Max's Message

I have a passion for writing. I love to write my thoughts and I hope that others will like to read them. Maybe my thoughts, ranting and opinions will get you thinking and start a dialogue among you and others, or maybe it'll just get you to say "Huh". I love music, books and movies and sharing my opinions about them because sometimes I want the world to know how amazing something is or I want to understand how others could like something I wasn't the biggest fan of. Finally and maybe what I'm most passionate about is I love stories, hearing them, reading them and especially writing them, which I do everyday and will be posting often. Each of my passions and writing exploits can be found labeled below. Pick one, get a little lost, maybe a little excited and hopefully always entertained.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Don't Eat the Sushi- Ch .1

Chapter I

“Do you think we could get away with it?”

“Get away with poisoning her?”

“Yeah.”

Selma paused to think about it, shrugged and said “Probably.” She took a sip of her coffee. It was a tempting idea, Tracy had to admit. The woman had been driving her bonkers; so much so that Tracy had recently been fantasizing about ways to seriously injure her. It wasn’t that her esteemed professor wasn’t good at what she did, per say. It was just that she was such a raging bitch, especially to her TAs, like Tracy and Selma.

Many of her students admired her and felt inspired by the African Art and stories class she taught at the university. But for Tracy, Selma and pretty much all the other TAs she was simply known as the Bull. She treated them like her servants, there to do her will and bidding. They were so much more than that. They were TAs for a reason; they were aspiring for something more: a master’s degree for one, a life for another and most importantly a dream.

Tracy and Selma continued to sip their coffees in silence. All around them at the coffee shop people were reading their books, typing on their laptops or quietly chatting to one another, not a worry in the world past the next term paper or their boyfriend’s cryptic words the other night.

Tracy wanted to be that carefree, not worried about what the Bull was going to demand next or what she would end up doing wrong this time. “I’m not saying I want to kill her or anything, just put her out of commission long enough to get to next term when I can be re-assigned,” Tracy said quietly, looking around to make sure no one was listening.

“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” Selma asked incredulously.

“Well” Tracy paused, briefly, very briefly then said “Yeah.”

“Tracy! You do realize you’re talking about harming someone, not to mention all the laws you’d be breaking.”

“We’d be breaking…”

“We, whose we?!”

“You, me, Brad, Kathy, all of us. You don’t know how many of them I’ve talked to about this very thing.”

“They weren’t serious though.”

“Maybe,” Tracy said as she took another sip of her coffee.

Selma sat there looking stunned for a few moments. What if they could get away with it? Their lives would be so much happier. But how, how would this work, really?

“How would this work?” Selma asked with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism. Tracy looked around the coffee shop again, moved in closer to the table and said in a very low voice “The way I figure it we’d need at least 4 people in on it. A couple to distract her with some inane questions, one person to give her the poisoned whatever acting like we’re sucking up and care about her approval and someone there to watch to make sure she eats it. More of us would always be good. Crowd up that terrible office of hers and make it harder for her or anyone else to place blame, if it comes to that.” Tracy muttered the last bit and sipped her coffee. If Selma was going to help Tracy didn’t want to scare her off right from the start.

“But wouldn’t they be able to tell she had been poisoned?”

“Ahh, yes, well I’ve been thinking about that. Have you ever noticed how much sushi that devil eats?”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is mercury poisoning is quite common from eating lots of sushi, not to mention everyone is talking and worrying about it because of Jeremy Piven’s recent episode during that play he was in.”

“So you’re suggesting we dose her with mercury?”

“Yeah, we could even have someone bring her sushi already injected with an extra dose of it.” Tracy realized that this plan was beginning to form itself.

After a few moments where both of them sat lost in their own thoughts Selma finally spoke. “Tracy, what you’re talking about is highly illegal and highly exciting.” More silence. After a few more moments Selma said “All right, let’s get the bitch!” Tracy smiled and they clinked their coffee mugs.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

My new favorite thing to Listen to


Skins Theme Tune - Fat Segal

Window to Where?

When one door closes another one will open. When one door closes another one will open. When one door… That’s what he said to me before he popped off, the goat man who bears a striking resemblance to the flute playing god Pan. Now here I stand staring down at an infinitely long hallway with brown wood doors all identical on either side. Millions of them, trillions of them. If I go through one how will I ever get back out to find the open one? Shit.

I can’t believe I’m in this predicament. I was merely hanging out, surfing through Virtu-World, the virtual world and network so many of us commune in these days, when something caught my eye on the right. When I turned my head to get a closer look something blinked and was gone. I slowed down my board and veered off the Virtu-way almost causing an accident. I wasn’t quit sure where I was. I had never gotten off in this sector.

Looking around all I could see were run down space programs with holes in the starry skies and the waistoids who frequented here because they couldn’t handle the space and speed of the rest of the Virtu-World. Where did I see that flash? Maybe it was a rouge star whose script had gone off the grid or something.

Suddenly I saw it again, this time to my left, as I headed south against the traffic I was just speeding in. As I moved closer to it, wedged between two old Horror House program buildings, I saw it. A long thin sliver of light so bright that if I looked directly at it my pupils hurt. I got off my hoover board and walked up to it. It was beautiful and kind of scary. As I walked around it I realized it wasn’t a sliver, it was a window. A window to what? To Where?

I put my hand up right in front of it. Do I touch it? What happens if my hand burns off or just doesn’t come back if I pull my arm out? What happens if I go in and can’t ever get out? Eh, fuck it. I slowly put my pinky in first (after all who needs it anyway). It felt like nothing and I pulled it out unharmed. This experimenting continued for a few minutes longer as I put more and more of my arm in and out of the window.

My curiosity finally got the better of me and I pushed my head through. There he was, standing in a long hallway of doors. Pan, a mythological Greek character who plays a flute made out of reeds and dances with nymphs, was standing in a hallway of doors, through a window suspended in Virtu-Cyber-Space. Just your typical day.

He grinned, grabbed me by the head and pulled me threw. I fell on the ground at his goat legs and looked up. He couldn’t have looked more mischievous than if he was painted in a Greek tapestry.

“What did you do that for?” I asked rubbing my head as I stood up.

“Why not?” he countered.

“Right, of course,” I said tartly looking around at my new surroundings. “What is this place?” I walked down the hall a little bit touching the doors with my fingertips. Each one I touched was vibrating and none of them had doorknobs.

“This place is the place,” he said.

“Oh right, the place. Thanks for clearing that up.”

“The place where everything begins and everything ends. The place where all things everywhere come together.”

“Uh huh, and in this place of places where does each door go?”

“Don’t you want to find out?”

“You’re just full of helpful answers, aren’t you?”

He just continued to stand there with a smirk on his face, a glint in his eye, and his hands behind his back.

“And which one of these are you from?”

“None of them,” he replied. “And all of them.”

“Great, well that settles that.” I walked back to the end of the hall, a blank wall now but what had once been a glowing window of wonder, where he was standing, leaning my back up against it. Pan turned around to look at me, still grinning.

“So how would I get into one of these doors? There aren’t any handles.”

“I will open one.” He raised his hand and a door about a 1/3 of the way opened and a shimmering blue light bounced off the white floor. I started to take a step towards it, uncontrollably propelled by my curiosity but stopped.

“How do I get out of this place?”

“Get out? I’m offering you infinity and you want out,” he rebuffed. I was taken aback. A real answer.

“I mean in case, how do I get back to virtu-world so eventually I can wake up in my own real world?”

“The answer you seek will reveal itself when it’s ready.”

“When it’s ready? When what is ready? Oy.”

“Are you ready to begin?”

“Begin what? And how do I get out of one door into this hall and then into another door?”

“X marks the spot.” He handed me a leather necklace with a dazzling blue stone hanging on it. It looked sort of like a sapphire but clearly wasn’t. I took it and held it up into the unknown light cascading around the hall. I felt slightly hypnotized by it. Then Pan blew a low note into his flute and I snapped out of it.

“Be careful of the stone. It can be helpful but harmful. You will need this to find the door you came through after you have closed it behind you.”

“Ok.” I said skeptically putting it on over my head, slipping the stone under my shirt.

“Ready?”

“Ready? Who knows?” I took a deep breath. What lay ahead of me? Did I want to find out? Yes I fucking did.

“Yes I’m ready,” I replied.

“When one door closes another door will open. Be careful not linger for doors do not remain open forever.” And with a small pop he vanished leaving a slight echo of his final words and a few wisps of smoke behind him.

It’s that time. The time that defines who you are and the course of your history, your destiny. I must remember to enjoy the ride. As I walk closer to the door I can hear a faint melody and smell grass, lilacs and, and…is that carrot cake? Standing in front of the door I poke my head through. I can see faint blurry lines of moving figures. Are they human? Are they kind? Time to find out I guess. With one food inside the door and one hand on it I step forward, walk through and shut the door softly behind me.

Let the journey begin.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

New day, same old Traffic

Mad Max here today:

Everyday I am baffled and truly frustrated by the congestion of cars that roam the streets of Los Angeles. Everyone is of course forewarned of this problem before visiting or if they take the big step, moving here. And while I've lived here for almost 3 years everyday I struggle with the stop and go, bad driving of others and general mayhem that ensues with too many cars, too many people and not enough road. I have recently come to the conclusion however that it may not be any of the aforementioned things but the traffic lights, the timing of them and the way it affects the flow.

Have you ever noticed that if you're traveling from Hollywood to say the Westside of Los Angeles the moment you hit Beverly Hills everything slows down, the roads get almost smaller in width and it seems like you've entered a third dimension of driving. I used to attribute this to the old, stuck up people who generally live in the area. First of all, if you're old it's probably a given that you're going to drive more slowly than the rest of us. Secondly, Beverly Hills being its own municipality tends to want to stray from whatever the norm is in Los Angeles and I figured that if you've got that kind of clout legally you'll change the driving laws to whatever you damn well please. It turns out that this isn't far from the truth. Being its own municipality Beverly Hills is on a different lighting grid from the rest of Los Angeles slowing down traffic. In fact there are times when I will be on little Santa Monica going through the heart of Beverly Hills and I will see three green lights in a row, one red light and another green. How on earth does that make sense? Not only does it disturb the flow of traffic but it's just ridiculous.

Now the city of Los Angeles itself isn't all that much better than Beverly Hills for they will frequently have similar lighting incidents where there are several greens in a row, interrupted by a red and then more greens. I understand that Los Angeles, being so big, having so many drivers and so forth is going to be a on a different system than New York City but New York’s truncated system where the lights in a strip of street turn Green one second behind each other makes sense. Traffic flows from east to west in one stream and then from north to south in one stream of cars and pedestrians. Why can LA not be the same? It seems to me that each neighborhood (which I rave about as a cool facet of Los Angeles: having all the different neighborhoods in one big city) are on their own grids causing this massive blockage all around town. People need to start talking to one another, neighborhood lighting systems need to start syncing up when one flows into another, when a boundary line is crossed.

Or maybe it's not Los Angeles at all and the people are really just terrible drivers and instead of paying attention to the road, driving defensively and understanding the rules they just get behind the wheels of the car and press the accelerator.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

What does a Degree In African Art Get you?- Ch. 2

Chapter II- The Final Installment
One year later and we were open. My investors were my 1st clients and swore they would merely be hotel and spa guests (after all they were married) but I knew better. Some of them didn’t even sleep on the same side of the house as their husbands let alone the same room or bed. They should have their fun, their husbands certainly did with the maids, babysitters of the past and so forth.
The hardest part was advertising. How to say what we offered with out actually saying it?

“OUR STAFF IS FRIENDLY, FUN AND READY TO HELP WITH ANY AND EVERY NEED.”

My best marketers were of course my lady investors who ate the place up, literally. Turns out my small city had a big niche that I was filling. By the 3rd quarter we were fully booked, really busy and turning a profit. We were in!

And the husbands were out. Outside of our doors, that is. It didn’t take too long for the men with the wandering eye to wander right over to my burgeoning business. Tired of coming home to find no one there to ignore them they began to investigate the disappearance of their wives. When they finally found them and our shop they were astonished. No longer were their women wasting away. Not only were they getting their kicks in the bedroom but they were eating healthily, taking classes to workout or fill their brain. We had yoga, water aerobics, dance, art, lit classes, history classes, the works! We were truly a full services spot. We made it so that if you could afford it you never needed to leave. And that was the problem.

I looked outside my office window one morning to find a swarm of middle aged and older men standing on the front terrace shouting and holding up signs, many of which read something like “WOMAN COME HOME!” Pretty bad marketing ploy if you ask me. I guess this day was inevitable. I sighed and got up taking the elevator to the lobby. This was going to be interesting.

My assistant Tammy rushed up to me when I stepped out of the elevator and said “They have this wiled eyed look about them. Should I call the cops?”

“No, no, I’ll handle this,” I said haughtily. I walked straight out the front doors with a few of my regulars scurrying behind me and more women coming to see what was happening every second (they of course stayed behind the glass doors). I stood on top of one of our big tree pots, put my hands up and shouted “Gentlemen, if you please.” Silence began rippling through the crowd as they realized I was there and I was their main enemy.

Of course right at that moment my mind went completely blank. What do you say to a crowd of angry men whose wives you’ve basically stolen of their own free will? I winged it.

“I come here today in peace to say that this place is a haven for these women, my clients. Tired of being ignored and replaced by a younger version of themselves they can come here and feel good about themselves. They can relax, learn, work out, indulge in food and fantasies, be themselves and feel loved. Something I believe many of them were lacking with you men here” I took a breath. No bad for on the fly. And then I heard,

“Fuck that. Give us our wives back!”

I felt something wet and slimy pelted at me. An egg! Someone had thrown an egg at me! As I wiped the yolk off my face someone shouted,

“Give em back!” Uproar followed in agreement.

“We’re not possessions to be taken, Robert!” one of my regulars came stroming out shouting at one of the men in the front.

“Baby, I miss you. Please come back. The house is lonely without you,” Robert said in a sweet subdued tone.

“Oh, your little whore Laurie can’t help spice the place up?”

“That’s over sweetie. She’s not you, Barb.”

“She wasn’t ever me you son of a bitch!” With that Barb slapped Robert fresh across the face. Robert put his hand up to his face looking stunned. The group seemed frozen in anticipation. What was next? Like the silence before a massive disaster such as a tornado or hurricane, quiet permeated throughout space and time, it seemed. Then as quickly as it came the silence was gone, replaced by a tumult of anger, screaming and rushing women. In a mad flood all my patrons came out of the building. They spread through the men (probably to find their respective husbands- though some just to reek revenge on whomever was closest) shouting, hitting, pulling at anything they could get a hold of. Men cowered from the blows, some tried to fight back meagerly and others just took it.

From my perch on the tree pot I looked over the mayhem I had caused and grinned. The war had started and I could only hope and imagine how it would end.

Monday, March 16, 2009

What does a Degree In African Art Get you?- Ch. 1

Chapter I
“It seems to me you’re going about this the wrong way.”

“You would say that.”

“And what is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’ve never had to seriously consider something like this because you’ve never had a real problem in your life.” There was a pause on the phone which I knew meant that she was going through her memory to try and come up with one just to prove me wrong. “This isn’t about me.” As though that closed one door of the conversation but left the one where she knew what was the right thing for me wide open.

“Ok fine. All I’m saying is that I’m broke. I know I’m not going to win the lottery anytime soon and it would be nice, for once, not to have to rely on you and Grandpa. I think it’s one of my only options. I’m not qualified for that much, Mom.”

She paused and I could hear her taking a sip of her dry gin martini, a staple in her hand. “But you have a master’s degree, my dear. That’s got to count for something.”

“I think everyone nowadays has a master’s degree, Mom. Besides what the hell am I going to do with a degree in African Art?”

“Hmm, move to Africa?” Another sip.

Pause. “Anyway, I think it’s a lucrative business idea. I wanted to pass it by you, get your opinion as a single woman of a-“ I paused for delicacy “- certain age.”

“Certain age? Who’s a certain age?!”

“Right. Just- what do you think for Christ sake?”

“You’re proposing opening a high end male brothel for women. Am I hearing this right?”

“Yes. It would be like a five star resort where the sheets are 1000 count thread, the views are spectacular and there is a spa and room service where you can order a $200 bottle of wine and a hot 25 year old Cuban man.”

Pause, surprisingly no sip this time. “Interesting. You may just have something here, my darling.”

A few weeks later I was sitting in one of my Mom’s living rooms surrounded by her long time girlfriends, all of whom were rich wives and had known me since I was born. The benefit of being the only living heir of a rich family is your family’s rich friends. The benefit of having rich family friends like my mother’s is that they dote on you like you were their own, which for some of them who were childless, was almost true.

My Mom had thought it made the most sense to bring her girlfriends together to hear my proposal. They were, after all, my target audience: rich, older, wealthy and bored. Bored with their husbands, the city, their life and best of all their money. Having so much of it they had nothing more they could do with it than is frivolous which they had mastered years ago. It was like having an informal focus group, with drinking, lots of drinking.

In the weeks between the conversation with my mother and this meeting I had put together a proposal, not too formal. These women may have dressed in pearls and Chanel suites but they were anything but formal in all other aspects.

“Darling, what were you thinking wearing that shitty pant suite outside of your house,” Carla said.

“Oh fuck off. At least I can still fit into mine,” Alice said.

Have to pander to your audience. After plying them with a round of drinks I made my pitch. Five minutes later I was about halfway through when Gloria stood up defiantly and said “I’m in! This is great. We’ll be rich!”

“We’re already rich,” my Mom said lackadaisically as she took a sip of her drink.

“You know what I mean. There’s nothing like this.” Gloria grabbed me by the arms and said “Good going kid.” The ladies all cheered and raised their glasses downing their drinks. I had my investors. That was the easy part. Now it was up to me do, well everything.