Wednesday, May 30, 2007

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I had two pieces on six sentences coming in rapid fire succession.

Here is the second at Six Sentences.

In other news:

Last week in a post titled Meat Is Murder I told everybody about my experiment of not eating meat (sans fish) and how I went to some friends house and they made chili and I didn't want to make a stink so I just ate it. Well that happened again last night.

In the interest of science, that is to say that one experiment is not very scientific, I conducted the experiment again. And again the results were disastrous. Imagine if you will being a small child, making a baking soda volcano and instead of using two teaspoons of baking soda for your volcano you accidently use five tablespoons. When you pour in the liquid, it overflows violently and there is goo and ooze everywhere.

That is how I feel.

In experimental terms: the results have been verified. (Regrettably)

I went to Ikea for the first time and it was an experience to be saved for a post later today. But the bed is out, it doesn't look nearly as neat as it does online. Damn. But I found some other things that are interesting, and I have some good ideas.

Move-in: I have ye old interweb working again (which is good), and the stereo hooked up again (which is better). The books are back in the bookcase but there is no order to it and that makes me a little crazy.

Enough for now. The experiment is bubbling over again. Eck.

Labels:

Monday, May 28, 2007

"I'm still figuring out what's going to go/In my experimental film..."

A couple of weeks ago, diligent readers might remember, I made a quick post about the month of May and the movies that it held in store and how I was excited about Spiderman 3 and also Pirates of the Caribbean 3.

Well they did not live up to their expectations. In fact, I would say that both of them left me wanting. I don't know that I can put my finger on what it was exactly; but I was certainly left wanting.

I won't get into spoilers for anybody, I don't want to be a harbinger of the doom of a fun time. My review of these two movies is this: they tried to do too much to wrap up the lose story lines and tie all of the ends up so that a fourth movie would be a clean break. The result? Two completely mediocre movies.

The worst part is that I think they would have held up on their own if they had been first or in the middle; but they couldn't be and I am more certain of it than ever--Hollywood is doomed and needs help.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

"Your cutting remarks are captured here..."

I have a new post up on Six Sentences.

In other news the move is finished. But, regrettably, the move-in has just started. Woe is me. I thought I did such a good job of getting rid of stuff that I just didn't need and I found myself looking for a pair of flip-flops, seeing some ridiculous piece of marginalia and saying, "How the fuck did that get brought."

My knees, back, shoulders and soul are killing me. I don't know if I have mentioned this, but I hate moving.

Friday, May 25, 2007

"Meat is Murder..."

So the title is a little misleading here... I don't know that I really believe that eating meat is inherently bad, or that it makes me a bad person. What I do know is that it makes me... uncomfortably... gastricly. Which is a recent thing. Fish, not so much and oddly enough not bacon either, but beef for sure. It just tears me down socially (that is something that my grandfather says, I don't know I always remember it as a euphamism for feeling bad in the tummy, but I do).

Anyway this week I did a bit of an experiment. I didn't eat meat--which for the purposes of this discussion refers to beef, lamb, goat, game, poultry, fowl, and pork... or more aptly everything that doesn't come out of the ocean. Everything was going great as well, I felt good; lively, alert, maybe even more sensitive (but fear not readers, I was not in the market for a new hair product, not that sensitive, but I did notice that I listened to a lot more Cure over the last week). On Thursday I went over to a friends house and they had a big to-do over dinner, which was pulled pork, and turkey chili, and I just didn't want to be the guy that goes over to somebody's house and says, sort of out of the blue, "Oh. Gosh, thanks for the offer, but I don't eat (or in my case, am trying to cut back on my intake of...) Meat."

So I humbly thanked the hosts and ate the food that was set before me and it was really tasty. I enjoyed it... for about 40 minutes. Then I got wrecked. Absolutely demolished. Heartburn like you wouldn't believe, I will not get into the gorey details of the whole thing, except to say that if you do it in the bathroom and it makes me feel bad or sinister I probably did it.

And so now I will atone--such as it is--for what I have done and go back to my new attempt to cut meat and poultry from the old diet.

Let's see if there is anything else to talk about... hmmm... well I hate moving, to be sure. But the good news is that it is almost over and when it is and I get my new place set up I will post some pictures so that people who don't know me and revel in my apartment... Wait... that sounded dirty.

I think I am on the verge of purchasing my first IKEA product. It is a bed, that has drawers underneath it.
Here is the picture:
The IKEA Mandal bed with storage boxes
Swanky, no?

I have to admit I feel like I am admitting something dire here. I mean isn't IKEA... tragically unhip? But my friend Josh (whose 20 songs is a couple of songs below) is pretty hip and he likes IKEA. What it really gets down to, more than anything else, is that I can't build anything for cheaper and it is exactly what I want. So there it is. I am lame. Ergh.

I found a funny link the other day BOT CON! Near as I can tell it looks like a Transformer collectors convention. I found it while researching information for the Providence Improv Festival. Which is going to be awesome. I can't wait.

Anyway enough said for today. If the weather is nice where you are, go out and get some fresh air, summer is fast upon us.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

"Give them a boot to the head..."

I have been bothered lately in my job by a handful of behaivors.

I work in a theater and I have seen the amount of work that goes in to putting a play with a forty-three show run and I am very appreciative of it.

So lately, two things have been killing me.

The first is easy to describe. People who bolt from the theater before the curtain call. It is rude. Give the actor's their due respect. Sit down for the one minute it takes for an actor to walk out and take a bow. Argh, every time I see it I want to say something really nasty to them. Something nastly that can't be taken back.

The other thing... and this is painful. It is baseball season. I live about forty-five minutes from Boston. People--men mostly, but occasionally a woman-- will come in with a small radio tuner so that they can listen to the everloving fucking baseball game. DURING THE SHOW! That breaks my hearts. They play 162 games a season. Catch the highlights on ESPN, watch the nightly news, call in to 411 & more on your cell phone (which I have done) to get an update. But don't bring a fucking radio tuner to a theater, and then have the temerity to listen to it during the show.

Oh well, I can't control them, I can only hope that I have the opportunity to catch them as it happens and ask them to put it away or leave the theater.

Today, I am taking the day off of moving today, because I am sore in places in forgot I had. Which is exciting and miserable at the exact same time.

"Its the last piece of the puzzle but you just cant make it fit..."

Well Folks, this is it. Sixty songs from three people that are identified as 20 of their favorite songs.

Now, personally I don't know that these are my twenty favorite of all time. And in fact there are some startling omissions from this list that make me a little embarrassed. For example, Howard Jones; how can you put together a list of twenty favorite songs and not include Ho Jo? But at the same time, I think I could come up with 20 songs of just people who came out in the first decade of the MTV era and have a very very comprehensive list. But, alas, I don't work for a music blog (or even more desirably a music magazine) so this is twenty of my favorite songs as I wrote the list. And as I said already I have grave regrets about it, which is why, in a couple of weeks there will be a gigantor post of my one hundred songs of all time. (Which of course is subject to change at any time).


My List
Song⎯Artist
  1. Brazil⎯Australian Cotton Club Orchestra
  2. One More Night⎯Stars
  3. That's Really Super, Supergirl⎯XTC
  4. The Globe⎯Big Audio Dynamite II
  5. Goody Two Shoes⎯Adam Ant
  6. She's an Angel⎯They Might Be Giants
  7. Take Me I'm Yours⎯Squeeze
  8. Let My Love Open The Door⎯Pete Townshend
  9. Tiny Spark⎯Brendan Benson
  10. Hey Julie⎯Fountains of Wayne
  11. Wake Up⎯Arcade Fire
  12. Love On a Farmboy's Wages⎯XTC
  13. Dirty Old Town⎯The Pogues
  14. My Shit's Fucked Up⎯Warren Zevon
  15. Six Different Ways⎯The Cure
  16. Bigmouth Strikes Again⎯The Smiths
  17. 40'⎯Franz Ferdinand
  18. All These Things That I've Done⎯The Killers
  19. Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses⎯U2
  20. The Girl From Ipanema⎯Stan Getz & João Gilberto


Josh’s List

  1. Birdhouse In Your Soul—They Might Be Giants
  2. Blister In The Sun—The Violent Femmes
  3. When Will You Come Home⎯Galaxie 500
  4. New Slang—The Shins
  5. Jumping Someone Else’s Train—The Cure
  6. Scythian Empires —Andrew Bird
  7. Where Is My Mind?—The Pixies
  8. A House Is Not A Motel—Yo La Tango
  9. Love Will Tear Us Apart—Joy Division
  10. I Deserve Someone Nice—The No-No’s
  11. Swallowing You—Meg Lee Chin
  12. That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate—Mission Of Burma
  13. Age Of Consent—New Order
  14. Lonesome Graveyard—House Of Freaks
  15. Paranoid Android—Radiohead
  16. Monster Hospital (MSTRKRFT Remix)—Metric
  17. Dark Center Of The Universe—Modest Mouse
  18. Ever Fallen In Love?—The Buzzcocks
  19. Southern Belle—Elliot Smith
  20. Birdman—Ride


Quick editorial note on Josh's list two of the songs are available in about three hundred different versians. So for purposes of listening to them, you should note that Scythian Empires comes from the album Armchair Apocrypha and Dark Center of the Universe comes off of the Night on the Sun EP. The rest of the songs you can assume are album versions of the songs.

Elizabeth's list

  1. La Mer—Charles Trenet
  2. Got A Hold On Me—Mark Kozelek
  3. Dinosaur—Low
  4. Any Way—Journey 18
  5. Girlfriend In A Coma—The Smiths
  6. Baba O’riley—The Who
  7. Digital Love—Daft Punk
  8. Here Come Your Man—Pixies
  9. I’m A Cuckoo—Belle & Sebastian
  10. Heartbeat—Annie
  11. Crimson & Clover—Joan Jett
  12. You’re My Best Friend—Queen
  13. I Believe In A Thing Called Love—The Darkness
  14. Kiss—Prince
  15. Ice Ice Baby—Ben Kweller
  16. Ballad Of Easy Rider—The Byrds
  17. Mushaboom—Feist
  18. Love All Kinds Of
  19. Blue—Evan Dando
  20. No. 1 In C—Bach

Quick editorial note on Elizabeth's list. There were a couple of songs that she didn't list the artist for; one is La Mer, I am about ninety-nine percent certain that the version she has given me is the version by Charles Trenet (and I listed it as such) off of an album called Anthologie de la Chanson Francaise: La selection ideale. There are a lot of crazy French letters and accent marks in there so don't count on the spelling to help you out too much. There is also a song in there that she listed as "Love All Kinds of" and there the descriptions stop. So I don't know. Good Luck.

Well as promised there is the list. The cool thing about it is that I feel like I know them a little better for it.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

"He's Going The Distance..."

So I am still waiting for my friend Elizabeth to fork over her twenty songs so that I can put up all these lists. One of the things that I have started thinking about is putting up a 100 favorite. But this is a monumental task that should not be taken lightly. For example, one of my favorite groups is Cake and I am having trouble finding one or two songs that I like more than any others. It is a really tough task. And I am encountering that problem with a couple of different groups; among them are Howard Jones, Cake, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello. Basically everyone that has had a very prolific career that spans many genres.

I think that once again I have let my alligator eyes eat for my hummingbird ass. Yikes.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

"So, when they tap our mundane heads, To zombie-walk in our stead..."

Yuck. I am up to my ears in dust, memoribilia (that I can't remember the occasion of) and clothes that are either too big for me or too small for me; amongst that category is a shirt, a soccer jersey from when I was seven and a sweater with the Kentucky Wildcats logo on it from when I was three or four and it amazes me that I was ever that small.

It also amazes me that those two items, a bag full of stuffed animals and I think three classes photos are the only things that I have, to this point, kept of my youth. And I am okay with that right now.

While I was moving I made the decision to get rid of my various versions of Monopoly. I have four of them; one is a New York version, one is a Star Wars version, one is a Make-your-own-opoly version (which was a project that I was going to undertake for a friend of my mother's but then he turned out to be a bit of a dickhead so I have held on to it. FOR NINE YEARS!) And a version from London by a compnay called Waddingtons. I am keeping the London version, but only very reluctantly. Monopoly is one of those games that I hate, I mean viscerally hate it. I would rather stare at an eggshell colored wall and listen to Yanni than sit and play a game of Monopoly; and yet I somehow have FOUR versions of this game.

I didn't get them all myself, in fact, I only purchased the London version, which I bought at Harrod's. The others were gifts because various people in my family thought I was collecting them. Which is about the saddest collection I have ever heard of, and it makes me sad to think that somebody, somewhere actually likes monopoly and every night faces a difficult task deciding if he wants to play NASCAR version or Lord of the Rings Version or--why not live on the edge--National Parks version. Blech. I think I just made myself sick.

I am sitting in a chair that I really like because it fosters and urge to sleep and so I have to get out of it soon. But I am looking around my apartment which is in a state of total disarray and I am struck by the fact that I don't really have nearly enough stuff done. But I am trying to keep in mind that the last two times I moved (NY to NM and NM to RI) I had a full week of unemployment to plan for the move and to get things packed and I typically had over a month to start planning that.

This move has been complicated because I wasn't really even sure I was going to be able to move until the tenth. And I had sort of resigned myself to the fact and so I didn't do much to get things working in a positive direction and now I pay for it. I think I made myself sick again.

The other thought that I have had lately is that I am really happy with my taste in music. What I mean by that is that I have music that I can listen to on every occasion and my collection of music, at this point, is probably the most diverse of any person I know. I have a healthy selection of just about every genre music I am aware of (without getting specific and breaking up emo into ten categories). Anyway I made a funny comment to Lovely Wife about my iPod, which was, "The thing I like about my iPod is that there isn't a bad song on it." Which is true. There isn't. And why should there be. Life is too short for crappy music. So you will not see 4 non blondes on my iPod: it is however on my computer because it reminds me of a girl I used to date in high school who used to scream when it came on she hated them so much. Hehehe Good times.

Anyway enough procrastination. I have been on a real glut of writing lately and I am hoping that will continue through the summer as I get settled into my new apartment in Downtow... errr... Down CITY Providence. Keep checking Six Sentences, I will have some stuff coming up there in rapid fire succession.

And now I will get back to work. Today, I will rock out to The Shins probably all day.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

"I can't remember what I used to do..."

I. Hate. Moving.

Really, a lot, I hate it.

The result though is that I am getting rid of a lot of crap that I have been hanging on to... I think.

But that doesn't change the fact that all things being equal I would rather drop a hand grenade into my current space take the insurance money and start anew with a couple pairs of clean underwear, my laptop and six pairs of shirts and shorts.

Totally separate note.

Last night at work a man, an older man, lost his car. He thought it had been stolen: but it hadn't. So we called the police and they showed up and took one look at this guy and said, "So you lost your car, do you know about where you lost it?" The guy sat there and literally scratched his head then his wife jumped in and I lost the plot entirely. She was convinced that she lost the car near "that little restaurant with the parking lot and the valets."

The cop found the gentleman's car. It was parked outside of a strip club called the Sportsman. Which has a couple of bouncers out front and a parking lot attached to it. I nearly lost my shit. The fact that anybody, at all, ever, would confuse this place with a nice little restaurant was the end for me. And I retired to get some dinner.

On my way home, through torrents of rain, I was somehow able to catch a cab, which in Providence is a lot like catching a leprauchan. It was a red gypsy cab called MM Taxi and when I sat down I thought I was going to die. I mean literally not going to come home ever. Moving? Moot. Anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas? Moot. I was going to be dead. The door that Lovely Wife had crawled in shut and my eyes did a slow motion blink--like in the movies where the character blinks and it goes into a weird slow-mo screen cut and his voice becomes blurred (can a voice become blurred?)--as I told the driver my address and he pulled away. But then...

Something strange and wonderful happened. He turned up the stereo and started singing Through the Years by Kenny Rogers and I felt like everything was going to be okay.

And now, alas, I have to go and continue packing. Which is just about my least favorite thing in the whole world.

I have finished my aforementioned 20 Favorite Songs and as soon as I get my CDs from the other parties I will post them all. I have to admit, I am very pleased with mine.

Sunday, May 13, 2007

"Take a look, it's in a book..."

Wow!!! What a week. Time flies for me lately. I was looking at the calendar realizing that I have to move this month, in about... oh... ten days and I haven't packed a thing. Granted I am using this move to unburden myself of most of the crap I have been lugging around for the last 15 years, I am still being far to cavalier about this. I need to knuckle down and get some work done.

But... I had a friends wedding, I have work, I have, I have, I have. And the I have's are sort of slowly outnumbering the I needs and the result is that I am moving in ten days and don't have a lick of work done towards that end. Ugh!

The good news is that I have discovered an author whom I adore. The bad news is that through obstinancy it is someone everybody else has known about for ten years: Neil Gaiman.

I have this feature as a person that if Everybody Else loves something. I immediately balk and find myself saying things like, "He can't be that good," or , "It is probably really base if it appeals to that many people," or, "Why would i want to read something that Everyone Else is reading." And the end result is that I miss out on great stuff and have to own up to my own arrogance too far into the thing. But I have been on many bandwagons and there seems to be plenty of room on this one so I am not too worried about it.

What do I like about Gaiman? Well aside from everything, he has a great way of writing fantasy without invoking the R.A. Salvatore, Piers Anthony crowd. Neverwhere might be one of the best books I have read this year. I picked it up on the recommendation of a friend of mine (I think I was reading a short story of Gaiman's that had been adapted to a Graphic Novel) and I used the airplane as an excuse to start reading. It was one of those things where I thought, ehh, if I hate it I will leave it on the plane and someone else can read it. But the fact was that I loved it and read the whole book in about ten hours (which for Capt. Reads-so-slow here is a feat). First of all he writes about things that I think about already anyway; by that I mean that I have a hyper-active imagination and often times I find myself looking at things--phrases, images, etc.,--that most people take for granted. So reading a novel set in a part of London where Old Bailey is a real person, Mind the Gap is a life saving warning, and the Night on Nights Bridge is very real and very dangerous makes for a very exciting read.

What Neverwhere does the best is to create a great juxtaposition of two worlds where materialism is important for different reasons. In Richard Mayhew's world his life goes haywire when the things that he is accustomed to get turned upside down, his apartment, his job, his bank account all become meaningless when he "falls through the cracks" and meets Door. Door's world is one which is run on mercantilism, if it has an economic system at all, and everything, from white handkerchief's, to a "very big favor" has a value attached and can be used as a currency.

Richard's decent through London Below leads him to many places that he thinks he might have known in London Above, but the pillars of his reality are consistently shaken and it isn't until the books thrilling last chapter does he realized what the important things in his life are.

If you haven't read Neverwhere yet, you really ought to.

I am now tackling Stardust, then I will probably move on to something else entirely--I have some biographies on my shelf that I have to get through--but in the meantime I need to get packing and get ready to move. But first... I have to work.

One last thing, a friend of mine are putting together a CD of our 20 favorite songs, this could be fun, I will post the results when I have finished.

Friday, May 04, 2007

"Ça Plane Pour Moi..."

People are strange

Nothing accentuates the idiosyncrasies of people better than traveling. I am convinced of this today as I travel from Providence to The Twin Cities for a very good friends wedding.

First, traveling sucks these days and I am not sure if I should send my open letter of disgust to terrorists globally or the US government bureau that runs the TSA. When I was a kid I used to love traveling by plane it was easily one of my five favorite things to do right up there with Wet & Wild Water World, a local water park, skipping school, which I never did but liked the concept of more than anything else and turning all my lights off laying on the floor of my bedroom and listening to Nirvana while I called and talked to some girl that I was convinced I was destined to marry (don’t ask, I was like 15). The point is, as I lose the plot almost entirely, that I loved to travel and was generally bitterly disappointed when I found out that my family was driving anywhere.

But today... I think that if somebody could have made a compelling case for it I would have left the dentist office and sat in a dentist chair for three hours while they performed a root canal with little more anesthetic than a sturdy piece of oak branch and a greasy rag.

Here are a couple of reasons why: First, the TSA is a joke; Second, airlines have become less friendly than I thought was possible, and the attitude that I constantly got from them gave the impressions that they were doing me a favor by taking my hard earned and carting me around the country; Third, people on airplanes that fly are by-and-large the most despicable variety of their particular flavor of people around.

The TSA is a joke deserves a bit of a qualifier. I would speculate that flying around is safer than it was prior to the Sept. 12 Government Expansion Projects, but I don’t think that it says much. The guy that scanned my bags through the big x-ray scanning machine that sits near the check-in might—and this is a very big might—have looked at four bags. He certainly noticed the ass of the woman that was loading all of the big bags onto the conveyor belt but I would surmise that he spent very little time of his workday looking at the silver outlines of underwear, shirt, razors and vibrators. (Which makes me wonder, how often does a woman put her vibrator through the checked baggage, and is it possible for me to meet her. That takes a tremendous amount of courage and I honestly get terrified that the scanner—who doesn’t scan anything apparently—is going to form some opinion about the fact that half of my packed underwear have stripes.) The security check through guy did take at least a second glance at my drivers license when I walked through, it is 4 years old and the guy in the photo and the guy typing this up don’t look to much alike anymore and that is a good thing. But they have this new, well, new to me, policy of making sure that all of your lotions, creams and what not are packaged together in a clear zip lock baggie in your carry-on luggage. Saline solution doesn’t count though, because it is medical. Which baffles me because getting the top of a bottle of saline solution isn’t difficult and I will routinely refill my small saline bottle so that I am not lugging around my gigantic economy size bottle. So why couldn’t I put anything else in there; just and idle question?

The airlines, oh gods where do I start? I generally fly the minor carriers Southwest (if Southwest still qualifies as a minor carrier), and Jet Blue (I have been known to drive 6 hours so that I can fly Jet Blue) are the two big ones that come to mind. But today I am flying United and American and I think it might be the last time for both. United has started this thing called Economy Plus for which they charge a little extra and it includes the seats from the bulk head through the emergency row—about half the aircraft. When I went to check in at the counter I asked for a window seat and the guy started typing away then informed me that the only window seat available was going to be extra. They must have a policy in place that says don’t charge anybody who uses words of frustration but doesn’t swear or get angry, because I think I said that it was an idiotic policy to sell me a seat and not charge me for it at the point of purchase, and voila, I am sitting in an emergency aisle; but not without a great deal of attitude. I didn’t even get a, “Have a nice flight/day/morning/life/anything.” The woman at American was nice enough when I checked in to my gate at O’Hare airport but when I asked her if there was by chance a place to get a haircut in the airport—a strange request I thought but in Chicago it seemed possible; and I wasn’t disappointed, the barber/salon/whatever was in a whole other terminal of the airport—she gave me my answer then proceeded to lecture me on the value of pedestrian exercise, at which point I told her I don’t own a car, walk everywhere I ever have to go and I would indulge my desire to sit on my butt for the forty minutes that it would take them to start boarding. She just shrugged and looked me up and down—I am overweight, I admit it, but she didn’t have to acknowledge it.

My least favorite part of flying though is the people around whom I end up spending time. Maybe it is my dumb luck, but as I get older I meet a lot less of the kinds of people that I met when I was 12 and a child flying. But I suppose if I sat down and really thought about it that would hold true everywhere in my life, not just the airport. So when I get on the plane in Providence I end up sitting in a row with the three biggest guys on the plane. And two of them stake out their claim on the arm rests right away, so I ended up sitting for two hours with my arms crossed, shoulders cramped and otherwise great temperament sinking like the faster Dubya’s approval rating. At one point during the flight though the guy on my left made a fatal mistake and leaned forward so I gallantly claimed a portion of the armrest and tried to un-cramp my shoulders slightly.

You know which gets me thinking: when I am in an airplane I am maybe overly considerate. For example when I sit down I take special care to see you is behind me so that if I wanted to, say, put my seat back a little bit I am not going to break a kneecap doing it. The woman who sat in front of didn’t share with me in that habit of courtesy and when she threw her chair back it popped my kneecaps out of place and I haven’t been walking right all day.

The other funny thing about the airports is that time doesn’t exist beyond the walkthrough metal detector at the entrance to the terminals.

I flew out at 7:00 a.m. and I saw a guy sitting at the bar in the airport drinking, what looked like, a pilsner with a cheeseburger. SEVEN IN THE MORNING and homeboy is washing down a cheeseburger with a cold beer. When I got to Chicago at 8:30 local time there were a bunch of people sitting at a Chili’s eating Fajitas and drinking Coronas and Dos Equis. (What is the plural of Dos Equis?) And it honestly freaks me out to see people who have been awake for hours and hours eating what I consider to be lunch at 8:00 a.m. it is just surreal the way that you completely lose sense of things, the terminals are so well lit up and the haze from the pollution diffuses all the light and you just lose time.

But these last two things are the best. First, I stood in the waiting area of the boarding gate and actually said to myself, “Damn, all the seats are full.” But they weren’t they were half full but there were no seats that would give me the opportunity to sit so that I wasn’t next to anybody—so it was like looking at a chessboard where every other square had a body in it—then I went and on the floor of the holding pen. ON THE FLOOR, BECAUSE I DIDN’T WANT TO SIT NEXT TO SOMEONE! I hope that everyone sees how ludicrous that is. I did. Second I sat next to really nice man on my way from Chicago to Minneapolis he told me about his job—he is the real Tom Hanks from Fed Ex: his job is to make sure your packages get where they are supposed to go, not he was stranded on an island for five years—and the particulars about it, he told me about his house on the lake in Minnesota, how he doesn’t like his cell phone because sometimes he gets off a plane and picks up his baggage with just enough time to turn around and get on another plane somewhere, and how he only got his first PC in the last 8 years and he is totally lost without it now that it is broken. But I never once thought of asking his name.

I love flying.

Now that I am landed and settled in my hotel room, I have to say it is all worth it. My friends family are really great, they are close-knit and I kind of grew up with all of them so it is really nice to see them all. Tomorrow is the wedding, I can’t wait.

Thursday, May 03, 2007

"The Good Times Are Killing Me..."

This is going to be quick and dirty.

Nothing, nothing in the world is more fun than a good Rock & Roll show with good friends.

Tonight, I saw Modest Mouse, who is playing with Johnny Marr, and the show fucking rocked. I mean they kill on stage, they know how to get the crowd into it and they picked their opening bands well.

The opening band tonight was a band out of Philly called Man Man. Awesome in concert. Imagine... Tom Waits and a psycho carnival music. I think one of the guys played a fire extinguisher. But the killed. I mean they had the place packed.

For all of you old time Smiths and The The fans. Johnny Marr holds up. He slid right into the band and it is really hard to believe that he is 45. Man... Great show.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

"...to Boston..."

So... Last night was another fruitful trip on the train up to Boston.

The ride was uneventful except for the fact that next to me, was a woman and a boy that I assume was her son. The boy was plugged into a laptop watchng School of Rock and the mother-figure was working on a project for school it seemed. Just as the train started to pull away from the station I heard one of those tell-tale sighs that just perfectly highlights the persons thoughts.

Then she started shaking her head back and forth and laughing to herself as she worked on her project.

Up in Boston we met with a friend of my wife's whom she knew from a children's theater group. It was a really nice evening, I had met the girl a couple of times before and she is one of those really vivacious people that laughs with her whole body and has a great story for just about any situation.

The place we went to... not as awesome. It was pub grub so the menu is what you would expect, sandwiches, some over cooked pasta dishes but it was cheap and that was the most important thing.

While we were there, however, I became aware of something. The United States is lying to us. And not in the way you are thinking, not the starting wars, misusing taxes, or any of that marginalia. This is big. I am convinced, that the world is much, much farther along with cloning technology than we had been led to believe.

As support I provide you three restaurants in Boston and Providence that employee three waitresses that could be triplets. They are all medium height: let's call it 5'5". With dark brown curly hair and hips and just that kind of all-American girl look. If you need help, check out Doc Hollywood's Julie Warner. Anyway, so this clone, and last night we called her G57, I swear she looks like about ten other waitresses, counter help people that I know from around town. And that sort of got me thinking, you know how people say, "Oh you look just like so-and-so," or, "You look so much like my friend Squibbledy Bob." What if that is because you are that person, or rather because the Cloning Company has your DNA and they are just pushing out carbon copies of you willy-nilly. Wouldn't that be freaky? Luckily for me, there isn't much demand for tall, doughy in the midsection, sarcastic, dickheads. So I am pretty safe, but it sucks for the person that G57 was based on.

On the train ride home I overheard a soul aching conversation. It went something like this:

The scene takes place on a commuter train, it is mostly empty, there are two couples sitting across the aisle from one another, one is doing a cross word puzzle in a local tabloid newspaper, the other is sitting across from each other. They are not a couple in the sense that they are in a romantic relationship, they are co-workers or business associates. There is also a girl sitting two seats away prattling on a cell phone inaudibly.
Girl: ... I really got into Shakespeare when I took an American Literature class.
Boy: Oh. Yeah. I go to the Shakespeare in the park, like every year.
Girl: This year they are doing Titus Androgynous.


At this point I have to stop, because I am not embellishing and I really want to embellish but that would make these two seem more ridiculous then they were already. But seriously, folks, and I can't stress this enough, if you don't know something make sure you say it really loud, that way you aren't compounding ignorance and inaudibility (Strunk & White, Elements of Style. pg xviii). Not to mention there will be someone around you whose day you will make.

The ride home was as awesome as ever, because the cabbie, I am convinced, had a twelve pack of empty Hamm's cans in the back. If you are ever in Providence for any reason I strongly endorse Big Daddy's Taxi over any other taxi company. The logo is cheesey but it is a very well run cab company. Stay away from any cab company featuring a person's name; Gonsalez, Richard's, etc,.

On a personal note, I am in the middle of having my ass handed to me by allergies.