jimmy

Well the landslide will bring it down.

A photo posted by Jimmy Bramlett (@jimmybramlett79) on Aug 5, 2015 at 4:49pm PDT

Thanks to Dallas Aunt coming for the weekend, I had the weekend off. Which meant JIMMY GONE WILD!!!!

What’s depressing is the difference between JIMMY GONE WILD at 36 versus JIMMY GONE WILD at 26. At 26 anything could have happened including drugs, sex and whatever would make a republican get a hard on then blush then react with indignant anger about god or wrath or quaint guilt-based mythologies that people use to excuse mass murders and wars.

No. This is what JIMMY GONE WILD at 36 entails.

Friday night I caught up with Madd. While I’ve been going through my grandmother saga, she’s been going through the death of a good friend. I hadn’t seen her since my birthday in March, so this was long overdue.

For some reason, our fallback option when we can’t think of anything creative or new to go to is Culver City. We wound up at Public School 310 and spent a whole lot of time gabbing and catching up. It felt so great to be able to get out into the world and pretend to be human again (or a reasonable facsimile thereof). It makes me wonder just how much I’m missing while I’m holed up taking care of the Grandmother. Well, perhaps “wonder” isn’t the right word. “Sad”? “Forlorn”? I don’t know. I guess I’m a little scared that once the Grandmother finally kicks the bucket, I won’t know how to enjoy myself outside. Hell, I’m already a pretty awkward in social situations. So who knows?

What I do know is I used to make fun of people who would be bright-eyed and excited about a weekend night out. And here I am. Bright-eyed. Excited. And just purely happy that I’m out eating at a restaurant. Taking pictures to show proof that I was out and about and enjoying life. Yup. This is what my life has become.

So while JGW at 26 would involve (lots of) drinks and (lots of) cigarettes, JGW at 36 involves getting iced coffee after dinner sans cigarettes and more gabbing. Still I got home after midnight, so I guess that made it a success.

Saturday was lunch with Cathi and Ben. Which, of course, means spending the day with little Emma. For a three-year old, she is remarkably well behaved. She actually listens and obeys to her “Uncuh Jimmy” which actually blew me away.

After lunch at an Asian seafood buffet in Glendale and a trip to Michael’s and Cost Plus, Ben took off. So I spent a good chunk of the day with Emma while Cathi and Tyson worked on their respective projects. While she is as well behaved as one can expect from a three-year old, goddamn she is hyperactive. It makes me happy that I don’t and won’t have children.

I got home at around 9 pm sore and tired and stinky from sweating from trying to keep up with a three-year old. It made me sad that my freedom weekend was coming to an end.

Now I’m not really depressed that JGW is over. I’ve accepted that this is my life, and I’m fine with it. But one thing I will have to start doing is to take days off. Cousins will be called so I can take a day off here and there.

Another thing that is pretty shocking. Usually most of my crushes has been guys older than me. That age is starting to decrease. I AM getting older. And, evidently, I need gel.

Barring something extraordinary happening in the next month or so, this will be the starting quarterback of the New England Patriots for the first four games of the NFL season. I didn’t watch the NFL last season, but I might just tune in to watch this dude play. Frankly he’s a far cry from who the Patriots chose in 2001:

Actually I don’t care about any of that since it was just an excuse to ogle Jimmy Garoppolo who not only is easy on the eyes but has a most excellent first name. Just don’t tell me that he’s straight or has a girlfriend or is married or has spawned or anything like that. I know you fucking heteros love waving that in people’s faces, and frankly it’s tiring. Just leave me to my illusions.

I’m on a Meat Beat Manifesto binge today. It’s amazing to hear something futuristic and retro at the same time. Art deco techno? Is that a thing? I wish I listened to them more in high school and college, and I wish I had the proper drugs to truly enjoy them in an “immersive” experience. It’s such a listening to Jason Bentley spin records on KROQ at 2 am Saturday nights/Sunday mornings in 1995 while trying to do something despite having a 10 pm curfew and since there were no radio stations I knew of spinning goth/industrial music this was the next best thing.

The Grandmother is still kicking, though she’s enduring more and more pain as each day clicks on. She’s stopped fighting me on eating her meals, although to be frank I’ve been giving her a tad bit less to eat. We went to the acupuncturist on Tuesday and this afternoon, and she still refuses to let me carry her up and down the stairs.

I’m a lot better than I was this time last week. I’ve gotten a handle on the scope of my grandmother’s pain, what she needs and what needs to be done, so I can do things.

Dallas Aunt came and went with minimal disruptions. I did get Eldest Aunt and an uncle get mad at me for calling Dallas Aunt last Friday. Eldest Aunt said she was hurt I didn’t call her first. I would call them if they actually came by and showed interest in how the Grandmother is doing. Even though Dallas Aunt is thousands of miles away, she knows the ins and outs of the Grandmother’s health and everything.

I’m just trying to distract myself, and right now I’m not really up for watching old depressing foreign movies. So I decided to watch the Dodgers play the Nationals. You know, what I used to do.

After one inning of watching the broadcast, I had to mute it. There was too much Charley Steiner, too much Nomar Garciaparra, too much Orel Hershiser. When I was covering games, I was used to just the sounds of the park, the crack of the bat, the sound the balls make when it hits the catcher’s mitt, the organ, the cheers, the boos, the choreographed claps, the awful pop music that’s foisted upon the public in the name of entertainment that these teams are aiming to strive for. The games were allowed to breathe in its own juices and not be strangled by the announcers. I know, I’m spoiled.

So instead of all of that, because of my sort of fragile emotional state right now I’m listening to Tori Amos. (Okay. That’s a bald-face lie. I’m using my emotional state as an excuse to listen to Tori Amos, to justify going back to my sensitive 17-year old self, to think about nine inch nails and little fascist panties tucked inside the heart of every nice grrrrrrrrrrrrrl.) Little Earthquake and then Under the Pink, just going chronologically.

Watching the game, I learned some things.

A. Chin-Hui Tsao is back to pitching for the Dodgers? I remembered him pitching before I started writing for LAist in 2007. Here he is now?

B. Pedro Baez is no long the second coming of Jeebuz. At the start of the season he was the bee’s knees, the shit, the everything about the bullpen. In the eighth inning he gave up a two-run pinch-hit homer to some Danish(?) guy Matt den Dekker. Belgian? It definitely has to be some country involving dikes or fjords or something chocolatey or potty. Anyhow, it gave the Nationals a 5-3 lead which set the stage for Drew Storen to get the save.

C. At some point the Dodgers went out and got Albert Callaspo. AND KEPT HIM!!!! I know how wheeling and dealing the Dodgers front office is, yet Callaspo is sill on the 25-man roster. They do want to win a World Series, right?

We went to my grandmother’s doctor who gave her a steroid injection into her back. That will help the pain she’s feeling in her legs starting tomorrow. Hopefully. But I did get confirmation from the doctor that her pain will keep getting worse no matter what. So I guess I have that to look forward to.

I want to thank people for their kind words. I’ve spent a lot of the day as an emotional mess. A few tears have been shed, but mostly there is this fluttering feeling in my chest and gut that’s ready to explode. Although I’m feeling better now than I did earlier. Actually, that’s a lie. I’m feeling more numb. And tired. It’s amazing that despite not physically exerting myself just how fucking tired I am right now.

Now I have to steel myself for Dallas Aunt coming. She’s getting in tonight and leaving Monday. I haven’t really forgiven her for her outrage back in March. So on top of everything else, I guess I have that to deal with. Although I aim to just ignore and repress because I’m just not in any fucking mood for it.

I really wonder how my grandmother gets through this. I’m amazed by her strength to endure all of this pain. It’s astonishing because here I am just breaking down at the drop of a hat. She actually has reason to, but she’s just plugging along.

I love my grandmother. I wouldn’t be her caretaker if I didn’t. But this week has been particular taxing for me culminating in today.

My grandmother has chronic pain. Mindnumbing I-wish-I-were-dead sort of pain in her legs and lower back. This week the pain has gotten so bad she hasn’t been able to walk (hobble is probably the more adequate verb to use to describe how my grandmother is ambulatory.) To move around she has taken to sitting on the ground and using her arms and ass to propel forwards.

Today she can’t even move without screaming in agony. Even the smallest movement brings with it hell on earth for her. I hear her crying in Korean, “ican’tlivelikethis.godpleasetakeme.thisistoomuch.”

The problem is that mentally she is still sharp. Her body is what’s let her down, and at 86 it’s completely betraying her. Nothing can be done to help her, not surgery not drugs not anything. Nothing. This is her life.

And here I am, helpless to do anything. Nothing I say or do will take the pain away for her. Nothing I do will make her wake up magically able to do the things she was able to do ten years ago. Nothing. I am useless except for moral support for whatever good that does (to prolong her suffering?)

For the first time, I broke down. Here I am in my bedroom writing this tears in my eyes just completely spent. I know I can’t be emotional in front of my grandmother, that I can’t make her feel any worse than she already feels. But it’s tough. It’s really really tough.

I’m taking her to her primary care physician just after lunch, and we’re going to take it from there. I know the logical steps to take to try and help her, but I know it will be useless.

I don’t know what to do.

So for her sake I hope she goes soon just so she doesn’t have to endure this pain she goes through 24/7. And selfishly I hope she goes so that I don’t have to witness someone I love dearly die in front of me in the slowest, most excruciating way possible.

Shhhhhh. My toilet is sleeping. This is what happens when rot upon rot upon rot is detected beneath your linoleum. It happens, and it is getting fixed.

The grandmother has been in more pain the last couple of days, her left leg right above her ankle making her life damn near impossible (and by extension, mine also). All I can do is watch helplessly — it’s not going to get any better and nothing I can do will make her feel better.

So I’m rereading Infinite Jest, because, why not? It’s great against the soundtrack of a drill going off in my bathroom.

I’m going through this list of the 1,000 greatest films of all time which has been going slowly and steadily. I got to no. 33, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet last night.

It’s gorgeously shot in the Danish countryside with minimal cuts. It’s also said that Dreyer didn’t like light meters instead opting to adjust the lightning of a scene by eye.

But the story is what got me. Three sons: the eldest who has become agnostic; the middle who think he’s Jesus Christ; the youngest who wants to marry the neighbor’s daughter. The death of the eldest son’s wife during childbirth is perhaps the saddest thing I have ever watched. And of course how that affects the family’s religion and the belief of miracles.

Although this is listed at 33, this is definitely top 10 for me. Better than The Passion of Joan of Arc for me.

Today, the death knell of the gay community has started to toll. The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage today, and millions of my queer brothers, sisters and everything in between are celebrating. I’m not exactly jumping up and down with them.

Same-sex marriage has nothing to do with equality. It’s about enforcing the white male morality within the queer community and sanitizing everything with their antiseptic imitation of heterosexual respectability.

The Human Rights Campaign has been fighting for gay marriage for the better part of the last decade. In an internal report leaked to Buzzfeed earlier this month, the HRC has been compared to a “White Man’s Club”. An organization that is rife with sexism, a glaring lack of diversity and repeated belittling of transgendered staff is supposed to be leading the fight for this so-called equality?

As Yasmin Nair explains, same-sex marriage is a conservative cause. Marriage should not guarantee rights, yet rather than fight for that issue groups like the HRC were complacent enough to join the hetero privilege party rather than fight for real equality.

These people are not interested in equal access to health care. They aren’t interested in dealing with homeless queer youth. They aren’t interested in real immigration reform. They don’t believe racism exists since they don’t realize that they are racists themselves. The list goes on. All they care about is extending the white heterosexual patriarchy into the queer world.

And that is the danger of saying that same-sex marriage is only the first step in gaining equality. For a good many people the fight is over. Fuck the trannies. Fuck the poor black folk who can’t afford healthcare. If you can’t help our bottom lines then just stay the hell out. That’s the way the world works, right?

So as people crowd the streets of gay ghettos all across the country, just know that we are witnessing the end of gay culture as we knew it. The vibrant tapestry of black and white and boy and girl and poor and rich and everything will now be replaced by the same ugly condo, same ugly dogs, same ugly lawns, same ugly clothes.

Sure, now us gay people can make the same mistakes as the heteros. Hooray equality! And now we can die like the rest of the straight world.