Rain and music that makes everything present seem a million dreams away are things that make life’s purpose beautiful. Clean, wet streets are blanketed by the turning of leaves like little resolutions announced then thrown to the wind. The bridge is damp and cold and my head is tucked behind my dials and this thousand liter scooter and I’m hanging on as we barrel high above rivers and thrust into November, deep into the remnants of the year. I often wonder when my desire for solitude and speed will wane and I conclude that it will be around the same time a decent book or simple photograph becomes uninteresting. I always questioned the name Nevaeh. The sound in my head it makes is “nev-ah” Never.

Wet leaves on asphalt is evil and sudden like black ice. The glistening white stripes on crosswalks and manhole covers in the rain are mean little gremlins. Any season that is called “fall” should be changed to “soft landing” for those who face this wonderful, crisp season on two wheels instead of four.

(God knows I miss the LTD).

I feel sorry for The Roots. The Roots are this great hip-hop band from Philly who are immensely talented and have great success especially among those who have grown to loathe the pedestrian contemporary rap songs about rims on whips or cabbage and grips.

Why The Roots deserve our sympathy is because every weeknight they have to sit through an entire, uninterrupted episode of the late nite snooze-fest of a show that is hosted by the sadly unimaginative Jimmy Fallon. Since The Roots are the house band, they bear witness to high-grade talent going rotten in the interview chair on the daily. The exchanges between Fallon and his guests are punishingly forced, plodding and just plain boring. I would rather watch my father pick his ears with a car key than sit through Jimmy Fallon interviewing someone. Fallon’s lack of common cultural knowledge leaves him sitting there like a nervous muppet with nothing interesting to say, unaware that he has no shred of spontaneous wit. 

The episodes are rabbit pebbles strung together by long, dull stories from celebrities and maybe a silly voice thrown in and this sorry recipe for entertainment reduces his show to a 60 minute log of awkward silence. I’ve counted how many times people laugh during a Jimmy Fallon segment and wonder why The Roots haven’t thrown their instruments through the phony scenic background and burned that place to dust. Simply put, the show just isn’t funny and the business of a late night show that isn’t Nightline is to be funny or we’re all falling asleep wishing The Roots would change their name to The Riots.

I know The Roots are getting paid but couldn’t they be given reprieve from this terrible show? We all know Fallon won’t last another year, which is unfortunate because on SNL he was quite funny, in his element he was goofy and charming. But leave him alone with the likes of Robert DeNiro or even Danny DeVito and count the tumbleweeds.

The Roots need to migrate to a better show or this is going to stain their resume, what about that crazy Scottish guy? His show’s kinda irreverent and bizarre. Way more fun than watching Jimmy Fallon struggle to put words together to form something that matters. Poor bastard.

The very least he could do is replace The Roots with a band more fitting for his nightly vacuous conversations, like Good Charlotte or The Black Eyed Peas so The Roots can go on making great music without enduring their horribly grueling day job.

When the sweat reaches its peak and you’re freezing on the sofa and your head is full of sickness and swill, when your skin is burning and lips are chapped and bleeding and the only sound you can make is a groan that only the dog hears, be glad you don’t live a hundred years ago. Because you’d probably be dead soon. Or maybe that’s a good thing.

Spending half a week with a filthy fever that wrestled itself inside my body and hid for a month before finally careening up my bloodstream is no way to spend a crisp November. When it swallowed my face and infected my very core and soul, this insipid little bastard of a cold had the gall to make me look like a slouch in front of my fairly new job. The same job that has seen me call in sick more times in my first 3 months than I did during the last 5 years of my previous job. Funny how perception of your person can vary wildly among those you barely know.

3 colds in 5 weeks and this last dirty doozy had me seeing dreams when I wasn’t sure if I was even sleeping. The hallucinations of glasswork people and broken conversations permeated me as if I were a glistening piece of rotten gristle, the strange warmth and slow liquid whim of my body attempting to restore its core temperature had me trembling and weak but somehow strangely calm and resigned. I kept feeling like a pig on a spit as I kept turning over, struggling for breath through a clogged, yet dripping nose. I soon didn’t care how sick I had become, I just laid there for a few days and groaned like a weird factory machine.

Fever broke, mostly better, now. No thanks to whatever scumbag whose infected breath I smelled or whatever soiled doorknob I turned just before digging up my nostril.

Sometimes the sun sets at the exact same time it rises against a new day.

Sometimes people converge and then release, our words rope in furor or keep destruction at bay, when we’re unable to discern between what’s proper or prosperous or what’s senseless or dangerous is what makes all relationships invaluable. Every past relationship and their influences count towards the sum of who we are today. There’s never waste in knowing someone because everyone delivers a bit of blue sky whether they carry black clouds and chips on shoulders or merely the weight of the past on their back.

Sometimes it takes a little sunshine on the cheek to realize what must be done and other times it takes a brick to the face.

Next time I see a woman at the store walking a small dog I’m going to grab that leash and run so her canine-rat bounces along the ground behind me like a tetherball. Like a mountain Vietnamese I’m going to skewer that little shitzuahua on a spit and grub him down like a tailgate party kebab. High five.

Whatever mammal you decide to bring to a public establishment better be your child or your service animal. If they’re one and the same, even better. I was told that it’s within the bounds of the law to ask whether an animal is a service animal or not but it’s unlawful to ask what service their animal provides. Wha-?

I’m going to petition that a monkey in a diaper to be my service animal so whenever I see someone with a little dog in a purse or on their arm in the video store line, my pint-sized primate is going to launch doo-doo balls like hot mortars and I’m going to stand and laugh and laugh. When the store clerk asks me why I have a monkey with bowels that bomb such cute little doggies, I’m going to tell her it’s my public service animal.

And all those who hold cell phones to their heads while changing lanes, those who use words like “LOL” in a speaking sentence, those who yell at their kids as if they were kids themselves, and those who thrive on the misfortune of others (politicians, brokers, bankers, doctors, lawyers, etc.) all get doo-doo bombed by my monkey in Huggies.

The best thing about having swine flu a filthy cold is the groggy (and justifiable) wanton consumption of little bottles of Nyquil. A pile of empties strewn about the bedroom and my drooling face caked in green pillowcase stains…oh yeah. Being sick can sometimes be great.

The first 20 seconds of a conversation determines whether your future contains pleasure and interest or fits of yawning and pending rage. 20 degrees south on a torso and you’ll know whether to continue the venture. 20 minutes into a movie usually better getcha goin’ and 20 years oughta be enough to learn a few things.

You’d think it oughta.

One of the many friends I made while tending bar was one that guaranteed me to not make any more for quite awhile. Just make sure the bartending academy teaches you how to convince people that your strange, molting lizard fingers are perfectly safe to run through girls’ hair.

She swings like a champion,
a rampant title fighter
with blazing eyes and frothing insults
spit like venom from reptile daggers.

Whether a lamp or a telelphone, or just a ring of keys,
objects wrapped in fists launched like warheads
luckily plunge far and wide.

Hands through drywall
like gorilla fists past car windows,
slivers of the mirror deep in the carpet
sparkle like snow in the shattered hallway.

Wrought iron fences watch as my things are thrown over
and the dogs all cirlcle like some angry hunt.
Lights on the pathway weave with temperance
a feigned accord manicured with growth and green

that match her eyes, calculating and arranged
with such horrible order and cool determination
I’m in awe of such evil,
an absolute masterpiece of destruction.

When the fury finally wanes
the lust doth wax.
Vehemence is followed by wanton consumption
of each others’ heat and breath.

The blood and rage simmers down to skin we covet,
armor is exhumed as fingers and mouths
burgeon a new battle,
forging into soft wilderness with careful movements.

The fierce adrenaline
traded for new endorphins
floods our fluids
in a warm revelation.

When I awake, alone,
still drunk on fancy and rancor,
I feel my cheek where the rock she wears
dug an indelible ditch beneath my eye.

Nighttime violence
is the aperitif of insane copulation.
A habit dressed in misdemeanors
that requests orders of restraint.

Resolving to never press charges
assumes our mad devotion,
assuages our cold loneliness and
assures our uncertain sanctity.

Long standing bars whose histories and legacy of neighborhood service have watched presidential tenures come and go, old laws be broken and new laws enacted. They’ve seen how people, style and tastes change over the decades, and only a few storied bars are still serving communities their certain brand of revelry and respite. No other institution can boast as many wild tales through bygone eras as a legendary bar.

Except maybe a church.

A house of god and spiritual worship, where those who are lost converge to find a common direction with others, a haven where everyone is part of a following but on a very personal journey to find a piece of heaven.

Are we still talking about church, you lovely dipsomaniac?