Trash, Garbage, Offal, Dreck
I am not the only writer in my apartment building. I discovered this just now, taking out the trash. A man was sitting cross legged in the trash room with pencil behind his ear, another in his hand and one of those black and white marble covered composition books that in my high school we used for lab reports. Appropriate enough, I guess, as the trash room smells of formaldehyde and high school carpet rot. The guy waved as I maneuvered my trash into the chute and went on copying the list of contents pasted inside the Fresh Direct (online grocery) boxes some other neighbor had left out for recycling.Naturally a "what the hell?" was in order.
He's writing a cookbook. Specifically on how to cook in small kitchens. When he's needs inspiration he checks out other people's Fresh Direct boxes to see if he can combine their weeks grocery orders into something palatable. This is his way of making sure recipes feature foods that real people buy. Real people like my neighbors in 408, who included three bags of dill pickle flavored potato chips, four pounds of grapefruit, and a case of butterscotch pudding in their order.
I'm afraid of what Cookbook Man comes up with for that one. Also, I'm scraping off my Fresh Direct labels from now on.
This gets me wondering though--what do you all do when (if) you get stuck?
posted by Manaster @ Thursday, September 15, 2005
2 Comments:
what do i do when i get stuck? besides this blog you mean? video games and internet, my friend. that's a one-two combo i can't live without.
also, i guess it's lucky that your neighbor only goes through the trash. i immediately became convinced that he's the type to sit around his studio in dingy underpants and a tinfoil hat. He'd sift through stool samples obtained semi-illegaly and say to himself. "yes, of course. that's it."
I go to see a movie which ideally purports some artsiness, something to make me think, most recently Grizzly Man. Anyone else seen it? Can't say I thought it was good, but it was fucking weird, a documentary about this guy, Timothy Treadwell, who got beat out for the part of Woody on Cheers by Woody Harrelson. Among other things, he was an alcoholic and went on a mission to protect grizzly bears in Alaska, and to sober up. Then he got eaten.
Weird movie with some super strange interviews of Timothy's family and friends in which the director asked creepy questions in his creepy German accent and the camera closed in on the interviewees' faces for so long they finally realized dramatics were in order and said some awfully forced strange stuff. I guess I do recommend it. It's just hard to know whether to be saddened, offended, sympathetic, or dismissive. My favorite line, screamed by Timothy Treadwell to his video camera in a raging soliloquy, was "Animals Rule! Timmy Conquered! Fuck the Parks Service!"
The movie had no noticeable effect on my writing.
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