Competition

// 10:00

By Tristan Smith .
07.07.10 // Competition

something in a blue dress
not the devil but something made
of skin and breasts and perfume
I would do anything for you to you with you
beyond what I already did
which was inhale you like an ant hill of cocaine
as I walked by, delirious, brought down by the locks I have
to open and the magazines I have to read.

I hope you never get cancer.

View Comments / Jul 07.10 / Competition / by Tristan Smith

// Twang

By Tristan Smith .
03.29.10 // What Could Have Been

An odd thought tonight, on the wood floors, on the tall metal beers, under the hot shoulders of spotlights:

who is running a Sony records?
who is running a Universal records?
an EMI?
a Warner Music Group?

Does he (and it’s always a fat, bloated, wool-garbed, farting, slithering, heaving he) have good taste? Could he stand in a dark club and watch a band that is somewhere between children pantomiming a rock band and an actual rock band, stand in front of them and listen and know this band makes me feel something. Or does he like CCR and Sting (nothing against either of them, they’re just old and with children) and so now looks out on smoggy hills somewhere in LA, and doesn’t care.

It’s stupid to ask. I’m sure it’s some mix of exactly this and exactly not this. And he can probably strum a chord, despite years spent at Harvard Business School. I can’t.

But taste. It isn’t learned at Harvard Business School. It doesn’t come from Saville Row, as tasteful as that is.

It tastes like Pabst, and the tin its compressed behind. It’s not an age issue. It’s a soul issue.

View Comments / Mar 29.10 / What Could Have Been / by Tristan Smith

// Clang.

By Tristan Smith .
02.25.10 // Status Updates

This saying has shown up in culture twice recently.
Once when Paul Sevigny was referring to the supposed new best nightlife spots in New York City.
Once as the title of a Sleigh Bells song.

Droll, right? Maybe. Maybe more.
Think about the actual concept: the king is dead. His crown has fallen naturally, unclaimed by a murdering successor. It has rolled to a stop a few inches from a pool of his blood. Surrounding it, a group of hungry wolves and ladies look on.
It is sitting. Waiting.

This seems familiar. There has been an unusual amount of regicide over the past couple years. And as Lord Lehmen and Baron Bear and Republicans and Democrats and magazines and Chevrolets and the Icelandic people have taken spills, the natural power system seems to have been disrupted, shattered, even.

And so it would seem that the crown

is on the ground.

And so while there’s doom and gloom all around us, and the mourning doesn’t seem to be ending any time soon, now may be the easiest time for some of us, some of us in the court, to reach down, and feel its metallic heft, the geometry of its inlaid treasure,

and anoint ourselves, ourselves. If not now, then when?

View Comments / Feb 25.10 / Status Updates / by Tristan Smith

// Password to Oz was broom

By Tristan Smith .
02.02.10 // Passwords

The trouble with finding success is that once you find it, if it doesn’t live up to your expectations, things get tough, fast.

Let me try again: it’s easy to work hard, really hard, when there’s some shining horizon that, although appearing unreachable, is so sweet in your imagination that to not work towards would be silly. It’s out there. You run towards it. You run as fast and as hard as you possibly can.

And if by some miracle you arrive, well then, I hope it’s a real sunset, or it really is paved with gold. Light reflecting off pollution doesn’t cut it. And once you’ve gotten everything you ever wanted, then what? What happens if arriving just reveals that the thing you were running towards, it just isn’t that good. You’re not happy. You’re not bathed in light and love. The water running down your back is still cold, still silty and brackish. Do you stop running? Do you set your sites on another sunset a little farther away, one you read about once? Or do you stop. Quit running. Running sucks. Hurts your lungs and legs. Hard to have a good conversation while you’re running. No one likes you. You’re sweaty and out of breath and your shoes stink from all the miles.

Analogy exhausted. But the feelings are right. If you work towards an end you believe to be great, and you reach that end, and it disappoints, what is the next move?

I do not know.

View Comments / Feb 02.10 / Passwords / by Tristan Smith

// Remember:

By Tristan Smith .
01.28.10 // Orgasms

View Comments / Jan 28.10 / Orgasms / by Tristan Smith

// Sounds good.

By Tristan Smith .
01.22.10 // Onomatopoeia, Uncategorized

So thought occurred to me

how does the whole onomatopoeia situation work in other languages?

Right?

So, courtesy of Google translate, let’s take a quick tour around the world of funny words.

Whoosh in German is “zack”. I think people named Zach are slow, so this does not work for me.

Rustle in Portuguese is “farfalhar”. This sounds mysterious and devious, like someone creeping in the bushes. It also sounds like the sound of fried chickpeas, which is clever.

Bubble in Polish is “gul gul”. The Poles nailed it on this one. Onomatopoeia in a different language, and it sounds more threatening than bubble. B is a very unthreatening letter, while G is an axe wielding hun.

Tinkle in Hungarian is “hálózat”. I think this is best. “The china made a soft halozat as it was placed in the drawer.” Now that’s writing. THAT’S language.

View Comments / Jan 22.10 / Onomatopoeia, Uncategorized / by Tristan Smith

// Alike

By Tristan Smith .
01.16.10 // Sloppy Drunk

It’s like that time you took your shirt off to throw up in it.
It’s like that time you went home with that girl and then wrote down your number on a piece of paper because she asked and then while she was sleeping you woke up and stole the paper and snuck out.
It’s like that time you told that guy and girl that the guy was too ugly for her.
It’s like that time you sang in the street.
It’s like that time you almost got in a fight in the falafel shop.
It’s like that time you lost consciousness under an oak tree in the middle of a crowd of thousands while Jay-Z boomed his bass down on you and the sun boomed its rays down on you.
And it’s like that time you had a good time. And that other time and that other time and that other time.

It’s like that. But better.

View Comments / Jan 16.10 / Sloppy Drunk / by Tristan Smith

// All the News

By Tristan Smith .
01.07.10 // Resolutions

The primate stepped out of its apartment down to the sidewalk.
Sniffing the air, he turned North and walked out of the Village.
He was still jet lagged from a few nights before, and the hollow slowness made it difficult to dodge the stacks of magazines and piles of dog shit that lined the street.

Resolved: I must begin reading more. Someone read all these magazines and I did not.

He continued on, breathing with difficulty in the fast moving air.

Resolved: I must move faster through life, if only to keep up with the warming planet. Warmer goes faster, at least the molecules.

The thought was so clever that it made him smile a little.

A Korean newspaper drifted across his path.
It had been a while, and the characters didn’t make quite as much sense as they used to, but he was able to catch it with his shoe and study a few columns.

“Scientists say chimpanzee sperm and human egg compatible.”

He removed his foot. The paper caught an updraft and lept towards the windows of an Italian restaurant.

It was not the fact that it could be done. It was the fact that if it could be done, then somewhere out there, at some point in time, it had already happened. A man-monkey, or perhaps more accurately, a monkey-man, had been conceived and maybe even brought to term. Maybe it was thrown in an incinerator. Maybe it lived chained in a cage. Maybe it still lived somewhere, teaching judo or sign language in a small town somewhere.

The fact that a man-monkey had existed somewhere opened up a whole host of new questions: what would the offspring of a human and a man-monkey, or a man-monkey and a monkey, look like? How much man was needed for sentience? Or, somehow more frighteningly, speech?

He continued walking.

Resolved: look into donating to a foundation that supports the creation of man-monkeys. Or one that’s against the creation of man-monkeys.

He hadn’t decided yet.

View Comments / Jan 07.10 / Resolutions / by Tristan Smith

// Den-neh-neh-Den-neh-neh

By Tristan Smith .
01.03.10 // Highlight Films

As wonderful as a good highlight is, alternately full of boom-shaka-lakas and did-he-really-just-do-thats, I can’t help but feel a little wistful over all the great highlights we’ve missed. The video recording device’s relatively recent invention means that for thousands of years of human history, highlights were going undocumented, unedited, and unuploaded to Youtube. I’m talking about some of the greatest performances of all time- some dude up in the crow’s nest of the Santa Maria seeing land for the first time, scrambling down and delivering the news in frantic, half-broken Italian (he was Portugese) that the times were a’changing. Capturing Columbus’ facial expression probably would have garnered a few million hits, plus the possibility of winning a Nabisco-sponsored competition for most radically chipalicious clip of the year, which may or may not culminate in an afternoon game of one on one with Shaquille O’Neal.

Or imagine squealing guitar riffs over slow motion footage of George Washington crossing the Delaware. That would be awesome.

View Comments / Jan 03.10 / Highlight Films / by Tristan Smith

// More than one.

By Tristan Smith .
12.21.09 // Bosses

I have had many bosses. I don’t think I’ve ever been the boss of anyone.
I think this is a bad mix, a bad recipe, all sour and yeasty, and it makes me afraid for the day when I am FORMALLY awarded command over another person’s life.
Because I think that’s what a job is. It’s your life. “In terms of stress levels, losing your job is equivalent of a death in the family” says some guy in that new Jason Reitman movie. So if all goes according to plan, I will be a reaper that sits near you, a scythe folded neatly under my desk.
And because I’ve lived sycophantically for so many year previous, I’ll expect the same out of you. I’ll expect you to watch my feet below my glass door, checking if I’m still around before you slink out for the night, back to your homes and bars for a few hours before you must rest and grind your teeth, before you have to assemble in the morning in front of your cold mirror the new-again sun. And I’ll expect you to think of new and exciting ways to say “yes, I agree” and “that’s a great idea”.

The philosopher Erich Fromm proposed that increased freedom results in increased isolation.
So what happens when you are the lord of others?
When you have more freedom only in the sense that you hold a dozen additional freedoms, the freedoms of others, slung over your back in a canvas duffle bag while you wait for your train home.

View Comments / Dec 21.09 / Bosses / by Tristan Smith

// Yeah, you.

By Tristan Smith .
12.15.09 // The Man

You know who’s the man? Math. Math, always one right answer, columns, sheets, secret codes trapping us, forcing us to draw perfect angles. Math is hard, mean, strong, oppressive, everywhere. Fuck the man. Fuck math.

And you know who else is the man? Yeah, the electric company. Oh, hey, here’s a bunch of great stuff, oh, yeah, by the way, you can only use it if you have electricity. Yeah, the whole steam industry, all your steam-powered shavers and steam-powered steamers, none of that works now. Fuck the man. Fuck the electric company.

And while we’re at it: motorcyclists, Winter, Taylor Swift, streetsweepers, Gulden’s mustard- guess what, you’re all the man, too. Yeah, that’s right motorcyclists. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Pretending to be rebels but really just intimidating all of us into hiding in big boxy crapfests.

All the other ones should be obvious. Especially the mustard.

View Comments / Dec 15.09 / The Man / by Tristan Smith

// History

By Tristan Smith .
12.04.09 // Tripping

History from Tristan Smith on Vimeo.

View Comments / Dec 04.09 / Tripping / by Tristan Smith

// Good at.

By Tristan Smith .
11.28.09 // Prodigy

Spitting.

Pooping.

Crawling.

Eating.

Screaming.

Giggling.

Surviving bacterial assassins.

I was a prodigy.

And so were you.

View Comments / Nov 28.09 / Prodigy / by Tristan Smith

// Strawberry Milk Instead

By Tristan Smith .
11.22.09 // Coffee

I think the most (French) pressing (sorry) question concerning coffee is neither our responsibility to Ivory Coast farmers nor the corporate creep that hopes to make every Main Street the same.  Rather, it is the dilemma of when children should be allowed to partake in what is essentially a drug that’s acceptable to consume in public.  And while I’m not a good father or even a good philanderer, I think I have the answer, as I am much closer to being a child than those with children (I hope).

The answer is: when they get a job.

Before then, there’s no reason to urge your intellect to action.  It is better to laze away the days, strumming a guitar.  Sleeping in class.  Sleeping all you can.

Adulthood is a constant battle against time, trying to retain as much of it as possible while a considerable portion of our lives are traded for food, shelter, etc.  Thus,  at 330 PM when our bodies tell us to go home, lie down, hang out, we drink a cup.  Kids don’t need that until they’ve joined the workforce.

We need drugs to make toil less terrible.

Childhood should be unadulterated.

View Comments / Nov 22.09 / Coffee / by Tristan Smith

// A million.

By Tristan Smith .
11.15.09 // Thank You

The man in the coffee shop to the counter girl.

The exiting church-goer to the priest.

The sportsfan to God.

The lover to the lover.

The sound system to the full theater.

The guests to the host.

The victor to the voters.

And 999,999,993 more.

View Comments / Nov 15.09 / Thank You / by Tristan Smith

// There are no awkward silences between the egomaniacal

By Tristan Smith .
11.02.09 // Awkward Silences

Bono: Hey Kanye, I have a poem by Charles Bukowski I’d like to read you.

Kanye: Wow, that was great.  I’ll take that under consideration.  Well, gotta go perform at VH1 Storytellers.  Later, dude.

View Comments / Nov 02.09 / Awkward Silences / by Tristan Smith

// For the Record

By Tristan Smith .
10.27.09 // Home Videos

Eating dinner by the rail of my heart’s closest bar recently, I watched the proprietors as they fiddled with a knob and moved the lights from “comfortingly dim” to “colonial.”

Then I was Benjamin Franklin eating bowls of pea soup and plates of cheese toasties  with Thomas and George.

Betsy Ross sat in a nearby corner, her sewing supplies exchanged for fork and knife and a portion of meat pie.

Outside, city air pressed against off-center panes.  The smell of the horses lay under the wood, the beer, the whiskey, the milk, the eggs, the frying sausages in the kitchen.

Our talk turned toward the food, and the British, and their British food.  And tyranny.  And women.  And the weather.

I paid without using any of our faces.  Not even George’s.

Outside the door, I walked New York without any more thoughts of the old one.  My dark denim forgot breeches.  My cravat dissolved under sodium light.
I didn’t mind.

But I did find myself wishing that George and Ben, Thomas and Sam and Betsy, had taken a few pictures.  Them preparing for a night on the town.  Or maybe a video or two
of the carriage ride home.

View Comments / Oct 27.09 / Home Videos / by Tristan Smith

// Did and Didn’t

By Tristan Smith .
10.21.09 // Do-It-Yourself

I wrote this post myself.
I pushed the keys that sent these letters.

But I didn’t build this computer.  I don’t know how circuits and transistors work.

And I didn’t generate the electricity that powers it.  I have copper and a magnet somewhere, but I didn’t put them together, didn’t spin them around my head like an Apache Tesla.

I didn’t take the photograph of the sailboat that I looked at just now.  It’s a fine ship, all ropes and canvas and silver gels.

I didn’t put myself in the mood to write these words.  Some songs and a series of blows to the body and soul did that.  I didn’t even ask.

And I didn’t ask you to read this far.  But it’s nice that you did.

View Comments / Oct 21.09 / Do-It-Yourself / by Tristan Smith

// Memories

By Tristan Smith .
10.15.09 // Uncategorized

Things coaches have said/screamed at me:

In reference to the wind sprints we were currently engaged in:

“WE AIN’T STOPPIN’ ‘TIL THE BIG MAN RUNS.”

I want to go on the record as saying I was, in fact, running when he yelled this.  I was running very hard, to the point where my internal organs hurt.  This was in 7th grade.

In reference to our effort in the previous two quarters.

“Fuck that.  Fuckin’, if you guys aren’t going to play, I’m not going to coach.  Do whatever you want.  Sub yourselves in and out.  I’m done.  Fuck.”

This was at half time of a JV basketball game.  I was in 9th grade.

In reference to… gyms?  The sun?

“THE SUN DON’T SHINE IN THE GYM.”

This was actually a slogan on a t-shirt one of my coaches wore.  But I’ll always remember it.  Because it’s true.  And sad.
In reference to losing.

“I DON’T CARE IF WE’RE DOWN BY FIFTEEN.  FUCKIN PLAY LIKE IT’S ZERO-ZERO AND THE GAME JUST STARTED.  USE THIS QUARTER AS PRACTICE. “

I guess this is actually good advice but it’s like, fuck dude, we’re about to lose a game, just give us a second to ourselves, ok?

In reference to everything about our team/the universe:

“Fuckin fuck, fuck fuckin fuck fuck fuckin.  Come on.”

Muttering was better than screaming.

View Comments / Oct 15.09 / Uncategorized / by Tristan Smith

// Happier, More Productive

By Tristan Smith .
10.09.09 // Fitness

Why it would be better to be fitter:

- You could work more.
You could actually sit at your desk and work longer and harder hours.  Your human capital would be more plentiful.  Your corporate overlords or the farmer you sharecrop for would consider you more valuable, and thus would not fire you/throw you off the land.

- You’d be a better dancer.
Sometimes life takes an unlikely turn and you find yourself surrounded on a hardwood floor.  There is loud music.  Colored lights strobe through machine-made fog.  And so, after a few more drinks, dude, just a few more, you go and thrash around and try and make out with someone.  If you were in better shape, you’d end up less sweaty, less tired, and wouldn’t have that hungover hobble that comes with gettin’ low.

- You’d feel more like a terminator.
No fat terminators.

- You’d feel more European.
Have you ever been to Switzerland?

- You’d be a shittier poet.
Lance Armstrong is Lance Armstrong.  Charles Bukowski is Charles Bukowski.  I’m not saying being fit and having the ability to flay and serve  truth from the carcass of life are mutually exclusive, but I’m not planning on reading It’s Not About the Bike anytime soon.  This is a reason to be fit because poets are miserable and international cyclist superstars are probably totally happy.

-You could beat up your dad.
Fuck old man strength, young fit person strength will push you in a ditch and make you lie there until a toad pees on you.

View Comments / Oct 09.09 / Fitness / by Tristan Smith

// A little unfriendly even at Friendly’s

By Tristan Smith .
10.03.09 // Menus

I have often been described as “competitive” by people I’m not friends with.  And that’s fine, even though I’d rather climb a tree as a team or organize a jailbreak cooperatively.  (They are typically more successful this way.)

One thing I will dominate you in, though, is ordering food.  Grind you right under my bootheel, smugly chewing my goat cheese while you suffer the indignity of bad gnocchi.

To be specific, this is how it will go:

The menus will arrive and I’ll feign engagement in our conversation while actually plotting my moves.  I’ll look around at the plates of other diners, studying their victories and missteps like a captain in the Napoleonics.

Then I’ll choose an appetizer that we’ll both enjoy, but was secretly chosen to compliment my main.

We’ll sip our wine and I’ll wait like a bettor at the track.

The food arrives.  The gates open.  The dogs run.

View Comments / Oct 03.09 / Menus / by Tristan Smith

// Why we do what we do.

By Tristan Smith .
09.27.09 // Scratch My Back

\’Love\’ by Billy Collins

View Comments / Sep 27.09 / Scratch My Back / by Tristan Smith

// The Look

By Tristan Smith .
09.13.09 // Sketchy

I drink to slip into some half-light where I can fight demons.

The full sun and moon of a real day distract us.  The time we spend away from family, friends, in the service of some great monolith, it’s a pollution that pulls us downwards or sideways.

Our center heats.  We boil over, froth and spit, cooking on a cast iron pallet.  And so sometimes I engage in a voodoo ceremony.   I am my own shaman, my own medicine man.

The room clouds, the lights gain colors and shadows race out of eyes and feet.  That is when I get to tear at a few savage hates.  The ones that ripped at me during the week.  Their names are Escape.  Abandonment.  Amnesia.  Fugue.  Desire.  Collapse.

In lateness, I can walk past spilled liquids and loud, pounding guitars and sit still, sipping slowly.  The lower the eyelids, the darker the room.  And eventually we all wake up.  They’re pushed back into our hearts again.

For another week or day.  The sweat spilled.  Our mouths are dry.  The sun’s coming up.  It’s another week.

View Comments / Sep 13.09 / Sketchy / by Tristan Smith

// Subtraction

By Tristan Smith .
09.08.09 // Retirement

At some point in your life, you’ll add up the amount of money you have and compare it to the number of years you believe you have left.
Think about that.  Actually, don’t.  It’s not natural to consider so far in the future.  Those are days you can’t possibly imagine.  Things are going to happen in your life that don’t make sense because they involve things not yet invented and people that don’t yet exist.  Not because they haven’t been born yet, but because the years between now and then will make make them them.

Math is hard.  I’m guessing retirement is too.

View Comments / Sep 08.09 / Retirement / by Tristan Smith

// Morning Good

By Tristan Smith .
09.02.09 // Backwards

The coffee left his cup and was sucked back up into the quaking machine.

He turned and walked back towards his office, picked his up his bag and the rode elevator down to the lobby.

Electronic gates waved open as he walked towards them.  A tap of his badge and they closed.

On the street he walked behind a blond woman in high waisted jeans and suede high heels.

Past the Puerto Rican coffee shop, past the masons and glass placers already hard at work.

“Sieggod elttil gnola evom” they huffed after her.  The man smiled.

Back across the cobble stones, through a crossroads where the woman took a separate path.  He doubted he would see her again.

He touched his apartment door.  It unlocked.  He walked through.

The apartment was cluttered.  The clothes on his back went on hangers and shelves rather than the floor.

Water flowed from the drain into the shower head.

He closed his eyes and breathed in pillowcase.  The sun hung low in the east, then slowly dipped below the wet trees.

View Comments / Sep 02.09 / Backwards / by Tristan Smith