I don’t want to sneak behind your back about this. I thought you should know, straight up. I’m in the market for some new shoes. I still plan to wear you, but don’t expect it to be a daily occurrence. You’ve done this to yourself. If we continue on the path we’re already on, one day and one day soon you’re going to fall right off my feet….and then were will we be? So get ready to make a new friend. I don’t know what type of shoes they will be yet, but I promise they will be more expensive than you were. Ones that won’t vomit all over my toes because I decide to walk to the grocery store instead of drive. I don’t mean to sound harsh, I just want the reality to sink in. If you pull your shit together then I will still wear you to the cool events. I enjoy showing you off and you compliment my style quite well. Don’t abandon hope. We’re still pals, I just want you to appreciate my feet a little more. I love you dinosaur shoes, and I hope that after you’ve had time to calm down from this letter, that you’ll be able to say it back.

Much Love

Travis

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I’m not sure what your internet situation is inside Annie’s womb (I know they have wi-fi in the apartment), so I’m not sure if and when you will read this letter. In the hopes that you do, I’d like to offer up a few words and maybe some scattered advice, hoping to better prepare you for what it will be like being raised by two of my closest friends, and what having me as an Uncle might do to you mentally.

When Ward and Annie (those are your parents names) first told me of your tiny existence I was blind-sided by a few different elements. Shock, happiness and something else that no one can really describe when people who are a part of your daily life announce life changing news. It’s a strange feeling that presses every emotion available into a tiny feeder cube that slowly dissolves in your stomach acids. I believe the reason this element is so hard to describe is because it is not happening directly to you, but it is non-the-less an event that will also change your life. Yes, little Pollywog, you are about to change things. You’ll be stirring up a can of old paint. The color is still beautiful but it’s been sitting static for a long time now and a film has claimed its surface.

You can breathe easy about one thing, your parents will love you and raise you to be a pretty kick-ass human being. That being said, you will be raised surrounded by madness. I can only imagine that is just how it is for children raised in the industry of film and television. Pure madness. Not to mention you will be seeing a good deal of me. That is enough to drive anyone to drink…but not until you’re 21 (I only said 21 cause your parents might read this, but start earlier…it’s fun). 

Yes, it’s true. I am not your Uncle by blood, but that can easily be fixed. As soon as you are official born (meaning you reside outside the tummy) I will see what  can do about getting a little sample of your blood to inject into me. Hell, maybe it’ll slow down these gray hairs I keep finding. Also, I have so many great films to introduce you to. I know your dad will as well, but I’ll be damn if I’m not there for your first screening of Evil Dead 2. Your mom will most likely shy away from singing to you, but encourage her as she has a very nice voice you can benefit from. 

Listen, Pollywog, I’m not really sure where I’m going with any of this. I just kind of want to say hi and that I look forward to meeting you. You are a most welcome to what is a very untraditional, but close family.

Much Love

Travis

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Well, well, well. Where the hell have you been? So you think after however long it’s been that you can just waltz back into my life? You’re lucky you’re so damn cute.  I’ve missed you, and I’m glad you’re back. It’s kind of nice looking back over the projects you and started ages ago but never finished. We were filled with such inspiration! But then you started looking around. You were bored with me. I caught you staring at other projects while I was at home slaving over the ones we had already started. Pretty soon, you were dipping your honey stick into so many pots that I had to throw my hands in the air and say, “enough. I am not your whore, productive streak!”

After that, as you will recall, we both went our separate ways. Some nights I would lie awake and worry that you were somewhere dead in a ditch, or wandering the streets looking to trade blow jobs for plot ideas. But mostly I just found solace in short form thrills and stories. They fed me for a good while, dulling the pain of your memory. 

Then recently you showed up at my place looking beat to hell. You were unshaven and your breath stank of sour hops and barley. You didn’t apologize, you just set your dirty hobo-stick down and went into my office. I decided not to say anything and see where you might be going with this. Before I knew it, we were working together again. You and I, we were actually writing, and better still, we were enjoying. I got you cleaned up and something to eat and we dug in even deeper. 

We never have apologized to each other, but I think that would just be a bit redundant, because the scripts we are turning out together seems more than enough.

Much Love

Travis

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My girlfriend and I happen to live in an apartment that faces a large office building. This building is one of the many unfortunate structures that is plagued by the new (and ugly as fuck)  trend of full building banner advertisements. While I do not like them, over the past couple years, my lady and I find a bizarre excitement in seeing what new ad we’ll get to stare at for the next month. On the rare occasion we get lucky and a cool movie ad will go up. But mostly they are always horrible eye-sores. 

For what little joy we get out of having a brand new ad, you, Pepsi, have squashed it. I was totally fine when your first obnoxious ad went up. It was abrasive and unattractive, but it was also colorful and had a fun word on it. POP! So I dealt with it. Hell, it’s only a month. After that I was hoping I might get the Drag Me to Hell poster! What I got….sorry, I’m fuming a bit….what I got was ANOTHER DAMN PEPSI AD! Why? What is the point? Why not just leave the old one up another month? Why tear down one and put up another, only this time exclaiming, HOORAY! Trust me, your product does not cause this amount of cheer into my daily vocabulary. You can take your HOORAY and POP it up your ass can.

This letter comes to you in the form of a threat. Give me back my monthly rotation of variety, or I shall sit in front of my window every night and drink Coke-a-Cola Classic. I swear to God I will. 

Much love

Travis

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I’ll admit, I never gave you much thought. I never caught myself pondering about what you must be thinking or feeling. I certainly never bothered to get to know your likes and dislikes. Perhaps it is my lack of interest that caused you to betray me, or maybe you just wanted to get my attention and draw focus from the right thigh. Whatever the case may be, could you knock it the fuck off?

I was concerned for you at first. When you started feeling strange a week after I wrecked my bike, I figured you were just a bit traumatised and would eventually pull yourself together. It was a pretty harsh crash and we hit that sidewalk real damn hard. I just figured you’d walk it off just like shoulder and face did. They both pained me for a bit but then eventually grew up and got on with life. Not you. You decided to shut down and render yourself numb. You took away my feeling, but oddly enough still allowed pain to shoot directly into the numb spot. How does that even work, lefty? Huh? Is it dead or alive and screaming? I remember that I couldn’t prop you up for to long on things or you made the whole damn leg sore as hell.

Scared that I might have killed you with my careless steering and not paying attention to elevated curbs, I took you to the doctor…who sent me to another doctor, who gave me an MRI. Those results came back with a shrug and a head scratch, so that doctor sent me to another damn doctor. Do you know what that final doctor told me about you, left thigh? He told me that he really didn’t know why you were the way you were, and the best he could guess is that there was a damaged nerve. One tiny fucking damaged nerve. Now, that was just a guess on his part, so either you are doing this to me on purpose or you’re a real big pussy who shuts down due to one tiny fucking nerve. 

You have been a lot better lately, but the random times you decide to make yourself known are quite annoying. Just when I get used to your numbness you sprinkle a bit of pain in there to keep me steamed. I’m writing this letter to ask you to cut this shit out. Enough with the back and forth dance of pain. I use you just as much as I use righty, so don’t sing me any sad songs about mistreatment. The bike crash was an accident and I guess you got the shit end of that stick. Deal with it.

Much love

Travis

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You’re still there. I barely notice you anymore as you’ve become as natural a part of the environment as the desk and computer. Your tiny legs jutting out from your crushed body seems no more unusual to me then my stapler. You are just one of the things that make up my work space.

I remember the day we met. Do you? Wait, of course you don’t. Your brain is unable to recall memories because I smashed it flat into the wall 8 years ago. Well, I remember it. I had just started this office job and learning the ropes. Still a fresh young face in Hollywood, this job would only be temporary as I would be selling a screenplay at any moment, propelling my career into the tinsel-stained stratosphere. I spied you on the wall, a mere few inches above my head. You were kinda cute. Tiny body, thin little legs. You kept a casual pace, as if perhaps that slab of wall was your beach. I’m not sure why I did it. Perhaps I saw some sick metaphor in the fact that you were ahead of me in Hollywood. Maybe at the time I was looking to crush a bug like I planed to crush this town. Or maybe I was just being an evil bastard that day. I really can’t remember. All I know is that I took the end of my pen and dotted you flat with it. Then I left you there. Like some discarded Christ figure for all other spiders to see. A scarecrow warning. 

Now here we are. 8 years have passed since our dance and I am looking up at you once again.  Things are different though. Now there are greater emotions rushing through my body. You are no longer just a dead spider on the wall. You are a shard of jagged glass floating freely through my blood stream, poking and tearing its way around my body. I look at you now and I feel the weight of time. You are the wasted hours I have sat at this desk, plotting my grand exit, but failing year after year. You are a bended fun house mirror, showing me I am both the bug and the squasher of my own island of paddleless boats. You, dead arachnid, are now punching me square in the face with each new/old day that goes by. You are a calendar, a clock, an hourglass and a watch, constantly reminding me how many fucking years I have been here. Dead spider…this ends today.

I am cleaning you off the wall. Goodbye.

Much Love

Travis

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Walk with me for a moment two years in the past. The night we first met. I was at Target wandering the aisles. You were on display along with a few other patterns. I’m not sure you saw me straight away, but I saw you. I never realized have desperate I was for comfort until my eyes fell upon your familiar logo running down two soft cotton legs. I had always partook in your beverage, in fact, it remains my favorite amongst the soda pop family. Maybe that’s why I fell so hard so fast. I know you felt the same. I didn’t have a lot of money, but I did have two long, hairy walking sticks that needed nightly vacations. To me, it was worth all the gold in the world. 

I took you home. Do you remember that first night? It was December and a bit chilly in the apartment. I needed you more than ever, and you delivered. The moment we sat down together on the couch I new something miraculous had occured. I’ve never been one to put much stock into fate, Peppers, but comfy pants like you make me question everything. Sometimes you were so lovingly comfortable that I would nod off during Blu-Ray action films. Even though the picture was so crystal clear, and the action so over-produced and loud, you still wrapped me in your Sand Man spell.

We’ve couched it now for two years, Peppers. Two years! What a time it’s been. Which is why it saddens me to have to tell you this. I’m shopping around for new comfy pants. It’s not that I don’t love you anymore…actually I think I love you more than ever. But you’re old. Let’s face simple facts; you have a large hole in your crotch and I am to lazy to sew you back up. The washer and dryer have beaten you around the block and you don’t fit like you used to my love. I will treasure you always, just from now on, I will treasure you from iside the drawer with all the other things I never wear. Then I’m sure a year or two down the road I will treasure you at the Goodwill I leave you at. But know this, I WILL treasure you. We still have some time together…let’s make it count.

Much Love

Travis

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So, you’re finally turning one. Sitting up all on your own and crawling are two of your major accomplishments. That’s good, because they will come in handy with the advice I’m about to lay on you. But before I rock your infant world with wisdom, let’s take a brief look back at your first year of life.

You slid on out of your mom’s vagina…which is more detail than I really needed to write down considering it was my sisters vag…Oh, sweet god, stop it Travis! New paragragh.

Drooling, shitting, pissing, eating, gurgling, crying, smiling. These are the verbs that dominated that first year. You were a joy to both your mom and your dad. You were passed around from grandma to grandma. From aunt to uncle. From cousin to friend. Everyone body at one time or another got their grubby mitts on you, bounced you on their knee and spit out sentences that sounded as if their head was cut open and doctors were pushing needles into select areas of their brain. “Boo boo gaaaa booo gaaa!”

Well, here you are. One year old. Harper, it’s time to rock this crib. Listen to me, because I’ve lived it. I was there and I blew it (I think). You have a unique opportunity to really let loose. The beautiful thing about being one is that you’ll never be able to remember it. This means zero regrets. No guilty concious. You are free to do whatever feels right. It will be the only time in your life you can accomplish this without getting in some sort of emotional trouble. I’ve done so many things that I look back on with sadness and regret. My heart weighs heavy in the present, but at the time it felt right. At the time it was exactly what I needed. But Harper, you pay for it later, so don’t waste this window of opportunity. Go out there and party! Break some hearts, get into fights, smoke like chimney and take risk after risk. Become a pirate and plunder somescurvy bastards. Steal a car and drive the coast of Mexico. Join an elite team of assassins and learn to “curve the bullet”. Stow away on a space shuttle and wage war with an alien race. Try human flesh (cooked of course, with mash potatoes and greens). Break the world record for longest time treading in shark infested waters with dead bloody fish strapped to yourself.  You won’t remember any of it and no one will get angry because your a friggin’ baby! There will be no ghosts of your actions coming back to haunt you. You’ll have lived in complete honesty with yourself for a year or two. You might not be able to recall it, but I am most certain you will feel it, and it will feel good. After that you can pick up the responsibility of being human and live out the rest of your life not doing exactly what you want to do.

This is just a small nugget of advice from your Uncle. It’s all I have to give, but believe me, it is priceless. Pricelss advice in which you’ll forget all about someday. Like when you’re three or so.

Much Love

Travis

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Let me just start this letter by saying that I love you. Growing up in Indiana, my family always sought the
company of dogs, birds and fish. In the Betz household the word “cat” was almost as dirty as the word “shit”, “foreskin” or “democrat”. When I was twelve years dumb, an old school chums pet cat dug its claws right into my thighs. In the horror films that littered my childhood the cat was always symbol of evil, bad omens or the cheap scare. All of these elements, mixed in a big ol’ pot of ignorance, had an effect on me. I was conditioned to believe that cats were the dingleberries of Satan, harvesting souls for his county famous wicked sin gumbo (and that the democrats wanted to steal all my precious young boy money). You, my sweet pussy, have changed everything.

You are adorable and a bundle of fun to play with. You love to have your belly scratched and your fascination with paper bags causes me to grin like the joker (circa – Jack Nicholson). Your pirate eye and muted squeak are sometimes the only things that  calm the inner-turmoil of my darkened days. All of this and a million other reasons are why I love you.

But…

For the love of all that is fucking holy, would you please stop sneezing and covering my entire life in your gooey-ass, globular-green snot balls?!? Seriously, it was cute for a while, but I promise you bitch, it’s getting old. I can appreciate the couch you’ve claimed as “snot mountain”. You know what, it’s all yours. But when you think that you’re going to expand your empire…you, my little ball of cute, are sadly mistaken. The bed is mine. You may sleep with me, yes, but then you best get that nose of yours in line. I refuse to keep waking up in the middle of night to a face full of your creamy nasal mucus. I am also well aware that the walls in the apartment should not be wrinkled and glossy, so don’t tell me it was like that when I moved in! I guaruntee you I could hop on Craigslist and find someone who eats cute kitties. Don’t make me be that asshole. I have enough shit in my life, I don’t need your snot glazing it.

I love you. Now fucking stop it.

Much Love
Travis

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