1. The Murder (The Brainwasher Mix) in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

I ended up getting overwhelmed with everything that happened at home that I didn’t have time to write about any of the other amazing things that happened.

I’m going to break this up into a few entries in order to make sure I stay on topic....

I had mentioned previously that the only people, besides Michelle and Morgan, who really reached out to me to spend time during the holidays were my cohorts from the Paris trip. Well, TJ and I hung out quite a bit. It’s funny because we weren’t super close in Paris and after the fact. We only sporadically ran into each other....

In Paris, he was this young, naïve 19 year old obsessed with Ernest Hemingway who lived in his own apartment on the top floor of our building. He was always smoking and drinking, ruminating about how depressing things were… He was built for Paris in a complementary way to myself. Whereas I got to push myself to the deepest corners of my heart, TJ got to push himself to deepest recesses of his existential torment.

He was socially awkward but like myself, completely unafraid of going out and exploring Paris on his own despite the fact that he knew absolutely no French before going to Paris.

Our adventures in Sacramento were like a continuation of our lives in Paris except we were much more harmonic.

Our friend RJ, who was Edgar’s roommate in Paris, was having a post-Christmas party. All of the Paris kids were going to be there and everyone was looking forward to seeing each other again. TJ and I decided not to go. I was too busy dealing with consequences of my choices on Christmas (next entry) and TJ decided that he didn’t want to spend the evening with people who pretended to like him during Paris and watch them pretend to like him in Sacramento. I fully support that choice.

Instead we both separately reflected that it had been two years since Caite, one of our close friends from Paris, had unexpectedly passed away from cancer. TJ didn’t go to the funeral because it hurt him too much, and although the final words spoken between us were words of anger at Charles De Gaulle airport on our final day in Paris eight months prior to her death, I showed up for her.

That made me realize the vast amount of death I had to deal with in 2014. It was absolutely unbearable, and knowing that my grandmother’s death is inevitable in the near future was also not comforting.

Apparently, TJ and I made the right choice to skip out on the party. Edgar apparently showed up, got too drunk and made a mess of the party. Hearing about his behavior showed me exactly how far apart we’ve moved since we broke up. There was a time where I really loved Edgar… now I feel a bit stupid for having loved him with such shameless affection.

His desire to be a comedian has turned him into the exact people I hated when I did stand-up, people that drove me away from the whole profession. Edgar just hosted a comedy festival in his apartment. He posted pictures and videos on Facebook. I was really disgusted with is because it was nothing more than an exercise in massive ego-stroking. It’s not a comedy show if the audience is populated by other comedians… then you’re just intellectually discussing what kinds of jokes turns on another comedian.

True comedy is meant to make people smile, make people laugh. And when I say “people” I mean the people who work regular jobs, people who are plugged into the vast machine that is the American economy. They reward you with their hard-earned machine-made money to give them a break from that life, and their reward lets you be apart from that machine. But make no mistake, you are responsible to them on a fundamental level… all artists are. Have your passion projects but never forget that the audience to pays you deserves some recognition for their part.

I really was just disgusted with the Edgar I saw… without actually seeing him. I used to be proud, but now I’m just ashamed. The nail has been put in that coffin.

So now I hang out with TJ.

When I was telling someone about how TJ and I seem to click a lot better now, she reflected that it was possible that we were of the same pack, like a wolf pack. I just smiled and said, “No, we’re too dark to be something as grounding and loving as a wolf pack. We’re more like a murder of crows.”