Brad Walsh

I Am Not Jim Carrey

Man oh man, this morning I got off the train with my iPod playing “Bloodbeat” by Patrick Wolf (I’m getting more and more into his first album; it used to bother me but now I’m blinded by love and it sounds better), and a man with a saxophone started a solo right as the song turned instrumental. It fit so well into the song and sounded so perfect where it was that I had one of those moments where I expected a spotlight to fall out of the sky. All the people from my adult life who resembled people I’d known as a child would come out from behind the poles in the Broadway-Lafayette station clapping, and I’d realize that multiple characters I’d encountered in my 23 years had been played by the same actors.

It made me wonder why, in the age of ultimate Celebreality, nobody has yet birthed a new incarnation of “This Is Your Life.” Blend “The Surreal Life” with “Punk’d” and “Oprah” and everybody in the damn country would be tuning in at eightsevencentral. Book Sharon Stone for an appearance on the “Tonight Show,” to be filmed at four p.m. and broadcast later in the evening, and ambush her after a minute of smalltalk. This… is… your… Life! Childhood friends, estranged family members, middle school teachers, and neighborhood hooligans would speak from off screen and tell embarrassing stories of pre-fame Sharon. I would watch no matter whose life it was. Jon Heder? Okay. Fairuza Balk? Why not? Kim Fields and Nancy McKeon? Let’s do this.

Then as I walked up Spring I passed the guy I pass every day who always pretends like he’s not looking at me, but he totally is. Maybe he knows who I am. Maybe he reads this. If so, he should do something particular the next time we pass. Maybe he should snap a finger.

There’s a new girl in the office. She seems nice. She also seems like she could do Saturday morning cartoon voice-overs for lots of money.

A girl named Jessica e-mailed me a while ago and asked if I minded if she painted me from a photo, and I said I didn’t, and she sent me this today:

I will put it in a gold frame and mount it above my fireplace, just like Elvis.