monday, july 31
I hate Netscape. 7:47 PM +
I don't know whether it's networked or syndicated, but our local ABC affiliate carries this Martha Stewart program weekday mornings, which I happened to watch whilst peering over my Wall Street Journal today.
Everyone on the show who isn't Martha seems to hate/fear (same difference, as Master Yoda might say) Martha. In fact, I think Martha hates herself just a little, too, in this flashy-angry way. If you've ever seen Todd Solondz's Happiness, and remember Lara Flynn Boyle's character, that's the kind of self-hatred I'm talking about. The kind of self-hatred that hints at auto-erotic sadomasochism, that's almost empowering in a twisted way, like scrubbing floors or having diesel for blood.
But like I was saying, everyone on the show seems to despise Martha. It feels media-assembled to say so, as accounts of this phenomenon are rote and legion; but I'm surprised by how palpable it is during the broadcast. Today, Martha was making paper hand puppets [almost dislocates jaw yawning faux-ironically], and she had some crew-person dude helping her. At one point, she turned to him and made a comment about how the show is hard-work-but-they-also-know- how-to-have-fun. And in the flattest, most perfunctory, airline-steward- performing-flight-safety-instructions, deflated way, the dude assented thus:
"Yeah."
He said it as if she'd just asked him to donate a kidney to save her life, and he didn't really want to do it, but he knew it's the right thing to do regardless of his personal feelings. There was resentment in his voice.
After Martha Stewart, The View came on. I watched for a few minutes, until Star Jones started talking about having her period.
The television is off now. 12:04 PM +
sunday, july 30
There's this stupid anti-smoking commercial I just caught on MTV. It incites viewers to tear out whatever cigarette ads they come across in magazines. Okay. Encouraging people to be destructive. Good. Because that cigarette ad won't suddenly be eight times more attention-getting once it's been violently torn out of that magazine. Man, that's so alterna-cool.
The "grown-ups" at HQ must've thought: "Gee, kids like tearing shit up. They'll think this is ... they'll think it's ... [Lackey], what's the word I'm looking for?"
Peon: "'Whack,' sir? 'Dope'?"
"Ah yes -- they'll think it's [hesitates] DOPE."
The subtext of all this is, KIDZ ARE CHIMPS. Which is partially true, sadly enough, but I still think the best education is a simple presentation of facts. Smoking is gross and harmful. If people can't buy into that, then they're entitled not to. It's the way of the world. I don't give too much of a shit either way, but I object to inanity and sensationalism. (Notable exception: Baz Luhrmann movies. But I digress.)
Actually, now that I think of it, the whole current anti-smoking campaign reeks of fake-cool. Remember those awful Arizona Jeans ads a few years back, the ones where those fake kids fake-deconstructed other fake-cool ad campaigns? And then Tom Green skewered the whole thing ... on MTV. Which is where this rant started, as I recall. Fuck MTV. 6:04 AM +
saturday, july 29
Chuck E. Cheese is a rat, right? He sure as fuck doesn't look like a mouse. What's up with that? 3:35 PM +
The much-maligned navigational scrap has been banished to the bottom of the page. Brushed under the rug, you might even say. Less clutter, less clutter. (This one goes out to Rachel and Brian.) 1:14 AM +
friday, july 28
Raining again. Hot prongs of lightning stabbing at the ground. Sadly, no attendant conferral of superpowers. 6:19 PM +
Two things that give me the creeps -- marionettes and Roberto Benigni -- in tandem. I can already think of the one-sheet copy: "This fall, terror has a new name. And a foreign accent." Hopefully this one will end up in Development Hell alongside Michael Jackson's long-festering Edgar Allan Poe project. 3:27 PM +
thursday, july 27
One of the things I actually liked about college, now that I think about it, was having the majority of my friends in one geographic location. Even if I didn't necessarily see any number of them except on a weekly or bimonthly basis or whatever, it was nice knowing they were around. There's consolation in that, an element of taking things for granted -- the way one takes one's family for granted. It's a compliment, really.
Now that we're all scattered hither and yon, tethered only by email and itineraries and the tinny mono-aural full-duplex comfort of a phone call, I'm reminded for some reason of how the ocean looks from twenty, thirty thousand feet up -- from an airplane: it seems to stop moving. Memory can work like that also, from a remove.
Or maybe everything's just moving too fast. Immense speed can also yield stasis. Think of Einstein's theory of relativity. Think of a hummingbird. 6:12 PM +
It's raining something fierce right now. It makes me want to run outside and catch pneumonia. 2:57 PM +
Blanket response to recent emails: yes, a fully functional interface will return. I just couldn't deal with that god-awful gray staring back at me from the screen anymore. It was beginning to look like last year's Mercedes S500 -- tight tolerances and logical as hell, but so bloody boring. So this is just a simplified core-element motif until I rethink the scheme of the site. It'll evolve during the next few or several weeks. 12:23 PM +
wednesday, july 26
Do not adjust your monitor. I just couldn't stand looking at the old layout anymore, so I've slapped together this lite number until I can think of something more redeeming. All the subpages, et cetera, are still in place, so if you've linked to anything "deep" within the site, it's still there. I just want to keep things simple for a while. Welcome back, whitespace. It's been a while. Bleh. (If you really hate the change, I'll bring the old design back.) 10:08 PM +
My little sister was watching Dexter's Laboratory just now, and asked me: "Why does the American family have an Eastern European child?"
"Because he's an evil genius," I replied. 10:07 AM +
Any day now, Joan Collins is gonna sue Elizabeth Hurley for going back in time and stealing her mojo, but in the meantime, sit back and enjoy. 9:56 AM +
tuesday, july 25
All right, all right. I've made the font bigger. I've held off this long (I know, rhymes with wrong) for various reasons (my eyes are good; I hate big print; my flat panel display is sharp and properly calibrated), but recently someone named Alex emailed me with the following comment:
"I'm writing to say that your fonts actually cause me physical pain to read. That's all. Good day."
Noted and corrected, however belatedly. Hopefully you're not reaching for your bottle of Visine anymore; however, if your eyes are still burning, you know the drill: drop me a line and maybe I'll deal with it a few months from now.
Just kidding. Seriously though, do let me know if the size is okay now. And if any (rhymes with many) of you Windoze users out there could send me a screenshot, I'd be mightily cross-platform obliged. Thanks. 6:38 PM +
I caught a few minutes of Mysterious Ways, by sheer accident, when it ran ... was it only last night? Seems like a week ago. Anyway, the show is filled with the sort of lugubrious self-approbation and reverence usually reserved for ... I can't even think of a suitable example. Perhaps seal-clubbings and Matthew Broderick-sanctioned community service ventures? The whole thing begged for a Baywatch-style musical interlude. Make that several -- say, forty minutes' worth. Pure poison -- not even saccharine, but those moisture-absorbing salts that used to come in those little sugar-packet-like envelopes in boxes of electronic equipment, that your mom told you not to eat when you were little. The ones that said DO NOT EAT in big letters across the sides. Mysterious Ways should have DO NOT WATCH superimposed over its entire broadcast. Actually, that applies to network television in general these days. 5:09 PM +
The latest revision of the item dispenses with the dodgy semantics. Pratfall of realtime media feeds, I guess. 3:38 PM +
As I read this otherwise sad, upsetting, distressing (et cetera) news item on the Concorde crash outside Paris, a couple of fatuities leaped out at me from the text:
"A German government spokeswoman said Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had been shocked when he was told of the accident.
"'The chancellor has been informed of the crash, he extends his sympathy to the victims and their families and out of shock has canceled his remaining engagements for Tuesday,' the spokeswoman said."
Um, dude, keep doing your job. No fainting spells, por favor.
And then there's this:
"Huge clouds of black smoke could be seen for miles (kilometers) around, and police blocked off all roads leading to the scene of the crash, an area of farmland, crisscrossed by highways. Dozens of fire trucks and ambulances rushed to the scene."
Is that metric "conversion" really necessary? I guess they automate stuff like that and the algorithms involved aren't particularly sophisticated.
Admittedly, these are somewhat needling, impertinent observations on my part, but what can I say? 2:47 PM +
There's something else I'd like to whisper to you. Lean in ... closer ...
"Granny Klump." 9:58 AM +
There was a huge cow-inflected billboard (yes, you read that correctly) for this little oddity at last year's Cannes Film Festival. Considering that it was probably filmed in 1998, and is only now receiving a marketing push, it must stink pretty bad. That much is obvious from the trailer. Still, any film where Jonathan Lipnicki gets the stuffing beaten out of him is not entirely without its charms. Ondele! 9:44 AM +
monday, july 24
Apparently the choice quotes herein were culled from a German publication. Perhaps something got lost in the translation? Sorta reminds me of this, oddly and appropriately enough. 4:05 PM +
Butter melts only the way butter can. 1:00 PM +
Being visionary and being profitable are often mutually exclusive, if not diametrically opposed. Blah blah blah ... snake oil. 12:54 PM +
sunday, july 23
I guess taking photographs is a sort of compulsion. Let it be said, then, that I was somewhat disabused of this impulse during my most recent trip to Europe. Traverse the same general latitudes thrice in one year and everything starts to overlap and look the same. So my camera stayed in my pocket, mostly. This equation is compounded by my basic lack of skill, which also stayed my hand. I had a good time. I didn't document it particularly well. Regardless, I've uploaded a few snapshots. Comprehensive, they're not. 7:05 PM +
I've had a sore throat and a head cold for the last eighteen hours or so. Not fun. Illness, however mild, upsets your chemistry and skews your perceptions. Logic and reason slip out of your lazy grasp, and obedience—apathy?—seems like the path of least resistance. If I were a turtle, I'd retreat into my shell. As it stands, a down comforter will have to suffice.
I downed some Dimetapp elixir for my symptoms. Too much, apparently. The recommended dosage of two teaspoons doesn't seem appropriate for a full-grown adult male, so I just took a couple of swigs from the bottle. The pseudo-grape taste is so much better than the mentholated-licorice-tar-battery-acid flavor that passes for cherry and whatnot in some competing brands.
Now my neurons are swimming like the little gold flecks in a bottle of Goldschläger and my laptop screen seems to be deliquescing. I feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald on a bender. And it's not even noon.
Come closer. Let me whisper something to you.
Closer.
Closer.
"Wunderkind." 11:31 AM +
saturday, july 22
Yeah, comfort music is good, if often idiosyncratic. 10:35 PM +
Ah, those overworked Disney animators. The Emperor's New Groove looks anything-but; Atlantis, on the other hand, beckons like the undiscovered country. You win some, you lose some. 4:09 PM +
The Toolbelt McAsscrack telephone company technician came by twice yesterday and once more today, and I guess the third time was a charm, because now my DSL hookup is purring like Eartha Kitt. Finally. 2:25 PM +
This has found its way into our home video collection somehow, and my little brother and sister are terrified of it. "Scared silly," even. Nothing says "crossover appeal" like a psychotic(ally cheerful) hamburger clown. And yes, it's a musical. 1:36 PM +
wednesday, july 19
Not to boost Owen Gleiberman twice in one week, but sometimes he makes me laugh out loud. I was perusing the dead-tree version of EW during dinner and I literally started guffawing when I read this, much to my mother's chagrin:
"Have Cathy Moriarty and Kathleen Turner become the same person? Every year or so, one of them gets cast as a blowsy, angry, frog-voiced harridan in a movie that reeks of camp misogyny, and it always takes me a minute or two to figure out which one I'm watching. Is it the former neo-noir sexpot of 'Raging Bull' or the former neo-noir sexpot of 'Body Heat'? At this point, John Waters should probably team the two of them in a glorious boomer-hag remake of 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'"
Couldn't have said it better myself. 8:48 PM +
"Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life represents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss." (p.118) 11:03 AM +
tuesday, july 18
Your daily dose of ultra mega super scariness. Looks vaguely familiar, no? I think there were several of ... um, her ... at college, always trailing the prettier females with a pathetic ersatz enthusiasm that would break your heart ... if it weren't for the gag reflex already locking up your limbic system. Later, the boys would mentally size up various girls like lions picking off gazelles, and the hapless also-ran would crop up as "the ugly one," followed by a volley of chuckles. 8:20 AM +
monday, july 17
Laziness squared: I'm actually tired of slacking off. Would ya believe it? I go through phases. So I've totally been demolishing my little to-do lists and whatnot -- attending to various deferred projects and even sending out résumés (with -- hot damn! -- cover letters) and generally attempting to conceive of an existence where the money I earn (always a perilously theoretical exercise) becomes a basis for sustenance. Self-sufficiency, even? Suffering succotash. It ain't happening anytime too soon, mind you, but maybe by the time the leaves have begun falling from the trees, I'll have some deadly-hip little position at some patrician establishment on one of the coasts. Or maybe not. But something or other ought to come around sooner or later. And then I'll make like Jay McInerney and write an even deadlier, hipper roman à clef about it. (Although I won't follow his example of churning several DOA tomes thereafter.) It's all free-association right now, but speculation is often the wellspring of actualization. I feel as if I should wrap this up with an "I guess you had to be there," even though it's not exactly an appropriate coda; but there's some sentiment in it that smells relevant. Maybe "I guess you'd have to be me"? Hmmm. Right. 6:33 PM +
sunday, july 16
My hosting buddies are experiencing Bell Atlantic backbone grief or somesuch, in case you're wondering about sporadic access to the site this weekend. Not that there's anything worth checking out these days. Snicker. How long before influx turns to reflux, I wonder?
In other news, my wonderful DSL connection is all set up. In theory. The relevant equipment is humming along within view, but the happy little green LEDs are blinking amber -- the international indicator for "uh-oh," electronically speaking. Turns out my local phone company has to resolve something called "LOOP NO CONTINUITY" on their end before the rapier stream of hot bits can flood my poor, atrophying Ethernet port. Of course, said phone company (GTE Ameritech, I think?) was supposed to have addressed this problem variously during the course of the past four weeks. I hate local monopolies.
But I love Michelle Pfeiffer. HOO-ah! Yeah. What Lies Beneath looks like lukewarm piss (beautiful one-sheet notwithstanding), but I'd follow Catwoman to the ends of the earth. Well, unless that led me to Los Angeles, but that's another hell altogether. 12:52 PM +
saturday, july 15
Extreme measures: Does being jobless count as a terminal illness? Can I be cryogenically suspended until there's a cure? In the future no one will have to work because everyone will have robot butlers. Wake me up when the icecaps melt. 1:07 AM +
friday, july 14
As usual, my favorite film critic in the whole wide world, Owen Gleiberman, nails a would-be summer blockbuster square in the pelvis. Says he of this week's pretender to the throne, X-Men: "This is a movie that was shot in Toronto and looks it." He elaborates on this damning sentiment, rightfully decrying director Bryan Singer as the grossly overrated fortune-cookie cracker that he is, but it's that one sentence that makes my skull tingle. My thoughts exactly. 4:52 PM +
thursday, july 13
Yesterday: lunch in Paris. Today: drool on my pillow. In Cleveland.
I'm still in an Albert Camus apathetic Doppler head space; still "out to lunch," as it were. I'll check in sooner or later. I'm around. There are photos to develop, lists to scan and annotate, words -- all sorts of words -- to assemble into thoughts and initiatives and endeavors. Hot sun makes the brain run like plasma, makes dreams take some opposite refuge, chilled to a superfluid, just graceful enough to slice up and serve sweetly. The alchemy that unlocks profit from fun: my private rainbow to chase. It'll all make sense in the coming months. Say about six. It will bear itself out. That's all I'm gonna say about it now. The past two weeks have been good. All sorts of ideas bursting like blood flowers, full of oxygen.
So, how've ya been? 11:49 AM +
thursday, july 6
Greetings from the Grecian isle of Santorini, home of the fabled Theran Cataclysm. The internet cafe here is mad snark, straight out of Leo DiCaprio's 'The Beach,' sans varicolored iMacs (not to mention slow as all hell). Otherwise, the scenery is soul-searing and far-flung -- as if titans from some long-forgotten mythology discarded their sailboats and treasured rocks and whatnot in their haste to collide with antiquity. Venice was a total snooze, by the way. If I've seen it twice, that's one time too many. And by the way, why did every other tourist there smell like damp cheesecloth? Well, gotta run, apologies for the typos. Cheers. 2:29 PM +
sunday, july 2
Stumbled into an internet cafe in Florence. Just thought I'd say hey. I've been avoiding most of the touristy stuff. It's been chill goings. A friend and I did happen to catch a screening of Gladiator in Italian, which was a complete gas. So much more melodramatic. Most of the attractions round these parts smell like old people and spicy food. Ack. Okey dokey, off I go. Check y'all later. 10:11 AM +
I hate Netscape. 7:47 PM +
I don't know whether it's networked or syndicated, but our local ABC affiliate carries this Martha Stewart program weekday mornings, which I happened to watch whilst peering over my Wall Street Journal today.
Everyone on the show who isn't Martha seems to hate/fear (same difference, as Master Yoda might say) Martha. In fact, I think Martha hates herself just a little, too, in this flashy-angry way. If you've ever seen Todd Solondz's Happiness, and remember Lara Flynn Boyle's character, that's the kind of self-hatred I'm talking about. The kind of self-hatred that hints at auto-erotic sadomasochism, that's almost empowering in a twisted way, like scrubbing floors or having diesel for blood.
But like I was saying, everyone on the show seems to despise Martha. It feels media-assembled to say so, as accounts of this phenomenon are rote and legion; but I'm surprised by how palpable it is during the broadcast. Today, Martha was making paper hand puppets [almost dislocates jaw yawning faux-ironically], and she had some crew-person dude helping her. At one point, she turned to him and made a comment about how the show is hard-work-but-they-also-know- how-to-have-fun. And in the flattest, most perfunctory, airline-steward- performing-flight-safety-instructions, deflated way, the dude assented thus:
"Yeah."
He said it as if she'd just asked him to donate a kidney to save her life, and he didn't really want to do it, but he knew it's the right thing to do regardless of his personal feelings. There was resentment in his voice.
After Martha Stewart, The View came on. I watched for a few minutes, until Star Jones started talking about having her period.
The television is off now. 12:04 PM +
sunday, july 30
There's this stupid anti-smoking commercial I just caught on MTV. It incites viewers to tear out whatever cigarette ads they come across in magazines. Okay. Encouraging people to be destructive. Good. Because that cigarette ad won't suddenly be eight times more attention-getting once it's been violently torn out of that magazine. Man, that's so alterna-cool.
The "grown-ups" at HQ must've thought: "Gee, kids like tearing shit up. They'll think this is ... they'll think it's ... [Lackey], what's the word I'm looking for?"
Peon: "'Whack,' sir? 'Dope'?"
"Ah yes -- they'll think it's [hesitates] DOPE."
The subtext of all this is, KIDZ ARE CHIMPS. Which is partially true, sadly enough, but I still think the best education is a simple presentation of facts. Smoking is gross and harmful. If people can't buy into that, then they're entitled not to. It's the way of the world. I don't give too much of a shit either way, but I object to inanity and sensationalism. (Notable exception: Baz Luhrmann movies. But I digress.)
Actually, now that I think of it, the whole current anti-smoking campaign reeks of fake-cool. Remember those awful Arizona Jeans ads a few years back, the ones where those fake kids fake-deconstructed other fake-cool ad campaigns? And then Tom Green skewered the whole thing ... on MTV. Which is where this rant started, as I recall. Fuck MTV. 6:04 AM +
saturday, july 29
Chuck E. Cheese is a rat, right? He sure as fuck doesn't look like a mouse. What's up with that? 3:35 PM +
The much-maligned navigational scrap has been banished to the bottom of the page. Brushed under the rug, you might even say. Less clutter, less clutter. (This one goes out to Rachel and Brian.) 1:14 AM +
friday, july 28
Raining again. Hot prongs of lightning stabbing at the ground. Sadly, no attendant conferral of superpowers. 6:19 PM +
Two things that give me the creeps -- marionettes and Roberto Benigni -- in tandem. I can already think of the one-sheet copy: "This fall, terror has a new name. And a foreign accent." Hopefully this one will end up in Development Hell alongside Michael Jackson's long-festering Edgar Allan Poe project. 3:27 PM +
thursday, july 27
One of the things I actually liked about college, now that I think about it, was having the majority of my friends in one geographic location. Even if I didn't necessarily see any number of them except on a weekly or bimonthly basis or whatever, it was nice knowing they were around. There's consolation in that, an element of taking things for granted -- the way one takes one's family for granted. It's a compliment, really.
Now that we're all scattered hither and yon, tethered only by email and itineraries and the tinny mono-aural full-duplex comfort of a phone call, I'm reminded for some reason of how the ocean looks from twenty, thirty thousand feet up -- from an airplane: it seems to stop moving. Memory can work like that also, from a remove.
Or maybe everything's just moving too fast. Immense speed can also yield stasis. Think of Einstein's theory of relativity. Think of a hummingbird. 6:12 PM +
It's raining something fierce right now. It makes me want to run outside and catch pneumonia. 2:57 PM +
Blanket response to recent emails: yes, a fully functional interface will return. I just couldn't deal with that god-awful gray staring back at me from the screen anymore. It was beginning to look like last year's Mercedes S500 -- tight tolerances and logical as hell, but so bloody boring. So this is just a simplified core-element motif until I rethink the scheme of the site. It'll evolve during the next few or several weeks. 12:23 PM +
wednesday, july 26
Do not adjust your monitor. I just couldn't stand looking at the old layout anymore, so I've slapped together this lite number until I can think of something more redeeming. All the subpages, et cetera, are still in place, so if you've linked to anything "deep" within the site, it's still there. I just want to keep things simple for a while. Welcome back, whitespace. It's been a while. Bleh. (If you really hate the change, I'll bring the old design back.) 10:08 PM +
My little sister was watching Dexter's Laboratory just now, and asked me: "Why does the American family have an Eastern European child?"
"Because he's an evil genius," I replied. 10:07 AM +
Any day now, Joan Collins is gonna sue Elizabeth Hurley for going back in time and stealing her mojo, but in the meantime, sit back and enjoy. 9:56 AM +
tuesday, july 25
All right, all right. I've made the font bigger. I've held off this long (I know, rhymes with wrong) for various reasons (my eyes are good; I hate big print; my flat panel display is sharp and properly calibrated), but recently someone named Alex emailed me with the following comment:
"I'm writing to say that your fonts actually cause me physical pain to read. That's all. Good day."
Noted and corrected, however belatedly. Hopefully you're not reaching for your bottle of Visine anymore; however, if your eyes are still burning, you know the drill: drop me a line and maybe I'll deal with it a few months from now.
Just kidding. Seriously though, do let me know if the size is okay now. And if any (rhymes with many) of you Windoze users out there could send me a screenshot, I'd be mightily cross-platform obliged. Thanks. 6:38 PM +
I caught a few minutes of Mysterious Ways, by sheer accident, when it ran ... was it only last night? Seems like a week ago. Anyway, the show is filled with the sort of lugubrious self-approbation and reverence usually reserved for ... I can't even think of a suitable example. Perhaps seal-clubbings and Matthew Broderick-sanctioned community service ventures? The whole thing begged for a Baywatch-style musical interlude. Make that several -- say, forty minutes' worth. Pure poison -- not even saccharine, but those moisture-absorbing salts that used to come in those little sugar-packet-like envelopes in boxes of electronic equipment, that your mom told you not to eat when you were little. The ones that said DO NOT EAT in big letters across the sides. Mysterious Ways should have DO NOT WATCH superimposed over its entire broadcast. Actually, that applies to network television in general these days. 5:09 PM +
The latest revision of the item dispenses with the dodgy semantics. Pratfall of realtime media feeds, I guess. 3:38 PM +
As I read this otherwise sad, upsetting, distressing (et cetera) news item on the Concorde crash outside Paris, a couple of fatuities leaped out at me from the text:
"A German government spokeswoman said Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had been shocked when he was told of the accident.
"'The chancellor has been informed of the crash, he extends his sympathy to the victims and their families and out of shock has canceled his remaining engagements for Tuesday,' the spokeswoman said."
Um, dude, keep doing your job. No fainting spells, por favor.
And then there's this:
"Huge clouds of black smoke could be seen for miles (kilometers) around, and police blocked off all roads leading to the scene of the crash, an area of farmland, crisscrossed by highways. Dozens of fire trucks and ambulances rushed to the scene."
Is that metric "conversion" really necessary? I guess they automate stuff like that and the algorithms involved aren't particularly sophisticated.
Admittedly, these are somewhat needling, impertinent observations on my part, but what can I say? 2:47 PM +
There's something else I'd like to whisper to you. Lean in ... closer ...
"Granny Klump." 9:58 AM +
There was a huge cow-inflected billboard (yes, you read that correctly) for this little oddity at last year's Cannes Film Festival. Considering that it was probably filmed in 1998, and is only now receiving a marketing push, it must stink pretty bad. That much is obvious from the trailer. Still, any film where Jonathan Lipnicki gets the stuffing beaten out of him is not entirely without its charms. Ondele! 9:44 AM +
monday, july 24
Apparently the choice quotes herein were culled from a German publication. Perhaps something got lost in the translation? Sorta reminds me of this, oddly and appropriately enough. 4:05 PM +
Butter melts only the way butter can. 1:00 PM +
Being visionary and being profitable are often mutually exclusive, if not diametrically opposed. Blah blah blah ... snake oil. 12:54 PM +
sunday, july 23
I guess taking photographs is a sort of compulsion. Let it be said, then, that I was somewhat disabused of this impulse during my most recent trip to Europe. Traverse the same general latitudes thrice in one year and everything starts to overlap and look the same. So my camera stayed in my pocket, mostly. This equation is compounded by my basic lack of skill, which also stayed my hand. I had a good time. I didn't document it particularly well. Regardless, I've uploaded a few snapshots. Comprehensive, they're not. 7:05 PM +
I've had a sore throat and a head cold for the last eighteen hours or so. Not fun. Illness, however mild, upsets your chemistry and skews your perceptions. Logic and reason slip out of your lazy grasp, and obedience—apathy?—seems like the path of least resistance. If I were a turtle, I'd retreat into my shell. As it stands, a down comforter will have to suffice.
I downed some Dimetapp elixir for my symptoms. Too much, apparently. The recommended dosage of two teaspoons doesn't seem appropriate for a full-grown adult male, so I just took a couple of swigs from the bottle. The pseudo-grape taste is so much better than the mentholated-licorice-tar-battery-acid flavor that passes for cherry and whatnot in some competing brands.
Now my neurons are swimming like the little gold flecks in a bottle of Goldschläger and my laptop screen seems to be deliquescing. I feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald on a bender. And it's not even noon.
Come closer. Let me whisper something to you.
Closer.
Closer.
"Wunderkind." 11:31 AM +
saturday, july 22
Yeah, comfort music is good, if often idiosyncratic. 10:35 PM +
Ah, those overworked Disney animators. The Emperor's New Groove looks anything-but; Atlantis, on the other hand, beckons like the undiscovered country. You win some, you lose some. 4:09 PM +
The Toolbelt McAsscrack telephone company technician came by twice yesterday and once more today, and I guess the third time was a charm, because now my DSL hookup is purring like Eartha Kitt. Finally. 2:25 PM +
This has found its way into our home video collection somehow, and my little brother and sister are terrified of it. "Scared silly," even. Nothing says "crossover appeal" like a psychotic(ally cheerful) hamburger clown. And yes, it's a musical. 1:36 PM +
wednesday, july 19
Not to boost Owen Gleiberman twice in one week, but sometimes he makes me laugh out loud. I was perusing the dead-tree version of EW during dinner and I literally started guffawing when I read this, much to my mother's chagrin:
"Have Cathy Moriarty and Kathleen Turner become the same person? Every year or so, one of them gets cast as a blowsy, angry, frog-voiced harridan in a movie that reeks of camp misogyny, and it always takes me a minute or two to figure out which one I'm watching. Is it the former neo-noir sexpot of 'Raging Bull' or the former neo-noir sexpot of 'Body Heat'? At this point, John Waters should probably team the two of them in a glorious boomer-hag remake of 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'"
Couldn't have said it better myself. 8:48 PM +
"Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life represents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss." (p.118) 11:03 AM +
tuesday, july 18
Your daily dose of ultra mega super scariness. Looks vaguely familiar, no? I think there were several of ... um, her ... at college, always trailing the prettier females with a pathetic ersatz enthusiasm that would break your heart ... if it weren't for the gag reflex already locking up your limbic system. Later, the boys would mentally size up various girls like lions picking off gazelles, and the hapless also-ran would crop up as "the ugly one," followed by a volley of chuckles. 8:20 AM +
monday, july 17
Laziness squared: I'm actually tired of slacking off. Would ya believe it? I go through phases. So I've totally been demolishing my little to-do lists and whatnot -- attending to various deferred projects and even sending out résumés (with -- hot damn! -- cover letters) and generally attempting to conceive of an existence where the money I earn (always a perilously theoretical exercise) becomes a basis for sustenance. Self-sufficiency, even? Suffering succotash. It ain't happening anytime too soon, mind you, but maybe by the time the leaves have begun falling from the trees, I'll have some deadly-hip little position at some patrician establishment on one of the coasts. Or maybe not. But something or other ought to come around sooner or later. And then I'll make like Jay McInerney and write an even deadlier, hipper roman à clef about it. (Although I won't follow his example of churning several DOA tomes thereafter.) It's all free-association right now, but speculation is often the wellspring of actualization. I feel as if I should wrap this up with an "I guess you had to be there," even though it's not exactly an appropriate coda; but there's some sentiment in it that smells relevant. Maybe "I guess you'd have to be me"? Hmmm. Right. 6:33 PM +
sunday, july 16
My hosting buddies are experiencing Bell Atlantic backbone grief or somesuch, in case you're wondering about sporadic access to the site this weekend. Not that there's anything worth checking out these days. Snicker. How long before influx turns to reflux, I wonder?
In other news, my wonderful DSL connection is all set up. In theory. The relevant equipment is humming along within view, but the happy little green LEDs are blinking amber -- the international indicator for "uh-oh," electronically speaking. Turns out my local phone company has to resolve something called "LOOP NO CONTINUITY" on their end before the rapier stream of hot bits can flood my poor, atrophying Ethernet port. Of course, said phone company (GTE Ameritech, I think?) was supposed to have addressed this problem variously during the course of the past four weeks. I hate local monopolies.
But I love Michelle Pfeiffer. HOO-ah! Yeah. What Lies Beneath looks like lukewarm piss (beautiful one-sheet notwithstanding), but I'd follow Catwoman to the ends of the earth. Well, unless that led me to Los Angeles, but that's another hell altogether. 12:52 PM +
saturday, july 15
Extreme measures: Does being jobless count as a terminal illness? Can I be cryogenically suspended until there's a cure? In the future no one will have to work because everyone will have robot butlers. Wake me up when the icecaps melt. 1:07 AM +
friday, july 14
As usual, my favorite film critic in the whole wide world, Owen Gleiberman, nails a would-be summer blockbuster square in the pelvis. Says he of this week's pretender to the throne, X-Men: "This is a movie that was shot in Toronto and looks it." He elaborates on this damning sentiment, rightfully decrying director Bryan Singer as the grossly overrated fortune-cookie cracker that he is, but it's that one sentence that makes my skull tingle. My thoughts exactly. 4:52 PM +
thursday, july 13
Yesterday: lunch in Paris. Today: drool on my pillow. In Cleveland.
I'm still in an Albert Camus apathetic Doppler head space; still "out to lunch," as it were. I'll check in sooner or later. I'm around. There are photos to develop, lists to scan and annotate, words -- all sorts of words -- to assemble into thoughts and initiatives and endeavors. Hot sun makes the brain run like plasma, makes dreams take some opposite refuge, chilled to a superfluid, just graceful enough to slice up and serve sweetly. The alchemy that unlocks profit from fun: my private rainbow to chase. It'll all make sense in the coming months. Say about six. It will bear itself out. That's all I'm gonna say about it now. The past two weeks have been good. All sorts of ideas bursting like blood flowers, full of oxygen.
So, how've ya been? 11:49 AM +
thursday, july 6
Greetings from the Grecian isle of Santorini, home of the fabled Theran Cataclysm. The internet cafe here is mad snark, straight out of Leo DiCaprio's 'The Beach,' sans varicolored iMacs (not to mention slow as all hell). Otherwise, the scenery is soul-searing and far-flung -- as if titans from some long-forgotten mythology discarded their sailboats and treasured rocks and whatnot in their haste to collide with antiquity. Venice was a total snooze, by the way. If I've seen it twice, that's one time too many. And by the way, why did every other tourist there smell like damp cheesecloth? Well, gotta run, apologies for the typos. Cheers. 2:29 PM +
sunday, july 2
Stumbled into an internet cafe in Florence. Just thought I'd say hey. I've been avoiding most of the touristy stuff. It's been chill goings. A friend and I did happen to catch a screening of Gladiator in Italian, which was a complete gas. So much more melodramatic. Most of the attractions round these parts smell like old people and spicy food. Ack. Okey dokey, off I go. Check y'all later. 10:11 AM +
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