September 9th saw the release of a new 10th Anniversary Special Edition DVD of the Coen brothers cult favorite The Big Lebowski, their Raymond Chandler on acid saga of two middle-aged L.A. slackers (Jeff Bridges John Goodman) who get caught up in a Byzantine kidnapping plot.
It used to be a little show biz secret that Jeff Bridges amiable character, Jeff The Dude Lebowski, was based on the Coens real-life friend and colleague, indie film producer and producers rep Jeff Dowd, but that began to change in 2002 when four Lebowski fanatics in Louisville, Kentucky promoted the first annual Lebowski Fest, an event so successful, theyre now staging three a year in various cities.
Jeff Dowd has attended several Lebowski Fests over the years, and managed to turn his unique cult status into an actual side business, making personal appearances, speaking at colleges, and writing his memoirs. The real-life Dude will happily talk Lebowski til the cows come home, but thats just the tip of the Jeff Dowd anecdotal iceberg, as I discovered at the Santa Monica Airports Spitfire Grill:
In one of The Dudes scenes with Julianne Moore, he tells her, You ever heard of the Seattle Seven? That was me. And six other guys. I was surprised to learn thats a fact taken from your actual life. I was just talking with Robert Forster about his experiences at the 1968 Democratic National Convention; as an anti-Vietnam war activist, that must have been a galvanizing event for you as well?
JEFF DOWD: I wasnt there. My father was, but my SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) chapter at Cornell University had voted not to attend. I certainly watched it on TV, and it was a seminal moment for all of us. It was essentially a big electoral reaction against the war. There were all kinds of reactions, but one of the biggest was the candidacy of Eugene McCarthy, who had done very well initially; hed won the New Hampshire primary that year.
McCarthy was more anti-war than Robert Kennedy?
Much more so. Kennedy wasnt anti-war for a long time. He was way behind the curve there, and a lot of people in New York State were very disappointed by that. But what happenedand this is one the great reasons Ive always remained an optimistis that Kennedy changed. He actually changed, and not just for opportunistic political reasons, though that was part of it. When Johnson decided he wouldnt seek reelection, Kennedy threw his hat in the ring against McCarthy. And he brought in his whole machine, and his union backing; it was a more middle-of-the-road, charismatic campaign. McCarthy was more of an intellectual type.
And theres little doubt in my mind that Kennedy would have been nominated, but after he was assassinated, the Democratic Party put up Hubert Humphrey as, really, a pro-war candidate, you know, this old establishment/machine politics nominee. Vietnam was the Democrats war: started by Kennedy, expanded tenfold by Johnson, so thats why the anti-war movement targeted their National Convention; that was the place to make our stand against the party. And then it turned into the televised spectacle of a police riot; not only police clubbing protesters in the street, but charging into hotel lobbies and clubbing McCarthy delegates in ties.
What kinds of things did SDS do at Cornell?
My anti-war efforts began when I was in high school in Westchester County. A bunch of my friends had joined the service, like there were maybe 150 guys who volunteered from the high school class ahead of me. And I was set to follow them. The cultural pull was just so heavy then; that manly-man traditioneven among guys who were listening to the Rolling Stones, or even Bob Dylan. But I started getting letters from my friends in Vietnam saying how bad the war was. Not only that it was mismanaged, but that we were on the wrong side even. All the anti-war material I saw was from U.S. Marines! Then some people who went started getting killed. One of my good friends was killed two weeks after he got there! That made a huge impression on me. So instead of 150 guys from my class signing up, it dropped to maybe three or four; yknow, no ones little brother wanted to go. Then I spent a year in Europe, and that kind of took me out of the brainwashing bubble of America, the one young men are particularly susceptible to. When I came home, I very quickly got active in the anti-war movement.
I joined a group called The Resistance, and we all turned in our draft cards. And what happened was they reclassified us from 2S, which was a deferment, to 1A, meaning we could be called up. So our group decided that if called up, we would refuse to be inducted, and from the time we refused induction to the time wed be sent to jaila court process that would take a year or sowe would go around and talk about why we were willing to go to jail for five or ten years. We saw this action as a part of whats called the Moral Witness tradition. So there we were, foolish enough, in some sense, to be willing to go to jail to protest the war. And we went all over New YorkBuffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Plattsburgand talked about the war. Church groups, student groups, community groups. We were very effective at it. And within a year, we became part of SDS, which had begun in the civil rights movement of the early sixties. So then we traveled around nationally, speaking on behalf of SDS.
Was civil rights still a big part of their agenda, or was it just about the war?
SDS was all about fighting racism in America, ending poverty, and ending the war. My father was part of the early civil rights movement.
So the Seattle Seven came out of SDS?
A bunch of us from Ithaca moved to Seattle, late 69, early 70. Pretty wild times; the Weathermen had started going underground, and bombing, and we were very opposed to all that. We started The Seattle Liberation Front; the idea was to have these independent groupscollectives, we called themwhich had anywhere from five to a hundred peopleand each group would do what they wanted. One group was very environmental, another worked with the unemployedBoeing had laid off over 100,000 people, so Seattle was decimated by unemployment. You could buy a nice house for about seven or eight thousand dollars, became people were just streaming out of there in droves. Some collectives did health care stuff. Clinics. One of the best clinics there today was started by one of our collectives.
Then we got indicted. Eight of us. We were charged with Conspiracy, Destruction of Federal Property
This came from your February 17th, 1970 protest? Was that a situation like Chicago? A peaceful protest where the police turned aggressive?
That was one of many demonstrations all over the country that day to protest the Federal indictments of the Chicago Seven. There was some mayhem; some protesters smashed windows at the courthouse, and maybe of some office buildings downtown. The police arrested 89 people, but hardly any of them were with the demonstration, most were just bystanders. So it was not that big a deal; there wasnt going to be any larger local repercussions. It was the Nixon Administration that decided to indict us and they did it without even informing the local Federal prosecutor! Eight people, some of us didnt even know each other, or had just met once, and they lumped us together and said we were Four of them were Weathermen, who we didnt even get along with.
The Weathermen were already a known terrorist cell at this point?
Good question. The main point was that these indictments were literally an Oval Office decision, by Attorney General John Mitchell, and John Ehrlichman, who were sending a message to the anti-war movement that they could really tie us up, and it didnt much matter to them if anybody was actually guilty of anything. They picked Seattle because it was a remote location, and not a media center.
We were indicted on seventeen counts of Overt Conspiracy, meaning none of our supposed illegal activities was done in secret: they were done in public, sometimes with hundreds of people present! What were these seventeen acts? We were making speeches! Which were all covered by the presswho happened to include Frank Herbert and Tom Robbins, by the way. They both worked for the morning paper. Frank had the education beat, so we saw him just about every day.
We were also charged with Crossing State Lines to Incite a Riot, which was totally absurd: wed left Ithaca on December 6th, arrived in Seattle on December 21st, and incited a riot on February 17th. When we left Ithaca, wed piled into a car with fifty bucks, and didnt even know if wed make it to Seattle! It was a throwaway charge.
So there we are, just young guys21, 22 years oldand were suddenly on the front lines of Nixons national war of repression against the anti-war movement! What did we do? Well, we put up a hell of a defense. We got great lawyersthe head of one of the top firms on Wall Street actually led our defense, all for freebecause even these kinds of people were truly freaked out by what Nixon was doing.
How do you even begin to cope with that kind of pressure?
Well, y wed already turned in our draft cards. We were already prepared to go to jail. Some of my friends did. One reason I didnt is that the day of my induction, I was on trial in Seattle for Conspiracy! The judge had to write them a note.
So because you were already fighting The Man, the indictments just felt like an escalation in an ongoing battle?
I think its like when people go off to war. You know, you adopt a mentality... Id been prepared to give my life for my country as a teenager. And I knew how bad it got in the civil rights movement. My father was shot at. People were killed. So we just kept fighting, and we were winning the trial, so they gave us a mistrial, and then found us in Contempt of Court. I ended up doing about six months in jail.
What kind of facility was it?
Five or six different places. They kept moving us around.
Were you with your friends, or did they put you in general population?
In Kings County it was just me and my friend Joe Kelly for awhile. We were with this heroin dealer named Owlface Larry, who was always complaining about his Cadillac being seized by the IRS. Fascinating character. And the head Hells Angels guy.
Then I ended up at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary for a while. The first week, I was in Solitary. No windows, no shoes. The only books I had were the Bible, and, of course, Dale Carnegies How to Win Friends and Influence People. So the guy would come by once a day with the food, and Id go, Gee, you really look like you know what youre doing! Youve got a great understanding of all this uh, you got a smoke? Then, before we went into general population, the warden called us in, and gave us a talk: You guys were protesters, but now youre in the Big House, so watch your ass, that kind of thing. I think my mother had called him too, or something.
He had to be careful, I imagine. Youd had national attention; it wasnt like you could just vanish into the system.
Right. So he gives us this big warning, we walk out of there, and start down the row between these three tiers of cells and hundreds upon hundreds of cigarette packs came down! That was their currency, like a buck a pack, so it was like getting a standing ovation. Why? Well, wed been on the front page of the paper every day during our trial. And our judge was this notorious hanging judgehe gave ten years to a soldier whod just come back from Vietnam, and stolen some diapers from a 7-11like Nic Cage in Raising Arizona. Every con in McNeil hated that judge. Then they all read in the paper, or saw on the local TV news, that we were just continually giving this guy shit every day. So they loved us.
By the way, it came out later about this judgewho was this grumpy old guy, who could never keep our names straight; every day, it was re Jeff Dowd? No, Im Joe Kelly, hes Jeff Dowd. Well, a few years after he died, his widow came forward, and said hed had Alzheimers the whole time! That explained a lot! Like, even the reporters who covered the trial eventually all ended up siding with us because they were constantly correcting him in the paper; hed say all kinds of things that were flat-out wrong and everybody just thought, well, yknow, hes a cranky old man.
That sounds surreal enough to get us back to The Big Lebowski. So you got into the movie business, and around 1983 you worked on landing a distribution deal for the Coen brothers first feature, Blood Simple. You remained friends with them over the years, and one day they called you up and said they were writing a movie with a lead character based on you. What was that conversation like?
I knew it before hand; one of their producers had told me. When they called, they told me it would be John Goodman and Jeff Bridges as these two Hollywood guys. And, yknow, Im a big guy, so I thought it would be Goodman playing me, as some kind of Hollywood ne that the story would be some kind of modern Barton Fink.
They didnt tell you it was a riff on the detective genre?
They showed me the script at some point. And here was the entire description of me: The Dude: his casualness runs deep. That was it!
Youve said The Dude is an accurate portrait of you in an earlier period in your life, like in the mid-1970s.
After I got out of jail, I traveled around South America for a year, and when I got back the anti-war movement was pretty much over. Watergate had finished. It was a time in our lives before we all went back to work in a serious way. I was driving a cab two or three days a week. A lot of guys did that. We were just hanging out pretty heavily.
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This week I unfortunately have to add another name to ‘the list’. While John O Dolan was not well known to me, I was the grateful beneficiary on a number of occasions his enormous love of life and his sense of humour. He was a regular visitor to Dubai and was involved in many high profile projects here. He had an innate way of infecting people with his sense of ‘positive spin’ – which makes his decision to take his own life even more incomprehensible. I don’t know John’s family but I do pray that they are given strength to work through this most difficult-to-cope-with chapter of their lives. While speculation will inflate as to what caused a man of such enormous belief and positive attitude to make his decision, I DO have to declare my complete lack of understanding as to why ANYBODY would want to take their own lives because of money problems. No matter how great the money one owes or outlandishly impossible it may be to repay such debts, there is NOTHING in my head that can explain such awful decisions and results. Banks will NOT put you in prison because you cannot repay your debts – particularly in these times where the number of people in ‘this room’’ are so great. And banks will STILL be around in 50 years, when all of us will have departed this world from more natural causes.
So please let me appeal to all who find themselves in what appear like ‘insoluble’ debt problems, let the BANK(S) take the pain and the worry (I know this is strange coming from a ex-banker). They have or will be given the financial substance to ‘work their way through’ these operational air-pockets. Don’t worry about them. Worry about what IS IMPORTANT in LIFE. Those people who will still be your family and friends – even if you can’t buy them a drink. Ego-damage or social embarrassment are repaired easily. And life can throw some pleasant future surprises your way in re-instating a ‘lifestyle’. But it requires that ‘you are still on the planet’. So you have to give ‘life’ a chance to prove this to you.
Unfortunately I expect 2009 to report the highest suicide rate in the history of the Irish Republic. As unemployment rockets towards 20%, corporate failures escalate, government finances deteriorate to a point where the IMF needs to ‘take a seat at the table’ etc, Ireland will return to the relative ‘poverty levels’ not seen since the 1950’s – when going on an overseas holiday was more rare than a polar bear in the Sahara. A life and wealth level that ‘our parents’ came from. And this ‘adjustment’ will be painful. Salary levels across the country will have to contract by up to 25% to improve Irelands FDI appeal. The country has NOTHING to offer but agricultural products and its people. And this latter resource has to be competitively priced if this foreign investment is to reappear (or stay).
The New York Times this week published an embarrassingly bleak picture of the country and its 10 year outlook. One statement compared Ireland as being more like ‘Bob the Leper’ than a ‘Celtic Tiger’. And most of what I read in the article mirrors my own feelings on where this once great (and proud) country is heading. And the worst is STILL to come.
This weekend in the UAE we celebrate the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH). Well it is a bit confusing. The ‘birthday’ is actually on the 9th of March (Monday). The government sector are however getting March 8th off (most of them don’t work Saturday – so they have three days off). The private sector on the other hand have been told to take March 7th off work. Because most of the private sector works on Saturdays – and it seemed to make sense to give them consecutive days holidays. And THAT is how business is done in this country. Did you follow all that ???
Another confusing event around the corner, is the election of the new Lok Sabha. To you and me that should read – the Indian Parliament. As you can imagine it is a hugely complicated affair with 800 million voters. What people don’t realise is that India is actually held together with ‘tape’. There are 15 States and 7 Union Territories – which are really 7 countries. I won’t go into the complexities of voting the 543 members of Parliament, but lets just say there are lots of ‘brown envelopes’. And THAT is how business is done in India. Did you follow all that ???
Another example as to how ‘business is done’ came from the Dubai legal system this week. In a truly outrageous decision a 26 year old Emirati who in a fit of rage and lunacy drove his Hummer over (and then reversed over) and murdered a Scottish woman last year, has for some unexplained reason had his prison sentence reduced from 10 to 7 years. Outrageous and the WRONG message to the rest of the world. What would the sentence have been for a Westerner. Murder is murder. Except in Dubai.
On a lighter note Dubai is making its own movie equivalent to ‘Slumdog Millionaire’.
Before you all start to flood me with title suggestions, it is not called ‘Arabian Billionaire’ or ‘Desert Dollars’ or anything like that. No it goes under the completely boring title of ‘City of Life’. And the subject ? Well a tried and proven Hollywood formula that combine the lives of three different cultures. And so the lives of an Emirati, an Indian and a Westerner are thrown into the ‘movie cocktail shaker’ and to bring them together there is a taxi car crash – how totally appropriate for Dubai. And guess which nationality was the taxi driver ???? hehe. It is hoped that the final product will have some Oscar success. It will be filmed in Dubai. Where there are more Indian taxi drivers than Locals !!!
The good new on the Dubai property front continued this week, with Palm properties showing some life. I really believe that the ‘bargain’ investment in Dubai is Palm Jebel Ali. For those who are fed up sitting on cash that has no investment yield. I estimate 15/18 month returns to be north of 100%.
Now some ‘lighter’ stuff. And where better to go than the ‘sewer of global journalism’ – the UK Press.
First we have Jade Goody’s husband facing jail. Ahh I hear you protest. SHE is dying. Why put him in jail. They only have a few months, if even that, together before she leaves her new husband and us all, due to inoperable cancer. So why ? Why jail him, now ? Well I suppose the judge took into account that he has a history of grabbing taxi drivers by the throat and threatening to stab them. WHAT ? In the UK ? Now I could understand if that were to happen in Dubai – to my good friends the guys at the steering wheel of the ‘vanilla’ limousines. Why does Jades husband take taxis ?
Well yeah, the police ‘have his licence’ – ooopppss.
Did you know that Jennifer Aniston recently paid £40,000 for a hair-styling. Well neither did I, until I read the sorry newspaper. Yes you are right, the hairdresser portion of the bill was only £ 400.
The balance was first class flights from LA to London. WITH her hairdresser – now I wonder. Is there more to him than the papers are telling. How many, even rich people do that ? 7 days in top of the range hotels in London and Paris (premiere of her new movie Marley and Me) – two rooms I suspect. STOP surely SHE (rich and ‘proper’ Jenny) is NOT dating a HAIRDRESSER !!!!
My Dad ALWAYS had hairdressers on the ‘boyfriend black list’ for my sisters. Obviously 40 year old Jenny needs to cut down on her bills in these difficult times, and how better to do so than have your hairdresser beside you in bed. Unless of course you are me – and you can use the time for ‘other things’ !!!
Did you know Gout cases are on the surge (remember we are still in the UK) and sufferers are getting younger. NOW THAT is GREAT stuff. Thanks UK journalists. Why did they not give us some other, more informative detail. Particularly if they wanted to put such a topic on page 4. How about ‘did you know that the word comes from the Latin word ‘gutta’ – which explains the Irish word ‘gutted’ !!!. Or 75% of cases happen in your big toe. Or it was known as the ‘disease of kings’. But no let them just address the ‘gutter’ topic – with all its gory details.
And finally there was an article about Frankenfarm (yes I know the word does NOT exist but these guys don’t get paid for good English !!). But it is all about (Frankenfarm that is) growing fruit and veg WITHOUT soil and all the year around. Wonderful stuff. And worthy of PAGE 2.
Finally there is controversy over teams with ineligible members on their University Challenge teams. All to do with when the members graduated. Wonder did they CHEAT in their exams as well !!
Finally finally some ‘stocking fillers’ – since I gave you a break last week. A rat and a horse cannot vomit. Well thats good to know. ‘Sixth Sick Sheiks Sixth Sheep’s Sick’ is the hardest sentence to say in English. Was THAT English !!! Children grow faster during Spring. In both hemispheres. A male mantis CANNOT mate with a female mantis with its head, so when they make love the female mantis has to chop the male mantis’ head off. What the fu*k is THAT about. And what is a Mantis !!!.
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It all started in 2002 when I still had AOLand was allowed only 1 hour of internet a day. I would use it to go into the music chatroom on AOL and pretend to be someone else. Someone I totally made up, but whose life was far more interesting than mine. I didn't get too attached to it and found other things to do by the time I was a senior and we got rid of AOL and got comcast later that year. Ihad unlimited access to the internet but Iplayed neopets every chance II forgot about chatrooms and instant messenger until I went off to college in fall 2003. Freshmen couldn't have cars and I was a social recluse so there wasn't much for me to do but stay in my room. The internet was down for nearly a month because of a virus a freshman brought in with their new computer that ate its way through the routers. Once internet access was restored, however, I downloaded AIM and created a new persona for new people to love.
I called myself Blake, born on March 10, 1986, an 17 year old only child from Maryland who moved to Sacramento California just a couple years ago and loved Good Charlotte and Blink 182. I claimed I was so smart that Iskipped 9th grade. I made up some pretty outrageous things during the first few days to make myself appear worth knowing, because who would ever want to know Robin, an 18 year old college Freshman from Richmond, Virginia who never even left the country, let alone the East Coast. I was a boring person. Boring and ordinary. The first few days I used AIM and its chatrooms, Icouldn't tell the difference between music0 and music1, until a guy named Joe from Michigan told me to come into music0. I was already making friends. People liked me. I liked that. I should've stopped after a few days, but I got so attached that I would stay up all night and miss class so I could make up the sleep that I missed talking to Carrie, Michelle, and Joe the night before.
At first I was worried that Iwould be found out. That someone would track my IP or ask for pictures that I didn't have, or want to talk to me on the phone. It would've been easier that way; I could've just stopped getting online. I could've made a new screen name and I could've been honest. The drama that unfolded over the next few months certainly wouldn't have happened if Iweren't such an attention whore.
I developed a particularly close bond with a girl named Carrie, from New Jersey and one day she confessed to liking me a lot. So much so that it strained our friendship and caused her to lie to me that she was over it. It made talking a little easier but I tried to blow it out of proportion and milk the drama for all it was worth. I complained to as many people as I could about how appalled and hurt I was that she didn't think I deserved to know the truth, and that she couldn't be straight with her feelings about me. It made me sound a lot more trustworthy if I got that upset over someone else's lies.Iadded a twist to the whole situation by claiming to be in love with a girl named Jen, whom I called Smithifer. It was our own little e-triangle. It was some drama, but it wasn't enough. I told a select few people that I was experiencing kidney failure as a direct result of my diabletes I've had all my life.If I didn't get a kidney transplant, I had only 6 months to live. I figured I'd be over the chatroom and my new friends by then.
In my real life, I was experiencing college and living away from home for the first time. I have a desperate desire to please people and I have the hardest time saying no, so I joined a couple BIble groups that were just a waste of time to me. Ifinally couldn't take it anymore and resign myself to complete and total honesty, except on the intet because it's only the internet. It turned out to be my whole life for way too long.
Concerning my situation with Carrie and her unresolved feelings for me, Ibegan to confide in another Jen whom Icalled Jennifer for clarification. Joe began to confide in me about a girl named Ashley who was playing mind games with him and another guy named Shane. She ultimately chose Shane and Joe was crushed but she didn't stop there. She tried to steal Chris away from Lainey while she was still with Shane. And eventually, stole the first and so far only guy I've ever loved. I've never loved anyone more.
His name is Eric and we did not get along at all at first. We clashed over Ashley from the beginning.Even before he cheated with her on me. Carrie and I said what a horrible, heartless, selfish person she is, but he wouldn't listen. Ashley and my relationship was never officially defined as anything. We were nice to each other most of the time, in passing. But we never talked intimately after she thought I betrayed her by talking smack about her behind her back. Maybe that's why she stole my Eric away. But it wasn't until April 2004, only a few weeks after Eric and I decided to date because Ihad recently come out as being gay. Another twist in my internet fantasy life that would haunt me to this day.
Eric thought I was stupid and hyper and a clown. He didn't respect me because he didn't think I respected Ashley, who was still with Shane while she and Eric were gradually getting closer. But one day I said something intelligent and his whole perception of me changed. Since then we were inseparable. We did everything together in the chatroom. We had the same fonts and said the same things and liked the same music and had the same sense of humor. We even liked to annoy the same people. He defended me countless times to numerous people and lost a lot of friends because of it. But he was a pothead and that really bothered me. I tried to get him to stop by claiming that i would cut myself if he smoked weed. I also said that I had a history of mental illness and hospital stays. Apparently the drama with Carrie and Smithifer wasn't enough. I wanted more, and I got it.
Our relationship suffered the biggest blow yet when Lainey told me that Eric was cheating on me withAshley. I couldn't believe it. I was in total shock. I was sick to my stomach. I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't leave my bed for days. Eric had to have known what he was doing. He had to have known he was hurting me. I knew Ashley was a slut and a whore but I didn't think she'd ever had a reason to hurt me. It turns out, she didn't need one. But why did she hurt Shane? It wasn't the first time she took advantage of his good nature and faith in her. Eric's and my relationship, however, had another challenge: the chat's resident stoner, Ron. He was always trying to expose some scandal or secret but also pretended to be everyone's friend. He was definitely two-faced. I was always cared of him telling Eric how I felt and that I didn't trust Eric. Eric hated when Iconfided inRon because he didn't trust Ron, either. Eric wanted the whole mess he caused to go way and my talking to Ron just perpetuated it all. That's whenI realized that my emotions had overpowered my intelligence and logic.
I made Eric feel as guilty as possible as often as I could but I still wanted the whole mess to go away. I wanted to go back when Eric and I had no history with and no attachment to each other. I stumbled upon Ashley's livejournals and read anything I could find about her and Eric but somehow she knew I was lurking. She would come into chat from time to time and talk to random people there, but not any regs. I would just pretend I wasn't around and just read everything she typed. She made me shake and my blood run cold, even after almost a year since she and Eric were finished for good, when she visited him and was fat and ugly; completely different from the fake pictures she sent to everyone. When she came back into the chat for the final time and I saw her screen name after I woke up from my name, i just fell to my knees and sobbed into my mattress. Michelle was there to try to comfort me, but I had lost my mind by then. A few days later, I decided the torment was too great and decided to OD. My body puked up all the pills I took on an empty stomach but later that morning Iwas shaking and couldn't breathe well so my dad took me to the ER and I had to go to the loony bin for a day. I felt so terribly helpless that I wrote an 8 page letter to my doctor and she let me leave after only 24 hours.
It wasn't the first time that Ashley came back to torment me. She came back in October 2004, the first time I thought it was over. I couldn't stand it anymore; I couldn't see the two of them together so I stayed out of the chat and got into bed for several months until I came back home for Christmas break. One night, Eric IMed me, wanting to reconcile, claiming he was done withAshley for good. I believed him and came back to the chat on January 1, appropriately. But a few months later, as previously stated, she DID come back. He WASN'T done with her. And I broke down. She did get to see him, but he didn't want to be with her. They were finally over, but I was always suspicious and made Eric feel guilty every now and then, up until we stopped talking.
Once Eric finally got over Ashley, order was restored the the chat and she never came back. She ended up getting pregnant by some guy named Carl and her daughter will be 4 years old in September. the good times. The good times didn't last long, however. People started growing up and getting real lives. The music0 crew began to disintegrate. Max and Lainey invited me to the powerpuff girls chat where I met a whole new group of people with no sex bots. It was full of mostly arrogant scene kids under legal driving age but I met a kid named Josh who was really nice and fun and actually talked to me all night. Augie would show up from time to time as well. But once I left music0, I lost contact with Michelle, Shane, Carrie, and a lot of others. some had already left, like Joe, Melissa, Jennifer, Dan, and Nicole. n00bs were taking over and it wasn't the same. But neither was PPG. I still came into music0 for a while, until Eric had enough of the lies and secrets. I couldn't tell him the truth so Imade up another vague lie but it didn't suffice this time. Instead of telling him the truth, I decided to end our friendship. By the end of the summer in 2006, word had gotten around that I was the biggest fake in the history of the internet. But they still don't know who I really am. Cindy and Eric still made the occasional attempt to reconnect. But as the months and years wore on, their attempts came less and less often.
I decided that the best thing for me was to get back to the real world so I contacted several of my old high school friends and got together with them. I went to see Fall Out Boy with one of my friends whom I've known since elementary school. I even made some new friends and got a new boyfriend. One that I could talk to, not just in an IM window. I think of everyone less each day than I did the day before. Sometimes days, even weeks go by when I don't think of them at all, until a thought of them blindsides me on some idle afternoon or in the middle of the night. But lately I've been thinking about them a lot, even Ashley. I don't think I'll ever completely stop thinking about them, and I know I'll never forget them. But it's a lot easier to deal with the loss when I have a real life to fall back on.
With the help of Max, a hacker from Florida, I stole all her internet aliases from every imaginable program/site. I even found more of her online journals and took them over, too. I told Eric and he thought it was so funny and wanted to join in. I was so relieved because I thought he would be upset that I was still obsessing over Ashley. To this day, I still check her myspace to see if it's still private. I still look at Eric's facebook and myspace. I still see if Michelle has updated her livejournal. She's married now. I've saved chats, IMs, pictures, and drawings from everyone and they're on a CDin my room. I save the pictures I find onEric's facebook. I wonder if they still think about me or if I'm the only one who reminisces about music0. We had a lot of fun. A bunch of us would go into other chatrooms and scroll the star of David on multiple screen names for hours at a time. We played scrambler where the only answer I wanted to get right was Good Charlotte. I was so good at the states game and got so mad when I lost because of lag. I'd laugh so much with those people. I wish I still knew them.
Timeline:
February 2000 I finally get AOL
April 2002 I semi-often visit the music chat on AOL, pretending to be someone I'm not
October 2002 I get comcast cable internet
August 2003 I go away to college
September 2003 I pretend to be 17 year old Blake Randall from Sacramento, California
March 2004 I come out as being gay
April 2004 Eric and I are boyfriend and boyfriend
April 2004 Eric cheats on me with Ashley
May 2004 I find out
October 2004 Eric and I break up and I leave for a few months
December 2004 Eric wants to reconcile
January 2005 I return to the music0 chat
March 2005 Ashley returns and wants to visit Eric
March 2005 I go off the deep end and try to kill myself via overdose, and subsequently go to the ER
April 2005 to December 2005 I steal Ashley's myspaces, livejournals, greatestjournals, xangas, email addresses, and AIM screen names with the help of Max, the resident hax0r of music0
March 2006 Eric finally had enough of my lies and secrets but I still couldn't tell him the truth. We stop talking
April 2006 I try to contact old friends from high school
July 2006 I meet Patrick in REAL life and start dating him.
July 2006 to March 2007 Eric tries to reconcile but I couldn't face the truth and don't respond to his efforts
Sometime in 2007 the music0 crew disbands
June 2008 Cindy, an on again/off again chat reg gets a summer job with Eric at a summer camp and they begin dating
December 2008 Eric moves to Tampa to attend college with Cindy.
Eric We happened to find the music0 chat around the same time. So close together, in fact, that I don't know which one of us was there first. He likes hip hop and smokes a lot of weed so he and Ashley immediately formed a friendship based on common interests. He was my first and only e-boyfriend and he never considered us to be a real couple. I've never gotten over him and I don't ever want to forget about him
Ashley She was the chat's resident slutbag. She played Joe and Shane, tried to cheat on Shane once with Chris (who was dating Lainey at the time) and started dating Eric when she knew that he was with me. She's pretty much a heartless bitch.
Joe He's a little slow, but he has the best of intentions and a good heart. He left the chat not long after it came out that Eric was cheating on me with Ashley, whom Joe was planning to meet in Las Vegas in July 2004.
Shane I didn't know him very well for the first few months, but when we had heartache in common, we really bonded and he's the nicest, smartest guy I've ever met. He didn't deserve to get hurt like he did.He likes metal and hockey.
Chris He acted a lot older than he was. He had a tough guy, punk rock persona but it soon melted away and he showed that he's a sweet guy but doesn't warm up to new people easily. He was tested by Ashley just after he and Lainey started dating, but he resisted her.
Lainey She's the one who told me about Eric and Ashley. She always made sure everyone was alright and did whatever she could to make them feel better.
Jen/Smithifer I met her the very first time I was in music. It was her first time there, too. I don't know what it was that made us instantly click, but she was my first friend from the chat.
Jennifer She was my best friend in the chat, even though I didn't start talking to her until I needed someone to share my dramatic life with. She's a good listener and a genuine person. I could tell her anything and we would talk for hours.
Ron is unpredictable and not to be trusted but I wanted any kind of sympathy I could get from anyone who would listen so I confided in him when I had no one else, despite my better judgment. He was a shape shifter, and I could never tell if he was being serious or not so he made me really nervous.
Carrie she was the first one who showed me her pictures in chat and I was her little brother and she was my big sister. After our friendship changed, I liked to amuse myself by annoying her with Eric.
Michelle We didn't always get along until she told me about how poorly Ashley treated her, too. I felt sorry for her and saw that she really is a good, caring person. She sent me a birthday card she made for me. She was there the night I saw Ashley and Eric talking in the chat for the first time in months before Iwas sent to the loony bin. She was always the voice of reason.
Cindy she was 14 when I first met her. She liked Eric and she told me, so I appreciated her honesty. She said that she wouldn't go after him as long as I was still not over him. After I abandoned my friendships though, I shouldn't mind that they're dating but I do because I still want to be with him and now they're living together. I'm secretly hoping it won't work out, even though she has every right to date him. I don't deserve to get what I want.
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