love letters from my 34th summer

It may come as a surprise to you that I, unmarried and single, am giving you advice about marriage. But you are my closest friend, and though I can’t be there to witness your nuptials, I would be remiss if I didn’t chime in with some encouragements and warnings. The fact I have never been married should probably cause you to take the following advice with a grain of salt; but it is a fact, I must insist, that makes me no less right. Without further preamble let me begin.

1.) Ignore everyone’s advice (except for the person that wrote what you are now reading, but including any self-help-newlywed-books-for-couples-to-read-together that people will give you as a wedding present because they are too cheap to buy you a rice cooker and too lazy/thick too write the definitive marriage guide which of course you now are reading).

If you were trying to get thicker, fuller blooms on your rose bush you might ask the nice British lady across the street with the lush flower garden for a little advice on water and soil, but we are talking about marriage, man. Look around you. Nobody has it completely right. For thousands of years men and women have been trying the best they can to coexist without driving wooden stakes through their sleeping partner. And do you think that pasty, smiling couple wearing matching chambray shirts on the dust jacket of your wedding present, fresh off the ”couples retreat 2007” tour, has stumbled on the magic potion? What about the lady with forty-five cats who keeps telling you to never go to bed angry and always keep things interesting? Nope. Her cats are inbred, and so is her advice.

I’m telling you to handle this how you have handled everything else in your 32 years on this earth. Wing it. You are a smart guy, or I wouldn’t let you be my best friend. Figure it out. Try. Fail. But keep trying. Keep talking to each other. Don’t be so busy thinking and obsessing about ”it,” the marriage, that you forget to have one. Otherwise five years from now you’ll be rushing home from work on a Friday because that’s your planned Make-Your-Own-Ice-Cream-Sundae-Night, and you and I won’t be friends anymore

2.) Argue Often and with Gusto, but in Private.

Apathy kills more marriages than Larry King. And nothing gets the blood moving like good old-fashioned argument. Give and take is healthy. Disagreement means you are both thinking, and both involved. Revel in your difference. Remember, if two people always agree then one of them isn’t needed.

Am I saying you should scream at each other, walk out of restaurants, throw bowling trophies (never come to a marriage without mysterious trophies-even if you have to buy them at a yard sale), or behave like the cast of Real World 2? No, of course not. Good, sound and calm arguments preclude all of the above. Good arguments prevent bottled up explosions and sulking.

When I used to wait tables, I was blown away by the amount of sulking men in the world. Is this just an American thing? Has Oprah emasculated us that much? Usually, I would wait till the woman was in the bathroom, before smacking the man open-palmed across the face. Then I would buy a shot of tequila and make the now red-faced sulker drink out of a dirty shot glass.

“You’re a man,” I would whisper right before she returned. ”Act like it. Don’t make me follow you home and smack your face again.”

I made really good tips on those occasions, and nobody ever complained about the service. Later the men would return to thank me for saving their marriage/relationship/job and promise to name all their children after me (Jamie is versatile in that regard.) So don’t sulk. Argue, then move on.

3.) Try not to die.

Many a music career has been bolstered by a timely death. Most writers wish they could cash royalty checks from beyond the grave. But death really harms both comedy careers and marriages alike. Dying tends to make any healthy marriage suddenly stale and one-sided.

To put it in plainer terms, my friend, it’s time to start taking better care of yourself. You now have someone else to think about. So quit trying to kill yourself with Bacon and Bacon Hot Pockets. Seriously, don’t die, or I will smack your face.

4.) Keep Picking Your Nose, But Stop Wiping It on the Bathroom Wall

Maintaining your sense of individuality while maintaining a healthy marriage can be difficult. As couples get older often they are not viewed anymore as two separate people, but suddenly they become one person (Bradgelina for example). This is one of the most scary aspects of marriage to me.

There are certain things you do that make you uniquely you. Don’t change these things. Be proud of them. There are other things you do that also are unique, but you may need to change them. Part of being a human being is growing, learning, and evolving. I think marriage is a wonderful excuse to stop being child, but don’t grow up so much you become unrecognizable.

I think it’s healthy for a married couple to pursue interests exclusive of each other. In other words, get away from each other some. Have some time for you. And don’t change…except for all that annoying stuff. Change all that.

5.) Laugh Till Milk Comes Out Your Nose

People say all the time, “I married him because he made me laugh,” or “I am looking for somebody with a good sense of humor.” I want to know where all these funny, laughing people are? People get married, have a couple of mortgage payments and all the sudden, life isn’t funny anymore. It’s very serious actually. And all that laughter is gone. What happened? Please keep being your laughing, silly selves. It will make me happy to see you guys growing old together, still belly laughing, still grinning, still spitting your drinks out at restaurants.

6.) “Love means always having to say you’re sorry.”

Hah! Get used to saying it. The proper response from now on is either “Sorry” or silence. But I have no idea when to use which. That’s why I am single. Oh yeah. Don’t go to bed angry, and always keep it interesting.

I wish you both all the best. I send you both all my love and friendship. I promise I’ll be there for your guys…just not when it’s important like your wedding day. I am so happy for you, and am smiling like an idiot even now as I write this. Congrats and all the very best.

‘True Love’

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn’t this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn’t it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn’t they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends’ sake?
Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
The language they use - deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines -
it’s obviously a plot behind the human race’s back!

It’s hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who’d want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life’s highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn’t populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there’s no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

-- Wislawa Szymborska

The other day as I was sitting on my couch looking for the remote, I realized the exercise of pivoting my head from the left to the right had caused me to be short of breath. It was then I decided a couple of things.

1. I’m going to quit smoking this year. I’ll keep quitting until I actually quit, really. I’ll quit everyday.

2. I need to start running again. I think I am as large as I have ever been. And that is large. And I don’t feel good about it either. Like, I’m not a happy fat person. In other words, I am fat but not jolly…which is surely some type of metaphysical injustice.

So since the other day, I have quit smoking at least four times. The longest I have made it without smoking is 41 hours, which is pretty good. But, I was so irritable I found myself going to fast food drive-thrus (note the fast food spelling of through) and trying to pick fights.

KFC told me they didn’t have sweet tea, which I knew to be a damn lie. A restaurant frequented by fat southerners such as myself allows itself to run out of sweet tea? Not likely. Something in all that was fishy, and I said as much. This is how I remember it going down:

Doom: “And I need a medium (note the restraint) sweet tea.”

KFC Drive-thru voice: “I’m sorry but we are out of sweet tea. Would you like a Coke?”

Doom (who hadn’t inhaled sweet, sweet nicotine in a day-and-a-half): “I’ll wait while you sweeten the unsweet tea.”

KFC: “I’m sorry, but we can’t do that. Would you like a Sprite?”

Doom: “Can’t or won’t? Had I wanted a Sprite, I would have ordered it, and doubtlessly you would have told me you were out of that too. I am not playing games here. I see the game of intrigue and deception you are playing, KFC voice, and I find myself tempted, even now to drive up and speak to you about this matter face-to-face.”

KFC: “But I haven’t given you the total. Hold on for a total.”

Doom: “If you think I will be bound by your ancient drive-thru etiquette and superstition, then you are even thicker than I would have judged you for.”

KFC: “Pull forward.”

(I pull forward only to find a man or a woman dressed in KFC attire, still can’t be sure as to the gender, wielding a spork in a menacing way)

KFC: “Be rude again, and you will die from repeated stabs to the chest via the spork that now points at your heart.”

Doom: (Paying my money, and carefully taking my food from the KFC Voice) “Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my judgements and my speech.”

KFC: (handing me a Sprite) It’s ok, have a nice night.

Doom: (looking coldly into the KFC Voice’s eyes and emptying the Sprite onto the ground) “If I knew for certain that you were man, I would challenge you to a round of fistacuffs near the dumpster. But since science still has limitations, and your gender…nay species won’t be determined any time soon, I’ll leave you with an admonishment. Bojangles never runs out of tea. Sweet or otherwise. Now, I bid you goodnight.” (Driving away while feeling in my ashtray for a longerish ciggarette butt)

Well I may have imbellished the dialogue a little bit, but this is about how I remember the whole thing going down.

To view the ad go here.

Anheuser-Busch, Inc.
One Busch Place
St. Louis, MO 63118

Dick Rogers, President and CEO
DDB Advertising North America
200 East Randolph
Chicago, IL 60601

Dear Budweiser and Dick,

Please, make it stop. I beg you.

Now, I realize the end of the world is nigh. This is one of several truths that have become apparent to me since the first time I saw your commercial entitled Anthem during week one of the NFL football season. Now the playoffs are here, and I am still seeing and hearing Anthem. So before polar caps melt, seas boil, stars drip with blood, Earth cracks along the Equator, or Jessica Simpson says something smart, I need you to pull this commercial from the air.

Several things about Anthem make me weep for our future, and I will be plain about them with you.

1.) The hook to the song/commercial: “This is Budweiser/This is beer.” DDB North America is a large respectable (as much as ad agencies can be) firm. I’m sure the creative talent you employ (even in Chicago) can do better than this. I am certain the first time this commercial aired during week one of the NFL football season, and the first time millions of happy, football-watching minions heard this commercial, one unanimous response was hurled back at the television. Did you hear us in your offices in Chicago? Did you, Anheuser-Busch, hear us in your grain elevators in St. Louis? You should have. It was two words, but sang like a mini-anthem from Phoenix to Seattle to Green Bay to Buffalo to Charlotte to Tampa Bay. I think I yelled it the loudest.

“No Shit.”

Is there really confusion about the nature of your product? Are people often at a loss when forced to classify the liquid you so meticulously bottle and stamp with Born on Dating? Do grocery stores still mistakenly put your product in the dairy section next to rice milk? Have those silly theories about your product actually coming from Clydesdales begun to hurt your bottom line? Did you think America hasn’t been paying attention? Or maybe you thought we forgot what it was you actually made. More probable is that you believe the demographic you are targeting, football fans, is really that dense. And this is what distresses me most.

It is perhaps a chicken-or-the-egg question. Do you give us this excuse for an advertisement because we are drooling Neanderthals? Or. Are we drooling Neanderthals because you give us this excuse for an advertisement? Play it safe. Give us a television spot that isn’t reduced to the most elementary syllogism in logic: A is A, so A is A. Please, give us something harder. If we get it wrong, then we don’t deserve to drink your beer, but at least you’ll know you’ve tried.

You could, if you so choose, even say: “This is Budweiser/This is Good Beer.” See how that small nuance makes the commercial, while still not a strong commercial, a bit more substantial than the present declarative sentence on which you hang your advertising hat? Perhaps, legally, you aren’t allowed to say that because it’s not true. Your beer is not good. Maybe your ad was better before the pesky Legal Department got involved. This is simply the result of the lawyers having their way. If this is the case, please forward my letter on to the suits down in Legal. As it stands, your declaration sounds as convincing as the following slogans:

This is West Virginia/ This is a state to the west of Virginia.

This is Kraft./This is cheese (processed food product).

This is Canada./ This is still a country and has lots of parking.

This is the Church of Christian Science./This is technically a religion too

2.) You call your ad spot Anthem. You make beer, not even very good beer, and you have an anthem? That’s a little, um, insane. Do your employees have to sing it every morning before they pledge allegiance to the Anheuser-Busch flag? Is Budweiser trying to stir up some type of secessionist, beer militia? In your utopist, beer-inspired future, will St. Louis be the new capital? Will the leader of this fledgeling republic be Augustus Busch? Caesar Augustus Busch?

Let me break it down. At the beginning of the ad, the crappy, generic rock starts playing softly, and we see quick shots of a cowboy and his horse (stereotype), an Asian man at his laptop (stereotype much?), an African-American policewoman directing traffic (stereotype), nothing (were there no available images of Hassidic jewelers counting money?), a sunset over a large city, a fly over of a bucolic small town (red state), a mail box (what says beer like the mail?), freshly hung laundry flapping in the breeze, a young man in a white t-shirt and a red hat talking to an old man in a white t-shirt and a red hat over a white fence (I do tear up a bit for .05 seconds), a housetop party, a subway, a garage band, a football team, people tail-gating wearing the same colors as the football team, a bus driver (I couldn’t find her can of Budweiser, but I’m sure it’s hidden in the picture), rail workers, more cops…this time on horseback(cops and firemen make it into more beer commercials than beer, which makes you wonder who needs the breathalyzers), a man in a tie and a dress shirt next to a man in a flannel shirt at a bar (both drinking some type of new wheat and grain based drink that Budweiser has invented), guys sitting on Harley’s (”Drink our beer, then go sit on your bike, but please don’t drive off and terrorize Rolling Stones fans” isn’t as catchy), then we see the city of St. Louis. This ad is so sweet and apple pie that it hurts my teeth. It also hurts my hand, but that’s because I shove sharp objects into the flesh off my hand to distract myself from the pain. Still, I don’t mind a little sappy Americana. But then I hear the words:

“This is what I call mine/This is true/This is Budweiser.”

That’s when the music cranks up, and the proud Die Zeit ohne Beispiel inspired Budweiser images start: grain elevators with the letters B-U-D-W-E-I-S-E-R painted in Budweiser’s national colors (red), Clydesdales, cold draft Bud being emptied out on the ground, and Bud’s poster child, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (He is also a spokesperson for Wrangler Jeans. Yep, they still make Wrangler jeans, and they have a spokesperson. Maybe your ad agency could help them out after you get done making a new ad for Budweiser.)

All I wanted to do was watch some football, but instead I am being re-educated by fanatical, conniving brewmeisters. Plus blood is coming from my ears due to a genre of music called “country-rock.”

3.) “This is where I live/This is where I’m from/This is what I believe when the day is done.” This is where I conclude my letter to you. First you dumb it down by stating the obvious, then you try to get us all to drink the Budweiser flavored Kool-Aid, and then you go way out there and equate drinking Budweiser with some type of Kierkegaardian existential leap of faith. “This is what I believe in when the day is done?” You still just make beer, right? Is there something else I should know about? When I contemplate those large questions in life and when I think to myself, “What do I believe in?” I am quite certain Budweiser won’t be one of the top five million or so things that pop into my brain.

In case I have been too negative, let me concede your commercial is catchy. The song sticks in my head. This is not a large accomplishment. I still have Cindi Lauper’s song, True Colors, stuck in my head (and I rarely question my sexuality). That Band-Aid song is still stuck (no pun intended) in my head, but I don’t use Band-Aid Brand (I am a real man, so I use electrical tape and old socks when I get a wound). You also have some gosh-darn nice images in your ad.

But this is the only commercial I have ever seen that manages to shoot too low and too high all at once. This is the only commercial I have ever seen that results immediately in the gnashing of teeth and the putting-on of sack cloth and ashes. Every time I see this commercial, I expect to see in that montage a brief image of fire and Nero playing his violin.

Please, I beg you. Pull this commercial from regular rotation during football games. You could even move it over to Lifetime where nobody will ever see it. Make it stop. You win. It’s beer. I’m not prepared to argue the point. I am at your mercy.

Yours Truly,

Jamie Doom

If that gun looks plastic, it’s only because it is (I am also holding the gun wrong).

I’m the foreign guy.

There was a time when I updated my weblog more often. My entries were better written. I was funny. I wasn’t trying to write poetry. I may have even been more innocent and less jaded. Anyway, back then I used to get a lot of fan mail. By a lot of fan mail, I mean two or three emails a week from strangers complimenting me on my website and asking me about China. Back then about half that correspondence was people wanting to “get into the Chinese movie business.”

These days I rarely get letters from strangers, but usually when I do, again, it’s asking for tips about how to land that role in a Chinese film.

On a side note, one exception is a recent Email from a reader who wanted a more detailed explanation about some Chinese drinking games. On his way to Beijing, my reader wanted to be prepared for whatever might impede or hasten his libations. It almost brought a tear to my eye seeing someone so dedicated and earnest about the ruination of his liver. Have you ever tried to explain a Chinese drinking game when you aren’t drinking? I hope my explanation was clear, but when I finished my brief missive, I felt like I had been talking about a strange drunken version of Yahtzee.

Anyway, back to the acting requests. Many people don’t take the time to write an Email. Instead, they just post the request in my comment box. Here is an example of a request: “Hey, I saw you were an actor in a Chinese movie. How do I become an actor in a Chinese movie?” Well, here’s how.

1.) Be foreign. No casting director cares how flawlessly and effortlessly you can banter about metaphysics in Chinese. When they are looking fill that role called Goofy Foreign Character 3, they don’t care that you never eat at McDonalds, hand paint your own chopsticks, and have a pair of “indoor slippers” that are pink and two sizes too small. They want you to be foreign. If possible, be a big foreigner. What’s better than a foreigner? A big foreigner. Think about it.

2.) Be an American. Your best bet for landing a role in a movie in China is as a bad guy/girl. No single country in the world today causes more angst, jealousy, hatred, passion, and vitriol than the good ole’ US of A. With most countries, people don’t care one way or the other about them. Take Swedes for instance, they are universally loved unless they suddenly mess with the Volvo design or ruin Tiger’s golf game. But as an American, I always know there is a place for me as a despicable bad guy, internationally.

3.) Don’t be picky about getting paid or safety on the job. If you wanted to get paid every week and have OSHA watching your ass while you nancy about your job, you should have stayed at the make-up counter at Sears. Do you want to be famous? Then sacrifices must be made. I saw an ESL Teacher from Seattle get written out of a script after he started crying because he realized that the “cliff-hanging” scene was actually off of a cliff, and he would actually be hanging without ropes. “Ted” an airline pilot out of Brisbane started going on about getting paid after he had been on the set for fifteen minutes. He was back at his “safe” job flying planes before he could say “Film Actors Guild.”

4.) Learn to accentuate your scars, birthmarks or botched tattoos. What’s a bad guy without a scar or tattoo? Ladies, use those pregnancy stretch marks for a little extra spending money in China. Face it, even in China, nobody is hiring you because you are pretty or hot or handsome or strong (even though that is how every casting agent has recruited me). Nope, they are filming a low budget movie and need somebody to be foreign. That’s right, you are the cheap, easily renewable labor. Enjoy it. Embrace the odd way you look. Either shave your hair completely off, grow it very long, or show your flair by coloring your hair in a ridiculous shade of orange. Leave your Fauxhawk back in the States and wear a real Mohawk.

5.) Chew nails alot. Blow stuff up. Jump out of cars.

Other writing about my Chinese Acting career can be found here (scroll down) and here.

If Becks can’t pull it off, then you can’t.

This is the type of tattoo that would get a lot of work.

Hair coloring like this will cause a great deal of fear. Fear sells.

Words can’t express how disappointed I was not to make it on the cover of my mini-series box set

Even Badasses get seasick on set.

And must needs puke.