Working Class Anti-Hero Introduction.

Keep Britney and Megan Fox and all your pop hotties. I'll take Order of Canada winner (and undeniable seductress) Valerie Pringle.



It's Dec 31st. As part of my New Year's Resolution I'm dropping out of the social networking set. I've found over the past year that I'm straight up junkie hooked on social networking, my drug of choice being Facebook, and I can't moderate it in the least. I check it like 20 times each day, eager to catch up on the activities of hundreds of people that I've had only the most minor interaction with over the years. I feel somehow compelled to tell all of them the micro-minutiae of my life. "Andy is cooking Spaghetti". "Andy is eating spaghetti". "Andy had too much spaghetti". Blurting out all of these insignificant little details somehow soothes that creative monster that drives me to write however, with the unexpected and unwanted result that I just plain don't write anymore.
So no more Facebook. Instead I'm going to channel that creative energy and typeractiveness back into actual writing. Paragraphs and trains of thoughts rather than status updates and the like. And today's train of thought goes like this.
I'm currently reading another one of Anthony Bourdain's books. "A Cook's Tour". I love Bourdain's writing. He started out being my favorite celebrity chef, quickly became my favorite celebrity tourist (knocking out long time top spot Valerie Pringle) to become one of my favorite all around writers. This guy has skillz peeps.
It was while reading his sometimes sentimental sometimes cynical gonzo-esque memoirs that it occurred to me that I have probably had more jobs in my life than most families have in several generations. It also occurred to me, that with few exceptions, I've loathed and despised every one of those jobs. Where there is loathing, there is passion, and where there is passion there is the potential for some good writing. Sitting in the tub, feet wiggling in the water with Bourdain in the Bay of Biscayne, I decided that I would start to chronicle my work history. I'm going to call the series "Working Class Anti-Hero", which is intended to be a nod to John Lennon's "Working Class Hero", a satirical, Sartre-erical lament for the working man, as well as a nod to Dostoevsky, Knut Hamsun, and Henry Miller, the absolute kings of anti-heroism.
And, as this is already starting to feel a little bit too much like work, I'm going to knock off for now, and think about what there is that I can tell you about working in a nightclub at 15 years old.

That's Right, DR. Andy Tait.

I picked my own Christmas present this year. As many of you may know, I like writers, and my favorite writers have always been the dangerous variety. I'm talking about Kerouac, Henry Miller, Hemingway, Steinbeck at times, and of course the immortal Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.
The first time I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I was hooked. From there I read everthing HST I could find. Eventually I came across the circumstances of his doctorate. He was a 'Doctor of Divinity'. For some reason I'd always thought he was a Dr. of Journalism or Letters or something like that. But nope. Divinity. He'd ordered his doctorate from a mail order church in Modesto California.
So this year, my Christmas present is my own doctorate (legal and legitimate by the way) from the very same church. I join the ranks of quite a few famous ministers. HST of course. But also Milton Berle, Sammy Davis Jr, Mel Blanc, Ray Bolger (who played the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz), Richard Branson, Tony Danza, Hugh Hefner, Abby Hoffman, to name but a few. I'm in some damn fine company!