Once again, stolen from Overheard in New York:
Eight-year-old son: Dad, I can’t even tell the Ninja Turtles apart! They all look the same, they just have different bandages and stuff.
Dad: Well, do you know their names?
Son: Uhhh… There’s the blue one… Armadillo?
Leonardo, it’s LEONARDO, kid. Come on, these mutant turtles were my first introduction into art history.
First Grade Teacher: Now kids, this is the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. Can anyone tell me who Leonardo is?
Little JJ: A ninja turtle!
Yes, even as a six-year-old, I unabashedly geeky. I learned pretty quickly three of four ninja turtles Renaissance painters were: Leonardo (lots of non-working inventions), Michelangelo (lots of robustly naked people), and Raphael (lots of cherubic babes, both maternal and angelic), but it wasn’t until I got to middle school that I actually knew who Donatello was (a sculptor, not a painter). Maybe this is the reason I always felt sorry for the purple ninja turtle; he wasn’t famous like his brothers. Also, he was kinda the wuss of the bunch: I mean really, computers and techno-gadgets when you could be whacking bad guys with a bo staff? I know what I’d choose. And in the lineup of ninja turtles, The Technogeek almost always got shuffled to the bottom against The Leader, The Badass, and The Comic Relief.
But more on the novel later. Maybe. For the first time in over a year, I’m writing significantly. It feels good. And no, I don’t want to share with the rest of the kids at the party, thank you. Unfortunately, this creative drive has rendered me completely antisocial at a time when my extremely social roommate/best friend turns twenty-one. Alcohol is repeatedly poured down my lightweight gullet when all I want to do is retire to a comfy couch in a cozy coffeeshop (with decent and free wireless) and write, write, write.
Timing. What a bitch.
I told Lou Reed Girlfriend that the reason I loved Carl (ex-Libertines, now Dirty Pretty Things) was Carl 1) looks like Neil Gaiman, 2) is in fact, a younger, rockstar incarnation of Neil Gaiman, and 3) writes like this.
I’ve been to Bunhill Fields a few times – right near Anto’s place. It’s old and eerie, it’s where William Blake is buried so it’s got a special resonance for me, it’s an oasis of Albion in the heart of the City of London, City of Commerce, City of Suits and all that lark. The last album was written a lot more in a panic and on the run. This time we’ve got the time to walk around the town and eat sandwiches with Blake.
Le sigh. Also, who can’t love a man who ends a blog entry by saying “toodle pip?”
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