Conversations with Keefy

Every year on March 8th marks the birthday of my friend Rora Lynn Darden. I use the day to celebrate her and keep her memory alive. She died in September of 1997 and I think of her often. She was one of my best friends in junior high school and then she vanished out of my life like a ghost. She would haunt me off and on via phone calls for ten years, always reaching out when she needed a friend. I wished I could have done something to help change the course of her life, but I was powerless. Although the circumstances of her death are murky, the story of how she lived especially when we were close comforts me and carries me. The story of our friendship is detailed below in an updated version of a post from my old Myspace (!) blog from four years ago about her.  *************************************************************** I was 13 when I met her for the first time. Toward the end of my second semester at Frank D. Whalen Junior High 135 in The Bronx. I was getting my ass ki...

Few things can shock you awake in life like death can. I was coasting along as usual. Waiting. Waiting. Wai-ting. Time for me is a distance between two poles of circadian stasis and amnesiac waking life. Perpetual state of grogginess. Searching. Wondering what is to come. Like a giant shoe is dropping from somewhere above me. Squishing me flat. I knew it was going to be like this and it hit me hard anyway. Concussive force like an elbow to the back of your dome. Saddling my heart with hurt. Hurt for my friend who is gone. Hurt for his wife whom I would do anything for. Hurt for his family and friends near and far. Hurt for myself as well. I'd long ago tasted grief's bitter wine. Swallowed enough for this lifetime and the next. Felt it swill around my belly and get comfortable. Maybe it has been so long and I have been so empty that I was crushed by my own sense of being. For the first time in a long time fragility became real again. Refusing to be ignored. And now it feels...

Charmed I'm sure...... Patton Oswalt is one of my favorite comedians and one of the smartest, funny people alive. His point blank sarcasm colors his observational humor in a twisted way which confounds some, but makes perfect sense to me. I have long been a fan and while his star is rising of late, it seems like he is only just now getting widely recognized as one of the better, more important humans among us. Most people know Patton from his stand up specials, from his role as Spence on The King of Queens on CBS and the Pixar animated movie Ratatouille . You may have also seen him on VH1's Best Week Ever (he was fired for making fun of Paris Hilton), Zoolander, Blade: Trinity , Reno 911 , The Comedians of Comedy tour, Blood Into Wine , Lewis Black's Root of All Evil show and some of Comedy Central's Roast of ... episodes. Patton has had a big impact on me through his stand up and through his brilliant albums Feeling Kinda Patton (United Musicians) Werewolves...

She glistens in the nighttime sky. Naked, beautiful, brilliant and deadly. Silvery black like blood, under the pale of the moon. Venomous and fearing neither Hunter nor scorpions sting. Intimidatress, undisputed. The Serpent bearer is coming for you. No force majeur may hold her back. Stellar events raze the bleak nothingness. While unbreakable spectroscopic codes are embedded in her sacred DNA. Celestial syzygy connects us all. The cosmic ladder spirals endless still. Uncovering the basic truth we fear most. What we desire is occulted by evil lies, and the permanent collapse of intellect. Everlasting logic and reason will be crippled for eons to come. Neutronicum corpore pulcher. Teneas exanimis ad eam.

I know that you watch me. Don't you think I can tell. I know you creep on me. I've felt your presence near. I know you still think of me. I think of you too sometimes. I know you see me in lucid dreams. In ways that you obviously can't help yourself. But you don't think I see you watching me. Watching from inside my eyes. Conjured up in my dreams and night terrors. Like a deja vu that I do not want. The truly despicable part of it is that I wanted you to see me- always. I felt the empty, opaque scream of you without me. A fracture that caused me tremendous pain. Caused me to breakdown. To tremble before you. Not anymore. Now I lick wounds once deep. Now healing and hoping although cynical to the last. You lash out from afar still clinging to your rage. It's quite nasty and unbecoming. But I expected no less all along. This is the pattern. So boring and predictable. I'm not sure what I did to deserve the ire of your i. There was a time I thought about m...

Written, Edited and Directed by Louis CK (Circus Time Productions) Massachusetts native Louis CK's new standup movie comes out today called Hilarious and I have been waiting patiently for it for a while. Louis is one of the premiere comics in America today and along with the sadly retired Dave Chappelle, George Lopez and Patton Oswalt is one of the top observers on male contemporary life. Louis' impressive resume includes a writing Emmy for his work on The Chris Rock Show, writing and directing some vehicles for Rock ( Down To Earth, I Think I Love My Wife, Pootie Tang ), roles in movies like The Invention of Lying , and Role Models countless stand up specials as well as his own highly regarded TV shows on HBO ( Lucky Louie ) and FX ( Louie ), and his numerous hit stand up specials and sold out tours. Ricky Gervais guest starred on Louis Season 1 Hilarious has been winning praise from the jump off. It has lofty the distinction as the first standup movie ever to prem...

When your #1 weapon has been taken away, what do you do? How do you cope? Like a knife that's been dulled. Sometimes no whetstone will aid it. I've no implement to strike with. The iron is cold and dead. Left alone in the vast quiet nothing of my mindseye. Alone and unattended. Jaws been flapping since I escaped the watery primordial ooze of The Cave. Ranting and rambling for anyone to hear for as long as I could remember. But primarily to please myself. My self. The ocean of uber consciousness crushes on. Flooding the shores of knowledge, inescapable tides rise. Drowning out the sands of reason. Nowhere to go with my thoughts, but deeper inside. Endless cycles of analysis. Paralysis. Ouroborus. Mostly by a design I am not equipped to fight. Perhaps if I listened more carefully to others I might hear more than the rumble of my heart, lips and lungs. My ego and intellect imprisoned by a virus. It's not sympathy I crave. Adulation is what I need to survive. But a soul o...