god DAMN it!

Man, you know what sucks? I don’t get a lot of cultural outings these days. In fact, you might even say that short of books and the internet, anything of any cultural value that goes on in this house is purely accidental. That’s why when I saw that a theater not too far away from my place was putting on a production of The Master and Margarita, one of my favorite novels, I was really excited. The run was to be a little more than a month and I found out about it the day it was announced. I cut out the ad and put it on my refrigerator along with all the various scribbles and pictures of other people’s kids, dinosaur magnets and a weird, handwritten note I got from the guy at Barneys thanking me for buying pants. I was determined to not miss out on the Devil in St. Petersburg.

Well, fast forward to now. There are three shows left, one is Sunday night, which is when my show is, so that’s out. The other two are Friday and Saturday, but here’s the thing, they’re all sold out. What a dick punch. I feel like a kid that looked forward to something for months only to get grounded the day before. I’m bummed, to say the least.

Here’s the thing: Bulgakov, the dude that wrote the novel-turned-play in question was also a playwright and even worked at a playhouse for a while. This particular work wasn’t adapted by him, nor was it even published in his lifetime (in fact, he made his wife promise to burn the manuscript on his deathbed, something she thankfully refused to do), but the notion of seeing a Bulgakov play in a small playhouse in a snowy metropolis in on a cold spring night is awesome, and I don’t believe I fucked it up. It’s such a bummer, and it’s truly no one’s fault but my own. And that’s the worst.

And that’s indicative of a big thing in the US. Namely, culpability. We’re obsessed with blame here, and no wonder. It seems like 95% of the educated people in this country are lawyers. We love, I mean, we absolutely LOVE to imprison people here and even more than that, we love to sue. We love to sue the shit out of people and ruin their lives forever, and perhaps even the lives of their kids and THEIR kids, often over mistakes. We need to sue, because litigation is one of the last few things in this country we produce. The whole thing is fucked and stupid and the results are that we’ve got a culture obsessed with blame, as though it’s almost okay if something shitty happens to us, just so long as there’s someone we can clearly and easily blame and then suck dry either emotionally or financially, or ideally, both.

Sooooooo, when it’s me, when it’s completely my fault, I don’t even know how to deal. I can’t feel smugly superior to someone, I can’t squeeze out an apology. I can’t do a goddamned thing but sit here and read the reviews of what seems like it was a pretty decent show while I listen to my new favorite bit of entertainment, Dora the Explorer, blast out of the living room. I need to sue the people that made me want to have sex and procreate. That’s what I need to do…soooo, who’s that? Paul Guccioni? Anna Nicole Smith? That girl in my sixth grade music class? I mean, my wife’s cool, and she’d probably just sue me back, so that’s out.

Ah, fuck. Don’t forget, I’m at the Beat Kitchen this Sunday, totally kicking ass. Are you coming? Please do.
Good deal.