Putnam Valley, New York | In 1956 Jack Kerouac and I first met at a bring-your-own-bottle party at a painter's loft and instantly began collaborating artistically. I backed him up musically while he read and from the earliest days of our working together I knew that he was an exceptional storyteller and writer. The spontaneous energy that poured out of him reminded me of what it was like when I played with Charles Mingus or Dizzy Gillespie or Thelonius Monk. Jack's way of reading was the embodiment of the spirit of jazz. He combined formality and spontaneity in a seemingly effortless way. As a young classical composer, as well as a jazz musician, I, as well, wanted my compositions to sound as natural as if I were making them up on the spot. Jack told me that this was what he was trying to do when he wrote his narrative novels. "I want the reader to feel like I'm talking directly to them," he said. We became friends.
Denver | There has been a lot of talk about Jack Kerouac this year and the 50th anniversary of his novel On The Road. It's buzzed through Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone, public broadcasting and public radio. Over and over again I hear the same comments, the same questions. "Why are we talking about this book?" "How can it possibly be relevant today?" "Why are we wasting time on Jack Kerouac? He was nothing but a hack. He was nothing but a one-hit wonder." To which, I imagine Jack Kerouac's bemused response. "Are they," he asks with genuine surprise, "Talking about me?"
Thursday and Friday:
Yesterday was my last day of work for the week. Typically I would never get Friday off, but my progress has been superb, my body has found its health, and my trainer knows this. My trainer also knows that Santa is watching him, and in a pathetic attempt to win brownie points with Father Christmas, he gave me today off. He's so transparent.
Wednesday:
I awoke this morning before the sun. I opened my blinds to a firey orange suggestion that it may soon follow my lead. I arrived at work bleary-eyed and as I approached the glass doors that lead into the cafeteria, I hit an icy patch that sent me into the splits. This was an unwelcome test for my healing groin that I thankfully passed without much more than a heavy sigh. The glass doors and windows to the cafeteria are tinted, so I wasn't sure if anyone inside saw me pull a Jane Fonda on the pavement. Thankfully, I was spared the laughter.
The halls were empty today at our Dove Valley facility. Tuesday is an empty day in the NFL anyway, but on a Tuesday in late December, you can hear leaky faucets. Not that we have any. Our maintenance crew is excellent. In fact, everyone that steps into that building is excellent at what they do, and that's not an accident. The efficiency with which the building moves and operates should be studied and emulated and taken to our nation's capital. There are far too many leaky faucets there.
Monday: I don't like the sound of morning radio show hosts. I can't help but picture them as obnoxious party guests. Before I got injured in week 5 of this NFL season against the San Diego Chargers, I was lucky enough to sleep through this noise on a Monday morning. In the NFL, Mondays and Tuesdays are like our weekends. Tuesday is off no matter what. Tuesday is a beautiful thing. Monday can be beautiful too, but only if we win. If victory is ours, then so too shall be Monday. If victory eludes us, then Monday belongs to the coaches, and we must come in late in the morning to watch game film and workout. If a team finds itself spending too many Mondays at work, things have gone awry. There are incentives everywhere in this game and getting Monday off after a victory is one of them. Win and you shall win your freedom.
Sadly, these rules don't apply to a cripple like me. Once you are placed on the "Injured Reserve" list, then your presence is non-negotiable. I am there every Monday through Friday doing pretty much the same thing every day, and it goes like this:
Blake Mooney was recently laid off from his job at NewMediaCompany.com and has somehow found some time to give a glimpse into the week in the life of a man on the dole. This is his story. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
Friday:
To the depressed and despondent (or in my case, unemployed), hope and optimism have a way of popping up in the minor peculiarities of life. Only Biblical figures are struck by epic moments of revelation. The rest of us receive our epiphanies in the quiet of our day, when something small and irrelevant pulls off its disguise and reveals itself as a powerful cry for personal revolution.
My angel of salvation took the form of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.
Blake Mooney was recently laid off from his job at NewMediaCompany.com and has somehow found some time to give a glimpse into the week in the life of a man on the dole. This is his story. Monday Tuesday Wednesday
Thursday:
With the exception of big name athletes entering free agency, looking for a job is no fun. It’s like you’re back in middle school during the lead up to the Sadie Hawkins dance - You hear rumors about who likes you and receive insinuating notes in the middle of math class. But mostly, you just loiter around, wearing clothes doused with a spritz of cologne, trying not to look too obvious as you flex your muscles to the girls who pass you in the hallway. Unless you’re a team captain or the most popular kid in the school, rejection is inevitable, passive perseverance a must.
Blake Mooney was recently laid off from his job at NewMediaCompany.com and has somehow found some time to give a glimpse into the week in the life of a man on the dole. This is his story. Monday Tuesday
Wednesday:
Everyone knows if you’re a male and you find yourself laid off from your job, the first thing you do is grow a beard. It’s a look that tells everyone around you, “I have no responsibilities and no boss or dress code, so why even fight with the whole personal hygiene thing.” You’re also supposed to walk around in slippers and a bathrobe most of the time, clutching a copy of the want ads in one hand and a cup of coffee spiked with Kahlua in the other. You definitely need to let your apartment get all cluttered up, so when your friends come over to visit, the stink hits them in the hallway and, concerned for your lack of direction, they give you a big pep talk that suddenly jolts you from your waking coma. You clean yourself up in the shower, print out a bunch of resumes, get a great new job and finally meet the girl of your dreams, all while Joe Esposito’s “You’re the Best,” plays somewhere in the background.
Blake Mooney was recently laid off from his job at NewMediaCompany.com and has somehow found some time to give a glimpse into the week in the life of a man on the dole. This is his story. Monday
Tuesday:
It shouldn’t be this easy. Before I started collecting unemployment, I was under the impression that in order to get paid, you had to head down to some government office and stand in long lines that would make the DMV look like the express lanes at the grocery store. You would wait there in your brown and disheveled clothes for an hour or two, shuffling your feet and sharing looks of quiet desperation with your fellow hard-luck cases. When you finally got to the window, the clerk – voice hoarse with the residue of 20 cigarette breaks per shift – would impatiently ask a few questions and hand over a check with the disapproving glare of a mother picking up her kid from detention.
Every Monday morning, millions of Americans roll out of bed, wipe the crusties out of their eyes, pour themselves a cup of joe and enter into the dispiriting ritual of the work week. They suffer through the humiliation of gridlocked traffic, pay far too much to park the car they paid far too much to drive, and shuffle off to anonymous workspaces under the harsh glare of fluorescent track lighting. For lunch, they get a quick fix off food that makes them feel terrible, for desert they take a lashing from their ironically titled superior for missing some mundane detail in a task primarily created to test the completeness of their obedience. They get back in their cars, which only remind them of their burdensome debt, get shamed by traffic a second time, and wind up with one, maybe two quality hours of time with their families before moving onto the never ending household tasks necessary for maintaining a mortgage.
This week, Joel Warner gives us some insight as to what it's like to be a part-time stay-at-home dad and a full-time neurotic obessessive with fantasies of prehistoric predators eating his young. Read his feature about the baby products industry here.
Friday:
Today something extraordinary happened: I had free time with my son.
This was an entirely new phenomenon. When I work from home with him, there is no such thing as “free time.” When my son’s awake, I distract him by wiggling a toy in his face with one hand and type horribly misspelled e-mails with the other. When he’s tired, I rock him to sleep, all the while composing stories in my head. And when he’s asleep, I dash downstairs, desperate to spew as much verbiage into my computer as possible before the baby monitor unleashes its first tell-tale whimper. The marathon continues until my wife comes home and yells at me for putting socks on her son’s hands because his fingers felt cold and I couldn’t find his mittens.
This week, Joel Warner gives us some insight as to what it's like to be a part-time stay-at-home dad and a full-time neurotic obessessive with fantasies of prehistoric predators eating his young. Read his feature about the baby products industry here.
Thursday:
The doctor’s office doesn’t scare me. I’ve been going there my whole life without a tremor. Strip me to my skivvies and stick a needle in my arm – I can take it. Sure, there was that one time a hospital physician in New Hampshire nearly gave me gangrene, but that’s New Hampshire, for Christ’s sake. You can’t trust those dirty townies.
Today, however, as I drove to the doctor’s office, I would have curled up into the fetal position if not for the fact I had to keep my hands on the wheel. After all, this wasn’t a visit about me, it was about my son.
This week, Joel Warner gives us some insight as to what it's like to be a part-time stay-at-home dad and a full-time neurotic obessessive with fantasies of prehistoric predators eating his young. Read his feature about the baby products industry here.
Wednesday:
Most of the time, my four-month-old son spreads joy and happiness. Sometimes he inspires people to attempt to conceive their own bundle of joy — right there on the sidewalk. It’s gross. But that wasn’t the case this morning, when I took him to a meeting of “Boot Camp for New Dads” at a local hospital. There, my baby spread terror.
As I carried in my son, the arms-crossed stoicism of the men sitting around the room splintered into panic. They were all fathers to be. “My God,” each of them was thinking. “Soon I will have one of those.”
This week, Joel Warner gives us some insight as to what it's like to be a part-time stay-at-home dad and a full-time neurotic obessessive with fantasies of prehistoric predators eating his young. Read his feature about the baby products industry here.
Tuesday:
Today I had to bring my four-month-old son along for a work assignment. I try not to do this too often; I prefer to keep my baby in our house, a place where I have full control over temperature, precipitation and casual observers. Sometimes, however, it can’t be helped – and those are the times when I’m very happy that my baby is better than your baby.
You want to know why my baby is better than your baby? Here’s why:
Blake Mooney was recently laid off from his job at NewMediaCompany.com and has somehow found some time to give a glimpse into the week in the life of a man on the dole. This is his story.
Blake Mooney was recently laid off from his job at NewMediaCompany.com and has somehow found some time to give a glimpse into the week in the life of a man on the dole. This is his story.
Every Monday morning, millions of Americans roll out of bed, wipe the crusties out of their eyes, pour themselves a cup of joe and enter into the dispiriting ritual of the work week. They suffer through the humiliation of gridlocked traffic, pay far too much to park the car they paid far too much to drive, and shuffle off to anonymous workspaces under the harsh glare of fluorescent track lighting. For lunch, they get a quick fix off food that makes them feel terrible, for desert they take a lashing from their ironically titled superior for missing some mundane detail in a task primarily created to test the completeness of their obedience. They get back in their cars, which only remind them of their burdensome debt, get shamed by traffic a second time, and wind up with one, maybe two quality hours of time with their families before moving onto the never ending household tasks necessary for maintaining a mortgage.
This week, Joel Warner gives us some insight as to what it's like to be a part-time stay-at-home dad and a full-time neurotic obessessive with fantasies of prehistoric predators eating his young. Read his feature about the baby products industry 