THE LAST FIVE ...

Closing up shop
- Wednesday, Aug. 02, 2006

It may be time for a change
- Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Entry in the air
- Friday, April 21, 2006

Still here
- Thursday, April 20, 2006

Music of the moment
- Wednesday, March 1, 2006

Or ... BE RANDOM!


GOOD READS

101 in 1001
American Road Trip, 1998


OTHER PEOPLE

Chupatintas
Dancing Brave
Fugging It Up
Kitty Sandwich
Mister Zero
Sideways Rain
Ultratart
Velcrometer


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Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2002 - 6:05 p.m.

Woke up this morning ... at 4 a.m.

It started around 11:30 last night and didn't seem to end until 5 a.m. Right before it started, I stood at the counter in the kitchen, filling the Brita pitcher for the night, and noticed the Succubus' car in the street. It was running; I could see lights lit on the dashboard.

Soon I felt as if I were in a movie ��a Lifetime movie, perhaps � when, just as I turned on the TV in bed to watch a little of the Daily Show before dozing off, I heard the shouting upstairs. I caught only bits of the exchange between the divorced (I'm assuming) mother in her 40s and the 19-year-old daughter. I heard the mother say, "That was our agreement when we moved in here!" Then it sounded like Garth, the cat, scrambled across the linoleum. More shouting. Then one called the other a "fucking cunt" and shortly thereafter the daughter left. A few minutes later, it seemed like the mother was on the phone with someone. She might have been crying. A little after that, my imagination began to run away from me and the sounds from above resembled what it might sound like if a 40-something divorced mother were kneeling in the bathroom and puking into the toilet.

This is what you get with no insulation between apartments. But I'm sure most of it was my imagination, which had barely begun to warm up.

Approximately four hours later, I'm awakened by pounding upstairs. Not knowing the layout of the attic apartment, I do not know which room sits directly above our bedroom. There was music playing loudly ��loudly for 4 p.m., let alone 4 a.m., which was the hour shown by the VCR. I heard more voices, but they were calmer. I assume it was the Succubus rather than the mother. There were definitely one or two people over; I heard at least one male voice. And with all the banging and sliding, it sounded almost like ... moving. As if, at 4 a.m., Succubus (if that's who it was) just had to move out. I'm not saying that's what happened, but that's what my jolted-from-deep-sleep and half-awake brain was concocting.

I do not know how long it had been going on, but it continued until 5 a.m., when I got up, went to the bathroom, then walked out into the living room looking for something long. I found the Swiffer and carried it back into our spare bedroom, where the music above was loudest. I pounded on the ceiling and waited. Nothing. I pounded again and waited. Then, after perhaps a longer wait than the first time, it stopped. But then, just after that, so did all the other noise. They were gone. I'm not even sure they heard my pounding.

All through my hour awake, trying to give them a chance to be considerate and responsible on their own, I wondered how the mother could put up with the noise. Was she just lying in bed, not wanting to talk to the Succubus? Had she gone out, to a parent's, sister's, boyfriend's? Then, because of too much Sopranos viewing, I wondered if the Succubus had killed her mother. And if all the noise was them cleaning up the blood and "disappearing" the body.

So this morning, when I left for work, I stopped in the middle of the street to write down the license plate number of the Succubus' car.

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This just in: Michael Jackson is still a freak. The bigger question here is not, "Why is he dangling his kid off a balcony?" but "Why is this man allowed to have children?" He'll probably take them to their first plastic surgeon for their eighth birthday(s).

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So New York City is considering putting homeless people on retired cruise ships. Sure, nothing like exposing them to even more things they don't have access to.

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As if Starsky and Hutch coming to the big screen wasn't cool enough, Warner Bros. has asked Snoop Dogg to play Huggy Bear. Of course, asking Snoop to play a pimp is like asking Eminem to play a lower-class white rapper from Detroit.

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Things have been slow around work the past two days, at least from a fact-checking standpoint. Dylan and I are hoping it's the result of the double issue coming out Friday and staying on newstands for two weeks. He's more skeptical than I.

So I should be outta here soon.

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