Having reached either a level of freakitude or an advanced age wherein life has blown out my memory, I’ve decided that it’s in my best interest to start a blog. To put it bluntly, things have gotten so strange that I’m having trouble remembering what I’ve done and where I’ve been. Not to imply that this is some casualty/tragedy case. It isn’t.

Life have just been that weird. I wouldn’t wish the last two years on anyone. Not that it’s been entirely bad or entirely good. Just intense to an unusual degree. I had expected that getting older would mean a gradual cessation of the chaos. I was wrong.

But enough of this maudlin trash. On with the new & relevant. Forever forward, Pax Americana! Or: a bit about the blog.

First thing’s first. My name is Jarett Kobek. For those new to me, or to those old friends & lovers with whom I’ve lost contact (or summarily expelled), I live in the outskirts of Hollywood, California. I’m originally from Warwick, Rhode Island. Then New York, then Boston, then Detroit, then Providence, then New York again. Now I’m in California, thousands of miles away from the vast majority of people I know. Presumably this makes stalking me a little harder than it once was.

The blog is intended to document the weird junk and events currently constituting my life. Some of this will be edifying. Other parts amusing. Very little titillating.

Once upon a time, I ran a website called Dumbass and the Fag, which was known in certain circles (those composed primarily of 13 year old boys) for its extremely foul-mouthed criticism of film. This was around 2000/1. A lot of funny things came out of that period (nothing useful), but probably the best was getting a shout-out by Tom Servo in his book. That site was fun but an enormous pain to update & build a readership with in those pre-blog days. So in remembrance of its spirit, the other major attraction (so-called) of this blog will be my random reviewing/criticism of films and books and comics. (Seriously, kill me for the comics.)

Next post: an hilarious trip down Memory-lane! With shocking repercussions for the world of comics!

Christmas had me mildly depressed. I snapped out of it. A single true thought rose and brought me cheer: if my major concerns circa the end of 2007 were presented to my past self at the end of 2006, they would be 100% incomprehensible. Not bad for a year.

To my mind, the single best working gauge of success is how totally, completely far away you can get from all the things you’ve ever known. To rush, like Marcus Garvey, into the fearful unknown. It don’t matter if it’s good, bad, or just plain boring. Only so long as it’s newly weird.

It’s obvious that my cycle of constant churn has, if anything, accelerated. This has been going on since, I guess, late 2004. All I’ve ever tried to do is keep on keepin’ on. What else can a poor boy do?

2005 was chaos, 2006 was just stupid, and 2007 was the single most insane time of my life. Further reflection makes me wonder if 2008 isn’t to be the year where, at last, it calms down. This is probably the proper course– how much longer can I be a psychedelic gypsy without it getting a little pathetic?

The New Year begins differently than any before it: for the first time ever, I know what I want and what I have to do. So watch out, O Lord, there’s a mutiny in Heaven and You owe me a favor. We march to victory on a road of bones.

–

Undercutting everything that I’ve written, here’s a picture from two nights ago that could have been taken at any point between 1995 and now:

Ah, adulthood.

Bad times in Los Angeles town. My bootleg wireless bit the dust, sending me into the Mercury Retrograde hell of Internet Access Disaster. A story too boring to summarize with sarcasm. Like an old friend of the blog once sang, “I wanna make a movie, so let’s star in it together. Don’t make a move til I say action. Here comes the hardcore life.”

So? What’s been the haps, paps?

The usual: writing, reading Wuthering Heights for the third time, talking boy poets down from ledges. The Freak Kingdom, its discontents and la casa de Kobek. What we do and how we do it.

I had a birthday. I’m thirty! My old pal and romantic interest, elly jonez, Escaped the Mission– which I believe was the title of a film starring Kurt Russell’s hipster second cousin– and visited the Freak Kingdom. Between anxiety attacks brought on by ferocious Concerns and Worries, she managed this photograph of my head exploding in a burst of incandescent radiance:

The Author at Thirty. Griffith Observatory. Surveying the Kingdom from on High.

Lack of Internet was all right. It’s always all right, every time. Speaking of photographs, I am reminded of an old Chestnut from December:

The Author at Twenty-Nine. Attending Lemon Pie Fayre.

Photocredit: Kaia “Katherine” Wong.

I should’ve known after I saw the young man vomiting in front of the costume store, but too much time on the West Coast has left me soft– I’ve lost my New York paranoia.

Like all the best people, I associate public intoxication & its dreadful results with the island of Manhattan. Whenever I return to that corner of the world, it’s inevitable that I see someone– and always within a few hours– forcibly expel the contents of his or her stomach. It’s a time-honored thing, an awful way of knowing that I’m home. The city welcomes its wayward son with a reminder of low ways and old days.

But I’ve forgotten my natural defenses. So I carried on. A few blocks later a dude on a skateboard came blasting West, playing chicken. I side-stepped to my right, avoiding him, and took two steps forward. My right boot slipped and I slid down Hollywood Boulevard, almost falling on my face. My balance in these situations is near impeccable– a relic of New England winters and black ice– and I recovered before the crash.

I looked down. An enormous slick of vomit. Then I realize what block I’m on and it makes sense. This post is intentionally cryptic, but I say this: every piece of serious writing eventually comes true.