Once and awhile you get to work on something that changes things.  Maybe you find it bubbling just under the surface, already there.  Maybe you set it into motion, fresh and new.  Maybe you just get lucky.  But whatever the reason, the work touches people- makes them think, or even rethink commonly held assumptions.  So here’s to a team of amazing people – Andrew, Rob, Jeff, Tiffany, Omid, Liz, Bekah, Tim, Andy, Andrew, Todd, Kate, Jesse, Andy, Yvette, Becky, Lindsey, the cogs, the content managers, the production department, the media department, all the attractive people at CP+B I don’t have room to list here, Guy, Amir, No6, Smuggler, Pretty Bird, Method and of course the wonderful, brave people of Bolthouse Farms.  Everybody came together as a team to create something rare.  And it’s not just the New York Times, Salon.com, Huffpo, or even the Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger that have taken notice and become part of a much needed debate about what and how we eat, but real people - high school kids, mommy bloggers and snackers across the world – are now questioning what it means to eat ‘em like junk food.  Check out the effort at babycarrots.com, be part of the conversation on twitter, download the app and check out the spots after the jump.

October 17th I’ll be running the Nike Women’s Marathon (yes I know) with Team in Training in support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. And I need your help. For the three people who actually read this blog, please help me out if you can. I’ll even try and sweeten the deal with the following:

I am selling my body parts. I haven’t had to resort to selling my entire body but I am willing to do so. In the meantime, I am selling off various body parts. $50 each. For an arm, a leg, a thigh, hands etc. You will own that space for the entirety of race-day and put anything you like there: a marker message of hope, a drawing, or an opportunity to call me names, deride my appearance and call into question why I’m even alive, breathing your delicious oxygen.  Swearing is encouraged.

Secondly, I am also selling space on my “Get Totally Pumped Race Playlist.” If it was up to me it’d be filled with nothing but Billy Ocean and Van Halen. But it’s not up to me. For $5 you can make me listen to any song you want. You can lift my spirits by getting the Led out or you can torture me with Yanni. Your choice. Buy multiples or put up whole albums.  And if I barf along the way it might just be because of your Mannheim Steamroller.

So please help out if you can. I’ll send you a pic of the body part you buy and your song in my playlist and I’ll periodically update this post to indicate who bought what (if anything). You can leave your message or song in the comments section on the donation page. And remember, cancer strikes anyone, anywhere.  And while it might not be a part of your life now, if may be in the future. So let’s fucking cure it, eh?

If you’d like to read my motivations for running and to donate, visit here.

If you’d like more information about Team in Training or the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society visit here and here.

Thanks,

Marc

Marty owned a bar called The View on Zion St. and would fuck drunk freshman girls on a dirty mattress in the basement. Why the mattress was dirty was never discussed. It could have easily been a clean mattress, but that would have made the rumor less appealing.

Confirmation of this story was one of the reasons I wanted to work at The View. The other was an unconfirmed, but strongly held idea that if I worked at a bar, I would get to drink for free. And possibly fuck drunk freshman girls.

The View occupied the ground floor of a brick apartment building at the foot of the hill, below the school. To the right, was a package store run by a Greek family whose establishment served the key 17-20 year old demographic. “Yes, and what is your address Mr. George Schultz?” You’d answer, he’d smile at your answer and everyone would be pleased that the ritual of the law had been upheld.

To the left, was a barbershop. Thick venetian blinds obscured the interior. I had never seen it open. Upstairs someone sold reasonably priced cocaine.  They’d deliver if the weather was agreeable.

Marty was middle-aged. He lived in East Hartford and his wife and kid lived somewhere else. He was sometimes drunk. He was Irish. At one time in his life, people probably referred to him as handsome. He was every New England stereotype. So of course he was also an ex-cop.

Now Marty, the Irish ex-cop who was probably handsome at one time, ran a bar whose sole purpose was to provide a place for underage kids to get drunk. There was good money in that. Especially if you were an ex-cop. I worked there one whole night.

I showed up at 5 pm. Marty greeted me and handed me a paint bucket containing what was at one time water. My job was to wipe down the tacky amber of spilled Cape Cods, Sex on the Beaches and Mind Erasers.

It was Tuesday and Tuesday meant 25-cent drink night. Any well drink for a quarter. The drinks came in smallish Dixie cups and were mixed strong, although everyone believed otherwise. People compensated for the perceived weakness of the drinks buy purchasing 10 at a time.

Some placed their drinks in ordered pyramids or long rows, methodically drinking one after another; always careful to remember which ones were theirs. Other people drank whatever was in arm’s reach, delighting in an alcoholic orgy where a five-dollar bill would purchase 20 gin & juices (Snoop Dogg’s seminal Doggystyle having come out the past summer).

Marty was incredibly efficient. Even inebriated, his arms moved in sweeping arcs, his body pivoting and swinging with an ease I did not possess. A grace no doubt earned from busting hardcore perps. As for me, I spent the entirety of the evening bumping into people as I made my way from table to table emptying ashtrays and collecting hundreds of dirty cups.

At 9pm, what had been small groups at individual tables, suddenly evolved and into a sweating, heaving, and shouting blob. I couldn’t talk to friends. I couldn’t talk to girls I didn’t really want as friends. And most annoyingly, I couldn’t have a drink (although Marty was fine if I did). There was just too much to do and the everyone wanted another vodka tonic.

There was an epic amount of trash, which meant many trips to the dumpster. Each time I’d drift through dozens of half-shouted conversations: a girl was sleeping with a professor; someone outwitted the “one person per room” policy at the New York City YMCA (in case you want to kn0w, throw the key out the window to your accomplice); some meathead enjoyed the recent Boston College game. No one talked about our sports teams; we were pathetic in every sport except squash. Squash: the racquetball for assholes.

Each time I’d take the trash out back I’d pass the door to the basement. I thought if I could at least confirm the existence of a mattress, the evening would be a sucess.  I’d gain the kind of pointless gravitas that can only come from becoming part of campus lore. Like the guy who climbed the church tower tripping balls and wouldn’t come down until the dean called his mother or the girl who blew the entire football team (at once, I hear) or the stoner who smoked too much formaldehyde-soaked weed and ended up in the psych ward.

I would know if Marty had a mattress in the basement and armed with that shining, golden knowledge, I would be a god. And that, that would help me get laid. Right then, I was not getting laid and there was a padlock on the basement door.

Soon it was two o’clock and everyone out! A few brave and stupid people lingered around the cart run by Billy the Crackhead and ate hot dogs that cost 14 cents apiece. There was no meat that cheap. Rats would be too expensive to harvest and process. Thus, they were magic.

I swept up, which consisted of grinding the dirt deeper into the pile of the carpet with an ancient vacuum. I was exhausted and not drunk. And as my friends ascended the hill to grope each other and rip bong hits, I was stuck with Marty.

Fortunately by this point I had run of the beer taps, of which I availed myself. Marty didn’t care and apparently neither did the cops who showed up to hang out at 3 am. They drank their beers out of paper cups. After all, they were on duty and decorum had to be maintained.

Marty made omelets and the cops had their lunch. I declined. I was too tired to eat. I was too tired to drink. I wanted to go back to my dorm. It was almost 4 am and that meant the big girl would probably be over.

Her scrunchy-ed ponytail would be bobbing up and down with the mechanical precision of a grandfather clock in desperate need of winding. She’d shoot me a dull, dirty look as if I had no right to be in my own room and would resume her labored grunting. I had never seen her during the daylight. I’m not entirely convinced she existed.

I wanted to leave, but that meant I’d have to abandon my quest for the mattress.  The cops were talking about cop things while tiny bits of eggs hung in their mustaches. This was less interesting than expected. I took away nothing other than Hartford cops thought pretty much everyone was stupid, worthy of ridicule or a cracked head. They didn’t seem as racist as everyone claimed.  In fact, they seemed to hate no race in particular except the human race.

I yawned and the conversations stopped. All at once everyone seemed uncomfortable with my presence. Marty opened a drawer from behind the bar and held out a key attached to a crowded ring.

“Three bottles of Classic Club.”

I eagerly grabbed the key. I wasn’t drunk and wasn’t getting laid, but at least I’d get to see the mattress. I was like a young Ali Baba who’d just been given the secret password to open the cave of riches. Except the password wasn’t “open sesame,” it was “Schlage.”

I turned on the light, descended the stairs and entered the cleanest basement I had ever seen. There was a row of wooden shelves containing dozens of neatly arranged liquor bottles. In the opposite corner were a few kegs, some empty, some hooked up to the taps upstairs.  From the ceiling hung two naked 75 watt bulbs. The floor was clean. And unless one of the bottles triggered a masterfully hidden door beyond which lay a secret room (I almost checked), there was nothing else in the basement. No boxes, no dusty advertising materials, no cleaning supplies and of course, no mattress.

I grabbed the bottles, hugged them closely and headed up the stairs. At the top, I turned off the lights and relocked the padlock. I put the bottles and keys on the counter and took off my apron, defeated.

“You can split.”

I headed for the front door and Marty followed to unlock it. I stepped through the breezeway and Marty handed me my pay. I stared dumbly at the damp bills and for a moment everything was silent.

Sirens sounded from the nearby Frog Hollow neighborhood and I turned to go.

“Hey dipshit.”

“Yeah?”

“I fuck the girls in an apartment upstairs.”

Marty smiled, closed the door and locked it. I didn’t go to work the next night. Or any night after that. And when people brought up Marty and the dirty mattress, I remained silent. Some crosses have to be bared.

James came to my birthday party this summer and with grit and poise he destroyed the universe, remade it with his mind, had a sandwich, destroyed it again and remade it whole a second time.

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The Huxtables never made jam on the Cosby show.  But they might have.  The recipe is as follows:

1. Don all your finest Gordon Gartrelle wear.  If you don’t have any, have your sister sew some, because it will inevitably look like an Itchy Amorada, which is much better.
2. Two pounds of crushed strawberries are placed in a saucepan.  Keep an eye on Rudy’s fat friend Peter who doesn’t talk.  He’ll eat the strawberries and then stare at you with his dead eyes.
3. Add a ¼ cup lemon juice and 4 cups of sugar.  Stir over medium heat while contemplating Ellis Wilson’s “Funeral Procession” hanging over your fireplace, but do not tell your friends on the pep squad.  They will misunderstand your pride for being “stuck up.”
4. Have Elvin turn the heat to high and keep stirring until the temperature of your candy thermometer reads 220 degrees.  All that stirring will no doubt impress Sandra.
5. Funnel hot jam into sterilized jam jars.  Lena Horne can help out.  Because she stops by a lot.
6. Screw on sterilized caps.  They should self-seal with a “pop.”  If they don’t seal completely, then place in bath of boiling water for 10 minutes.  Makes about 8 jars.  Count them carefully because Cliff may have hidden one or two in the fireplace because Claire won’t let him eat all that junk food.

You’re done.  One taste and you won’t mind if Cockroach gets on Dance Mania without you.  You can’t give them away, even to good friends.  Theo Huxtable’s Jammin’ on the One Strawberry Jam can only be exchanged for Coogi sweaters.

Special thanks to Laurie Ann Greenberg at Halo Salon for accepting the challenge.

“Housekeeping.”

There was no response, so she knocked louder.

“Housekeeping.”

Nothing.  She inserted her keycard and let it snap back on the retractable cord.   Dropping a wedge, she slid it under the door and walked inside.

The room smelled sour.  Cigarette butts floated in the sink and beer cans littered every flat surface.  Sickness spilled out of the toilet bowl and onto the floor.   A pile of dirty towels was a testament to a quickly abandoned cleanup.

Rosa sighed.  It was beautiful yesterday.

She rounded the corner and saw a small man with a big stomach asleep, naked on top of the sheets.  His mouth wheezed and gasped as the muscles in his chest struggled against a gelatinous prison, which spilled over his hips and drowned his penis.  He was an unfortunate man.

Backing out, she knocked over a stack of 11” x 17” foamcore boards featuring a leering woman promoting the usage of Herbal Essences Hydrolicious “Dangerously Straight” Shampoo.

The man stirred, lifted his swollen eyelids and spoke:

“Fuck off.”

Rosa closed her eyes and whispered a prayer to Mictlantecuhtli, the Aztec god of death.  And he appeared before her, mighty and terrible.

Rotting flesh and exposed organs hung loosely off his blackened bones and the feathers on his owl head were clotted with dried blood.  He opened his mouth and let out a silent scream that sucked the light from the room.

Without a sound, the god stepped towards the bed and plunged a clawed hand deep into the sleeping man’s chest.  The fat man’s eyes went wide in shock, but he was too terrified to make a sound.  Mictlantecuhtli lifted the heart and swallowed the bloody thing whole.

Licking his lips, he spoke a word and summoned fire.  Unleashed, it devoured the body on the bed until all that remained of the small man with the big stomach was a pile of ash.  Content, Mictlantecuhtli willed the fire and himself out of existence.

The room was quiet.  Rosa opened her eyes and looked at the bed.  She went to her cart and returned with a Dustbuster.  Turning on the television, she switched it to Univision.  “El Gordo Y La Flaca” was on.

This wouldn’t have happened without the talent and dedication of some spectacular people.  Thank you Mom and Dad, Ross, Lee, James, Matt, Todd, Kylie, Hal, Sheena, Ryan, Thomas, Julia, Amber, Andrea, the Studio, Joint, everyone at W+K, Tina, Andrew, Thibault, Neysa, Michael, everyone at Psyop, Flying Fish, Tom, the folks at Mollie’s, Stimmung and Lime.