I live underneath this Popeye's Chicken. Ask me Anything!

I'm fine, how are you? Glad to hear it.


That's what it looks like from above ground. The picture is taken from my bus stop across the street, which I take to work. That's the last and brightest thing I see before going down below for the night.

I work for an accounting firm, actually. No, I know. No I know it's a good job. Just a lucky guy, but thank you!

It'll be three years this winter.

Well, it's really cold and smells like friend chicken all the time, what's winter like where you're from? Pretty fucking similar?

I'm sorry, go on.


The rent was pretty cheap, and I had a really good feeling about the landlord. And he really has been a great guy. He's kept the apartment in pretty good shape.

I was a little worried about the Popeye's Chicken upstairs, but I figured, everyone's got that one bad neighbor.

Thighs and boneless wings. Drumsticks are for classless goons who can't appreciate a knife, fork, and a dipping sauce.

My friends give me some grief about it, but I can take it, I have a good sense of humor about it. I joke about catching chicken pox, though in reality it is probably lupus.

Sure, it's difficult to bring a date back there. The last girl I tried to bring home was disgusted by the idea of going to some guy's apartment beneath a fried chicken restaurant. I went to bed alone and she went into Popeye's for a late night snack.


Well, no I don't usually eat there. Is that the story you're looking for? That I'm going to be sickened by the fact that I live underneath a Popeye's to the point of not even thinking it's food? Your big scoop is that a local accountant thinks a Popeye's is a big browntank? KFC can't call itself Kentucky Friend Chicken because it's not technically chicken anymore. Popeye's can't even call itself "C". It's such shit that the closest thing to chicken it can legally name itself after is an inarticulate vegetarian with deformed forearms and boobs for legs.


You're right, I am happy that I live below a Popeye's and not above it. Really, I can't imagine how horrible my life would be if I had to live above a Popeye's chicken. Imagine how living above a Popeye's would just end up permeating every level of my miserable life.

I'm sorry, again, but I'm still stuck on how stupid that question was. Do you know I would kill to have a window to open, even out into a hot breath of hot breaded mutant? My home sweet home doormat is a puddle of muddy grease. The whole building leaks grease out of every crack. Wasn't there something in Revelations about a bunch of oozing wounds that would never heal? Maybe that was just something I saw on 20/20.

I do sleep well, but that's only because a dark acrid smoke fills my apartment every night at about 11:30 when they flush out the overhead vents. It's a lot like taking a chimneysweep to bed.

You know, it's funny you should mention that, because I actually found an egg in the corner of my apartment about a week ago. Come on over, I'll show you. Yep, here it is. Well, I bought an incubator, because I've been reading a lot of slow cooking cookbooks lately, and I've always been a fan of hard-boiled eggs, so I figured I'd try to combine the two. Sure seems like it's been getting bigger, though. Hell no, I'm not cooking for myself. When it's done I'm gonna dump it in the ocean and see if this stuff will kill Cthulu. Naw, I'm not worried, these things are mutants. DNA strings' full of typos! Why, there's more grave than gravy to th---





EPILOGUE:

"Ah, well, life, ah, finds a way."

Golden Man???

"The deal is, God wants us to help his friends destroy some bunker. He says it'll make the moon explode."

...And You Shall Know Us By The Trail of Bread.

Finally!

Look sir, Aluminum tubes!

Situations I will almost certainly never be in, Vol. 1

I am watching "Gladiator" in my loft apartment, wide awake and having a particularly satisfying time pointing out the countless anachronistic bloopers. After my third Nike sighting, which I am more than happy to announce aloud to the director, the actors, and their multi-million dollar budget, I feel a distant rumbling. I blink, and in a flash I am in the body of a well-to-do Victorian Brit sitting at dinner with his friends. Not only am I alive in the nineteenth century, but now I have to carry on a conversation with people I don't know and eat food I didn't order.

Tales of Jazz from Wynton Marsalis

Man, when we were schoolkids, we were always playing music. We played jazz just about everywhere. We played underneath our desks, in the locker rooms, even on our teachers' backs! These poor teachers were just trying to teach grammar and they always had to stop and be like, "Wynton, you get your jazz trio off my scapula!"

Reflection

A Yia for a Yia leaves the whole world blind.

Midget!

"Hey!"

"Watch that gnomenclature."

Notes from my Ongoing Movie Script.

-Currently a Romantic Comedy about a Gangster (Ricky) who tries to escape the Mob life and open an ice cream store on the moon or something.

-Ricky spends the second act stuck in a door frame after being challenged to walk through it while wearing every trench coat he owns.

-On their first date, Ricky tries to impress his date with the numerous luxuries and conveniences of a well-connected Gangster's life. This starts with him being let into the back doors of popular clubs and ends with him clipping out coupons in front of her and saving
shocking amounts of money over the course of a month.

-Ricky learns that he can elude the eavesdropping Feds by limiting inter-Gang communication to a Southern dialect of Morse Code, which sounds like someone playing the Jew's Harp.

-Ricky gets breakfast with a man he is meant to assassinate. After going to the bathroom and deciding not to pick up the gun and go through with the kill, he continues to be bombarded with other hidden weapons. An old acquaintance spots him and, with a wink, offers his business card, which is taped to the handle of an antique shotgun. The waitress, with a wink, brings his western omelet, which is just a loaded revolver folded into scrambled eggs.

-When Ricky sits by the bedside of his sickly Godfather, the suspicious old man grabs Ricky, and, wriggling his fingers says "This is a loyalty-to-the-family sucker. And it's starving!"

-Ricky suffers a lengthy emotional crisis when he suspects that his mustache is in fact a black plastic comb.

-The film ends with Ricky's former Godfather hobbling through a national organic chain grocery store. The camera stops on an eggplant shaped unmistakably like Ricky, then fades to black.