Truesday: I'm Still Beard
*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors
It was about a year ago. I was cutting down dead trees in my backyard, in my underwear, which is perfectly normal. Well, I had chainsaw chaps on too. Never heard of ‘em? Well they’re these lead-like/Kevlar chaps that are designed to take the brunt of a chainsaw blade when it pinches in the cut and pops out real violent like, aiming to sever your leg or crotchal arteries. And buddy boy let me tell you, them shits work brilliant. Like the way levees are described by inspectors to work (right up until the point they don’t).
I was cutting a downed log, savoring my uber-manly-appearance-ness, when the cut collapsed and kicked that blade clear out, bouncing the cutting edge off my chaps like bottles off a riot shield, right at the calf.
My leg was safe thanks to my sweet chaps (no thanks, underwear), but it was a major frown moment for me.
Remember the first time you got hit with an existential crisis? And I don’t mean that time you were splitting your skull at the end of your marijuana-and-breakfast-burrito fueled freshman year, trying to decide between the bland Plan II and majoring in Paleoanthropological Cultural Studies. Because that wasn’t a crisis. That was just a braveless soul-hole being a pretentious asshole by arguing with themselves over how few job prospects their super-smug future would hold.
I mean the real deal. Like when you witness an armed robbery at a convenience store and survive: guns and threats in teary faces. And the following day you confide in your never-does-his-damned-laundry roommate "I was scared for my life. It flashed before me man. EVERYTHING. The past, the present, and my wasted future. What am I doing with my life?" He scratches himself and shrugs. You continue "and dude, why'd you pull a gun in that store, you dick? I gotta LIVE in this neighborhood. PACK YOUR SHIT." He never did pay his half of the cable bill anyway. Plus he smelled like an unvented gorilla exhibit.
So you were left there wondering what the hell it all means, with no road signs or magic maps to help guide the way. And so you stumbled forth, clawing your way into the depths of deepening darkness and despair. Along with some other foreboding ‘d’ words like dearth, deathening, and derivatives. And that despair led you to a single conclusion about your situation: 'tis time to switch shit up.
Well that’s where I was a year ago. That chainsaw jarred me to this waking existence. That chainswaw would've had me peg-leggin’ it right now! Scared me straight. Straight into profound and impressive life-altering decisions.
I decided that I must never have been meant to be a writer. Mustn’t have been in the deck. I mean, I’m just a word monkey. Dotting ‘i’s and crossing ‘t’s. A slave to paragraphs and grammatical structures and serifs and onomonomonomonopeas and subtle differences that no one cares about concerning book binding techniques. I felt like a failure at living creative. At making a difference. Plus I was spending my free time murdering dead trees with a motorized, bladed chain machine that wanted to hobble me. Such a desolate existence, swimming in such quandaries.
Got me thinking. Well if not this, then what am I meant for? If not ruining the English language on the printernets, or firing up a logging career, then what?
Minutes went by. Then collections of five minutes went by. And after the second episode of Deadliest Catch (season two, because you really need to re-watch the early shit to catch all the surprise angles) I had it all sorted out. Rapper. I WILL RAP THE WORLD'S ASS OFF BECAUSE THAT OBVIOUSLY MAKES THE MOST SENSE.
In fact, I remember the times when I’ve been slam-poeting on the northbound 1 bus and people were like dude you’re awesome at this it’s almost like you could pass for either Milli or Vanilli so SHUT THE FUCK UP.
JAM ON IT!
So, with that kind of anonymous support, I wrote up some raps for the house.
Foldin’ my cash like Singapore busts a lash
Mad brash my soul’s mashed with burnt-ass mad ash
The clash of my knotty ‘stache with the herps sad rash
Makes your teeth gnash like fash zash fazzazafrash grash shashashash
Meh. Damn this is harder than I… Maybe-
Sleezy Tee Cee Be breezin’ like [vocode’d] ‘caaaaanes,
Eatin’ ‘spensive cheezes like zombies eat [vocode’d] braiiiiiins.
Nah. Ooooo-
Lincoln continental’s crossin it in stacks and these BluBlocks is [Ludadrop] baaaaaaaad.
Bitch! Out my rental gettin’ my deposit back and yo ass gots [Ludadrop] craaaaaabs.
Fuck this. Abysmal.
But then I remembered that rapping is boring as shit and pays waaaaaay too much money to be truly creative. Something else had to be my bag, and I honestly thought I should stay parked in the music biz. And while I was thinking about how I’d totally rap a better mother ode than Mr. T, it HIT me.
Alt-Antiblogster Chillrave.
OF COURSE! I’ve always been meant to be a subject of Carles’ meandering fluorescent masturbation-in-text. So I immediately wrote some lyrics:
(set up: the song’s about a kid’s toy train that goes missing because his bitch sister stole it, melted it, and shot it into her veins. The background is any ol’ Coltrane trueclassic mashed with a sped up version of the neoclassic “Gold Digger” by K. West - in my mind it’s super fast so he sounds like a chipmunk and the chipmunks in his actual song sound like coke’d up crickets- BOOYAH it’s tight)
[some random alt-synth notes or whistling or some shit, then mash-up breaks in]
Bedside side’s a vacuum
Forrrrrr (hold for ten minutes then fade into nothing)
the dirt left from the tracks of lovers lost.
[Brooklyn/Iceland street reference]’s lamps make me weep
[more random alt-synth notes or whistling shit interlude before mash-up busts your face]
She owes me ten bucks for that train and if that bitch don’t pay I will dynamite her womb
Whoa. That got dark, didn’t it?
Obviously music isn’t my purpose. I know that now. Good thing it doesn’t matter. Because I found that once you cross off popular music from your purpose-list, the only remaining purpose worth purposing in life is…
ACTING.
The theatre! The silver screen! Or the big screen! Toxicology screen! Whatever screen! Acting’s my calling. It’s obviously what drives my spirit on Creative Avenue, which I cruise every hour of every day. Besides, acting is super easy and any asshole with daddy issues and/or critical substance abuse problems can do it. In fact, I think they do it without trying. It’s like crapping! But even more embarrassing for other people to watch!
But then I thought about how hard is to get into the industry. In fact, I’ve found that when you don’t take a whole industry seriously, even if that industry is founded on faking shit, then you won’t be taken seriously as a contender. I found that out when I applied for Dumbledore’s position when that other old dude passed to the Guild Beyond after Chamber of Secrets hit the DVD shelves. I figured I was a shoe-in. I’ve got the beard, I’d seen all the previews to the earlier movies, and plus acting is my destiny so there’s no way Hollywood would be so unfair as to turn away me and my week-long dream of becoming an international sensation as a professional copier-of-other-people’s-actual-emotions. After all, I did decide that I deserved it. And like I like to think: if you dream it, then the least the rest of the world could do is owe it to you.
But you know what they* did? They told me that they didn’t believe I had it in me to properly ply the trade of ACTING. Asked me if I was serious. Serious? Questioned my dedication, and went so far as to point out that I had only made the decision to become an actor a week earlier. But whatever, because I told them it was my lifelong dream, and that even preincarnations of myself had dreamed of ACTING and that they didn’t know how dedicated I really am so I cut my arms to show serious I wanted them to believe that I felt and all this other mumbo jumbo to make them feel bad.
That’s right. I lied.
It’s called... ACTING.
[Scene]
• By "they" I mean the voices in my thought-spaces representing Studio Heads or Union Bosses or Carnies or whoever the hell runs Movieland nowadays.
