible and in bed by 11 and up at 8 and wearing a tie and having lunch at 1 and asking for shit when I should just be able to take it. The world is obsessed with youth and I fucking have it. Now I want to use it and you're holding me back. Unacceptable.

This is two thousand fucking ten yall, and we are too young, too smart, too talented, too driven, too beautiful to be draining the life out of ourselves for someone else's wallet. Revolution, I say. World fucking revolution.

I don't want to grow up. And right now I'm so young I don't have to.

Run wild, yall.

Oh, After You Kitty Cat

2010-03-30T17:22:00.002-05:00

I'm so PG. In writing, at least. In life I'm all blaaah blaaah blaaah, always running my damn mouth about something, but on this blog I'm PG. What gives? I must be afraid of something on a subconscious level. Career fuck-up? Getting too personal? Actually saying something?

idk. tbd.

But until then.

Dear Internet Zac: Don't be a square.

I'll Follow You Until You Love Me

2010-03-29T10:00:00.004-05:00

My last post was about that amazing spring day the gang and I had last weekend, and just to top it all off, today we showed up on on AOL's gossip blog PopEater.com in the background of a paparazzi shot. Like, what? Typical, yall, so friggin' typical.

Of course when we were walking around the Meatpacking District we didn't even notice this woman, who is apparently one of the Real Housewives of New York. We did see a few photographers and eventually spotted this bia looking classy in her pink sweatsuit shopping for fake sunglasses, but as is evidenced in the photo, Jessie and I have no idea she's even there.

Oh, New York. A perfect day, now plus ten perfect points. In honor of the event, here's some Gaga, obvs.

This is the First Day of My Life

2010-03-26T10:21:00.005-05:00

I've been meaning to post about this amazing day that my friends and I had last Sunday, where we basically ran around downtown Manhattan for twelve hours and basked in the glory of New York. It was one of those hazy days that you don't really remember but will never forget. We went places, we were young and beautiful, we did things, but it was like we were floating above ourselves watching it all happen. We took photos and video and ran in the streets like wild children. We were up, we were down, we climbed things and we lounged and we just lived, without inhibitions. I dont remember there being people on the street. It was just us.

How I felt that day can be summed up in one epic photograph that Jenny took:

Theshit.com, right? Live love life. And there are plenty more where that came from. See this slideshow below for jealousy-educed stomach pangs.

There was another day about this time back in 2007 at Double Decker, an arts festival in my college town. See the same people, roaming the streets of Oxford, Mississippi, in baby-faced bliss.

Oh life. What did I do to deserve you?

Bring on the Spring (Redesign)

2010-03-21T02:03:00.005-05:00

When I actually used to go to the gym (remember Zeb2010? Yeah, me neither), I would stare out at Third Avenue at 106th Street and look at the old buildings as I churned away the calories on the elliptical machine. One of my favorite little pieces of East Harlem history were these two old signs protruding from the side of a now-decrepit old building, remnants of New York years past.

The view uptown on E 106th and Third Ave.

One sign reads 'Pizza del Barrio' and the other 'Carousel Ice Cream,' and they remind of summer and simpler times. So when trying to come up with a new banner for the blog—I get restless—I googled East Harlem and found a photo of the signs. Obviously a perfect fit.

So here we are, a little design change as spring approaches. Out with the old grey underground subway theme and in with some color. Spring has sprung. Thank god.

That Boy is a Monster, Twice Over

2010-03-19T10:33:00.007-05:00

Here we go again.

Since Lady Gaga announced the second American leg of her tour last week, obvs Meghan and I had to get tickets. There was this whole unfortunate fiasco when she was here in January at Radio City—we were on Ticketmaster forever refreshing refreshing refreshing after we lost the FRONT ROW tickets I'd gotten but accidentally let expire. We did get tickets, and they were good seats and we had an amazing, life changing experience (that I never really accounted on this blog... whoops!).

This time, my luck struck again, and this time, I didn't let them expire. Though we were (somewhat... breathe... breath...) prepared to pay the $180 for good orchestra tickets, when the two minute wait was up and I was lucky enough to get tickets, they were for the standing room only general admission pit for only $80! AKA Gaga Little Monster Heaven.

Y'all. We obvs had to freak out. Like a lot. To illustrate how amazing this is, Meg and I both added countdowns to our sidebars (see mine to the right), and I made this little graphic above. Also updated my desk art. Yeah. Amazing. The show is July 6 at Madison Square Garden. Hello amazing summer part one.

2010 for the win. For. the. WIN. WIN. WIN.

MyNY: Hope in East Harlem, Again

2010-03-17T09:25:00.003-05:00

Walking to the train this morning, I saw this message written on the sidewalk. Again? Really? Either a local church is taking this message old school viral or East Harlem really, really wants me to become my dream. I'll take it either way.

Snippets from IM: Disappearing Act

2010-03-16T13:19:00.002-05:00

Meghan: if i get a weird vibe, i wont follow through
Meghan: ill drop off the face of the earth like christopher columbus
Zachary: amelia earhart up outta this bitch
Meghan: lolz niiiiiice
Zachary: vroom vroom what? whereshego?
Zachary: chillin on an island
Meghan: swimming with jacques cousteau
Zachary: feedin elvis apple sauce
Meghan: freestyling with tupac and biggie
Zachary: bangin jfk
Meghan: doing princess di's nails
Zachary: nice
Meghan: putterrrrrrrrrr
Zachary: huh?
Meghan: putter putter
Meghan: her plane taking off
Meghan: the prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrttttrtrtrtrt noise
Zachary: .......ah.

From the Desk of an Actual

2010-03-04T11:01:00.005-06:00

As I've said before, I'm a huge fan of New York magazine's Daily Intel blog's 21 Questions feature, especially when they feature writers. Yesterday's post was about Jennifer Mascia, a New York Times journalist and author of a new memoir called "Never Tell Our Business to Strangers." Jennifer is a crazy young and inspiring 32 and lives in my lovely hood, East Harlem.

My favorite thing Jennifer said in her interview was her description of her job. This might be the most perfect definition of being a journalist that I've ever read:

Yes! She also stays up crazy late, hates teenagers and loves New York pizza. Hello, future me. Or present me, really.

MyNY: Hope in East Harlem

2010-03-02T09:52:00.002-06:00

Jen, Meghan and I were walking back from nom nomming at Joy Burger Bar, the best burger place in the city (for real!), and noticed this inspirational message written on the back of an abandoned dresser in a trash pile on the street. Thanks, NYC!

A few minutes later, a bus drove by us on Third Avenue, and where the bus number would usually be identified on the back, it said "Call Cops 911" instead. We called cops 911.

Snow Country for Cold Men

2010-03-01T17:44:00.004-06:00

Hilarious snow pun, right? It's from a commenter on Meghan's blog, a few weeks back when she wrote a post about snow puns and the so-called Snowpocolypse of 2010. The real Snowpocolypse, though, happened last Thursday/Friday, when the city got like 15 inches of snow or something. Okay, fine, I didn't look up the number. But it was a lot. My office even got a "work from home" snow day!

Of course, I was out on a date until 3 a.m. the night of the Snowpocolypse, which according Jenny was when the storm was the worst. How is the worst storm time determined and then advertised as such? I do not know. What I do know, however, is that I was down in the East Village and saw about four people in six blocks or so, then came uptown (alone, mind you!) and saw about zero people in four blocks. Long sentence short: no one was out.

There were these huge piles of snow that were taller than my boots when I stepped in them, and the steps of my mini-stoop were covered and there was a tall pile of snow I had to step over and be careful not to knock over when I opened the front door to my building. So I took some photos, natch.

For What It's Worth: February 2010

2010-03-01T00:00:00.000-06:00

February 2010
Bills & Utilities: $800.00
Food & Dining: $341.32
Shopping: $107.97
Cash & ATM: $100.00
Subway: $89
Personal Care: $32.17
Home: $30.84
Entertainment: $20.53
Health & Fitness: $13.37
Travel: $11.90
Auto & Transport: $5.31

Total: $1,552.41

From the Desk of a Would-Be

2010-02-25T15:09:00.006-06:00

Do you ever look around and realize, shit, I've sort of accomplished what I set out to do? I'm pretty much exactly where I thought I wanted to be two years ago? That happened to me the other day. We were in the midst of an issue close and I paused to look at what I'd been doing all day and went, huh, I forgot I'm living my dream. My desk was cluttered and strewn with all the stereotypical things I hoped it would be when I was in college. I was busy, working for a national magazine on a real story about real world issues. What? When did this happen?

I took a snapshot of my desk, which I annotated here. Please note that I did not stage any of this. This is actually what it looked like. (Oh, and because I'm a lazy journalist, I didn't go back and fix typos. So eat that.)

Worry not, though, dear readers: it's not all work and no play at my office. Below, my little art project(s).

Yep, living the dream.

Snippets from IM: In Which We Hate the New "We Are the World"

2010-02-23T12:56:00.002-06:00

Jenny: dude did you watch the we are the world yet?
Zachary: yeah
Zachary: snorzzzzzing
Zachary: when t-pain comes on it's over
Zachary: everything before that is good
Jenny: from my twitter: Autotune, Pussy Cat Dolls betch, rando rap break, Justin "my PARENTS weren't even born for the first one" Beiber. #WeAreTheWorldFail
Zachary: nice
Jenny: thanks. i wanted to say so much more but 140 characters ya know
Zachary: me too man
Zachary: here's mine from a few weeks ago: Ugh, We Are the World. Amazing for the first few minutes, but everything past Weezy is a shitshow. Kanye could die and I would not be sad.
Jenny: LOLZ
Zachary: originally mine said "with barb and celine in the room, why did tpain and weezy get solos?" or something
Jenny: i MEAN give me J-hud, celine and bstrizzy and i'm good
Zachary: obvs we're on the same page
Jenny: oh our minds
Jenny: and why did that fucking pussy cat doll betch get so much play
Zachary: i didnt even know who she was
Jenny: uh yeah
Jenny: ew
Zachary: grody
Zachary: i wont even talk about that justin kid
Zachary: he doesnt deserve it
Jenny: i mean he opened the fucking thing. i'm like UH WHY ARE YOU EVEN THERE!!!
Zachary: dont even want to talk about it
Zachary: the whole thing was a SHITshow
Zachary: in the shots with barbra just in amongst the crowd
Zachary: im like DUDE
Zachary: bstriz does NOT sing chorus
Jenny: bahaa
Jenny: when the random ass rap break started in the middle i literally stopped it and took my headphones out
Jenny: i had to reassess
Zachary: right
Jenny: i do love that riff ms. celine blows in the middle
Zachary: yeah def
Jenny: oh b-strizzy i LOVE that betch
Jenny: miley cyrus i will kill you. i kick you and then i will kill you.
Zachary: bbbbbbbbbbbbbah

An Ode to Summer, in Photos

2010-02-21T10:47:00.009-06:00

Oh, summer, how I miss thee. Let me count the ways:

How I loathe the fur-lined coats...

And miss the raggedy cut-off shorts.

How I despise the knitted hats and leather gloves...

And yearn for the sensible summer sweaters and plain white tees.

How I detest the layering of coats and clothing, wearing boots...

And desire the carefree days of shirts, shorts and Converse sneakers.

How I abhor carrying thirty pounds of coats, hats, and scarves everywhere we go...

And long for the simpler, lighter, a-tee-is-too-much days.

Despite the wrapping up, winter has its fun times...

But being outside makes everything better.

And the worst, by far, is the dreaded winter coat check...

Give me summer or give me death!

For The Love of Suspenders: A Tale of Strapped Commitment

2010-02-12T11:34:00.013-06:00

A few weeks ago my friend Susan posted this on my Facebook wall. We'd been out a few nights before and I was, of course, wearing suspenders. It's kind of my thing. But it got me thinking about how committed I really am to the straps. And how many times I've worn them. We're in a long-term relationship, suspenders and I, and we go way way back to April 2007, almost three full years ago.

In college I was really into vests, but I always had a desire to try out suspenders. A annual party the theater department at Ole Miss put on gave me the perfect opportunity to either a) look really cute wearing suspenders or b) look ironically foolish but acceptable because the party was themed and ridiculous. Jenny and I powered over to Walmart, home of cheap $7 grandpa suspenders, and my love was born.

The very first time.

These were fat suspenders, though, because Walmart isn't exactly trendy. I knew I'd need some skinny ones, and moving to New York for my internship in the summer of 07 provided the shopping range I needed. I looked and looked and looked, finally finding a pair of skinny black suspenders sitting on a random table at H&M. There weren't any others around, so I grabbed these and went. Since then, they have made many appearances. Here are a bunch:

Yep, about 18 different recorded instances of suspender wearage in just under three years, and many undocumented times as well. As you can see, I found a pair of skinny silver/grey suspenders sometime last year, and they've made it to their fair share of city outing. As much as I wear suspenders, though, I actually only own three pairs, counting the original fatties from Walmart. And speaking of, my relationship with suspenders came full circle at the Lady Gaga concert a few weeks ago, when my first pair became my special bedazzled bling pair. Three years later, they have evolved and they still hold up.

This look is a commitment, and one I don't feel will be gone anytime soon. I will be that little old man, still wearing suspenders, still living the scrappy, strappy old dream.

The Social Network: It Sees You When You're Sleeping, It Knows When You're Awake

2010-02-11T16:49:00.004-06:00

Social networking weirdness alert.

I'm on Foursquare, the "next Twitter" app for iPhone and other smartphones that lets you check in at different places you visit and gain points for each check-in. Accumulate enough points and you earn a badge. Check in more times than anyone else and you become the mayor of that location. You can leave tips at various places for future patrons who see your tips when then check in later. It's silly and unquantifiable, which is why it actually isn't the next Twitter (yet), but I'll try anything for a while.

Anyway, I went to dinner with Jenny last week at this Thai place called Room Service in Hell's Kitchen. Naturally I'm trying to recruit all of my friends to Foursquare, so Jenny checked in as well. We're hanging out, getting drinks, reading the tips for the restaurant, etc. Jenny checks a tip from Jenna R. that she left in December: "Try the coconut crusted calamari!" We didn't take her advice.

Jenny taps on her photo and it comes up full screen. Jenny has this talent/freakish skill for recognizing faces of strangers, so she looks at the photo, looks to the table next to ours and turns back to me with wide eyes. "Is this the girl sitting next to me!?" she asks me as she shows me the photo. The waiter approaches Could-Be-Jenna-R's table. "We'll start with the coconut crusted calamari," she says.

Of course we fall out laughing. And then get weirded out. And then laugh more. Because what are the chances? This girl left a tip two months ago and now we happen to be using the same service and she's sitting right beside us? Bizarre. Of course we had to try to snap photos of her to confirm that this actually happened. Here she is in a few different views.

I was tempted to ask her if she was Jenna R. Jenny actually had a brilliant plan of saying "JENNy" really loudly and seeing if Jenna R. looked at us, but when I tried it, she didn't flinch. She was engrossed in her conversation, though, and literally never noticed us. Typical New Yorker.

So, Jenna R., if you're out there and you find this, I'm sorry I posted your photos online without your permission, and I should have asked if it was you sitting beside us. Tweet me if you see this.

PS: Just for fun, here's a photo of super sleuth Jenny from the same night, because why not?

Snippets from IM: Dinner Dinner Decisions Decisions

2010-02-10T22:00:00.003-06:00

7:16 p.m.
Zachary: whats for dinner?
Meghan: poss papa johns
Meghan: still debating
Zachary: hmmm
Zachary: ordering papa johns alone is like drinking alone
Meghan: lolz

7:32 p.m.
Zachary: maybe chinese
Meghan: how is that any better than pj's?
Zachary: um, it's not A WHOLE PIZZA
Meghan: obvs i would not eat the whole entire pizza
Meghan: it would provide leftovers for dayssssssssss

7:45 p.m.
Meghan: i think ima just cook something instead
Zachary: i think i just ordered chinese
Meghan: lolz