The following is the second installment of many kickass excerpts from Brian Alan Ellis’s new book A Series of Pained Facial Expressions Made While Shredding Air Guitar
ACADEMIC THINK-PIECE ABOUT HOW OUR CULTURE WENT FROM ART GARBAGE (LAST TANGO IN PARIS) TO POP GARBAGE (FIFTY SHADES OF GREY) BUT WRITTEN BY HONEY BOO BOO
Pretty sure introverts, loners, and misanthropes have never needed kids as an excuse to not want to hang out with anyone, but seriously, when you go to a Tropical Smoothie and order a “Beach Bum” to bring home to your girlfriend because she asked you to and the counter girl asks if you want dark or white chocolate, which you mishear as “black or white” chocolate, and you tell her “black” for some reason, maybe because you thought you were suddenly at Starbucks ordering coffee, which is how you generally take your coffee, and the counter girl starts laughing, maybe because she (and everyone in Tropical Smoothie at that moment) just happens to be African-American, and you feel stupid, so very stupid, and guilty, but mostly stupid because your brain usually turns to mush whenever you’re in social situations and you probably would have done the exact same thing had the counter girl been Asian or Caucasian or Hispanic, but you feel terrible that your absentmindedness could somehow be misconstrued as racism, that there is even a remote possibility that the workers at this particular Tropical Smoothie will mutter “white devil” every time you stop in to order a drink with a stupid-ass name for your lovely girlfriend, who is a diamond and deserves the world, but goddamn it!
A Series of Pained Facial Expressions Made While Shredding Air Guitar: Poems, Observations, Lists, Letters, Notes, Bullshit Aphorisms, and General Tales of Ordinary Crabbiness (House of Vlad Productions) comes out March 2016. Visit houseofvlad.tumblr.com, for more information.
