Who's that on Six Sentences? Why it is me, silly, of course.

If you guys don't check out six sentences very often you are missing out. This is, in my opinion, some of the finest wicked short work out there. Pay particular attention to Madame Z. and Kimi Goodrich.

Thanks, as always, to Rob.

"Get up, come on get down with the sickness"

I don't know about anybody else, but I know I am going to be sick about 16 hours before I get sick. My throat gets dry, I get irritable, and I lose my appetite.

That happened last night while I was in the middle of a double shift, which consequently lead into a double shift today. I hate being sick at work, mostly because I have this overburdened sense of responsibility that prevents me from taking time off when I need to. Anyway, I lament.

My friend Amy (who I am going to get see fingers crossed in a couple of weeks) does this playlist thing. Here is my installment for today, since I am too lazy to do anything else today.

If only it were socially acceptable to make a mix tape #2

1. The Sick Bed Of Cuchuliann -- The Pogues -- Rum, Sodomy and The Lash
   
2. Sick of Myself -- Matthew Sweet -- 100% Fun
   
3. Sick Day -- Fountains of Wayne -- Fountains of Wayne
   
4. Ill Troubadour -- David Garza -- [hear it at www.myspace.com/davidgarza]
   
5. Black Coffee in Bed -- Squeeze -- Singles 45s and Under
   
6. Medicine Hat -- Flin Flon -- A-Ok
   
7. The End of Medicene -- The New Pornographers -- Electric Version
   
8. Things Can Only Get Better -- Howard Jones -- Howard Jones: Best of
   
9. Nothing Better -- Postal Service -- Give Up
   
10. Feeling Yourself Disintegrate -- The Flaming Lips -- Soft Bulletin
    
11. Comfortably Numb -- The Scissor Sisters -- A Touch of Class S***s!
    

That mix tape goes to eleven. Here's to feeling better.

"I put on a fake smile and start the evening show"

So I mentioned earlier that my grandfather thinks that there hasn't been good movie made since 1979. Which is the year that Marion Morrison (a.k.a. John Wayne) passed away. For a long time I have felt like I should put up a fight and for the most part I did. I subjected the poor old man to Adventures in Babysitting, Breakfast Club and Big Trouble in Little China all for naught.

I think in hindsight if I had picked my selections a little more cafefully I might have won him over. But then again we are talking about a man who has a visceral hatred for Dances With Wolves (and not because it unleashed Kevin Costner onto an unsuspecting and unprepared world, although that is also a correct answer) because he thinks it is unrealistic. Specifically the movie was ruined for him when a commander shoots himself at the beginning of the movie. He thinks it is disrespectful and maybe I agree with him. But he hated it and walked out of the theater and sat on a bench in the mall for four hours when my mother--who loved that movie--took him to see it.

The point of all of this is that I am starting to feel like my grandfather and I blame the marketing machine in Hollywood. There are essentially two film seasons now. Summer Blockbuster Season, which lasts from the beginning of May until Labor Day, and Oscar Season, which seems to start in October and run through the end of the year. There isn't really even a Holiday season you can count on anymore because the Oscar stuff has become such a boon for the studios and their is really only so much that a major studio can put out every year that Holiday Season usually runs smack into the Oscar heavy hitters... but I digress.

The point is that the state of movies right now in Providence is abyssmal and I feel like I am waiting with bated breath until either Spiderman 3 comes out or Pirates of the Caribbean 3 comes out. And not because I so love craptastic fluff action movies; but because they will seem downright epic compared to the nonsense that is out right now.

Oh well, seems like a really long way to say that the movies that are out suck, but there it is.

"Let us talk about some trivial things we like..."

So a couple of things, to conquer first:

1. I love the fact that there is a scheme to my lovely wife’s blog. Every single post has a title that is taken from a line of one of Shakespeare’s plays. So I am going to shamelessly rip that idea off of her and adopt something similar.
   
2. My very dear friend, Amy Guth has been nominated for a blogger’s choice award and it is pretty important that she win. Not because I have an overriding loyalty to her but because I want to be able to say that I knew where when she was just a pastry chef trying to get a break. So if you are a friend of her’s already make sure that you vote for her, if you haven’t checked out her site or read her book, you are painfully behind the times, get with it, join the twenty-first century. Sheesh.
   
3. It looks like I might be moving soon. Before you start applauding too loudly, I hate moving; with the intensity of a thousand white-hot suns. Moving to me is like Britney Spears first album to my mom. Or like… Any movie that doesn’t star Gregory Peck or John Wayne to my grandfather (more on that later).

So I went to Boston last night, which was fun; the old lady and I took a train up to go and just get out of town for the night. It was great.

We started off with the intention of doing something we hadn’t done before, so we went to an Ethiopian food place called Addis Red Sea. Very interesting dining experience considering I have never had Ethiopian food before; they didn’t give us utensils, you get bread and food and you can shovel or manipulate the food into your mouth. It was strange trying to relearn how to do something like eat.

Don’t get me wrong, I eat with my fingers all the time, but not typically spicy dishes that involve a sauce. It is usually more like fried shrimp or calamari. The food itself was good, I would go back but I am going to check out another Ethiopian food place before I rush back to that one.

While we there though we were sitting next to this couple (two men if you have to know) and we both left the place thanking the G-ds that we weren’t single anymore, it has been almost nine and a half years since I was single. Listening to these guys talk was really strange because it seemed like it was a blind date. One of them, we will call this one Reggie (he was sitting on my right), had just gotten out of a relationship that sounded like it was pretty serious, and he talked about it almost all night long: my previous relationship this, my previous relationship that, my ex-boyfriend this, my ex-boyfriend that, it was really off putting and I wasn’t even dining with him. The other guy, we will call Lemy (because he was on my left), just sat there and I wasn’t even completely convinced that he wasn’t a mute. But in his defense Reggie dominated the conversation. The only time I actually heard him speak was when he sheepishly uttered the words, “I am not really a programmer.” A response to the only break in Reggie’s diatribe about his ex, which was, “You are pretty outgoing for a computer programmer.” Here is a quick list of the things I learned about their lives: (Guess who learned the HTML tag for lists?)

Reggie

1. Just, like in the last 6 weeks, got out of a relationship.
   
2. Likes to work out and play volleyball.
   
3. Is in grad school.
   
4. Picked this grad school on the strength of its gay population.
   
5. Really likes his Ex and is really lonely and pining for him
   

Lemy

1. Is pretty outgoing for a computer programmer.
   
2. Isn’t really a programmer.

After dinner we walked around the Tremont Street area, and I will come right out and say it, I love the feel of Boston. It seems like the kind of city where a person can really live. I have friends who will disagree with me, and their points are well taken, but the area between Back Bay Station and Tremont St. is pretty much everyplace I want to live. The major drawback is that the real estate is insane there. And I don’t mean a little crazy like a girlfriend who wears your underwear like a hat and growls seductively. I mean the kind of girlfriend who at 34 still grooms the hair of her My Little Pony collection—which she still actively collects. At one point we stopped at a real estate office that had listings in the window and some crazy fucker was asking over half a million dollars for a two room apartment. And as much as I think Boston is an adorable city, it isn’t that cute.

We had some time to kill and so we went to Newbury St. up around Trinity Church and Copley Square and we found a great little candy shop called Sugar Heaven. I don’t think that I would have seen it except that they had music playing and it broke the stillness of the street (Newbury St. businesses seem to shut down at 6:30 or something, which for a giant retail strip seems a little early). Nice selection of candy and some really great imports. So naturally I got a really nice sugar high. Naturally.

But before that we passed the Massachussets Institute of Rock and I think I know what my calling is; I am going to become a licensed awesomologist. Surely the MIR can help me on my way to that, with their MA in Awesomology program.

(I think at this point we should break for a test of our emergency sarcasm alert system, this is only a test)

I think the institution of the Hard Rock Café bothers me more than the restaurant itself. I read a funny interview with Andy Partridge, from XTC, and he was telling the story of how HRC asked him for a guitar and he told them to bugger off. If you are like me and don’t have a reason to hate them then go to the website and do a search for cafes and look at the number of places that they have locations that they probably shouldn’t (they have one in Beirut, one in the Northern Mariana Islands and one in Oslo, Norway. Nothing says embrace Capitalism quite like Barracuda blaring over the restaurant speakers while you eat your “Joe Perry’s ‘Rock Your World’ Quesadilla” in Kuala Lumpur. I think I just threw up in my mouth… a lot.

But the whole night ended on a really positive note for me. Actually the cabbie that drove me home was kind of crazy, but I will get to that in a second. When I got back on the train to Providence, there were two little girls that had just been to a Build-a-Bear Workshop and had their new friends in tow. And it was adorable and it made me really appreciate what it was like to be ten and innocent and be able to hug a stuffed animal and not feel like you are on the verge of getting your ass kicked. When I was ten I was a rampant GI Joe collector, I had a first series Snake Eyes (you could tell he was first series because he didn’t have the swivel-arm action, but did still have the kung-fu grip), and I had just bought my first Dungeons & Dragons books. I would play D&D out at the school yard with Chad and Brian and I didn’t really care that Candy and Marsha thought I was stupid (although it was a little hurtful when Jennifer, Allison and Dana gave me dog food and a collar for a Christmas present). And I wish I could have hugged these two little girls and squeezed them tight and told them to hold on to this age forever and never forget that for ten days you loved your new bear, Clover, more than anything else in the world without being arrested and thrown in jail. But such is life.

Then the cabbie drove me home, at sixty miles an hour, down my residential street. At one point I think he screeched to a stop, sideways, in front of a cop. I wanted him to get a ticket so bad.

So today, I am going to head into work, and tackle my project with a renewed vigor that there was a time when I didn’t take everything so seriously.

Vote for Amy.

Tonight we dine in hell...

Or rather this morning we breakfast on Chocolate.

Seriously

I am sitting here, at my coffee table, writing and eating a chocolate bar. It isn't a Hershey bar though, it is a Scharffenberger bittersweet (70% Cacao) bar. So it is great quality chocolate. But it is still chocolate and I can't help but think that as I approach my 31st birthday I should be taking better care of myself.

Eavesdropping

Sometimes, especially lately, I like to sit in a public place, like a coffee shop or a bus depot, with my headphones on listening to music and make up the conversations of the people around me.

I am fairly certain that this is not a new thing for people to do. But I go through phases where I really enjoy it and then the flip side are the times when I would rather eaves drop and see what happens in other peoples lives.

Today I am listening to XTC, one of their earlier albums and I am watching couple of women outside. Check out Marlowes Sketchpad for the description.

I get tired of saying things like, “I am going to be better about posting,” because I say it and just don’t follow through, which is just lame. So I am going to stop feeling obligated to do it and hopefully that will help with solve the output problem.

Thanks for your patience.

DOOMED!!!

I am convinced tonight that America is doomed in the "healthy" department.

I blame Nintendo, Sega and the cola industry primarily.

Tonight at work... wait I am going to stop and set up some back story.

I work in a theater, not a movie theater but a play house, or repertory theater if you prefer. Anyway, we have two venues here and one of them, the larger, "Main Stage" (but not in an "Amber will be on the mainstage" kind of way), is upstairs. It is technically on the third floor of the building. There is a stair way, and a small elevator, that will get you there. Now this not a drastic three floors. It is a grand floor, maybe 25 feet, between the first and second floor; and then 12 feet, or so, between the 2nd and 3rd, and then maybe another 25 feet between the Mezzanine level and what we call the balcony level--although it isn't a balcony in the truer sense of the word. And we have people, employees and patrons alike, bitch about the stairs all day long.

So tonight, this lady (who was... obese) and her obese little son were trudging up the stairs. I say trudging because that is what it looked like. It was sad really. The conversation that I heard went something like this:

Her: Wow. All these stairs. (gasping for air) This is a pretty good workout. I could have gotten a regular coke tonight.
Him: Yeah it isn't that bad, I have been playing Dance Revolution, so I am in pretty good shape.

(This is a total side bar note, but I wish that along with the blockquote and italics commands HTML tags included an "End Faith in Humanity")

Now, what those two people needed was a comprehensive dietary and exercise regime overhaul. If their idea of taking care of themselves is to drink a diet soda and play a video game... well as a race (or nation) we are doomed.