Brain Poops

Ladies and gentlemen!

What you don’t want to hear me talk about or read me writing about is here for you to see in photo form instead.

I am internet rich.
Which means I earn jack shit.

Here’s hoping I find some way of earning money, since being a new homeless person in Los Angeles might be a tougher industry than the internet could ever be.

WARNING:This post contains photos of painted and erotically costumed people. While there is no nudity displayed, anyone offended by such content or otherwise restricted from it should go to http://www.zombo.com in lieu of seeing those photos. You can do anything… at Zombocom.

In our last episode:

In the green room, George tells me that the projector isn’t coming in today at all and that we have been bumped till tomorrow’s panel. Nick and I say goodbye to Halcyon and Ashley and head back to the hotel to get some rest. We both look like we’re carrying a week’s worth of groceries under our eyes.

13:00 - At the Hotel

Nick wakes up before me to search out deck shoes in downtown San Francisco for his Magnum-PI-esque costume, so I’m alone for a few hours in the hotel.

I turn on the hotel television and watch the last two acts of ET. I wonder why I really cared about a moist-turd looking alien with an erectile neck. Must have been the big eyes. Disney knew about the “big eyes = cuteness” principle, and apparently so did Spielberg.

ET ends and Nick is still nowhere to be found. The only thing on television now is some guy who looks like my old chemistry teacher explaining how to make a wooden bowl using a lathe on a stump. I fall into that hypnotized insomniac state watching it and a few hours pass by. This is the closest my people will ever come to cryogenics, I think.

I go for a smoke downstairs and get a message from someone congratulating me on getting featured. As I finish my cig, Halcyon pokes out of his second-floor window and compliments me on Haberdashery.

“Thanks man,” I say. “Hey, could you check and see if it’s on the front page of Youtube? I know it was featured in Canada for a while, but I got an odd message.”

He pulls his head back into the room for a minute, then turtle heads it out again with a goofy smile. “Indeed it is. Congratulations!”

I give our street a good old fashioned howl and swagger back into the lobby. This feels like it’s going to be a good day, but the pride lasts only a few heartbeats before I realize it probably doesn’t matter and shrug it off.

(continue reading…)

WARNING:This post contains photos of a graphic sexual performance. While there is no nudity displayed, anyone offended by such content or otherwise restricted from it should go to http://www.zombo.com in lieu of seeing those photos. You can do anything… at Zombocom.

In our last episode:

Nina talks for a while about her relationship with her husband and working in the business, which somehow segues into the election. She carries herself with the dignity of a true Lady, comfortable in her lifestyle yet clever and polite. I gain respect for her outside of her performances, and realize I really don’t know Jack about the porn business or the people in it.

20:00 - The Ball

8 o’clock sends a crush of costumed Ball-goers into the expo floor and the Main Stage tent. Thousands, as quickly as they can get through the entrance, pour into the hangar which feels smaller by the second. I have never been one to deal with crowds well, so I push through the throng to get to the Main Stage tent and the VIP room.

(continue reading…)

8:30 Friday - At home, Los Dangeles

Groggy. The sleeping pills from the night before haven’t finished their job just yet, but feel hell-bent on completing the mission anyway. Jesus… I haven’t seen 8:30AM in a long time. It’s as I remember it: overrated and bleak.

My bags are already packed from the night before. They are a few feet away from the base of the bed and looking up at me with their sad, polyester duffel-bag faces. I flop over them and make my way to the kitchen.

Fridge doors are complicated when you’re waking up from six hours of sleep and expecting to be awake another sixteen. I fumble the door open and slam down three cokes to combat my foggy brain functions.

I grab my bags, give NickyNik a quick phone call and belch off on my motorcycle towards the airport. I’m absent the fear of long-term parking costs, since on my last trip there I realized they don’t charge for motorcycle parking for any length of time. The wind wraps me up like a long lost lover, then it smacks me around like a long lost lover finding out about the other lovers in your past.

10:00 - Los Dangeles International Airport.

Nick leaves me a voice message saying he has to piss and that he’ll meet me at the terminal. Well not exactly those words, but you get the drift.

I walk into the ticketing area, mouth agape at the horde of travelers shuffling through the queue. It was a bedraggled, coiling square dance with a lame band, only the band was equipped with weapons and authority instead of instruments and talent. After 30 minutes in three lines, two donation solicitors and one hung over TSA, I headed to the terminal to meet Nick.

The terminal is only slightly air conditioned, which makes me ponder just what the hell they do with all the profits from grossly overpriced chihuahua ashtrays and fast food. It’s gotta be 90 degrees in this fucker! My glasses get foggy in a Dilbert-in-a-strip-club kind of way and I stop to clean them off.

I put them back on and see Nick waiting for me in front of a window. The scene looks as if Norman Rockwell had been working in the 90s covering transit: Nick reading the LA Times with his head down to see over his spectacles, the terminal umbilicus attaching to the airplane behind him. I compulsively check that I indeed washed behind my ears and say hello.

(continue reading…)

Now with 50% less superfluous metaphor and simile!

In our last episode:

Yet again my fears are shot down in a blaze of awesomeness and candor as we all frankly talk and laugh about our strange stories and backgrounds. We’re only a few minutes into the convo before the car arrives.

The driver gets out, and for a moment I think it’s one of my high school classmates¹. He talks as fast and as recklessly as he drives, but we get to our hotel with a quickness.

Our lodging is the America’s Best Value Inn Suites, located in South Market. A misnomer, as the hotel staff is largely foreign and since our room comes with a complimentary copy of the Bhagavad Gita instead of a Gideon Bible. Refreshing, I thought, but different.

Nick and I get to the room to find a luxurious suite with only one king-sized bed. There’s that awkward split-second eye contact between two heterosexual men over the same bed, and we decide to ask for a different room. It isn’t until later that we found out Halcyon and Ashley ended up with the double-bed room and a simple swap would have sufficed.

(continue reading…)

WARNING:This post contains photos of a graphic sexual performance. While there is no nudity displayed, anyone offended by such content or otherwise restricted from it should go to http://www.zombo.com in lieu of seeing those photos. You can do anything… at Zombocom.

In our last episode:

She asks me for more details on what I do and such, seemingly interested in just who the hell I was. I catch the slightest traces of a European accent, and though I couldn’t place it, it was enough to know that while she looked strikingly similar, it was thankfully not Johansson.

I take my leave after a few short minutes to not mess up first impressions and get down to seeing the underbelly of the Ball.

(continue reading…)

16:00 - 9/12/08 (day 544)

A high tech alarm/PC beeps an automatically selected song this morning from data it non-intrusively monitored in Ze’s sleep cycle over the night. Today’s song is “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins.

The alarm is networked to digital micropanels in his floor-to-ceiling bay windows. The miniature shutter clusters receive a “open” command pattern from the alarm and gently break a 2 PM dawn on the groggy sleeper, who is determined not to “be hangin’ on like a yo-yo” [at right].

Endorphins flood the brain of Ze “Danger” Frank as his required umbilicus is attached and grafted to his torso over the scars of previous grafting. He stretches and yawns just before his module delivers the first infusion of protein, caffeine, vitamins and nutrients to his body. His custom molded slippers feel plush and supple as they shrink and adjust to his feet.

(continue reading…)