Sunday, July 28, 2002

There's a Diet Pepsi commercial that splices some chunky middle-aged guy into motorcycle scenes with Peter Fonda from Easy Rider. Augh.
7:44:02 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

From the 'way to make me feel like I've accomplished nothing' department... My mom calls me to tell me about two stories she read in today's Boston Globe. The first is about a folk singer playing Newport Folk Festival this coming Saturday, Josh Ritter. Mom's wondering if I know him - he went to Oberlin, he graduated in 2000 (when I was supposed to graduate)...and yeah, I know him. Ate in the co-op I lived in freshman year, we crossed paths periodically over the next couple years. He's a cool guy. And then mom REALLY messes with my ego - she tells me that there's an article about the guy playing the lead in that new movie Tadpole. He went to my high school, it turns out. Graduated the year before me...I know I recognize the name (Aaron Stanford), and looking at pictures from imdb.com, I think I*might* recognize him. And just to make it more fun - he's got a significant part in the next X-Men movie. And what have I done with my life? Well, I started cleaning my room yesterday, and I had a nice lunch. Argh.

7:29:51 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

heh. I get way too much entertainment out of looking at the top page-read blogs here at Salon. #1 makes sense - Scott Rosenberg's IS the one with a link on the main page, after all. The #2 overall is 'people are stupid', where the blogger spends half the time whining about blogs and the other half whoring for hits. And #3 overall (and #2 today)...'Pornographer's Picks'...let's just say I'm not surprised. =) Not to bash Pornographer's Picks at all - we all need our pr0n, after all.

5:00:12 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Ok, while watching/listening to an action sequence in Das Boot, it made me think about sound in movies. I never really appreciated it until I got a home theater system (and yes, it's in my room. long story.). Since that point, though, I'm a geek for it. I actually critique the Oscars for Sound and Sound Editting. Well, ok, not really sound editting. I'm not entirely clear what that award is for, exactly. But sound? Oh yeah. Black Hawk Down won it last year. And deservedly so...it also won film editting. It's not the best movie I've seen, by a long shot. It's pretty flimsy on character and dialogue, and it's not so much telling a story as restating events. But DAMN does it do it interestingly. It pulls you in and swallows you into Mogadishu. The sonud is simply incredible. There's always a gunshot somewhere in the distance, from somewhere behind you, somewhere to your right, off in the distance - they move, and make you feel just as jittery and nervous as the soldiers. Great, great work there. Das Boot is pretty impressive as well - the scenes that particularly stand out as brief, subtle moments of sound elegance are one where a torpedo is being cranked past the camera and you hear it, moving from your back right to the front right, with a slight echo effect on the left side - since the camera's in a skinny corridor on a submarine, you'd expect something like that. And whenever the shot is on the top of the submarine (I forget the exact name for the thing - you know what I mean, though) the ocean cracks around you, and goes in perfect sync with the waves. There's also a nice section where they're trying to hear the target ships through the water - they're pre-sonar, so that's the only way they can detect things besides surfacing and periscope. The scene is dead silent, except for the captain walking, and eventually a small hint of sound. Well done stuff. I like movies too much for my own good, really.

4:48:07 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Military under fire over Ukraine crash [BBC World] What, just because one of their pilot dropped into a crowd of friggin' people? Yeah, that'd be an issue, wouldn't it? BTW - Das Boot is a quality piece of film. I'm about halfway through the director's cut right now. Peterson, the director, is lined up to do the upcoming Batman v. Superman movie...should be interesting.
4:34:08 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

'New species' of giant squid found [BBC Science & Nature] Giant squid are inherently cool...just 'cos they're weird as hell. After looking at this sucker, I'm hungry. =)
11:17:11 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

That was a strange night - fell asleep at 7:30, woke up at 12:30, fell asleep at 5:30, woke up at 10:30. THAT hasn't happened for a while...
11:13:42 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

On that wonderfully pathetic note, I'm going to go to sleep. If you read that last entry and feel sorry for me, don't. I'm really not unhappy, when you get down to it. I've got a good job, I've got all the books I can dream of. I don't see enough of other people, but hey, I work too much and read too much. It happens. I've just got a nasty insecurity thing re: my mad desire to be a writer. The problem is that I'm too much of a snob - I don't just want to be a writer, I want to be a GOOD writer, and I know, deep down, that I'll never be that. And that I'll never be with her. Damn, I was trying to avoid that. Now I'm getting all narcissitic bloggy, all the cliches of blogging. Fuck it - this isn't being written for the purposes of showing myself off to others, this is being written because I need to fucking write things down and this feels more possible to me than a 'diary' or some crap like that. I'm going to write about Josephine. So it's St. Patrick's Day, 2000. It's my quasi-first anniversery with Polly, whom I finally ended it with the day before Valentines this year. We're sitting in the Sco at Oberlin, drinking a couple beers and listening to Irish music. People are dancing - I'm not, because I don't actually like to dance and therefore suck at it. Polly's not because I'm not - she's a dancer by major, so she'd really rather be dancing. A couple girls sit down at our table - they're significantly younger than us, freshmen in fact.(this is my senior year at this point, Polly's as well though she was kicked out for a year and should have been gone the year before). And one of them blows me away immediately. She's unique looking - very skinny, almost unnaturally skinny, with a decidedly uneven face - there's something so that one side of her face doesn't look like the other, but I can't pin it down. She's fucking nuts - it's obvious. She's also a dancer, and an artist, and a reader, and with ADHD - like me. She reads everything - EVERYTHING. She likes so many things I like, but also dislikes some things I love - she's always good for a great argument on art. And she's perfect. It took me a while to see this. It first dawned on me during Commencement Week that May. I didn't graduate - still haven't, in fact. I owe them money. But I was in town to watch my friends. Polly went home for a few days - I forget the reason. A friend stayed with me at me and Polly's place...Josephine was staying with her grandparents, who happened to live in Oberlin. Late one night, the three of us are up talking when my friend goes to bed. Josephine and I talk for another hour or so more when I realize that I'm in love with her. It hasn't gone away. I forgot about it for a while - all the shit I had to go through at home, getting an internship, getting a car, going to weddings (Polly's brother first and best friend later in the summer)... and then I got back to Oberlin and Arielle (the friend from earlier) reminds me of Josephine. I'm shocked, bowled over - I'd forgotten her? How the hell could I do that? I still remember that feeling - like seeing the sun come up and thinking "I wasn't sure it was going to come back? What kind of idiot am I?" I spent the rest of that semester (my last one at Oberlin) trying to end my already self-destructed relationship with Polly, wishing to god that I could just talk to Josephine about her for a while. I never had the chance - I broke up with Polly for 18 hours, but ended up back in our apartment, too terrified of dealing with moving out to stay gone. I went back to Oberlin repeatedly for the next year plus, always with Josephine as my first intention. Last spring, after breaking up with Polly for once and for all, I flew out on a Friday after buying my ticket on a Thursday and came *this* close to telling her how I feel, but I didn't. I couldn't. I'm never going to act on it - because I know I'm not good enough for her. And this is not just self-deprecating babble. It's the truth. I'm a lousy boyfriend. I get bored easily. I forget things. I never clean my room. I'd just make her miserable, and she'd most likely want nothing to do with me anyway. But I can't stop wanting to take the chance, wanting to just hold her for a minute. I'd give so much for tha. I know I should get out, meet people. I know it's never going to happen. But I can't stop wanting it, and I can't stop hoping and dreaming. It breaks my heart, 4:30 am on a Sunday morning, dreaming of the girl I need, the one girl I've ever met who I truly feel I fit with. God, I love her. Right - now that I've gotten myself all teared up - g'night.

4:32:22 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

It's 4:09am on a Sunday morning, and I just spent the last three hours reading 'Wonder Boys'. Read the whole thing, too. I fell asleep at something like 7:30 at night, woke up again at around 12:30. I just finished the book - I started it around 1 or so. Haven't done that in a while - I'm going to pay for it, mind you. It's going to be a bitch and a half to sleep well tonight...if I'm lucky, I'll be falling asleep in the next hour or so, before dawn - I hope. It's been a long time since I've been up at 4 in the morning. I wonder if that's symptomatic of getting older or just getting dorkier. I don't lead the most exciting life, after all. And now I just spent a night reading a book that makes me even more sad than normal, because I just want to create something and I can't, no matter how hard I try. This babbling is the closest I've ever come. It makes me sad.

4:11:51 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []