GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #301: MY CANE

 Ever since I was a young man, I had a phrase I've always wanted to say. I never could because I was never old enough.

I got this line from an author I used to highly respect. He lives in disgrace now, as he should, because he didn't treat women authors as well as he claimed he did. Hint: he used to get annoyed when people used to confuse him for Nick Cave's excellent violinist. Now, I'll wager he wished that people would think he was Nick Cave's excellent violinist.

I used to have another quote of his on my office wall for the last 15 years: DRUNK SINCE 1983, AND I CAN STILL DEFEAT YOUR ENEMIES. A lot of people thought that was me in that picture because I shared the same evil genius beard when I had it. But the picture showed nothing above his eyebrows, which would have shown a bald head. I have a full head of luscious hair at the age of 42. That is one of two positive things I can say about my physical appearance. I have run into my fellow high school students over the years and have discovered that I'm a rarity in that I have all of my hair, and it is a veritable mop. Almost all of it is still black, too. I'm not a vain man, but I'm glad I still have all of my hair. I figured I'd be bald by thirty. I had my mom's hair, and all males until me on that side went bald by 20. But my dad died nearly 60 years of age with a full head, so I guess I have his genes to thank.

By the same thought process I thought I would age early. I would need a cane early. But I never thought I would need it this soon.

His other phrase: SHUT THE FUCK UP OR I'LL HIT YOU WITH MY CANE. I have eagerly wanted to say that to someone. Now that I need a cane to get by most days, I actually can say it. 

But none of you fuckers have given me an excuse. Please. Say something stupid to me. I want to say this line so badly. And mean it. Seriously. I'd like it if a stranger gave me the opportunity, but I need this in my life.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #300: TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL!

 *ahem*

Sorry about the title. To quote Dr. King Schultz, "I could not help myself."

This column has run for six years. Six. Motherfucking years. And now we're on the 300th entry. Dear fucking God, have I really been doing this for so long? Have I no life?

I went down a rabbit hole of nostalgia tonight, rereading the first 100 GF columns. While I stand by every one of them, I don't think that I'm the same person who wrote that first column. That guy and me have a lot of years between us. A lot has happened. I'm not even close to that guy anymore. I like him (in all honesty, I liked him more than I thought I would), but the John Bruni of his late thirties is definitely not the same John Bruni of his early forties. There has been a lot of heartbreak and whiskey between him and me. If I told him that Gramps would die not too long after his 90th birthday, I think I would have broken him. If he knew I was such a huge fan of opioids that I sometimes lie to get them, he probably would have disapproved. He thought his hypocrisy had limits, but he has no idea that my hypocrisy turns out to have no bounds. He didn't even know how shitty 2016 would be, much less how fucking agonizing 2020 is. The idea that a lunatic reality show host with delusions of grandeur and the worst comb over in history as US President is completely alien to him. He knew Trump as a fraud and a conman and one of the most horrible people alive, but he had no idea that you chumps would actually let him be US President. He would be most fucking disappointed. He prayed publicly for the DeathBird to embrace us all, but he never would have suspected a fucking plague would do the job. He would probably find comfort in the fact that Keith Richards is somehow still alive. (Ah, but wait! The end of the year is at least a decade away.)

He would never have thought I would be unemployed for more than half a year and doing battle with the Unemployment Office the whole way. He would never have envisioned me cashing in on my 401k. But I think he would have been proud of his published work, especially BLOOD, which he had long ago abandoned as unwriteable but turned out to be pretty fucking good in final draft form. If I don't say so myself. (And I do, dammit. Allow me some fucking vanity, fuckers.)

Fuck! I wish I could go back in time and slap that son of a bitch in the face and tell him about all this shit. Especially about how wrong he is about the probability of the IT remake and Bill and Ted 3 happening. I think he would have found much pleasure and joy in that knowledge.

But here's something he didn't know at the time: how many good friends he will make in his journey through life. How many of them would stick by him despite losing his mind several times. Despite his time on the psych ward and his very regrettable suicide attempt. Despite all the people who would prefer he didn't drink and the disappointment he sometimes inspires in people, especially to his closest loved ones. He'd be baffled if he heard me call myself an alcoholic. He's still in the mindset that he's a drunkard. He hasn't gone through alcohol withdrawals yet. At the same time, I've inhabited the philosophy of early Gregory House: "I said I was an addict. I didn't say I had a problem." I wish he would have watched that show live because he would have recognized House as the voice at the back of his head that he always censored in order to be nicer or more polite.

Actual scene from the ER:

DOCTOR: You need to stop drinking, or you'll be dead by 50.

ME: Oh, moral platitudes. I love those.

Viewed just yesterday, an actual scene from HOUSE, MD:

WILSON: (saying whatever sanctimonious shit he usually says)

HOUSE: Oh, moral platitudes. I was running low on those.

Fuck, I even have the gimp leg to go with House . . . and I have a cane to use as a weapon.

And sorry to my past self, but your efforts to #SaveConstantine fail. Good news: he has a guest appearance on the CRISIS CW crossover, along with Lucifer, who didn't get his show canceled forever. The new season is on Netflix, which I will watch very soon.

Funny. I kind of thought I might make a very brief and non-professional speech about the Spartans and how Frank Miller was surprisingly faithful to history in his book. But better history fans than I have done that, and I'd rather keep GF columns personal.

This year has been the worst of my life. No job. No money. No prospects. Everything I write turns on me and throws me into a corner until I have to destroy the whole thing and start new. Even the shit I wrote on the psych ward bites back. Well, except for one thing that absolutely no one knows I'm writing. That's going all right. I spend most times driving to forest preserves and reading books. I just finished THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD. My mp3 in my car has not worked for months, and it kicked on today, for no discernible reason, and played the score to the movie, THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD. It was actually pretty gratifying. I almost finished EMPIRE by Gore Vidal. Before I got my own books back on the psych ward, I lucked out and was placed in a room previously occupied by a reader who left their books behind. Gore Vidal was the only author I'd heard of, so I started reading that one. It is a fucking masterpiece of historical fiction. I took it with me when I left the psych ward.

This has gotten long, and hopefully not too boring or self-referential. I'm just excited to still be here, even if I'm neck-deep in shit. 300 fucking columns. Six fucking years.

Fuck that ER doc. I'm going to beat his prediction. I'm going to be here at 51. And then? I'm going to beat both of my parents and actually make it to 60. After that? No promises.

I hope to write many more of these GF columns. I kind of regret calling these GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS. I was a younger man. I wanted to grab people's attention by the throat. But as noted in several (sometimes very drunken) columns, you're not fuckers. Not a one of you.

You're the best friends I've ever had.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #299: WHAT DO THE IT REMAKE AND BILL AND TED FACE THE MUSIC HAVE IN COMMON?

 There is one thing that the IT remake and Bill and Ted Face the Music have in common: both are movies that people have been talking about for fucking years. It got to the point where I decided that I would never believe either of them happening. I said, of both films, that I would not believe either was actually happening until I sat in the theater and saw the opening credits for each movie.

When IT CHAPTER 1 was announced as finished, I said that it was bullshit. It wasn't real. I fully believed that I would be sitting in my theater seat with popcorn and Coke, and the opening credits would roll and Tim Curry as Pennywise would say, "Just kidding, John Bruni! You fool! Sit back for the full time of the original IT TV movie!HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

That didn't happen. I began to have more hope for Bill and Ted 3. And then the plague happened, and I realized there was no way in hell I'd see the movie in a theater. Much to my shock and glee, it was released On Demand, and I got to watch it from my own home. I could not have been happier with the result. I have always loved the idea of a couple of lovable idiots who save the world through the universal power of music. If you don't, I suspect you might not be human. And to watch the third film unfold made me feel young again. It was great to see how they save the world. It was awe inspiring and very beautiful. I had a wonderful time.

This means that I might be wrong about another possible trilogy that was never finished. So Hollywood . . . when are we finally going to finish the Weekend at Bernie's trilogy?!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #298: A MOST BEAUTIFUL MOMENT.

 To be read to this song.

Every year, on the anniversary of his death, my family gets together to visit my grandfather's grave. Due to the plague this year, we didn't get to go. I try to visit him as often as I can. I promised myself that if I was ever in the neighborhood, for whatever reason, I would stop and visit. I usually bring two airplane bottles of Jim Beam. That was his favorite drink. At the conclusion of each visit I would pour one into the ground on his side of the grave while drinking the other for myself. (On the left side is my grandmother's mom, and Gramps is on the far right side. Between them is my grandmother. She has recently changed her mind and wants to be cremated instead, like her daughter, my mom.)

When I got off the psych ward I wanted to see him again. But my liquor store didn't have Jim Beam. I got Old Forrester, which I like, but it still felt like a betrayal. I went to see him regardless. I told him about the psych ward. I also told him that he picked the right time to check out. He would not have liked this world now one bit. Sadly, he would have voted for Trump, and I think he would have refused to wear a mask during this plague. But I loved him more than I have loved anyone else in the world. Everything good in me is because of him. I sat there next to him. Or maybe above him. I apologized for the Old Forrester and imagined he forgave me. I poured his shot and drank mine. I told him goodbye until next time and threw the empty airplane bottles into the garbage next to the hill that forbade people from sledding on it in the winter. I started my way out of the cemetery when I saw something that made me stop.

I saw a man on a camping chair next to a grave. He looked maybe ten years older than me. He had a guitar in his lap, and he belted out the most sorrowful song I have ever heard. I stopped my car and lowered the window for the full effect. Normally I would leave the grieving to themselves, but I couldn't help myself. I looked at the grave and saw it was a woman who died in 2020. Two days ago. Born in 1969. The guitar sounded great, but it was the mournful sound of his voice that nailed me to my drivers seat like a butterfly on a display board. I don't know if you know Terry Reid, but his song sounded a lot like this. I don't cry often. It was beaten out of me at an early age. But I couldn't help but weep my eyes out as I listened to this man's ode to his dead lover. Tears streamed down my cheeks, but I tried to be quiet so as not to disturb him and his grief. His song built higher and higher until his own voice cracked. He couldn't continue as he screamed her name and wept into his hands. He gave out honking tears into his palms until he realized he was being watched. He turned back to look at me. Our eyes locked, and we saw how much we were each crying. He nodded, still shaking with grief, and I nodded back, my own grief wetting my face. He turned back to his love and fell to his knees, touching the grass just outside the dirt outline from where she had been buried. I thought I should drive away then, and I couldn't stop crying until I got home.

I hate humanity. I have several friends who have apocalypse theories, and I hope at least one of them is right. We don't deserve this wonderful planet we somehow live on. None of them like it when I say that we need to fast track this shit.

But I'm not a monster. Not at heart. I find these moments in life and revel in them, no matter how hard it might be for me. There is great beauty in this world if you're looking. Fuck. You're going to think I'm a good person if I continue along these lines, but take my word for this. Sorrow brings out the best in us. Sorrow kills the worst in us. Sorrow reminds us that love is real and can move us to great moments.

If you love someone, and in this world I don't take that for granted, tell them so. I told my grandfather often. My mom, too. I wish I'd told my dad, but he was very emotionally shut off, which I suppose I inherited from him despite not knowing him for many years. And I never imagined he would die so young.

Love is the answer. I weep as I write this. Don't worry. I'm not getting soft on you. My regularly scheduled misanthropy will continue shortly. But I mean it. Find someone you love and let them know you love them.