By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-


My right arm looks freakishly long in this picture:








The other night my fiancee and I were walking across the street at night and there was a photo on the ground.

I picked it up and kept walking.

The photo had been torn in half.

Part of it had been dropped in the road.

I looked at the photo in the glow of the streetlights and kept walking.










"What is it?" said my fiancee.

"It's a couple of guys," I said.

"What are they doing?" she said.

"A couple of Latino guys," I said. "The photo's been torn in half. They're holding beers and smiling."

There's a third guy in the photo, but he's mostly cut out of the frame.

All we can see is his left arm.

His wristwatch.

He appears to be holding a Corona.








His index finger is extended in an apparent gesture to the camera.

A "number one" sign.

The other two guys are drinking Bud Light, I think.

It's hard to read the label.

Maybe it's something else.

I'm not really sure.

The guy on the far right has a diamond stud in his left ear and is wearing what appears to be a wedding ring.

He's pointing at the camera.

Smiling.

His eyes are a little de-focused.

There's a bit of a shine on his face.








He's wearing short sleeves.

This makes me think that either:

A.) This picture was taken in summertime.

B.) The guy was shit-faced.

or

C.) Both.





Maybe they were someplace tropical.

Someplace humid.

Mexico.

Or the Caribbean.

Or Hawaii.

Or El Salvador.

All three guys are wearing short sleeves.

They appear to be outside, at night.

The guy in the middle is dressed in red.

He looks particularly wasted to me.








His face has a high shine, and his eyes appear a little glassy.

No wedding ring.

A mustache.

Receding hairline.

A shit-eating grin.

He's flashing a peace sign at the camera.

A peace sign is a pretty good indicator of a high blood-alcohol content.

His shirt is tucked in, though.

I don't see any stains.

Maybe that means he was still functional.









In fact, I don't really get the sense that any of the guys in the photo are shit-faced beyond recognition.

For the most part, I think they still have it together.

If anybody in the picture is wasted, though, I'm thinking it's the guy in the red shirt.

And even if he's not wasted, it seems reasonable to assume that he might have been on his way to being wasted.

You can see it in his eyes.

He could turn at any moment.

An unpredictable drunk.

Happy, then dangerous.

Laughing, then sad.

One minute he's dancing on the patio.

The next minute he's throwing bottles at the wall and challenging God to a fight.








Then again, he doesn't appear to be as bad of a drunk as, say, this guy:









And really, that's not even the point.

The point---for me, anyway---is this:

Who the hell are these guys?

What are they doing?

And where?

And who took this photograph?

And why has it been ripped in half?

And why was this half discarded?

And who is on the other half?

Etcetera.









For some reason I'm thinking it was a woman who took the shot.

Or maybe it was a gay man.










If you have any ideas, I'm all ears.

I like old photos.

And found photos.

And things like that.

By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-







Today the street-sweepers come.

I have to make sure not to park on one side of the street, or else I'll get a ticket.

Street parking.

A pain in the ass.

I got back to the home office early this morning and the skies were gray overhead.

A marine layer.

It's probably burning off right now.

It's probably turning into air.

I drove around the neighborhood at around 7:30am, looking for a suitable parking spot.

It took me a few minutes.

Driving around in circles.

Cussing under my breath.

Drinking a juice.

Looking at cars and trees.

Waiting for people to go to work.

I finally found a spot up the block, not too far from a construction site.

Dirt on the road.

An apartment building going up.

It's amazing how fast an apartment building can go up.

The workers show up like an army of ants, and the next thing you know there's a building on your block.

It happens in a time warp.

A constant parade of bulldozers and forklifts.

Hammering.

Wiring.

Lumber.

Utilities.

Someday it'll all be dust.








Someday everything will all be dust.





And smells.

A lot of things wind up turning into smells.

It's one of my favorite thoughts.

Everything turning into smells.

I think I've probably mentioned this before.

Human beings turn into smells, eventually.

You and me.

And everyone.

Same with cities.

Same with trees.

Dust and smells.

And air.

And whatever else.







It's an ugly apartment building, the one on my block.

From what I can tell, it's run of the mill.

Painfully standard.

Fresh off the line.






Architecture is a fascination for me.

I drive by a construction site in its early stages of development, and I see a massive hole in the ground.

A manmade crater, waiting to be filled.

It always boggles my mind.

Makes me impressed with human beings, even if only temporarily.

We may be killing the planet, I think, but sometimes we manage to do it in style.









Monarchies, it seems, were pretty good for architecture.

Kings and popes.

Pharaohs and queens.

Dictators with good taste.

Manifest destiny.

Style points.

Nowadays, it's not so simple.

Nowadays, it's a whole different story.

I sit there and I try to wrap my head around it.

Large-scale architecture.

Urban ascent.

I can't figure it out.

I can't figure out how it works.

You're a guy.

You get hired to oversee the construction of the Empire State Building.

"We need you to build the Empire State Building," they tell you.

So you say yeah, sure, I'll be glad to build the Empire State Building, thank you very much.

And then you sign the contract.

And then you go back to your office.

You put your briefcase down.

Your sketchbook.

Your coat.

You sit there.

You look at the telephone.

What's the first thing you do?

What's the first move?

Where do you begin?

What's the procedure?

What's the first thing you do at the site itself?

Who goes out there with a shovel or some heavy machinery and says, "Okay, guys, whaddya say we all get started on the Empire State Building?"








6,500 windows.

73 elevators.

102 floors.

It makes my head hurt just to think about it.











I don't like working with other people.

I think that's why I'm a writer.

I have great admiration for anyone who knows how to put a beautiful building together.

There isn't enough of that, in my opinion.

There aren't enough beautiful buildings anymore.

There aren't enough originals.

There aren't enough risks.

There aren't enough works of art.

Too much plastic.

Too much mass-produced crap.

Especially in suburban America.

Anyone can see it.

I guess the money must not be right.

Whenever there's too much mass-produced crap, it usually has something to do with the fact that the money's not right.

The good way is too goddamned expensive.

It takes too long.

Seems too impractical.

People don't want to bother with it.

People don't want to pay for it.

They'd rather line their pockets and get on with it.

Contractors are trying to keep costs down.

There are market demands to consider.

Contractual obligations.

And in the end:

Cookie cutter neighborhoods sitting like warning signs at the gates of paradise.









There are a lot of people in this country who have made a king's ransom by putting mass-produced crap up all over America.

The mass-produced crap business.

It's all the rage these days.







I watched a documentary on Frank Gehry not too long ago.

Sketches of Frank Gehry, directed by Sydney Pollack.









I think I might have mentioned this before.

The movie made my head shake.

Frank Gehry.

Pretty unbelievable.

Think what you will of his buildings, the man's been able to make some big, weird stuff on planet Earth in a time when the mass-produced crap business is running rampant over everything.

Gehry is an anomaly.

He's managed to game the system.

He's gotten paid a king's ransom to take big risks in big cities.

I gotta believe he's got a pretty big brain.

Is there any artist in the world today who is working on a bigger canvas?










My uncle is an architect.

His son (my cousin) is also an architect.

My roommate from the dorms my freshman year is an architect, too.

Gerber is his name.











Frank Gehry's given name was Ephraim Owen Goldberg.

He went to college at USC, and afterwards he worked a series of odd jobs, including one at the Los Angeles International Airport, where I think he washed airplanes for a living, or something along those lines.









He was struggling to find his way in life, and so he washed airplanes at the airport for a little while.

He talks about it in the documentary.

His dead end airport job.

Hosing down wings.

He talks about how valuable the experience was to his future career.

He spent a lot of time around jumbo jets, looking at the way they were constructed, admiring the precision and artistry of their design.

He was able to take that seemingly mundane and thoroughly depressing temporary occupation and turn it into artistic gold.









Call it alchemy.

Call it whatever you will.

The man is fast.

And he kept his eyes open.

It's an important thing to remember.

A beneficial lesson.

There's gold to be mined pretty much everywhere, if you can manage to keep your eyes open.

You might even be able to find some in the cookie-cutter neighborhoods that sit like warning signs at the wounded gates of paradise.

It's pretty strange.

By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-








Okay then.

Where were we?








I got engaged.

Gifts were exchanged.

I drank too much champagne.

I slept like a drunken bear.

I blew bubbles for my niece.

I wore my green Christmas sweater.

I went for walks.

I read books.

I saw movies.









And then this morning I got up and drove over to that juice place that I sometimes go to.

It's 2007.

Day 2.

A big year ahead.

Gut feeling.

Call it a hunch.

I get up early.

Ready to go.

I figure I should start off with a juice.

So I go over there.

My buddy is behind the counter.

The old bohemian.

He's juicing.

He's looking a little weary.

He's telling me about his holiday.

Apparently it was a bit strange.

Some gal is in town from London.

An old love interest.

An ex.

He's squiring her about town for a few days.

A fling.

They go to a bar, his favorite bar, at an old hotel on San Vicente, just below Sunset.

They have too much to drink.

This is New Year's Eve.

The woman insults the bartender.

The bartender puts Elton John on the stereo, and the woman mocks him and calls him a fag.








The bartender is gay.

He doesn't like her tone.

He picks up the phone and dials security.

Security comes upstairs and taps my buddy on the shoulder and escorts both he and the woman out of the bar and into the street.

Ejected from the premises.

An embarrassment.









And then the next day they wake up mid-morning and drive over to Malibu, to the beach, to recover and shake off the fog.

The sun is out.

75.

They're in the old bohemian's 1982 Mercedes convertible, with the top down.

They go to the beach.

They belly up to another bar.

An hour goes by.

It's pushing noon.

The old bohemian has another couple of beers, trying to deaden his hangover.

The woman has a water.

They're watching TV.

Football.

Conversation is limited.

The Pacific Ocean is there.

And then later, on their way home, at PCH and Temescal Canyon, they get into an accident.

Rear-ended by an elderly woman.

The elderly woman bashes into them, and in turn they almost hit a pedestrian.

The back of the Mercedes is crunched, but the car is still driveable.

The pedestrian is startled but otherwise okay.

They elderly woman is shaken and apologetic.

She appears to be okay, physically.

They exchange information with the elderly woman---insurance, plates, driver's licenses, etc.

They make sure the pedestrian is all right, and then they call the cops to file an official report.

A half-an-hour goes by.

They're standing on the side of the road.

The cops are nowhere in sight.

It's New Year's Day.

Business is slow.

Everybody figures: Fuck it, we've exchanged information, we'll deal with it on our own.

And so they wish each other a happy new year, and then they drive away.

And as they're driving away, the elderly woman's information blows out of the Mercedes and into the atmosphere.

Remember: it's a convertible.

The top is down.

They're driving 55.

The piece of paper with the old lady's information gets caught in the wind and flies away.

Lost for good on Sunset Blvd.

The old bohemian didn't notice it until it was already gone.

He was a minute or two late in catching it.

He looked down at the floor of the car and it was nowhere to be found.







He stood there this morning in the juice shop and relayed the story to me in a state of disbelief.

He was standing in front of the blender, getting ready to turn it on.

"I don't know," he said. "Weird astrology. Must be something freaky in my energy right now."

I said, "Jesus. That's the start of a new year."

"It can only go up," he said. "It can only go up."









And just as he said that, the door to the juice shop opened up and this woman stuck her head in the door.

She looked kind of like a soccer mom.

Nothing too unusual.

She had glasses on.

A bit of a geek.

She was wearing a white sweatshirt and jeans.

Mousy brown hair, shoulder-length.

About five-foot-five.

"Schprechen sie Deutsch?" she said.

That was her opening line.

She barged in the door and opened up with: Schprechen sie Deutsch?

It was a little odd.

It was before 7am.

The woman is standing there with her glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, and she's asking me if I speak German.

Something was a little off.

I turned and looked at the old bohemian.

He squinted and shrugged his shoulders.

And just as quickly as the woman had entered, she turned around and left.

It happened fast, before we had time to properly react.

The woman left the store like she was in a terrible hurry.

She slammed the door shut without saying another word and walked away quickly, out of sight.









A few minutes later, I stepped out of the juice shop and walked back to my car, and when I got to my car there was a fake ten-dollar bill under my windshield wiper, as well as a flattened paper cup that appeared to have been picked up out of the gutter.

I took it back inside and threw it in the trash.

The old bohemian looked at me.

"This was under my windshield wiper," I said.

"What is it?" he said.

"A fake ten-dollar bill and a dirty paper cup."







The old bohemian shrugged.

I said goodbye again, walked outside and got in my car.

I drank my juice and keyed the ignition.

And as I'm driving away, I look off to my right and see the soccer mom standing there shouting on the side of the road.

She's standing on the curb in the morning sunshine and she's throwing an absolute fit.

A crazyperson.

Hopping around.

She's holding a palm frond in one hand and a water bottle in the other.

Traffic is whizzing by.

The morning rush.

I'm slowing to a stop at the intersection, getting ready to make a left turn.

The woman is yelling in my direction, waving her hands in the air.

For some reason she's furious.

My windows are shut and the traffic is loud.

I can't hear her; I can only see her.

The woman shouts at me and throws her water bottle out into the road, and it explodes.

Then she throws the palm frond.

A car swerves, honking.

I look at the woman for a moment, and then I make my turn.

I look in my rearview mirror.

She's still standing there.

She's shaking a fist in the sunlight.

I look at my clock.

It's 7am.

January 2, 2007.

I think to myself: Jesus.




I'm predicting a big year.

3:AM Magazine in Paris gives Daniel Scott Buck's The Greatest Show on Earth Novel of the Year 2006.

By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-








My girlfriend and I went to a dinner party last night down in Manhattan Beach.

Or maybe it was Redondo Beach.

It was right there in the middle somewhere.

Some old friends.

They just bought a house in the South Bay.

A tall and skinny.

That's what the houses on their block are called.

Tall & Skinnies.

Because they're tall and skinny and stacked right up against each other.

Southern California real estate.

Houses like sardines.









The mansions in Beverly Hills, incidentally, are not called Big & Fats.

Go figure.








So there we are, over at my friends' new place.

The house is nice inside.

They're remodeling.

Hardwood floors.

New bathroom.

New kitchen.

A baby on the way in February.

A little boy.

A family.

They already have a name picked out for the kid, but they're not saying anything.

A lot of people do that.

They tell you that they've picked out the name, but they won't tell you what the name is.

They don't want any feedback on the name.

No criticism.

I can understand the logic.

You don't want to pick out a name for your kid and then have friends of yours weighing in on it before the kid is born.

So you keep it to yourself.

You keep it under lock and key.

And then when the kid is born, you give it to him.

You bestow a name.

And that's that.










So we had dinner together, about ten of us, and we drank some good wine.

A bunch of old friends.

We sat around the table and caught up.

It had been a while since we'd all seen each other.

We talked about what we'd been up to.

And oddly enough, we talked about how ugly newborn babies usually are, and how uncomfortable it is to have to pretend that they're not ugly when dealing with the proud new parents.

Somehow that came up.

The kid comes outta the chute looking like an alien with a pointed head.

He's cross-eyed and drooling, and he just shit his pants.

And for some reason you're forced to stand there over the crib and coo.









With most people you can't just stand there and say, "Congratulations. You did it. That is one ugly little bastard. Let's hope things improve."

The parents, inevitably, are completely blind to the fact that their offspring looks like a mutant.

It's something genetic.

It's something deeply ingrained, deeply hardwired into the human brain.

Most new parents are completely incapable of seeing their children as anything other than beautiful and perfect.

And on one level, I can completely understand it.

All newborn babies are beautiful, in a way.

On another level, though, my head calls out for a strong dose of reality.

Me personally, I like to think that I won't be that way if I ever have kids.

I like to think that if I have an ugly kid, I'll say so.

And I'll hope that things round out in the future, as time goes by.

And if I have a little girl, I'll hope to Christ she won't wind up looking like me.

(I'm convinced that I would make for a really ugly woman.)

And so on.











One of my buddies at the table last night was talking about how heavy the babies in his family are.

He was nine pounds when he was born.

Tremendously ugly.

His grandfather weighed thirteen.

A mutant in his own right.

A thirteen pound baby boy.

Right outta the chute.

And these are not big people.

Slender, even.

Slight as adults.

But big when they enter the world.










My buddy Jason said, "Jesus. A thirteen-pound baby boy."

My girlfriend said, "My vagina hurts."







I was eight pounds when I was born.

I don't like my first name.

I've said this before.

I've always been opposed to Brad, ever since I can remember.

Brad carries with it a negative cultural connotation.

It's like some sort of generic name dished out to douchebags in movies.

The dipshit quarterback or the prickish real estate tycoon---they're almost always named Brad.








It's uncanny.

A statistical wonder.

It's been happening for years.

I'll be sitting there in the theater, and all of a sudden another Brad will show up on the screen.

Some guy with a sweater tied around his neck, laughing like a robot on a putting green.

I'll shrink down into my seat, completely defeated.

My girlfriend will elbow me.

She'll be laughing her ass off.

And this isn't just me being paranoid, either.

If you pay attention, you'll see it.

My assessment is completely accurate.

I'm onto something here.

The name has been abused for the past two decades.

All I can do is try to give it a new connotation.

Restore it a little bit.

Take it back.

Bring it a small shot of dignity.

All I can do is endure.

It's my name.

I'm stuck with it.

I'm not gonna change it or anything.

That's not my style.

I'll ride it out.

My parents bestowed it upon me.

It's the only name I've ever had.

And I kinda like my last name, so I guess that serves as some sort of odd consolation.







The waning popularity of the first name Brad








For a while there, early in my career, I contemplated using a pen name, professionally.

Almost all writers consider using a pen name at one point or another, and usually early in their careers, when they're just starting out.

My middle name is David.

For a while there, I was going to go by B. David Listi.

And then for a couple of months I was going to go with Henry.

I like the name Henry.

I have an uncle named Henry.

My mom comes from a giant Southern family.

Nine children.

Their names, in the order of their birth, are:

Johnny, Jane, Nancy, Mary, Peggy, Sally, Sue, Henry, and Becky.

(How's that for a Louisiana family?)

Sally and Sue are fraternal twins.

They look nothing alike.

Faint resemblance.

You can tell that they're sisters, but you can't tell that they're twins.

Johnny is a priest.

Jane, Nancy, and Mary were all nuns for a spell.

They have since given up the habit.










The thing with pen names, I figure, is that more often than not they're compensatory.

At least for me they were.

I was hoping that if my name were somehow cooler, it might improve the writing.

But the truth of the matter is, if the writing is no good, it doesn't matter what your name is.

And if the writing is good, it doesn't matter what your name is, either.

The name, in the end, has nothing much to do with it.

It is what it is.







And so then there you have it.

I think that about does it for today.

Time to sign off for the weekend.

Everybody have a nice Christmas / Hanukkah / Kwanza / Festivus.

I'll be back next week, probably with spotty coverage.

Scattered reports from the holiday battlefront.

Hard to believe another year has gone by.

The days on parade.

What can you do?

The blink of an eye.

A mad rush of color.




If you happen to see Santa Claus on Sunday night: TACKLE HIM.




Ho-ho-ho.




Good afternoon.

By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-








You have these strange things.

You pick them up from your parents.

When I was a kid, my soccer team went to Six Flags Great America in Illinois.

Six Flags is a theme park, not too far from Chicago.

Roller coasters.

Cotton candy.

Elephant ears.

Vertigo.









So I go with my soccer team.

We're piling into minivans.

I'm riding along with my buddy and his parents.

And on my way out the door my mom says to me:

"Be careful you don't get sick on those roller coasters. People have been known to get sick on those roller coasters."

And back then, for whatever reason, I was deathly afraid of throwing up.

I don't know if my mom knew that.

I was in fourth grade.

Puking freaked me out.

Call it a phobia.








Emetophobia.

(A phobia that has since gone away.)

I had strange little quirks as a child.

Scared of puking.

Scared of drinking other people's milk.

I didn't like sharing food.

Giving people a bite of my sandwich.

All I could see was their saliva, their tongue on my food.

It gave me the creeps.

I thought it was bad form.

In some ways, I still do.

I think I might've said this before.

I would never think to ask somebody else if I could have a bite of their sandwich.

I would never put my mouth on somebody else's food, unless it was an absolute emergency.

Nowadays, though, I don't really give a shit if somebody asks me for a bite.

It rarely happens, but if it does, I deal with it.

I don't get all freaked out.








But back then, for some reason, it really freaked me out.

And I was embarrassed about it a little bit.

I knew it was a little bit ridiculous.

And I was conflict-averse.

Didn't want to make anyone feel bad.

Didn't want to say no.

I'd be sitting in the cafeteria, and some kid would lean over and ask me for a bite of my sandwich, and instead of really standing my ground, I would just give the kid the sandwich.

The whole fucking thing.

"Here," I'd say. "Take it. You can have it. I'm not hungry."

And the kid would be like, "Jesus, man. I just want one bite."

And I'd be like, "No. Seriously. I'm not even hungry. You can have it. Take it."

And from there I'd find myself forcing the sandwich into the kid's possession, insisting that he take the entire thing and eat it.

I missed a lot of lunches that way.

Rather than try to explain my irrational behavior, I'd immediately throw in the towel.

I couldn't not share my food.

I knew that would be un-Christlike.











There was a roller coaster at Six Flags back in the '80s called The Edge.

It was a straight drop.

A freefall ride.

There were no upside-downs, no twists or turns.

You just went up, and then the bottom dropped out.









A year or two before I went to Six Flags, there had been an accident on The Edge.

Something had gone wrong.

The ride had malfunctioned.

People had gotten hurt.

Maybe somebody died.

I can't really remember.

It was all over the news.

My mom had probably seen the footage.

I think she might've said something to me about it.

"Whatever you do, don't go on The Edge."

"People get hurt on The Edge."

"The Edge is incredibly dangerous."

"Children have died on The Edge."

And my friends, I remember, were talking about it in the minivan the whole way down.

It was delivered like a ghost story.

A savage tale of doom.

The Story of The Edge.

The Story of How Children Have Died on The Edge.








And so by the time we get to the theme park, I'm thoroughly rattled.

My head is doing a number on me.

My palms are sweating.

I'm feeling a little queasy.

I'm convinced I'm gonna die.

I'm convinced I'm gonna die on The Edge.

I'm nine years old, already neurotic, and I think I'm gonna puke all over myself and die in a tragic theme park accident.

We walk into the park, and we're standing in the shadow of a giant roller coaster.

The American Eagle.

A classic.








It looks like a mountain to me.

It looks like a skyscraper of death.

The cars come screaming down a hill.

Wooden tracks.

Wooden lattice.

I hear the squeals of human beings.

Desperate squeals.

Terrified squeals.

I see their faces.

The blood running up into their heads.

The noise is deafening.

My friends are excited.

They're elbowing each other, trying to figure out which ride to go on first.

I'm pale and despondent.

I'm trying to plot my escape.










I spent the entire afternoon begging out of every ride.

I wandered the park in a daze, claiming to be sick.

A sudden bout of nausea.

A freakish influenza.

I was completely defeated.










I got back home around midnight.

A long drive home at the end of a long day.

The minivan dropped me off.

I walked up the driveway in slow-motion.

The porch light was on.

It had been a terrible day.

My mom was there at the door.

She asked me how things went.

I told her that I didn't ride anything.

I was terrified I'd puke.

I kinda felt sick.

My mom gave me a hug.

She said, "I can't ride those things either, honey. Neither can your father. We look at those things and we both turn green."

Which is true.

My mother wasn't being (entirely) paranoid.

Both of my parents have notoriously weak stomachs.

My dad goes on a roller coaster, he loses his lunch.

He can't handle smells, either.

And my mother gets car sick.

Etcetera.






But what I later discovered, right around the time I turned eleven, was that I actually have a cast-iron stomach.

I can handle anything.

I don't get motion sick.

Roller coasters don't bother me all that much.

I can ride anything.

I can drink other people's milk, too.

I even ate an earthworm once.

No big deal.

I went on my first real roller coaster when I was eleven, and once the fear was gone, I became an animal.

I was ashamed of the fact that I had been such a spectacular pussy two years earlier, and I set out to rectify the situation by going on as many roller coasters as I possibly could.









My friends and I, we would go to King's Island in Ohio.

The Beast.

The Bat.

The King Cobra.

The Vortex.

I would ride with my hands up.

I would challenge people to sit in the front car.

I would mock people who claimed to be afraid.

And from time to time, I would castigate my mother for instilling "her paranoia" in me as a child.

"You almost robbed me of roller coasters," I would say to her. "You freaked me out so bad, I almost never went on one. I thought I was gonna die. You told me to stay away from The Edge. You made me paranoid."

But the truth of the matter is that wasn't her fault.

Not entirely her fault, anyway.

Most of the blame belonged to me.







It's funny how we pick these things up from our parents, and then we blame them for the fact that we picked them up.







Last night I was sitting on the couch, doing some work, and there was a knock at the door.

It was about 8pm.

I heard my girlfriend call out from the bedroom.

"It's the Gas Man."

The guy from the gas company.

My girlfriend had smelled some gas in the kitchen, over near the stove, and she feared a leak.

So the Gas Man was coming over to have a look and make sure we weren't about to explode.









I got up from the couch and I walked over to the door, and the Gas Man was standing there.

"Hi," he said. "You called about a possible leak?"

And I said, "Yeah, sure, come in, come in."

And I opened the door and motioned to the kitchen, but rather than turn my back on the guy and walk back inside, I let him in ahead of me and followed him back to the kitchen.

My dad has told me on more than one occasion to "never turn my back on any kind of workman" who might show up at my house.

Always let them in first, and then follow them back to wherever you're going.

Because you never know about these guys.






I actually repeated that very same thing to my girlfriend the other day.

She's very casual about having workmen around the house, which makes me a little bit nervous.

She'll answer the door in pajama pants and a tanktop.

Home alone.

Doesn't care.

Isn't the slightest bit concerned.

"Never turn your back on any kind of workman," I said to her the other day. "Always let them in first and follow them back to wherever you're headed. You've gotta be careful with these guys. You never know what they're up to."





I worry about my girlfriend.

She's so friendly to everyone.







And last night after I'd let the Gas Man into the apartment, I was sitting there on the couch, listening to him fiddle with the pilot light on the stove, and it occurred to me that I had just followed my father's instructions to perfection.

The Gas Man was a nice guy, a big pudgy Latino guy with chubby cheeks and kind eyes.

He had a moustache and a tattoo on his arm.

He wished us happy holidays on the way out the door.

Assured us that there was nothing to worry about.

No leak.

No impending explosion.






I watched him go out the door, and then I turned on the news.

And then my girlfriend got up and made tacos.

By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-








The passage of time.

It goes by.

Things happen.

Almost all of it we forget.

Memory is a funny thing.

Very unreliable.

But ultimately, when we look back, it's all we've got.

And it's subjective.

A few flashes.

A few echoes.

A few fleeting images stuck inside our brains.










Most of it goes.

And then there are the few things that we carry with us.

A few defining moments.

Vivid.

Tactile.

Technicolor.

Indelible.

These are the pivotal moments.

These are the pivotal songs.

The things that form us.

The ones we go back to.






Today marks the 11th anniversary of the death of one of my good friends.

I don't talk about it much.

There isn't much to say.

I don't dwell.

He committed suicide eleven years ago.

December 20, 1995.

He hanged himself with a belt a few days before Christmas.

Happened out of nowhere.

No one saw it coming.

No one knew it but him.

His death was the genesis for the writing of my first novel.

It was confusing enough to demand a book out of me, I guess.

I don't know how else to put it.

It happened.

And then this happened:









Something happens to everyone eventually.

It's life.

There's no escape.






It's a weird truth of my existence:

Without my buddy's sad and untimely death, there is no Attention. Deficit. Disorder.

No A.D.D. Blog.

None of it.

None of this.

It's a little strange for me to sit back and consider it.

And in some ways I suppose it's appropriate to acknowledge it.







I like to think I would still be writing, even if he hadn't taken his life.

And I like to think that I would've written some kind of a novel.

Made a career in fiction.

Done essentially what I'm doing.

But of course it wouldn't have been this novel.

It wouldn't have been this career.

It wouldn't have been this story.

It wouldn't have been this blog.

No chance.

It's clear.









Eleven years.

Just like that.

It's hard to believe that this much time has gone by.

We were just kids, really.

It was yesterday.

Snap.

He was 21.

I can still see myself the moment I got the news.

I was in California.

We had just gotten back from a semester studying abroad in Australia.

I remember dropping the telephone like it was hot.

It's hard to believe that that had to happen in order for all of this to happen.

From the ashes....something.

I guess that was always the intention.

I guess I didn't really know what else to do.

Nobody really knows what else to do.

You just get up.

You just dust yourself off.

You just continue on.










Writing the novel was therapeutic.

It was also a humble attempt at some kind of strange alchemy.

Take the empty tin can and try to turn it into gold.

Or something resembling gold.

Don't let it be about nothing.

Don't let it be stupid.

Don't let it crush you.

Don't let it take your sense of humor.








Kind of a downer, I realize, in terms of subject matter.

A post like this might be liable to blindside you.

Which is interesting, because this sort of thing was the most difficult part of writing A.D.D.

Striking the right tone.

Finding the right balance.

Walking the line between the heavy and the light.

Finding a way to tell a story about this kind of a loss without it being a savage, insufferable bummer.

Finding a way to tell the story honestly.

But also finding a way to end it by playing a genuinely hopeful note.

Ending it with a moonrise.

A story about the meaning of life.

A story about a guy who's reeling from a suicide, trying to find some ground under his feet.

I was always terribly concerned about putting a book into the world that only played one note.

I didn't want to be humorless.

Didn't want to diminish people's sense of hope.

I wanted it to uplift.

I wanted to write a life raft for the disenfranchised.

I didn't want it to be all heavy, anyway.

Because I don't really tend to see life like that.

I don't see death like that, either.

I don't see life as being all one way, which I think I've probably mentioned before.

Life, to me, is terrifying and confusing and dismal and dark and outrageously funny and beautiful and miraculous---and often all at the same time.

Big laughs at funerals.

Crying in the middle of a carnival.

Art, in my mind, should try to reflect the oddness of that circumstance.

And so I guess that's what I'm sitting here trying to do.








Anyway.

There you have it.

And I figure I should tell you a funny story about my friend.

A good story.

One that is true to the best of his spirit.

My buddy's name was Judd.

I knew a lot of people who wanted to be him.

Friends of his.

They would actually say as much.

He was big-hearted, and he had an easy presence.

Women adored him.

It was a little bit outrageous.

And he could be good at a party.

When we got down to Australia in the summer of '95, Judd and I, and our friend Chris, we all pitched in and bought a shitty old 1975 VW van.









Bright orange.

We bought it for about a thousand bucks and thought it was the greatest thing we'd ever done.

We called it The Vaaaaaaaan.

It was a rattling piece of shit and the brakes were nearly shot, but we drove it for five months up and down the Gold Coast, and to Byron Bay and Rainbow Beach and Noosa Heads and Nimbin.

We tried to surf.

It got us where we needed to go, and it never let us down.

And the first night we had the thing, Judd threw a party at his house.

He was living with two other students in a place not far from campus, and we kept The Vaaaaaaaan parked over there, in the driveway.

The house was one story, and it had a big sliding glass door in front, which was kind of odd.

A house with a big glass door that ran the width of the facade.

And sometime after midnight, Judd gets it in his head that we need to drive The Vaaaaaaaan into the living room and take a picture of it.

In the living room.

He was convinced that this was something we absolutely needed to do, and so the next thing we know, he's out there backing The Vaaaaaaan into the yard, running over bushes and preparing for a direct entry.

The sliding glass door was wide open.

Partygoers were up on the roof.

A captive audience.

He got the thing right up to the house and onto the stoop, and he pulled the nose of the vehicle into the living room.

But there was a surfboard rack up on top that kept him from getting any further.

The Vaaaaaaaan was too tall to fit.

I remember standing there next to the driver's side window, talking to him, trying to help him navigate.

Both of us were shit-faced, and Judd was holding the steering wheel like it was the yolk in a fighter jet.

He was acting like the Red Baron.

He actually considered driving the thing straight through the facade and into the living room.

He actually considered going for broke.

Tearing the front of the house off.

He gave this strategy some pretty serious thought.

He wanted that picture of The Vaaaaaaaan in his living room pretty badly.

He wanted to send it home to his folks.







This is Judd in Fiji a few months later, a couple of weeks before he died:








For the record, he didn't usually wear his hair like that.

But on that day he did.

We had a really good time.

He was a good friend and a good soul, and he would be terribly embarrassed if he knew I was sitting here writing about him like this, but I don't really give a shit, because he checked out and made his exit and left me sitting here in front the keyboard.






Sorry, Judd.

You bastard.

This is what you get for leaving me to my own devices.





In closing, I'll kindly ask that everybody do one small unruly thing in his honor today.

It doesn't have to be big.

But it does have to be a shot of light.

Write a letter to an old friend you haven't talked to in ages.

Hug your mother.

Tuck a twenty-dollar bill in a sleeping bum's pocket.

Give somebody a flower, and tell them it's all right.






Something like that.

Anything like that.

Something simple and easy and true.







Another day goes by, and here we are.

The moon is coming up.




Onward.

By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-


Just got the first copies of the paperback edition of Attention. Deficit. Disorder. in the mail.









They look shiny.

I am happy.



Cheers,
BL


PS. The title appears backwards because of my webcam. My webcam makes all words appear backwards for some reason.

By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-









Tuesday.

The Internet is down.

Technical difficulties.

I'm sitting here at the kitchen table, writing this thing on a sheet of paper.

The lead story on CNN right now involves Miss America.








She didn't get fired by Donald Trump.

Controversy.

Clemency.

Authority.

Mercy.

Apparently she visited bars before she turned 21.

Scandal.

This is the lead story on CNN.

This is the most important story of the day.

Miss America is a hot young woman who represents America.

She abdicated her responsibilities.

She's supposed to be the best of us.

I have no idea what she does.

I can't imagine anyone cares.

I've always been perplexed by the notion of Miss America.

I'm usually perplexed by the American media.

Abdicating responsibility.

A pathetic quest for ratings.

The Miss America Pageant.

The News.









Women coming out in one-piece bathing suits, wearing Lucite heels, snapping their fingers and singing show tunes.

Flashbulbs popping.

Their teeth are neon-white.

I remember watching a documentary on Miss America hopefuls years ago.

A horror show.

There are people who make their living coaching young girls to be Miss America.

Pageant winners.

The pageant world.

Catfights.

Bloodlust.

DNA.

Ulcers.

If you want to take a one-way trip into the dark heart of America, go hang around in a small town in Texas with a young Miss America hopeful.









Go spend some time with her parents in a locked room.

These people are aliens to me.

They're stray dogs with empty bellies.

They were beaten in their youth.

They're angry and they can't explain it.

They could turn on you at any moment.

Tear your neck to shreds.

There's something savage there.

There's something missing there.

Zombies on planet Earth.










And what's this thing with people missing in the snow?

Unfortunate souls in the Pacific Northwest, venturing into the blue.









The news networks are making a mint off of this stuff.

People are eating it up, dabbing at their eyeballs, choking it down like eggnog.

The saintly dad who froze to death while trying to save his family.

Three marooned climbers caught in the perfect storm at the summit of Mt. Hood.

My girlfriend and I sit there, suffering with it.

I get restless.

Curse myself for watching.

Pour a glass of wine and shift in my seat.

Here we go again.

The National News.

The lead story.

Four people, total.

Four men.

And the world is on fire.

Miss America is doing body shots at The SoHo House.

Four men lost in a land of frozen Christmas trees.









And a half a million malarial kids are in desperate need of a mosquito net.








I guess it's about advertising.

I guess it's about narrative.

I guess it's about numbers.

And demographics.

It's about capturing The Imagination.

People in peril, family men, physically fit.

Rescue efforts.

Danger.

Military helicopters.

A made-for-TV movie.

And now a word from our sponsors.

It's all backwards.

It's all out of whack.

The ratios are ruthless.

Monica Lewinsky.

A missing debutante in Aruba.

It's not at all surprising.













In other news....

I was at a bar last night with my buddy, Timmy.

Some of you might know Timmy from my Myspace page.

Goes by Tim-tation.








Ladies, you should sexually harass him.

He would like that.

Timmy and I grew up together.

That's why I get to call him Timmy.

Everybody else has to call him Timothy, or Tim, or if you're feeling aggressive, Tim-tation.

And sometimes he goes by Satim.











Timmy and I were sitting there last night watching the Colts unleash a beating on the Bengals.

A savage dismantling.

Surgical precision.

We were in Barney's Beanery, the second- or third-oldest restaurant in Los Angeles.

The last place Janis Joplin was supposedly seen alive.

She had her last drink there, apparently.

Southern Comfort, I suspect.

The place has been around since 1920.

Santa Monica Blvd.

Historic Route 66.

It got its name because it served beans to weary travelers during The Great Depression.

The Great Depression.

The Dust Bowl.

The Wrath.

You stop in the middle of the desert and you get yourself a bowl of beans.

Refugees moving to Hollywood for a bowl of beans.











So Timmy and I are sitting there, and the Colts are mutilating the Bengals, and we get to talking about Andy Warhol for some reason.

I don't know how it came up.

We were drinking beer in Los Angeles.

Then it was Andy Warhol.

"He didn't really explode," Timmy said, "until he started doing celebrity portraits. Before that, he was drugged out in The Factory, and he was essentially just sliding by."

"But he had The Factory," I said. "He had The Factory. Most people don't even have a Factory. They're not willing to live in a Factory. That's the difference. You have to be willing to slide by in a Factory."









Timmy is a photographer.

He just finished a Jesus portrait he's been working on.

He's doing a series of these Jesus portraits.

Jesus dressed up like the Virgin Mary.

Clouds all around.

Jesus in drag.

"I wonder what Andy Warhol would've done if he were alive today," I said. "I wonder what he would've done online. I bet he would've gone crazy on Myspace."

Timmy said, "I don't know."

I said, "I think he would've gone bananas over it. This was the world he envisioned. This is what he was hoping for. Everybody having their own television shows. Youtube. Myspace. Facebook. Google. He would've done a back-flip. It would've been a dream come true."

Timmy said, "Maybe."

I said, "Yeah."

I shrugged my shoulders.

The waitress came by.

She wasn't wearing a bra.

I'm not really sure what Andy Warhol would do if he were alive today.

And generally speaking, these kinds of hypotheticals bore me.

Who knows?

Who cares?

Impossible to say.

Even so, it does seem pretty evident that we're living in a Warholian World.

Kind of undeniable.

Time magazine just named YOU the Person of the Year, after all.

That means you.

That means me.

That means Timmy.

That means Miss America and her corroded liver.

That means the bleary-eyed wannabe starlets at the Beanery, sitting at the bar in designer clothes they can't afford, sucking down bottom-shelf tequila while trying to stay in The Zone.

That means every floppy-haired male model this side of Route 66.

That means Thomas Kinkade, the most collected living artist in the United States of America.








That means all the widows and all the family members of all the physically fit individuals who got lost in those vicious snowstorms.

That means everybody.

Everybody you know.

People of the Year.

Fifteen minutes and counting.

Staring at you from the newsstand.

Ready to die in a landfill.







Quick!

Get to the television!

Larry King just finished interviewing Tammy Faye Baker's radical punk rock son.

Up next: The News.





Things are gonna change.

I can feel it.

By Brad Listi


LOS ANGELES, CA-








So it's Monday again.

The weekend went by.

I worked.

Graded papers.

Saw some friends.

Drank some wine.

Watched a game.

Read some news.

Iraq.

Sports.

Books.

Politics.

Judith Regan.








Apparently she's declaring war on Rupert Murdoch.

Judith Regan, the woman who published (or was going to publish) the O.J. Simpson book.

The wicked witch.

She got canned.

Pure schadenfreude.

That's the news.

I sent out emails to a few writer friends of mine.

"Judith Regan got canned," I said.

I don't really care about it all that much, but I sent out a few emails anyway.

It seemed like the thing to do.

Judith Regan, dishing out $3.5 million to O.J. Simpson, while good writers juggle fire for peanuts and live like dogs in hovels.

In my emails, I always included the words, Ding-dong, the witch is dead.

I like the idea of munchkins dancing around Judith Regan's office, singing and shredding papers.

I like the idea of munchkins dancing around an office, period.

I'm a sucker for a good visual.

I dig The Wizard of Oz.








I can't remember what I was going to write about today.

I had it on Saturday.

A thought passed through my head, an idea.

I was listening to something or watching something on television, and it occurred to me.

I remember thinking, Oh good, I'll write about that on Monday.

But then I went to sleep and when I woke up in the morning it was gone.

Memory is strange that way.

Some things stick.

Others don't.

My brain is full of vapor.










Here's something that stuck:

I was driving back to my apartment on Saturday afternoon, and I saw a dead pigeon in the road.

A pile of feathers in the sun.

A pile of feathers, waving in the wind.

It was a dead pigeon out in the road.

I could see a little blood.

The pigeon must have been standing there.

Somehow it got crushed.









I have a friend who believes that all birds are angels incarnate.

He sees a bird and he thinks: Well hey, there's an angel incarnate.

I like the idea of that.

The world full of angels.

A nice, poetic thought.

I like the idea of angels flying around, fluttering their wings down by the beach, squawking and clucking and shitting on people for luck.

I wouldn't mind coming back as some kind of a bird in a future life.

I wouldn't mind coming back as some kind of angel.

It would be fun to fly.

It would be fun to sit on power lines and sing.

It would be fun to shit on people.

Be angelic.

Get crushed.









Some people feel that pigeons are rats with wings.

Other people love them.

Mike Tyson, the heavyweight, he grew up raising pigeons.

I think he still does.

His pets.

His friends.

He loves them.

They bring him peace.










Terry Malloy kept pigeons, too.

What is it with boxers and pigeons?








I coulda been a contenda.








Mike Tyson interests me.

I think I've said this before.

That voice.

I wonder if he might be closeted.

All that rage.

All that bravado.

All that untapped intelligence.

Bad advice.

The lisp.

The terrible childhood.

The parasitic friends.

The emotional instability.

I wonder who he actually is.

He used to have pet tigers.










I have a friend who actually hung out with him once.

A British girl.

She weighs about 105.

A very pretty girl from London.

I think I mentioned this before as well.

She knows one of Mike Tyson's handlers.

She was over at this guy's house one afternoon for a party or something, and Mike Tyson was hanging around.

They started talking.

Everything was friendly.

The girl wound up lying on a bed right next to Mike, looking at photo albums and talking.

They were both on their bellies, flipping through photo albums and talking.

She said Mike was soft-spoken, gentle and shy.

She said he seemed harmless.

She said he was like a little child.







My girlfriend heard this story and was like, "You're lucky you didn't get crushed."






I wonder what Mike Tyson would've thought if he had seen that dead pigeon in the road on Saturday.

Would it have pained him?

Would it have caused him real sadness?







Some people see a dead pigeon in the road, and they don't think twice.

But that same person could see a dead dog or a kitten in the road and be brought to tears, or worse.

It's strange how human beings differentiate among animals.

Humans, dogs, pigeons, pigs.

It's all about who you know.

You can smash an insect or skin a pig, but if a golden retriever gets beaten to death with a baseball bat, all bets are off.







I walk out to the mailbox and kill things by accident.

I wash my hands, and it's genocide.

O.J. Simpson beheads two people with a butcher knife, and he gets a book deal that would make John Updike jealous.

The other day I found a bug in my bathtub, and I tried to pick it up and take it outside.

I was wearing a towel.

The floor was cold.

I scooped up the bug and turned to go outside, but the bug jumped out of my hand and landed in the toilet.

I looked down at the bug and he was floating in the toilet water.

I sat there debating and the bug squirmed.

I looked at that bug.

I looked at that toilet water.

And then I said "Fuck" out loud and shook my head.

I told the bug that I was sorry, and then I flushed it down.

"I tried," I said. "I tried."

As I showered, I wondered if I'd tried hard enough.

Maybe I should've stuck my hand in the toilet water.

Maybe I should've saved that bug.

I think it was some kind of cricket.

Or maybe it was a baby cockroach.

Cockroaches will be around for eternity.

That's what I told myself in the shower.

I was trying to make myself feel better about flushing this bug down the toilet.





The world is a very strange place.