"You're as ADD as a cat on ecstasy in a baby mouse factory."OK, so I made up the quotation above. Sue me for crimes against the state. But that's the point my business manager, Mark, was trying to make to me today. I mean, that was the point he was pounding into my goddamn brain when he wasn't saying "monetize" or "capitalize" or "merchandise potential." He was all Ari Gold on my fool ass. Focus! I need to "focus on my product" and blah-blah "two-year plan" and "You can't use the N-word or the F-word" for "mass appeal potential" and "ten to twenty percent" and I think I signed something or another and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
-Manager Mark
[In my head I'm all like, "Fuck, the new Them Crooked Vultures album is good old-fashioned rock and roll bliss. Who would've guessed they rocked so hard?" As Mark was "projecting forward" and "diversifying" I was praying to the rock gods that I'd wake up with headphones on listening to "Scumbag Blues."I had to go and write all that "sell out" shit and now I have standing meetings every Tuesday and a November 30 "deliverable." Seriously. I have goddamn "action items" now. Jesus almighty! I have to have a meeting EVERY TUESDAY at 8:00 in the morning! Isn't this the very same rat race from which I was escaping by being the art guy? Now I'm just like the rest of you cubicle monkeys minus the commute and the dry-cleaned clothes and the bosses and the politics and the cubicles and the jobs (and the germs--neuroses never take vacations). But other that that it's all workin' 9-to-5 n' shit for me now. You get the gist, the dream is over. Now I have to work. I'm just like you. I have a meeting every Tuesday!
So good, in fact, that dropping that knowledge in a post would be a perfect product placement...and then I realized it: oh shit! I'm one of them now. I'm thinking like a greedy, money-grubbing capitalist!]
Focus! I need to focus and build my platform and "follow well-established models." I have to track hits and stuff now. I was just trying to live my life (albeit in the limited unstructure of a self-customized world).
Mark: So let's set a start-up date and work backwards to meet our goals.Looks like play time is over, guys. No more stream of conscious meandering about whatever comes to mind or emailing or the comments or anything fun anymore. It's like when you just got your playground mojo going but it's getting to be around nine o'clock in the summertime evening and you hear The Call; your mom telling you to come home for the night. Oh the crushing defeat as you slink home while the other kids have all the fun; the fuckers laughing and pointing at you and being so cool about everything. You swear vengeance then and there, "You're the asshole" you say more to yourself than aloud. It may take twenty or thirty years but you'll get 'em back. Somehow. Somewhere.
Ty: Oh, perfect, how 'bout January 1?
Mark: JANUARY 1st?! HOW 'BOUT YESTERDAY?! WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!
Ty: ----[images of me shoveling brimstone into a furnace while Mark drowns hooker after hooker in hundred dollar bills and cocaine]----
So I guess I'm left to do this thing. It's what I asked for. But what will I do? It's not like I haven't "established platform" already. I mean, what was "An Historical Record" all about? What was "I've Always Been This Awkward" for? I've mused on my stupid neighborhood. What else could I possibly do? Quit frontin'! I mean, what else is there for an odd, curmudgeon, half-black Jew house-husband living in a PC, New Urbanist community to ponder? Just because I say the things you think doesn't mean there is a market. Where is the art? What's next, t-shirts?
[Just got an emailing from Mark. "113011," he wrote. Oy vey! The crazy part is I know what that means: it is the end of the "two-year plan" and exactly two years after we "launch." Oy vey! Now I went and did a thing.]Now I have to create a movement. Well, as my graduate school advisor once said (and that I hereby trademark as my own):
Get behind me so I can lead™Alright, I have to go pee now (can I say "pee" anymore?). Mark was force-feeding me coffee (but didn't pay for shit).
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