You remember that dog who sold t-shirts in Union Square? Here is the video I posted on May 19th:
And here is the response I got on YouTube:
I gotta say…maybe they are on to something. Might wanna check it out. I mean, who knows?
PS I’m gonna be by for a new t-shirt someday soon. I’ll be really sad if you aren’t wearing the dog outfit. But even without it, you’ll always be the dog who sells t-shirts to me.
PS Did I mention Greg is talented? He came up with this television show. It’s inspiring, and I’ll bet some network is gonna pick it up. It’s that good. I’m proud.
My brother is one of my best friends. I’m so lucky to have him. I just got to see him in Philly (my parents live there), and was reminded how funny, talented and kind he is.
P.S. He’s single, ladies! Feel free to send me your bio/pic and I will consider whether you are good enough for him!
and he loves precious animals
Greg and I went out in Philly, and had the best time. So… you think I’m weird? Meet Greg. And now picture two Sloan’s out on the scene in Philly.
Dangerous and terrifying? Yes. But also kinda AWESOME.
Amongst the “scenes” with which we graced our presence:
a. we crashed a batchlorette party (as soon as he took this picture, Greg, mistaken for a pervert, was forcibly pulled back from the stage…later the owner came up and apologized – he said the security guard was new and didn’t know better – and he gave Greg a free beer)
b. We met this guy on a motorcycle and his sexy biker chick (they were parked on the sidewalk with the music blaring…and they took requests!)
PS Greg is a motorcycle expert…he builds ‘em, rides ‘em, can name every single one in a pack speeding by us at 100 MPH. Once he picked me up in the Bishop McGuinness parking lot after school…just sped in with his bike, right in front of everyone. I was so cool (for, like, a minute…actually, that was probably my only cool moment in four years of high school)
c. We went to a party (We met these hot girls at a bar, and I acted as wing-woman, like a good sister should…then they invited us to their eighties party. They all work at FOX in Philadelphia, and they are so fun and sweet)
Then this news broadcaster showed up…he used to do the morning show, now he’s a nightly news guy in Ohio…I mean, you look at him and think cheesy news guy, right? But he was hilarious…really dark with a sick-ass sense of humor. And he’s like nine feet tall. And he overheard me telling greg he must practice witchcraft or bathe in newborn baby blood after I found out how old he was. He thought it was funny. I’ve decided News guys don’t age.
and he told me a kickass story about Barbara Walters, which I'm sure he would not like me blaring on the Internet...it was hearsay, anyway. I don't think I've ever used the word hearsay in a sentence before. Did I use it right?
dude is nine feet tall. i'm not kidding. and he has a champion racehorse. He was there when it was born, and now he actually owns it.
In conclusion (how did this turn into a Freshman English essay?), I had a kickass time with my bro and we partied like it was 1992. Meaning, we acted like we did in 1992, when we were young enough to actually get away with it. But everyone deserves an immature weekend now and then.
Maya and Greg, BFFs! Don't fuck with Maya, 'cause her brother will kick your ass!
I’m visiting my parents in Philadelphia. They moved here two years ago. And everytime I visit I am reminded how weird this city is…I lived here for a year myself, in NE Philly (near the Frankfort Street Station), where we’d cruise the boulevard on Saturday playing “who can spot the hookers”…a game everyone ends up winning. That is a part of Philly, no doubt – total poverty, joblessness, racial tension…there was a bar a block from our house where a cop got shot in the head the year before we moved in. And yesterday, I overheard a little girl at the Wa-Wa (the Philly 7-11) tell another girl she wanted to “be a crack whore” for Halloween…so Philly can be dangerous and infuriating, there’s a reason they call it Killadelphia (or Filfthadelphia)…
For instance, and I swear this isn’t a joke, I was at this showing of Benjamin Buttons last Christmas Eve:
Annoyed Viewer Shoots Noisy Man in Movie Theater
PHILADELPHIA — A family talking during a movie enraged a nearby viewer so badly that he shot the father in the arm, MyFoxPhiladelphia reports. Philadelphia police say James Joseph Cialella Jr, 29, shot the man after a brief altercation inside the Riverview Movie Theatre.The victim suffered a gunshot wound to his left arm. Cialella was still inside the theater when police arrived. He was found with a black Kel-Tec .380 handgun on the front of his waist. Police arrested and charged him with attempted murder, aggravated assault, violation of uniform firearms act, possession of an instrument of a crime, simple assault and recklessly endangering another person.
My mom and I were ten feet away. And now, I can look back and see the humor – I mean, Benjamin Buttons of all movies? Really? You wanted to see the end that much? But at the time, it was far from funny. In fact, I still get nervous in movie theaters.
So Philly can be rough…but, that said…just like so many other cities, despite the faults, Philly can also inspiring and beautiful.
There is a lot of support for the arts here…amazing theater, galleries, and a program that funds murals around the city. And sometimes they will just shock you. You turn the corner in a rough neighborhood and there they are, gorgeous and bigger than life:
And in what other major metropoliton area can you stop at a red light, look in the rearview mirror, and see a horse licking the trunk of your car?
If you are a real Philadelphian, you wear your affection for Philly like a badge of honor. You belong to the city, and it belongs to you…and real Philadelphians a ferociously proud of their home…and underneath their gruffness is a true sense of honor and pride. I mean, this is the birthplace of America! And where else will you see a homeless guy yelling at people outside the Betsy Ross House?
Anyway, here are a few of my favorite things in Philly.
South Philly is so cool…it has a real sense of community and neighborhood….old Italian couples scream at each other, and people park illegally in the middle of the street (as they have been doing for generations – the parking spots go back that far – don’t try it if you aren’t a native, though). Not to mention, the Italian food and the best espresso in the world.
The train station…all the historic buildings, really. The fact that it is the old mixed in with the new in this disconcerting and breathtaking way….
Paddy’s, the bar that “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” is based on…where I never fail to meet the coolest and most diverse crowd of people…from factory workers to professional French bicyclists to hilarious, cool-ass lawyers (yeah, cool-ass lawyers exist! Who knew?) A place where I was once invited to a underground magic show (literally underground – in the basement. I politely declined), given the opportunity to dance on top of the bar (hell ya I did it), and where people can still smoke inside…
if you haven't seen this show, you got to...it's pretty offensive, and I mean that as a compliment. be sure to see the "dumpster baby" episode. The "glory hole" one is good too.
A few blocks away from Paddy’s is this shirt store (right across from the oldest post office in America)…
this shirt store is catty-corner to another shirt store which is an EXACT REPLICA…as I learned when I was teaching at Philly U, seems these two stores are owned by brothers who were angry about the division of their inheritance…so they opened competing stores..recently one closed, and I was sad, because I had almost convinced my dad to buy a purple suit there (two suits for $200…how great a deal is that?)
The piers, especially Pier 3 by Penn’s Landing:
The view of the river (that’s my dad):
The great young artists and designers, like this cool chick Carrie I met…she studied Urban Design at Cincinnati, and then opened this store in Fishtown called Fabric Horse. Her stuff is ingenious and earth-friendly:
And one of the best vintage clothing I’ve ever seen, with the coolest owner (Amanda):
Something else I love…the people who dress up in Colonial costumes in Olde City and really stay in character. PS obviously, I didn’t pay enough attention in history class….
And, of course, The Duck Tours:
Needless to say, not everyone likes the duck tours…P.S. how great is my dad’s New York accent?
In fact, Will Smith I (the actor’s dad) is a friend of mine (I know, I’m a name-dropper, but he really is the coolest guy ever…and really talented). And everyday the Duck Tour goes by his condo twenty or so times and the guy says in the megaphone “Will Smith’s father lives right here, in the condo to the left” which, of course, annoys the shit out of Will Senior. But he won’t sue, ’cause he’s a good guy.
Duck Tours suck…but everyone can agree on one thing, it is both justifiable and fun to fuck with the duck tours (and now you know where I get my need to bother strangers…apple doesn’t fall far and all that, huh?):
Thus begins a section of my website in which I will feature the writing of my friends. Over the years, I have befriended many amazing writers who I am lucky to call my friends…so this is just the first installment, and there will be many to follow (hear that Jon, Steve, Matt? you guys are next!)
But I will start with someone who hasn’t been doing it that long, because she reminds me what I love about writing, and how it has nothing to do with reviews or Amazon book ratings or MFA programs or disgustingly self-promotional writers websites (buy my book, High Before Homeroom, Simon & Schuster 2010)
Sara’s only sixteen, and already blows me away with her talent… and when she grows up to be a famous author, I wanna brag I was the first to feature her!
Splinter Girl
by Sara Karabashlieva
There are sixty-two definitions for the word “end” in the dictionary.
Not one of them mentions Oliver.
I am at the wake. There is no coffin, just an urn with his ashes in it. I go outside. He was twenty-three—only a year older than me. I sit on the front steps and light a cigarette and let the cold cement soak into my nostalgic bloodstream as I wait for his mother, Marcy, to drive me to the airport. A winter wind circles the house, rustling the stripped tree branches and swirling my scarf into the air. I tap my ash into the snow lining the concrete and it is engulfed by flecks of white. I draw a circle in the snow with my finger. It could be an “O.” I stub out my cigarette in the center. I lift my camera to my eye and snap a picture of the naked trees, of the gray streets, of the bitter snow. A woman in a white suit ignores me as she walks up the stairs and into the house. Doesn’t she know that this is my closest friend? Doesn’t she know to wear black at funerals?
I remember when they built the playground. I lived in Ohio then. The city decided to advertise abstinence and the dangers of drugs; Above the Influence campaigns ran everywhere, but they didn’t help because this was Ohio and there was nothing else to do except fuck and get high. So the city built playgrounds. By the time they realized they were appealing to the wrong age group, it was too late and they were in the middle of construction. They couldn’t leave a playground half-constructed. That would just give all the junkies another place to shoot up and do drugs.
It was March when they finished. It was too cold to go to the pool and too warm to go to the ice rink, so we turned to the playground as our only source of entertainment. It was all made of wood, except for the metal slides. Nothing was childproofed plastic then—especially not playgrounds—because we were tough enough to handle a splinter or two back in ’95. That’s how I met Oliver. It was six o’clock, but I was still out playing because my mom was at work. She was a bartender (hence my name—Lorraine), and worked late. She was never home, so I had learned to cook and clean and do everything by myself. Somehow, I had wound up with a splinter under my nail that day. I could make a meal and dust the entire apartment, but I couldn’t take out my own splinter.
I was sitting on the swings, contemplating how to take out the tiny piece of wood when Oliver came along. He had brown hair and green eyes and a bit of freckles. He was carrying a bright blue umbrella because it had rained earlier.
“Hi,” he had said, sitting down on the swing next to mine. “I’m Oliver. I like your boots,” he said, pointing to my yellow rain boots.
“Thanks. I’m Lori,” I said, and then we were friends. It’s that easy when you’re eight.
“Do you want to play something?” He asked.
“I have a splinter.” He wondered why I didn’t take it out and I told him I didn’t know how.
“My mom can do it. Come on,” he said and pulled me off the swing. He was good like that. He took me home to his mother and she pulled it out with tweezers and gave me a Popsicle because I was a “brave little girl” for not crying about it.
I push the sling-backs off my feet and settle into the passenger seat of his old car, but he’s not driving. Someone else is driving.
Marcy is driving.
She turns off the mellow radio and the silence seeps in between the seats. It inhabits the space where splinter stories and fortress fairytales should be. Why should be talking.
After that, Oliver and I hung out all the time. Wherever I went, he went. He introduced me to video games. I showed him how to turn his room into a fortress using blankets. He trained me to arm wrestle. I taught him how to climb to the top of trees. We slept over at each other’s houses because we were eight and it didn’t matter that he was a boy. He was in the grade above me, but he always ate lunch with me. At recess, we played tetherball together and after school, he would always wait for me. He always hung out with me instead of playing football and soccer with the boys. Our age and gender difference was never a problem. Until middle school.
They had just renovated the playground—the wood was polished, the metal was shined, the broken swings were replaced—when Oliver entered Worthington Middle, leaving me at Salem Elementary. I saw him once in a while on his way back from school, black backpack slung across his shoulder, hanging near the studded belt holding up his jeans. But most of the time, his schedule was full, bursting with English essays and history projects. He didn’t have time for me anymore. He could only spare a few seconds to give me the upward nod/hair flip. So I braved my fifth grade year alone, because Oliver was my only real friend. I tried to integrate myself into a group of skirt-wearing, ponytail-sporting blondes, but I was always the odd one out. My brown hair and tan skin made me stick out like a sore thumb in their fair, golden group. I counted down every single day out of the one hundred and eighty that school year.
When, finally, I graduated into middle school, I couldn’t wait to see Oliver. The first day of class, he waved me over to his group of friends at lunch. They were seated around a wooden picnic table, with bags of chips and cookies spread out before them. “Is that your girlfriend, Ollie-poo?” The apparent leader of the group teased, making the rest of his flannel-wearing friends chortle with laughter, sending coke spurting out from their noses. Two of the skater boys high fived as Oliver flushed a deep red, embarrassed by the joke, but I smiled inside. I liked that they thought I was his girlfriend. Oliver, however did not. After slapping him on the back, the rest of the boys resumed their talk of parties and hook-ups, but he and I stayed silent. I picked at my turkey sandwich for a few minutes then threw it away into the trash can before heading to the library.
We emerge onto the main street and it’s raining. The rain pounds into the white snow settled on the sidewalks and it turns gray gray gray like the street, like the sky, like his ashes. We drive by a couple walking on the sidewalk, holding hands and laughing as their sopping shirts plaster to their bodies. The girl turns and looks at the car, the remnants of a smile dissipating from her lips, as they dissolve into rivulets of rain on the windshield. Why do they waste so much time?
The playground was deserted for that period of time. There were no seven and eight year olds in the neighborhood. There must have been a dry spell sometime in the nineties. We were too old for puerile play structures and too young for liquor lies in the basement bedroom of that weekend’s kickback. The swings creaked in their autumn solitude and the pavilion was deserted of snowmen in the winter. There was no puddle-jumping in the spring and no mud fights in the summer. For two years, the playground was silent.
Like the playground, Oliver was quiet; he didn’t talk to me after the occurrence at lunch. He avoided making eye contact in the halls. He ate at the quad. I ate near the garden. It was a mutual sort of reticence. He wanted nothing to do with me. I wanted nothing to do with someone so easily manipulated by the masses. So the silence and discretion built up between us, a synthetic mass of disparity. Eventually, so much time passed that I didn’t really recognize him. I didn’t even notice when he entered high school. I was an eighth grader then, top of the food chain, without a care in the world except for falling into the right social circle. All my time was devoted to this desire to be accepted. All I wanted to do was fit in, and fit in I did.
Marcy makes a right onto Walnut Drive and I see the brick façade of Worthington Middle School. It is 3:35. I hear a bell ring, muffled through the rain, and watch as students cascade out of the halls. They huddle under the building’s overhang and crowd together on the snow-sloshed steps, clutching see-through umbrellas and mustard raincoats. I see a boy slip on the watery snow and tumble down. A group of girls points and laughs at him as he gets up and rushes down the stairs, disappearing behind the closed doors of a silver sedan. I see a girl walk down the stairs, heading home. She jumps from puddle to puddle and rain splashes into her yellow boots. She steps only on the sidewalk cracks. It’s a game and only she is playing. Why does she waste so much time?
The summer before I entered high school was the first time anyone desecrated the playground. One day, the town woke up to see that their iconic playground was covered in graffiti. Evidently, some teenagers had discovered the power of permanent pens and obscene illustrations. The wooden exterior of the playground became increasingly filthier, both in color and content. It was engulfed in large drawings of detailed anatomical structures and crude, belittling sayings. Since the economy was in a downward spiral and the state couldn’t pay for renovation, the graffiti remained, ever a symbol for my generation’s degradation.
I braved my eighth grade graduation in a dress and heels along with the rest of my eager class and managed to enter high school without any sort of legacy or label. Oliver was in my French class. He sat in front of me and his mohawk blocked my view of the board. My verbs remained half-conjugated and I had to look them up when I got home, all because of the newfound punk image he was rocking. He had shed his plaid button ups and sailor shoes for band tees and converse. He had snake bites and wore baggy black pants embedded with studs and drooping with chains. He nodded at me in the hallways, but never said a word. I began to thrive on my own in the high school hierarchy. Without trying, I managed to climb my way up the volatile pyramid and find a niche for myself. I fit into the artists’ alcove perfectly, and they made room for me. I joined the drama club and wrote plays for them. I joined the Key Club and went to feed the homeless every Saturday morning. I had found my place, my balance in the precarious, perpetually fluctuating scales of high school. Oliver, on the other hand, had no place. If I was a stone in the social pyramid, he was the fleck of sand a mile away, and he was happy in his seclusion. He never talked to anyone. His headphones were permanently plugged into his ears, looping Dark Side of the Moon and Hail to the Thief.
Marcy asks me when my flight is. I tell her it’s in two hours, but it’s not. I don’t want to share my silence with her anymore. I want her to leave me at the airport, where I can wait for my red eye in my own sort of quiet. I want to sit at the airport bar and order martini martini martini. I want my head to pound vodka and tooth-picked olives when I board the plane and find my seat. I want to feel every single second of those five hours and I know that the bartender will help me achieve this. Why do I waste so much time?
She keeps driving.
Two years later, the city paid to have all of the playgrounds in residential neighborhoods modernized and revamped. That summer, our playground was closed as they scrubbed away the black residue and painted the wood blue. The metal was replaced with yellow plastic because it didn’t absorb as much heat. At the end of the summer, we were gifted with an entirely new jungle gym. We were the only neighborhood with a colorful playground. It glimmered in the last glimpses of summer sun at our annual Labor Day barbeque. I remember I was getting a burger from the picnic table and talking to one of the soccer moms in the neighborhood when Oliver came up to me.
“Hey,” he had said. “Can I get one of those?”
“Hi,” I replied, handing him a bun. “How have you been?”
“Good,” he replied, slapping a patty between the bread. “You?”
“Good.” We sat together and talked away the dwindling hours of summer as if nothing had ever happened, as if fifth grade was yesterday.
When we returned to school, Oliver had shed his goth get up and was wearing skinny jeans, button downs, vests, and blazers. His hair had grown out and he had removed all his menacing piercings. He joined student government, got his act together, and started talking to me again. It was probably because we were both upperclassmen now. Or because he was a senior and didn’t care what people thought anymore.
We became better friends than we ever had been before. Occasional meetings gradually turned into weekly coffee. We were in the same French class and in the same social circle. He merged into my group of artists. All of my friends admired his paintings. He shared all of his artwork with me and taught me how to take pictures. Before he left for college, he gave me a camera. It was a Nikon F90.
“It was my father’s,” he said. “I’m buying a new one.” I was awestruck by his kindness and generosity and found myself holding the Nikon up to my eye.
“Oliver,” I called and he turned around and I snapped the portrait. Two days later, after I had developed it, he smiled at my black and white photograph and promised it would be the first thing he’d unpack in New York. When he went off to NYU, we kept in touch and he came to visit me every once in a while. I learned to keep my holidays open because Oliver would come back to town to see me.
Finally, I graduated high school, grabbed my diploma, and ran off the stage to UCLA. I didn’t see Oliver for a long time after that. We were on opposite sides of the world, making the same sort of history. He was in New York, allowing turpentine dreams and canvas hopes to disappear into empty cigarette boxes. I was in Los Angeles, with type-written pages piling into every corner and publisher’s rejections held down by empty coffee cups. We talked every once in a while, when I wasn’t busy tracking down agents and he wasn’t looking for gallery space. We would both sit on our balconies and chain-smoke Camels and look out over our crazy cities and pretend we were together. One morning, I received a call from his mother.
“Hello?”
“Hey darlin’, may I speak to Lorraine?”
“Speaking,” I had replied.
“This is Marcy, Oliver’s mother. I don’ know if you remember me, honey.”
“Of course I do. You pulled out my splinter,” I paused. “A really long while ago.” I felt a smile creeping between the seams of my lips, curling them upwards as I recalled how I met him.
“Ah, yes. Splinter girl.” She laughed a dry, brittle cackle, like the sound of an old, old book when you first open it and all the pages come apart with a whisper. “I just wanted to tell you, honey,” she began. “Oliver is…” A buzzing had filled the receiver and I didn’t hear her forlorn words. But I knew what was coming.
“I’m sorry?” I asked, not sure if I wanted her to repeat it.
“Oliver was in an accident, darlin’. I just wanted to tell you myself, you two were so close.” She paused and I let the New York static fill my ears, drowning out the white noise of the city, covering the clamor of LA traffic, masking the mellifluous piano sound from inside. Her words pulled at me and I felt like I was held together by spider-web sutures that someone was slowly stringing out of my skin.“You there, sweetie?” And I nodded frantically, thinking she could see me, could somehow feel my unperceivable nod through the airwaves. I must have muttered yes because she continued to speak. She told me that the wake would be in three days. She told me that he had been killed instantly in a drunk-driving accident. She told me he had been coming home for Christmas. She told me it wasn’t his fault. I instantly bought a plane ticket and let the in-flight radio carry me to Colombus the next day.
It wasn’t his fault, Marcy tells me. Green means go, doesn’t it? It’s that other drunken kid, she says. It’s all his damn fault. Ollie was only comin’ home for Christmas.
She runs a red light. She doesn’t notice. I say nothing.
Why is there so much time to waste?
Now, I look out the window, past the blur of red and white headlights, past the flickering signs, past the green traffic lights, and catch a glimpse of the gray apartments where I used to live. I ask her to stop the car. She pulls over and I step outside. I wind through the neighborhood, with Marcy’s footsteps tailing me, and find the pavilion where the playground stands. It is dark out, but I snap a photograph of the playground that I know will not develop. Marcy winds her hand into mine and it’s warm against my cold cold fingers. We look at the wintry playground, covered by a thin layer of rain-beaten snow. I draw a circle in the slosh with my foot. I know it will be gone by the time I return to the car, dissolved into crystal snow hydration, twisted against other droplets of hydrogen-oxygen, melted unto itself, until it is just a memory of what once was.
