Friday, June 03, 2005

the seventeen list

More listing of things for the pure fun of thing-listing. So let's get it on with that ordinal mania. Eight to seventeen.

8. Def Leppard is coming to play in August. Did I say play? I meant RAWK. Sorry, I meant suck.

9. Because I was hit on the head with a baseball bat as a kid, I have trouble finishing my

10. But I wrote a short story about being hit on the head with a baseball bat, which featured one character saying to another, "Ah bite me bag".

11. For the last week I've been in the office for 11-12 hours a day. I even ended up here on Sunday afternoon, palely haunting the hallways.

12. You who know me, know how lazy I am. Why work so many hours? It's a funny story involving all of my staff quitting on me within a week with notice ranging from two days to five hours. "Don't get me wrong, Mr. Node," they all said, notice in hand. "We think you're a good producer. You shielded us from a lot of bullshit here. It's the executive we don't like". So they stuck me with a series in full production, exposing me to the teeth of a howling executive body, and leaving me with their jobs to do on top of mine. Because they liked me and thought I was a good producer.

13. Currently I have a crew in Nova Scotia driving around and interviewing people. Every night I coordinate and write up questions for the next day (see 11 and 12). Once they return home I will celebrate with a bottle of Pine Sol and collapse in a bus shelter.

14. My first mascot is Evil Wizard, a plastic figurine I picked up for 99 cents at Humpty's Family Restaurant. He's dressed in a purple robe and cap, wears tiny little round sunglasses and sports a wand with a funky star glittering at its tip. He's more like a magical David Crosby than an evil wizard.

15. My second mascot is Dolphi, a perverse plastic dolphin fitted with human clothes and juggling three red balls (other Dolphi figures are similary frozen in other degrading street tricks). I nicked him from a basket in the lobby of the Novotel Mannheim. I have several photos of Dolphi posing in rural Austria. He juggles by the ancient church, he juggles in the graveyard, he juggles against the splendor of the Alps. He juggles in the Alpenglow.

16. My third and favourite mascot is Kogepan. He is my secret sharer, my homuncular twin. According to Kogepan himself, he's a red bean bun from Hokkaido who was baked too long until his skin turned dark. He ran away from the bakery when the taunts of the lighter red bean buns became too much to bear. After a nihilistic descent into smoking and drinking, he returned to the bakery of his birth to begin the arduous process of learning to be a better burnt bean bun.

17. On my first long trip, my wife (The Lotus) put a Kogepan in my carry-on bag as a good-luck charm. I have never removed him, and every so often he turns up in a search for keys or change, staring blankly up at me as if to say, "Where now, big burnt bean bun guy?"

7 comments:

blackbird said...

http://blackbird17.blogspot.com/2005_01_30_blackbird17_archive.html

Friday Films said...

Oh Kogepan. Try not to take him anywhere where there's milk as beer, or he might make a break for it.

palinode said...

Kogepan is in thrall to his addictions, it's true. Sometimes I fear that the taunting of the other buns may drive him to drink milk with his pal Sumipan.

Anonymous said...

"Pine Sol" reminded me that Billy Joel tried to commit suicide once by drinking furniture polish. /Colleen--> http://connie-cobb.diaryland.com

palinode said...

I was thinking of drinking furniture polish more out of joy than despair. That's the difference between me and Billy Joel.

Which gives me a perfect conversation opener if I ever meet Mr. Joel. "You know what the difference is between you and me, Joel? Joely boy?" I'll say, swinging a bottle of Murphy's around, "And it isn't that you've screwed Christie Brinkley and I haven't? Because I was, every time you were in the studio, tinkling on that piano of yours? The difference is, I drink furniture polish to relax and enjoy myself". Then I'll put an arm around his shoulder and burst into tears.

Anonymous said...

They call it the Christie Brinkley effect. She gives guys a taste for furniture cleaner! I believe she signed a contract with L'Oreal's home decor branch.

Anonymous said...

Regarding numbers 11-13, there is a reason why many former employees are currently living in other countries. We can never get ¨too far¨.