Back to Nick's Homepagekay, I've had a little time to clear my head and get my thoughts in a row. Or is that my ducks? No, it can't be my ducks--I don't have ducks. So it must be my thoughts. Okay, so my thoughts are in a row and I'm ready to continue with the exciting saga of my life. I either grew up or blew up (I can't quite make out my notes here) in a cave in the side of a mountain somewhere in downtown Detroit. It was a hard life, but one that taught me thrift, self-reliance and to look both ways before crossing the street.
y earliest memory is of standing at the summit of Mt. Everest earnestly congratulating Sir Edmund on his conquest, which probably sounds as ridiculous to you as it does to me, except that there is at least an outside chance that you may have done such a thing, whereas there is absolutely none that I did. Nevertheless, I stand by the memory as, if not exactly legitimate, then at least well-intentioned and mostly non-violent, which is more than you can say for a lot of people these days. My next memory is of a strange, vaguely southwestern-looking symbol spinning through space, growing rapidly larger and larger, ultimately resolving itself into the worn design on a bit of cheap linoleum that then immediately arrested my plunge from the top of my parents' referigerator, and turned the cookie jar held firmly in my grasp into so much sugar-coated ceramic shrapnel which I was to spend the balance of the afternoon picking out of the perforated body of the family cat, to what end I was never really sure. Although it does explain a lot of things...
hortly thereafter I left home (or, more precicely, lost the directions I had cleverly written on one face of a sugar cube in order to sneak them past my parents) to seek my fortune in that mecca for the self-deluded, Hollywood. Surprisingly, I became a popular movie star pretty much overnight, and would have been able to retire a rich man if, at least according to my agent, I had ever actually appeared in a film. At that point I decided to leave Florida (many people mistakenly think Hollywood is somewhere in California) to make a new life for myself along the Great White Way. That's right, I'm talking about the Big Apple itself, Los Angeles (the "City of Dentists" for those of you who don't speak Spanish). But I soon fell in with a fast crowd of down-on-their-luck librarians who had been burned once too often by the Dewey decimal system. Our days were drenched in sex, drugs and polka music 'till the wee hours of the morning. Or at least polka music. But we did stay up pretty late, sometimes until after Letterman.
hose were the days. We had nothing to live for and nothing to lose. Nothing to eat and nowhere to go. No laundry facilities and just this dingey little kitchenette with really ugly formica countertops. The toilet didn't work right--you had to jiggle the handle to make it stop almost every time. The cable would go out two, three times a week. The towels didn't match. There was a worn spot on the rug in the entryway. The maid was rude and the pool man always used too much chlorine. In short, it was either hell, or a pretty comfortable life. You decide.
ver the course of the next several years, I made a name for myself on the streets of Pacoima. It was a pretty good name as I recall, although I don't exactly remember why I took the time to make it. I used scraps of lumber and roofing nails and had a hell of a time until I figured out that it was much easier to put the pointy end of a nail into the wood, and bang on the flat end with my forehead. That also really cut down on my trips to the emergency room. The big problem with making a name for yourself on the street is that it doesn't really last very long what with all the cars running over it all the time.