I sometimes wonder...

2003-09-06T15:05:00.000-06:00

Moving

I'm thinking of permanently moving my blog over to typepad. So, for current updates, please visit redandblack. I have thirty days to decide how well it's working out. Leave comments (on redandblack) and let me know what you think.

2003-08-31T22:25:00.000-06:00

perhaps it's time to stop relying on supposed definites. and on order and schedules that i impose. perhaps it's time to stop relying.

::tired of the inevitable::

2003-08-31T22:21:00.000-06:00

eager-depression

emasculating personage

immediate satisfaction

importantance of conviction

conviction
commitment
conviction
commitment

regretandregretandregret and never start to change

::denying interpretation::

2003-08-24T18:55:00.000-06:00

So...I'm back at school. slowing seeing everyone again. room is much bigger this year.

maybe i'll post some sort of road trip diary later on...nothing really great happend, i was mostly in the midwest, i spent one night in chicago, which was about the only excitement of the whole trip.

::moving too quickly::

2003-08-18T07:00:00.000-06:00

After trying for the whole summer, I finally achieved the seemingly impossible: I woke up at 6 am, with the first ring of my alarm, and went to a coffee shop right when it opened. It's a great feeling.

I leave in four hours.

This weekend I tried to say goodbye to everyone. It didn't really work--I didn't see everybody, and my 'goodbye' to the people i did see seemed forced and carried much less weight than it should have. I'm sorry.

2003-08-14T18:33:00.000-06:00

leaving monday. much to do.

packed up all my cd's today. after purging a whole lot of bad stuff, i'm very proud of my music collection. i can almost pass for a real hipster.

mmm...caffeine pills...very bad for me...yesss

this week i interviewed randy murray, the new york city DJ who helped to break run d.m.c. in the early eighties. he was sooooo coooooool. the story should appear in tomorrow's Santa Fe New Mexican.

can i take this opportunity to put in a good word for yerba mate? it really is a magic beverage.

i've been doing a lot of therapeutic tape recording while i drive lately. handheld microcasette recorders are awesome.

::afraid to say goodbye::

2003-08-11T22:37:00.000-06:00

i value sincerity.

i cultivate irony.

and epitomize sarcasm.

::tired::

2003-08-07T16:45:00.000-06:00

as my life gets increasingly interesting, or at least stressful/hectic, my blog gets left behind. i guess that's the way it is for most amateur bloggers...if you have stuff to do, why sit around and write angst-y 5,000 word posts?

that said, stereo is turned up, door is locked, and typing fingers are all stretched and ready, so let's see what's up.

i leave for school on august 18th. a few goals to accomplish before then:

finally finish that painting i've been working on
get camera fixed
wake up early even on my days off
complete two features for the new mexican: driver's ed videos and randy murray (run d.m.c producer)
interview
wisely invest money (in iPod or similar device)
finish _a portrait of the artist as a young man_, _one hundred years of solitude_, and at least (2) other
books

that seems like a modest list, and i've got 10 days to do it; unfortunately, i also have to pack and set up campus tours for a number of colleges.

longevity cafe has reopened. water street is cool again, but only between ninepm and elevenpm.

must-see weekend events:
avenged sevenfold w/the kidcrash (maybe), warehouse21, friday night
the second street experience, carnival-thing, friday and saturday afternoon to night

last weekend of work starts tomorrow.

ben reininga and nick join me in leaving home early this fall. they're moving to hong kong and california, respectively, both to prestigious and extremely hip schools. eliza dangler, st. mike's numberonestareverything, is starting at simon's rock (i could not be any more excited about this, by the way). connor is graduating early to join the marines. bridget flannery mcCoy is going to school in Wales. santa fe, why can't you hold on to your best teenagers? I mean, how many smart people actually spend four years in high school nowadays?

my birthday was tons of fun. i was at a party on sunday night, and officially turned eighteen while debating the merits of pop-emo bands with various scenesters. mostly drunk scenesters. i had a drink called an 'ectoplasm' that was really quite good. i'm not sure what was in it. liquor and something green and fruity, pretty much. then emily and i went to a seedy all night diner (sounds cool, actually just denny's) at like two.thirty; we probably had the least awkward and most interesting conversation we've had all summer. i got home at fivethirty, slept for a few hours, and then started again. the rest of the day was a million percent less interesting, actually, it was only the first five hours that were unusually pleasant. this girl jamie bought a cake for me and brought it to the new mexican staff meeting. she is not good at picking up on signals. and she is not good at giving up. and she is _definitely_ not good at being let down easy.

ummm....there is a lot going, i never seem to be at home, it is difficult to explain what i do. what we do? y'know? we...sit? we eat bread? we tip well, we make outstanding remarks, we play games we do not quite understand, we are known in certain circles, we jump off buildings, we scare cops, we have a park a pizza place a coffee bar a tea house a book store a gallery a cinema a rock club and a neighborhood, we are young? i am tired of trying to define life in terms of the exciting things i have never done before. i accept that there are no good stories. can i also accept that they are all good nights?

::uncertain of answers to many seemingly obvious questions::

2003-08-05T23:57:00.000-06:00

18

::eighteen::

2003-07-27T00:48:00.000-06:00

i declare the following things either

HOT!

...or not

Begin!!!

hot:
java joe's
squad car 212
queer eye on the straight guy
diet coke
grunge
girl pants
second street
melody

not:
moist things
sleeping alone
federal witholding tax
not being able to answer yes or no questions
cafe oasis
microbrews and designer rootbeer
post-grunge
water street
harmony

::might call you "honey bunches of oats" if things get serious::

2003-07-20T19:02:00.000-06:00

I have started making to do lists every day. it is pretty helpful. or at least i feel that way. i want to take more advantage of the rest of the summer and be infinitely more productive.

::sets goals and achieves results::

2003-07-17T16:28:00.000-06:00

"watched high fidelity. it was a very ben rogers movie. hey! i bet that's why he amde a top five list of his favourite things about hannah flake once."

she knows me so well. visit h.flake

2003-07-17T16:22:00.000-06:00

deposited $790 today. i think it's sad that that is all the money i have made all summer. it doesn't really seem like very much.

watched cartoons. drank a smoothie.

yesterday: got to work hung-over. the summer begins.

I believe strongly in the significance of dreams.

lately i have been dreaming of falling in love.

::and again with the obscure antics::

2003-07-13T23:32:00.000-06:00

it's fuckin' a million degrees here. it's not even really the desert! i live on the side of a mountain.

::comfortable at seven thousand feet above the sea::

2003-07-13T19:04:00.000-06:00

define your aesthetic. fit into a mold.

last night matt sharp, ex-weezer bassist and rentals frontdude, played at warehouse21. it was one of those reflective, quiet acoustic shows. pleasant. matt sanford and i kind of wanted to party with mr. sharp after the show, so we knocked on his tour-winnebago. unfortunately, i pussied out and just asked him for a bottle of water. he gave me a half-finished one, so i guess he had been drinking from it. i hope i get mono or something, so i can tell people i got it from a rock star.

a guy came into the coffee shop the other day apparently for the sole purpose of showing me his brown recluse bite. most disgusting thing ever. brown recluse venom causes necrosis--which basically means all the tissue in the affected area turns pink and then black and starts to come off in dead chunks. ewwwww. picture.

connor is in canada. nick works every night. other ben is difficult to get in touch with. lonely nights ahead.

::my superhero name is sarcastico::

2003-07-07T15:46:00.000-06:00

my mom's parents are in town. we don't get along. that is all to be said about that.

happy 16th birthday dylan...i've never seen anyone less happy about a surprise party.

mmmm....the mars volta. that is good.

does anyone know how to play any ridiculously high stakes card games? can we please?

::keeping posts shorter since two thousand and three::

"fuck that, i'm stealing it"

2003-06-29T22:21:00.000-06:00

i don't even feel like i have anything to write about. all i've been doing is working, and no one wants to hear about that. i've only been working mornings, and i feel like i haven't slept in about a week. good thing about working at jane's: free alcohol at the "we've been open for a year" party on thursday. bad thing about working at jane's: jane sings all the time.

i went to a sort of teen newspaper staff party last night, so we could set off fireworks and then write a story about the best ones. but the po-po shut us down.

ramon turned 18. i don't think he got a tattoo or anything exciting. but yay for him anyway.

there was a radiohead concert on mtv tonight. it made my day.

::easily pleased so "please, please, please me"::

2003-06-26T10:10:00.000-06:00

Chris Stine
1985-2003

May he rest in peace.

2003-06-22T00:40:00.000-06:00

my car broke down. nick and i rocked the house singing "you've got to fight for your right to party" at lesbian pizza parlour karaoke night. i made a mixtape for emily and the packaging is probably the only interesting arts/crafts thing i've done ever, on in a long time. but i don't think i'll give it to her because that's a little too 'serious' and emo and stuff. i'll probably just call. i spent the better part of my afternoon at alex's house. i love just being able to sit on someone's couch and chat. and i love brittany & michelle (alex' family). and michelle's boyfriend's brownies.

::too tired for a cutesy signature::

2003-06-20T01:46:00.000-06:00

100 minutes of screamo

alright, so, amazing day.

my dog was in the doggie-hospital yesterday. she has a really bad infection of some sort, but she's much better now, i think. my dad picked her up this morning and as soon as she came in the door she crawled in my bed and slept there with me for like three hours. my dog never sleeps in my bed...it was really soothing, i should be more of a pet person.

so, when i finally got up, i got online and did a lot of college research, since I might be transferring after I get my A.A. in the spring. I requested applications from Cornell and Brown...and found out that requirements for Comparative Literature majors are way-way scary. Can I learn two foreign languages well enough to read them fluently in the next two years?

I was supposed to go out with Ashley tonight, but she was "too tired" after working all day. Ordinarily I would think that I'm getting majorly run-around, but Ashley is the type of person who actually might decide she's too tired for things...overworking herself would be bad for her health!

It actually turned out to be a good thing, maybe, as my night sans-Ashley was jam-packed.

I went into town without having made any plans with anyone, sort of just hoping I would run into someone. And I did. I walked like five steps from my car and saw Emily outside of this coffee shop. She was meeting some people for dinner, but she had half an hour to kill, so we walked around and chatted for awhile. Just like the last time we randomly ran into each other, we seemed to get along well. right around when she was about to go in and meet her friends, i said something like "I don't have much of a sex drive nowadays." which has been pretty true recently...aside from occassional bouts of 'okay, i probably have to have sex now.' Then she grabbed me, and kissed me, and said "even after that?" and she just turned and walked into the restaurant, leaving me completely speechless on the sidewalk.

shocking. absolutely. i couldn't have been less prepared for anything. and now I don't know what to do. Was she just being impulsive and silly? Messing with me? Does she want to get together? Has she had as much trouble getting over me as I've had trying to get over her?

am i supposed to call her or something?

after that i met eve and her friend laurie at the oasis, since eve is leaving for camp tomorrow. or actually in like three hours. we had the least awkward time of our brief friendship, and laurie seemed really cool, a surprise since my impression of her has always been that she's an off-putting bitch.

then i went to backroad pizza to play pool with thales, connor, nick, and ben. a good time, although nick and ben seemed to both be in really weird moods. afterwards, connor and i headed downtown, once again just expecting to run into people. and we definitely did. sachi and christina mulcahey were hanging out by the punk rock, so i got to catch up with them. then i saw carlo serna, the GOD OF SPEECH, home for the summer from Catholic University in D.C. He told me to give him a call if I'm ever in D.C again and we'd hang out. Which is very cool, coming from one of the more fun, more popular, and sexier guys I know.

Connor decided that we needed to do some 'snarfling,' so we headed to the east side of town, and stole all the plastic letters off the sign at the Rio Grande School. Hopefully Connor will make some sort of decorative sculpture out of them.

I did a lot of driving today, which gave me time to listen to all 100 minutes of the mixtape I made. It's all screamo-violence, speed punk, and math rock. sort of makes me edgy.

::still in love with many things::

2003-06-18T00:01:00.000-06:00

ooooo....the new Grandaddy album is great.

and the new Radiohead album is greater.

Buying a bunch of CD's all at once is so wonderful...i also got Elliott Smith, Either/Or. so nice.

Jane gave me keys to the cafe. dumb move on her part, probably.

if you could have been at one concert, no matter the constraints of space and time, what would it be?

I say Butthole Surfers, 1986, the Danceteria, New York City.

"the band was livid; Haynes got quite drunk just before show time.
after only a song or two, Haynes picked up a beer bottle and viciously smashed Leary over the head with it. Leary's eyes rolled back in his head as he crumpled to the floor. Then he quickly got up and resumed playing. it was a stunt bottle. Then Haynes pucked up a real bottle and heaved it the length of the room. Soon haynes had set fire to a pile of trash in the middle of the stage.
then Lynch jumped onto the stage from the audience and began dancing...
that girl, she pulled down her pants and Gibby started sticking his thumb up her ass. He was fucking her with his thumb just back and forth and this went on for like a half hour or forty-five minutes.
and that was only the beginning.
the band had played only five shambolic songs before Leary leaned his guitar against the amplifier, producing ear-splitting feedback; the strobes were flickering, sierens were flashing, the films were rolling, and through the dry ice fog a couple of open fires burned brightly.
gibby filled up a plastic whiffleball bat full of urine and made this 'piss wand.' haynes then began swinging the bat, spraying urine all over the crowd. but it didn't stop there...
lynch, now completely naked, lay down on stage, and haynes, in leary's words, started "mounting her".her legs are up in the air and there's gibby's pumping butt in the strobe lights and the smoke...in the midst of the chaos, leary went around discreetly poking screwdriver holes in every PA and monitor speaker in the place.
...afterwards, the band invited lynch to be part of the stage show; she wound up dancing with the Butthole Surfers for years."
--a description of the concert sort of quoted from "Our Band Could Be Your Life."

2003-06-16T23:07:00.000-06:00

i totally don't get how the internet works.

i finally got paid today. which was lucky, because i owed the bank lots of money. apparently i've been writing bad checks all over town.

which is pretty bad-ass, in a mid-eighties sort of way.

and i do love the 80's.

I worked today. I work tomorrow. Pablo, world-renowned scientific astrologer, and former tarot/astrology adviser to Courtney Love [!] and Kurt Cobain [!!!], is coming tomorrow, as per every tuesday. i'm so excited! he can tell me more crazy rock'n'roll stories.

although all i really want is for one of the middle-aged women who comes into the coffee shop to turn to her prada-toting friend and say, "i could just fuck the shit out of that adorable coffee boy."

I sort of have a date with Ashley. That is the story.

::now with %20 more links and %0 more interesting ones::

2003-06-15T00:01:00.000-06:00

I had a pleasant night...if not terribly event-filled. Nick, Reininga, Cousin Kevin, Connor, and I went to this new pizza place on Second Street, Backroad Pizza. It was really good. I recommend the pesto. Ernest James and the Taos Zydeco Band played, because it was the grand opening or something. We played pool for awhile. I was unfortunately trounced by Nick. We also went to the plaza for a bit. We ran into Emma, a girl I have not seen for many a year. She was hitting people with those noodle things kids play with in the pool. We also saw the extra-beautiful girl from Aztec Cafe. She's so beautiful, in fact, that when I first saw her I thought she was Leah, of Spit on a Stranger, the mostest beautiful girl on the internet.

2003-06-14T15:19:00.000-06:00

the first thing I heard this morning was my boss' voice on my cell phone, at nine-thirty.

jane: ben, do you know you're supposed to come in to-day?
ben: yeah.
jane: well, have you decided just to not show up?
ben: no. i'm supposed to come in at twelve.
jane: oh no. you were supposed to open.
ben: the schedule definitely said twelve to six.
jane: you need to get here as soon as possible.
ben: but....yeah, okay, i'll be there.

so i went in from ten.fifteen to two. and i'm supposed to go back at four to help with the closing. i can't believe i let her wake me up and drag me to work two hours early. i'm not a fucking er doctor--i'm not supposed to be on call.

::really feels like yelling at boss, yet simultaneously fears getting fired::

2003-06-14T00:03:00.000-06:00

That was definitely the most hardcore show I've ever been to. It was As I Lay Dying, the Death Campaign, and Dead Like Everyone. Yes, three bands with references to death in there name...plus, the opening band, But Not Ferdinand, used to be called Dead Man Joaquin. It was intense. All these kids from Albuquerque came and showed off their ridiculous mosh pit moves. My favorite was one where a two guys got back to back, locked arms, and then sort of cartwheeled, so that each guy in turn was up in the air kicking his legs around. Alex Gaziano did something similar, where he got on a guy's back and just started kicking people. I bought As I Lay Dying's sampler CD...they were really good. They're a Christian band, but they were incredibly, incredibly fast and intense and I actually thought they were really quite cool.

I'm pissed that I missed out on seeing Darkest Hour when they came to Albuquerque...it would have been so good to see this band Isaac and Bontempo are always talking about.

Music is so beautiful...I need to devote myself to starting a band this summer, and to getting good at guitar (I've learned to play some Elliot Smith songs, which makes me squeal with de-lite).

::probably shouldn't use capital letters any longer::

2003-06-11T00:09:00.000-06:00

ben rogers would like to let hannaH Flake know that he most definitely reads her blog, and he wants to thank her for reading his.

2003-06-10T23:21:00.000-06:00

"The way things are nowadays, sex doesn't mean a thing. It's just a sport like tennis, you know? The really personal thing between a man and a woman is communication."
--John Barth, Giles Goat Boy

I sold my car for a cool six grand. I'll use that money to buy my dad's Subaru off of him and fix it up a bit.

I got to 'carry' my first shift at work today--meaning I got to work mostly by myself. So nice. Boss still crazy. She told me never to talk to a certain customer just because she doesn't like him...but I'll ignore her, because he was the only interesting person I talked to all day.

So, I'm about the horniest teenage boy in the Great Southwest, I'm pretty sure. I need to get some. and I feel more and more like I need to Caroline Hu that I love her.

At warehouse on Saturday I tried the "Isaac Linder Flying Tackle" on some stranger. Basically ran and jumped onto his shoulders, knocking him to the floor. Because he was really pissing me off. It was really fun, and I plan on learning more hilarious mosh pit moves for use in the future. Possibly at the Dead Man show on Friday.

New radiohead album out. Have not purchased it yet.

This morning some cute girl I've never seen before pulled up next to me in her car while I was sitting on a bench reading and yelled a super-adorable "hi" at me and waived frantically. I guess she was hitting on me. So we're probably married now.

::willing to cheat on brand new wife since he doesn't know her name::

2003-06-09T22:55:00.000-06:00

YOU EAT PEOPLE!!!

2003-06-08T23:33:00.000-06:00

emo/indie kid:
cheer up, it's ok to be happy you music
elitist

So, what kind of Underground kid are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

2003-06-08T23:17:00.000-06:00

it was the biggest secret i've ever kept

2003-06-03T13:53:00.000-06:00

Work went much better today, so now I get to work Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I might even start getting paid real wages and tips. Yippee!

2003-06-01T16:18:00.000-06:00

I've fallen in love with epitonic.com. It's just a bunch of free mp3's, and while the selection isn't incredible, there's been at least one or two songs for almost every obscure indie rock band I looked up. Which is nice...especially since it's almost impossible to find stuff on the Mac file-sharing services, Limewire and Acquisition.

2003-05-31T15:10:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, after I took my little brother to his violin lesson (he's doing soooo well!), I spent most of the day with Conor--he being my usual partner for highjinks of various kinds. We went to this barbecue that some girl we don't know (ollie?) was having. We parked across the street, and what should we find in the arroyo in front of our parking spot? A bunch of our friends (mostly Conor's friends, actually) getting drunk! Silly teenagers, it was the middle of the afternoon...

Anyway, we chilled with those kids for awhile and waited for Thales to show up. I'm not sure how long we spent at the barbecue/park/arroyo thing, but it was fun. I met this girl Kalie from Dead Man Joaquin, who seems like a lot of fun (I sort of wonder if Ana and Julie from Dead Man remember me...no one ever seems to)--we exchanged text messages on our cellphones the whole time. I've been trying to use text messaging as much as possible, because it's really Japanese, and doing things that are really Japanese might impress Caroline Hu. I also hung with this girl Katie who Conor is friends with; we talked about college, and I tried to steal her sunglasses.

After that, Conor, Thales and I started just cruising around, climbing out the sunroof and listening to blink (liking blink 182 is the secret shame/pride of every Santa Fe scenester). We went to the mall...I think our plan was to get kicked out of as many stores as possible. Thales proved at Mervyn's that he could fit his whole self "comfortably" into a suitcase. Then we got distracted, because Thales asked me if my ears were pierced, and I said "no, but I think I'll get them pierced right now."

You have to be 18 to get your ears pierced without parental consent, which presented something of a problem. The first place we went to accepted my college ID and didn't look at the date, but they wouldn't pierce my ear without a driver's license because of some form they needed to fill out. So, we went to another place. The girl just asked how old I was, and when I said 18, she handed me a form. I had to sign a thing that said "blah blah blah if you're under 18 and lying to us about your age you could get in deep shit blah blah blah." But I signed it anyway. The girl took my college ID, and used my ID number to fill in the Driver's License Number space. She obviously saw the date and knew I was lying, but she said "I'll just pretend" and we got on with it. I bought two earrings and then the piercing was free. It hurt less than I expected it to...I just got one little stud in my left ear (although now I want to get that ear pierced again, plus one on the right side; I think I'll do that as soon as I actually turn 18). I felt rebellious, which was cool, I guess.

When we got back to the car, Conor took my second earring and pierced his own right ear. Pretty hardcore.

After all that we went to Cafe Oasis with Alex and Brian so we could all sit around and be really emo (unlike most of my links, that one is very much worth clicking on). Mmm...chai.

On my way home, I stopped to get gas, and glory of glories, I ran into Emily Pepin! Her hair is really short now, which is super super hot, and she's driving, which is hot as well. Oh I miss her.... ximawhinybitchx. We chatted for a good while; she seems to be doing well, breaking into swimming pools and watching catatonic babies and whatnot.

Today I had my first real day of work. I got to the coffe shop at 7.45, and it was already busy...even though it wasn't supposed to open until 8! Jane was the only one there, and she was getting kind of overwhelmed. I juiced a bunch of lemons, oranges, and grapefruits, washed a lot of dishes, bussed a lot of tables, and made a lot of mistakes. Once Esodie got there, I started sort of getting into the groove of things, and I think I was actually doing really well. I learned to use the cash register, and started to learn the espresso machine. I was feeling really good about the whole thing, and then...

Jane came to tell my shift was over, and called me into her office, and gave me this whole speech about how she didn't think the coffee shop was my "natural environment." So, she wants to keep me in training for quite awhile, if she wants to keep me at all! Which is completely retarded...obviously I'm going to make mistakes and not know how to run the whole coffee shop on the first day, she knew when she hired me that I hadn't done anything like this before; and I really was catching on and keeping busy and stuff, at least by the end of my shift. I think she was just a little frazzled because people had rushed the shop before it opened in the morning, and the short order cook was late, and the register was way off. She told me that I wouldn't be getting a cut of the tips until I was done training, but then as I left, Esodie slipped me my half of the tips from when it was just me and Jane working (Jane owns the place, why should she get tips?)

Hopefully I'll be able to prove myself...although it looks like I'm in for a summer of hating my boss. At least I like my coworkers. Esodie is really fun, and Jesse, who also works for my dad, seems cool, although I didn't see much of him 'cause he just works in the kitchen. I haven't really met the other people yet, although I'm sure that I will.

So, that was my weekend so far.

2003-05-29T23:31:00.000-06:00

So, I got the job at Jane's Cafe, the coffee shop near Uppercrust Pizza. I start tomorrow, with just a couple hours of training and stuff. I get minimum wage at first, and then $7/hr once I've finished training. I'm pretty excited--working at a coffee shop was absolutely what I wanted to do for the summer.

I saw Lost in La Mancha last night. Connor and I weren't sure what it was about--but it was playing at CCA, so Connor's friend could get us in free, and the poster said Johnny Depp, so we were in. It turned out to be a documentary about Terry Gilliam trying to make a film version of Don Quixote--a project that was doomed to fail almost from the start. Strangely, it made me really want to work in the film industry. I think I'm going to contact the College of Santa Fe and find out more about their really prestigious Moving Image Arts program. Maybe literature isn't actually my thing? One interesting job that I noticed in the film was film insurance claims adjustor--I had no idea that movie production was insured, in case, for example, a sudden storm destroys all the equipment.

*****

The Atlantic Monthly reports this month that the martyr Mohammed al-Dura was not killed by Israeli gunfire. Mohammed al-Dura was a 12 year-old boy that was killed at netzarim on the second day of the al-Aqsa Intifada (september 30 200). It was initially reported that the Israeli Defense Force shot the boy, and the IDF claimed responsibility for the accidental shooting. Now, new evidence indicates that al-Dura could not have been shot by the Israeli military. I can accept that the boy may have been accidentally killed in the cross-fire; he is still a martyr, because Israeli incursions into the Gaza Strip were the ultimate cause of the fighting at Netzarim that day. But the Atlantic Monthly goes so far as to lend legitimacy to claims that al-Dura's was intentionally shot by Palestinians in order to create a martyr! Such a claim is ridiculous, it is the most horrifying of anti-Palestinian sentiments; how can we dehumanize Palestinians to the point where we believe them capable of murdering children for propaganda? To question the orthodoxy of al-Dura's murder is one thing, but to make anti-Palestinian claims when there is no evidence whatsoever is another!

In case you didn't know, this blog will forever be pro-freedom fighter.

*****
Baudrillard hypothesizes in Simulacra and Simulation that today's culture does not produce, it only expends; culture has moved from the stage of expansion (explosion) to the stage of contraction (implosion); everything tends toward entropy.

How then is Global Conflict implosive? My theory is that in the context of the United States' global hegemony, all conflict, or at least all conflict involving the US, is necessarily an expenditure, an implosion. When the US controls the globe (and the US does, in many senses, control the globe), the wars perpetrated by the US are internal; war is no longer about defeding ourselves against outside forces, it has become about suppressing radical elements within our own sphere of influence. That is why people refer to the US' actions as "policing the globe;" we do police the globe, just as we police within our own (now arbitrary) borders, because we are the globe, the "system." Saddam Hussein was not a threatening foregin power; he was a radical element threatening something the US already controlled/controls: Mid-East Oil. The United States' policy of global preemption is in fact "implosive" rather than "explosive;" our government perpetrates illegal wars to purge dangerous elements within our system.

::one step closer to theorizing the postmodern::

Santa Fe

2003-05-28T00:31:00.000-06:00

So, I'm happily back in santa fe!

Last Thursday, Buko, Paige and I had a super excellent adventure. Buko wanted to visit this "abandoned mansion" that he had seen last semester. Paige and I were skeptical of the mansion's abandonedness, and I told Buko that if we were disappointed I would probably kick him in the nuts. Anyway, we got to this "abandoned" mansion, and there were several cars parked in front of it. Big let down, right? Well, we walked around the building, and it did look kind of weird and run down. It actually turned out to be more of a barn than a mansion, and one of the big barn doors had a bunch of "no trespassing" signs. there was a laundry line out back and i stole a pair of argyle socks. buko and paige wanted to leave, but i told them we could probably just walk in and start yelling and ask whoever we found if we could take a look. we found a kid, younger than us, and he said we could go on in. the barn or whatever was absolutely filled with stuff...old mechanical equipment, boxes of clothes, furniture, everything, enough for three or four families. we walked up the stairs, but once we got up there, a woman with a french accent told us that she would prefer it if we would leave. she started to tell us the story of the building, but all we heard was "Institute for Economic Affairs....blah blah frenchy talk blah....Lusitania" before she said (literally) that her crepes were burning and we had to leave.

So, we left, and decided to try to find the Institute for Economic Affairs, which I had visited once with Jack Cushman. We got distracted by a path in the woods that led nowhere, but eventually we found the American Institute for Economic Research. The center of the "campus" was a largish castle type structure. There was also a Perfect Tree. It looked the Tree of Knowledge that the hero arrives at the end of a corny fantasy movie. I don't know if that's ever happened at the end of a fantasy movie, but it seems plausible...anyway, buko will probably put pictures of the tree up on his website or his livejournal someday. Okay, so we played around the magic tree for awhile, and then decided to walk towards these newish looking buildings, where we figured the office would be. On the way, we passed the biggest mailroom i've ever seen. bigger than a post office. very suspicious. so, we found the office, and i asked the receptionist if she knew anything about the barn. and she didn't. but instead of sending me home, she called the director of the institute, and sent me up to meet him. So paige, buko and i went upstairs, and talked to fred harwood, who explained everything. turns out, the institute was built on the estate of mr. and mrs. pearson, from lake forest, illinois (buko's home town!), who died on the Lusitania. The barn we visited was also part of the estate. Fred gave us some pamphlets, and we found out that the institute is sort of a socialist think tank. Which is awesome. But why such a big mailroom?

After that adventure, Buko and I hung out all night, partly with Caroline Hu. She's probably just the most adorable smart fun girl ever. Too bad she dedicates her whole self to being in love with the unattainable Buko.

Caroline and I were supposed to hang out on Friday night, after Buko left. But I fell asleep at 8 o'clock and missed my one chance to spend time with her. dammit.

obviously i made it home just fine. my flight was uninteresting. i met a kid from MIT who turned out to be quite a dork. he started every sentence with "y'know what I find interesting?"

So far, my big occupation here in Santa Fe has been job hunting. It looks like I might be working at Jane's, a coffee shop near Uppercrust. sounds excellent.

okay, gotta go, gotta get up early tomorrow and meet this girl for breakfast/coffee, whatever.

2003-05-18T21:34:00.000-06:00

So, Blogger is doing some weird thing where they move all the users over to a new version of Blogger. I don't know what that means, or what's involved, really, but it does seem to be affecting the amount of time it takes to load blogspot pages. I noticed that for both my blog and Jessica's blog Safari was only able to load about half of the page before timing out. Which is wicked annoying, but oh well...the top half of the page (or the first 6-7 "items" that the browser loads) has all the new stuff, anyway.

One week left. One fucking week. It will be so nice to be out of here and just be done with the school year. But that's in the long term. In the short term, Holy Shit, there's only one week left and I have to:

write a 3-5 page short story in Spanish
finish the take-home part of my American Transcendentalists final (a four page mini-paper)
Dramatically revise the fresh sem essay of my choice
study for and then take finals in Statistics and Am. Trans.
and, most importantly/frighteningly: clear move out.

I'm flying home, and I can only take a very limited amount of stuff on the airplane, so I have to ship most of my stuff home. I'm really very concerned that packing, cleaning, figuring out what I can just throw away, will take a lot of time and be really stressful, especially when I have school stuff to do at the same time. Plus, it'll probably cost me like $300 to get all my crap shipped home.

maybe i don't have that much to do. I don't know. whether or not it's legitimate, I'm stressing the fuck out. glad i bought cigarettes today...

As much as I'm excited about being completely done with my classes, I'm sort of dreading having to leave and spend the whole summer without seeing any of my Simon's Rock friends. Maybe I should try to make plans to visit people over the summer, but I really just plan on working all the time. I'll miss every one so much...I definitely need to get a hold of everybody's email and summer address so I can try to keep in touch.

I've been doing a lot more reading of other people's blogs lately, and I'm once again getting excited about serious blogging. I think once I get a blogroll/link sidebar thing going (soon, hopefully), I'll post a bit to discuss what I'm reading and what my current views on blogging are.

::doesn't trust that zander kid one bit::

2003-05-11T12:17:00.000-06:00

I promised myself that I'd be at the library to start working by two, but that didn't happen, so I might as well put off homework even further and post a little.

This weekend was Mayfest, which is when the Student Life department throws a big huge party the weekend before finals and then makes sure that there is an RD (read: authority figure) around every corner. It's sort of weird, having this atmosphere where it seems like anything goes and then running into someone who could bust you every five seconds. Thursday was the hip-hop performance/party, which was pretty awesome, especially some of the solo dances that were just incredible (go Gillian). The Prom was on Friday, and it was sort of silly; I took Caroline and Maia as my dates, but I guess I really just went to see Ali. Yesterday, Brendan's girlfriend Liz came, which was fun; there was a premier of the thesis movie I was in last semester, which was pretty embarassing for me; and a midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show, with some students performing the whole movie along with what happened on the screen. It was very sexy, especially Todd and Adam la Faci.

After Rocky Horror, Maia and Caroline told me that I had to take them on an adventure. We played frisbee in the dark, and then we started to climb this huge tree until I found something that looked like a nest and decided I was done with the tree. We also played on the swing, and Maia spun me around until I was so dizzy that I actually fell over in front of the security car. They must have thought I was soooo drunk.

Oh yeah, dice is the new coolest thing. C-lo, to be more specific. On Thursday, I won a whole pack of cigarettes playing dice, plus most of Sasha's clothes (unfortunately, Ali Harabosky also won my favorite pair of pants and I don't know when I'll be getting them back).

Home in two weeks. TWO WEEKS. Whoo.

::says whoo when he does want to talk anymore::

2003-05-06T12:22:00.000-06:00

For the whole semester, I've been totally sure that I'm just an English person, that's my department, I don't want to take anything but Lit classes ever again. But lately, I've been branching out.

First off, I've decided to become a math genius. To that end, Brendan teaches me a little bit of calculus every day at lunch. It's a lot of fun, somehow, even though I've thought that I hate math. Maybe it's because there's no class involved, and I can learn stuff really quickly without waiting for everyone else to figure out what's going on.

I've also gotten a little more interested in foreign languages. Buko sort of inspires me to practice my spanish more often, because he's the only person I really talk to in Spanish outside of class; he also taught me a very useful phrase in chinese. I don't know how to write it in pinyin, which is the technical way to write Chinese with roman characters, but in phonetic english, it's like this:

nee sure whoa da my lie doe ji chi ren

It means "you are my futuristic robot."

by the way, visit buko.

::thinks tetris theory is more interesting than actually playing tetris::

2003-05-01T18:52:00.000-06:00

I just wrote an extremely long post responding to the utter stupidity of students at the Serge Lang lecture tonight. Unfortunately, all of the academic and pc things i said in critique of the way students acted at the lecture were destroyed by blogger, so I'll just say, for now: ya'll dumb.

This blog will probably not be seeing frequent updates at any point in the near future. While I feel that blogging is important and that my contribution to the world of online publishing is significant to my close friends (who have very little contact with me otherwise), I have become largely frustrated with the medium. I am seriously considering getting an actual website and using movable type to include a blog on the site. That will be in the future, however, because I'll have to learn a lot about web design before that can happen...

2003-04-21T13:17:00.000-06:00

blogger is seriously causin' some trouble up in here.

gettin' all uppity and what not.

i probably need to get a blog on movable type.

I could get it hosted on this porn site: fucker.net.

that would be sweet.

2003-04-21T12:58:00.000-06:00

Are you ready for a challenge?

2003-04-12T15:39:00.000-06:00

AEP Day was today. That's when all of the finalists for the school's big super competitive merit scholarship arrive for interviews and tours and stuff. Since I won the scholarship last year, I was invited to hang out and give a couple tours and what not.

It was nice, but it didn't seem nearly as fun as my AEP day last year. I gave tours to a girl named Rachel Tapley (whose father was constantly hanging behind the group poking his head into things he found interesting) and a boy named David Kim (who spent more time talking to his mom in Korean than asking questions). They were both nice, and seemed like good applicants, but not shoe-ins.

There were 30 finalists, and the school gives out twenty full AEP scholarships. The winners have probably been decided by now--the faculty council gets together almost as soon as the interviews are over.

Amazingly, there was actually an applicant from my high school! Eliza Dangler is a sophomore at St. Mike's, and a friend of Emily's. I know her sort of--I saw her at a Strokes concert once, I think. I wrote her a nice little note of recommendation, because I've always thought that she seems really smart and dedicated. I really hope she gets the scholarship, as it would be great to have someone to talk to about New Mexico type stuff (I mean, there's always Jessica, but she's Albuquerque and that's soooo different). I'm almost positive that she will get it. Eric and I both wrote her glowing notes of recommendation, and she has a very impressive record, plus she seems super-enthusiastic.

So, one more night on campus and then finally, I get to come home for a week. That should be so nice. The weather's been terrible here lately, but in Santa Fe I'll be able to cruise with the top down, chill with the guys, eat chimichangas, go to W21....oh man oh man oh man, so excited!

Last night I watched a couple episodes of The Prisoner, which is a really weird British TV show from the seventies, about this secret agency who resigns his post and then gets kidnapped to this place called The Village, this weird place where everyone has a number instead of a name. They're always trying to get all this secret information from him, and he keeps trying to escape, but every time he tries to get away he gets chased down by this big white balloon. So weird.

Apparently I'm supposed to go out to dinner with a bunch of guys I don't really know later on, and then there's gonna be this weird epic sword fight kind of thing in the Kilpatrick (apparently someone discovers they have fencing foils for rent). That might be fun, I'm not really sure yet.

Random plug for bendependent.com

::sometimes forgets to put little notes at the end of his posts::

2003-04-08T15:58:00.000-06:00

My life seems to have taken a rather Biblical turn lately. I have become, in certain circles, a figure akin to Judas Iscariot, betrayer of Christ. Today in, my locked mailbox, there appeared a note:

"The cock crows for the third time."

A reference to Judas' final betrayal of Christ. Why did I receive this note?

On Sunday evening, two sophomore friends of mine decided to play a prank on my RA, Nick Ballenger. At three in the morning, I let the pair into the building. With them, they brought a bottle of honey, and a bag of freshly-shorn hair. Nick slept unawares in his room, with his bald, bald head. The pair proceeded to honey up his head, and add some hair to it. He awoke in anger. The sophomore escaped.

When Nick eventually discovered who the culprits were, he also found out about the role I had played. Because Nick and I are close, my act was one of betrayal. Hince the cryptic notes.

I think it lends an interesting motif to my life, what with Nick constantly striking the pose of a crucified man in my presence and all.

2003-04-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

I don't know if I've ever been this dissatisfied with Simon's Rock before. All I can think about wanting to do is getting home....only one more week and I'll be in Santa Fe.

I'm just getting really tired of the way my group of friends is treating me. I don't think that I've actually been invited to do anything with Bontempo et al. since we returned from break--it may just be paranoia, but I feel like I am being very actively excluded.

Consequently, I spend most of my time in my room, doing very little if anything at all. I hang out with Maia, Ilana, Caroline, Gavin, Jess, and Peter a lot now. It's nice, but I really don't feel connected to them. I really, really miss having Bontempo as a close friend.

Fuck!

This is turning into one of those retarded apathetic emo bullshit online diaries.

One exciting thing happened in the past week: Jess and I hosted a show on the new campus radio station, WSRC. It was kind of a success, I think--we had at least five listeners, which is very few, but that's actually a lot more than the station usually gets. So, high fives for us.

::hates sleeping alone::

2003-03-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

I gave blood this afternoon, and now I'm really quite tired. Perhaps I'll take a nap. Taking naps, in my opinion, is super cool. I got my midterm grades. Four B's and an A. I thought that was pretty good, but my advisor told me that there's no reason for me to ever have anything but a B+ average. A lot of my comments were harsh. Okey, wrote that my fiction has a lot of potential--if I could develop a strong voice, good plots, and believable characters. Ouch. I think he'll be impressed with the short story I just turned in. At least I hope so. Bob Snyder put down that I've got a D as my homework grade. Homework is only %10 of the class, but he seemed kind of pissed about it. Oh well. As long as I keep doing well on tests and ace the final, I'm in the clear.

Aside from school, which is growing less and less important, things are going alright. My group (Bontempo, Catherine, and Judd), which was once, briefly, such a Simons Rock institution, seems to have dissolved rather intensely. There are several reasons why, but I don't know that it would be prudent to discuss them here. Catherine doesn't mind at all that we're no longer a 'group,' but I'm not taking it very well. I liked actually belonging to a very close collective of friends. It was something that I could be as comfortable with as being a 'speechie.' Now, it doesn't seem like I have any sort of social circle to hang on to. I've been hanging out a lot with Buko, Sadiek, Sasha, Brendan, etc, and Ilana, Maia, Caroline, etc, but for the most part I feel like I'm destined to spend the rest of the year in relative solitude. Maybe I'll actually start getting some work done. Read the books I've been meaning to read:

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Part I and The Foucault Reader
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation
Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy of Dunces(which I started over break and almost finished, but haven't gotten back to).
More Hemingway, Faulkner, perhaps some Mailer, Naipaul, and Updike

That could be nice. But what I really want is to fall in love with the cutest girl in the universe. Unfortunately, I don't really know who the cutest girl in the universe is, and I doubt I could have her if I did. There's this picture on my wall of some actress whose name I don't know wearing an adorable black victorianish dress and black converse sneakers. I'd like to meet someone like her. I think. I'm sort of not that interested in 'hooking up.' I really just want to have the chance to sleep next to someone again.

I've been reevaluating the girls I was involved with last semester, and I'm starting to wonder why things ended with a few of them. In retrospect, good things were going. mmmm. It will be nice to get back to Santa Fe and get away from all this weirdness.

I watched Seven last night. It's a great movie. The ending is such a letdown though! Kind of like most of what I get myself involved in. A big let down.

I've decided to win almost every category in the Leslie Sanders Writing Contest and publish a lot of work in the school literary magazine, Glacial Erratic. That should give me a big boost. Hope I can do it.

::Living in the past since June 2002::

2003-03-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a problem with the very end of the previous post.

Anyway.

www.pressgaggle.com

2003-03-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

So yeah, a lot going on I guess. Tomorrow classes are cancelled for a teach-in related to the war. Explicitly, the teach-in is an equal forum for all views, but implicitly (for the simple reason that all of the organizers are anti-war) the teach-in is mostly peace oriented--something which I whole-heartedly support.

This morning, I received three e-mails from Simon's Rock professors. Apparently, the faculty has decided to use the student@simons-rock.edu list-serve as an opportunity to bicker publicly. Majid sent an e-mail to the whole campus condemning the teach in for even considering allowing pro-war parties to voice their opinions (saying that by participating in a debate about the killing of civilians, he would lose part of his humanity). Barbara Resnik responded (again to the whole campus) by saying that she didn't think there were discursive limitations on the teach-in; Majid was wrong to assume that he wouldn't be allowed to take an adamantly anti-war stance. Finally, Ahmet sent out an e-mail noting that even if he was not expected to act moderately, the campus was being foolish in acting moderately as a whole, because pro-war opinions already get vocalized in the major news outlets (Ahmet, like Majid, seems to have decide to boycott the teach-in, which he had actually suggested in the first place).

I think it's great that the faculty has suddenly become embroiled in this very public game of name-calling. Johanna and the rest of the organizers of the teach-in must be flipping their shit. I'm sure that once Bernie starts the whole thing off tomorrow morning, it will be very smooth sailing (my only concern would be that many students will not participate in the teach-in, because they'll think of it just as a day off of school).

RED DART! RED DART! RED DART! Isaac and Judd built a bike. The front tire is a four-inch scooter wheel. There aren't breaks, or pedals. It only goes down-hill and you stop by crashing. It's probably the best bike in the universe.

Ramon will apparently be showing up on campus tonight. I have no idea when, at all, and I really have no idea how long he was planning on hanging out here. Maybe he and his dad will take me out to dinner? That would be the hotness.

Roomate has been in the shower for about twenty million years.

Oh, that Sigur Ros concert that I went to a long time ago was great! I took Ilana. We had to park way far from the concert, but I think it turned out for the best, because we had to walk across the Charles River and it was really beautiful. The concert itself was a blast--I hadn't realized how good the drummer is. The highligth was definitely their encore: they played starlfur and untitled 8, and it was just stunningly stunningly beautiful.

For a good time, click here

For a better time, click here.

You're the man now, dog.

Oh, and vist Henry's immensely popular

2003-03-14T14:09:00.000-07:00

I've got Modest Mouse blaring in my nice clean room, and for the first time in a few days I'm actually feeling pretty good. I've been kind of down lately because there seem to be these two big problems hanging over me, like really pointy icicles, waiting until it gets warmer to drop.

First off, Bontempo and I really haven't been getting along. Sort of waging a passive aggressive war, I think because he feels like I'm absorbing too much of his style and I feel like he doesn't have a lot of respect for me (as a writer, as a musician/music appreciator, as a Santa Fean). This afternoon we had a very calm, civil, and friendly few moments, which cheered me up. I'm sure that we were just getting tired of each other after spending the whole break together, and we'll be good friends again soon.

Secondly, I'm really absolutely deatlhly afraid to talk to Lauren Webster, and I really feel like I ought to talk to her, try to get to know her, convince her that I'm not a 'player...' Even if it would be impossible at this point to convince that I'm worth dating, and that probably is impossible, I'd really like to be able to count her among my friends...I really miss those little bits of conversation we got to have in class last semester, she seems like such a cool person. Too bad I find her totally innapproachable (which is weird, because she's probably the most approachable-seeming person ever).

But today has been nice, getting my room clean, looking at viewmaster slides in Isaac's room, catching up on all my friend's blogs. I need to give Ramon, Reininga, Nick, Conor, and Dylan a call sometime in the future, and I need to give Jenelle a call immediately so I can figure out how I'm getting to the

SIGUR ROS CONCERT!

on Sunday.

I played my first game of Dance Dance Revolution today. It was very difficult. I much prefer Tetris.

2003-03-09T16:25:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'll try to squeeze my whole winter break into a quick rundown, since I really want to get something posted and then go happily to dinner as soon as the dining hall opens.

I started break by taking the train down to New York with Judd, Catherine, and Bontempo. We stayed in Judd's house on Long Island for two nights. We bought some mice and played with them in the park, which was fun, although it made me feel kind of morally empty. The second night, Bontempo went into the city to see his friend from DC, so I hung out with Judd and Catherine. We had an impossible time trying to find weed, so we ordered a pizza and watched Best of Show instead.

Bontempo and I took the Amtrak to DC on Saturday. That night I got to meet a lot of Bontempo's friends who I'd been hearing so much about: the Johnson Twins, Welch Canavan, Cindy, etc. We got some pizza (I not only stuck and entire piece in my mouth at once, but managed to swallow it without spitting out any, which impressed Bontempo's sort of immature friends). About sixteen people gathered at this gorgeous girl Jessica's house to watch Say Anything, one of those classic John Cusack movies from the 80's. Then the majority of the group went to Meg's house, with the intention of sleeping on her floor. We sat around and played picture-caption, which is a great game; basically, someone writes a caption, passes it to the next person, who draws a picture and covers up the original caption, and then passes it again, and the next person writes a new caption, and the cycle just continues like that. It's pretty hilarious, although it kind of all degraded to penis jokes after awhile. We also played Truth or Dare or Strip, which never really got interesting...Bontempmo and I got bored and decided to walk to his house instead of sleeping on a floor.

The next night Bontempo, Isaac, Pete Johnson, and I went to the SoHo Cafe and DC Cafe to play spades. I had never played before, but I think I caught on okay. We played three games, I think, and my team won one out of the three. The DC cafe was classic--this shady as fuck Turkish restaurant in a sort of sketchy neighborhood with this unbelievably greasy pizza, indoor smoking...a beautiful, beautiful place. After we finished playing cards, at around two in the morning, Pete Johnson decided we would play "Break the Seal."

The four of us sat around a table, accompanied by one large bottle of each of the following: warm Pepsi Blue, Nestle Strawberry Milk, generic brand Orange Drink, and Water. Every four minutes, each of us drank a glass full of one of the drinks, passing them around so that every one drank equal amounts of each one. The game was over when someone 'broke the seal' by peeing or vomiting. After ten drinks, Pete lost control and threw up. We could have gone for soooo much longer! The general consensus was that pepsi blue was the least pleasant, especially warm, but I think that strawberry milk made me hate myself.

We saw Godspeed You! Black Emperor and the Black Dice on Tuesday, which was just incredible, maybe the best concert I've ever been to. Afterwards, we met a really cool homeless guy who told us this long winded story about being arrested for causing trouble at the 9.30 club; the best part was his live reenactment of the scene with a knife.

We also watched a lot of movies, saw an awesome Gerhard Richter exhibit at the Hirshorn, went to a great thrift store, and cruised around the greater DC area for hours and hours and hours and hours. It was great.

On Saturday Bontempo's dad celebrated his 70th birthday. I got to meet the whole extended Bontempo clan, who turned out to be a lot of fun. I was kind of unwilling to chat with any of them for most of the day, since everyone really just asked the expected questions about what I was studying at school and what the weather was like in New Mexico. At night, though, we played pictionary, and I think that really put me on a friendlier footing with the family. Bontempo and I did well as a pictionary team, our crowning achievement being Bontempo drawing a man eating a piece of pizza, and my correctly guessing the answer: "Garbage Truck!"

I kind of expected Bontempo and I to get tired of each other, but I think we did okay...Bontempo's been getting on my nerves today, though, but I'm sure that will pass.

Today we got up early to fly back up to school. We flew into albany and joined some other students for a cab ride back to school. The cab, an ancient cadillac limousine, broke down about ten minutes away from school. While we waited for someone from the cab company to drive out and help, we talked with the cab driver about his political views (he called the federal government a bunch of communists and expressed a desire to overthrow it in bloody revolution). Once help arrived, it turned out they couldn't help--the Caddy was done for. So, seven people (five students, our cab driver, and the cab company guy) crammed into an isuzu trooper and rode to school. good fun.

So, I'm safely and happy back at school/home, lots of homework to catch up on, and hopefully I'll be able to update the blog more regularly.

2003-02-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

Oh! And a trip to New York!

We began our New York City journey at two o'clock on friday, when Judd borrowed Jessica's car to drive us to Wassaic, the northernmost stop on the Metro-North line and jumping off point for most Big City adventures. We stopped for egg-plant sandwiches, easily a highlight of the trip. We were on the same train as our RA, Nick Ballenger, and Ilana, Andrew, etc...I got really freaked out when local folk singer Maya Papaya got on the train, because I was supposed to write a press release for her about three months ago and just never got around to it. She didn't bring it up though, probably because I was relentless in maintaining my aloof attitude. Arrogance and aloofness get you really far in this town. Or any town.

Danny's father picked us up in Kotonoa (?), a nice part of Westchester county. The house was really nice, three stories with a studio out back and a lot of nice furniture. Danny, Isaac, Bontempo and I settled down to watch an episode of the old PBS show "Puzzle Place," which was a muppet show based solely on diversity. We watched the episode where the Native American muppet, Sky, wanted to become a musician, and found inspiration in Apache/Pueblo soft-rockers Red Thunder, who were apparently huge in the late eighties. It was hilarious, especially the brief muppet tribute to Julio Iglesias.

Soon, it was time for Shabot dinner. The Altabefs had invited over a British/South African couple for dinner. It was really nice--semi-formal, not overly religious, the hallah bread rocked. Isaac and Bontempo were really uncomfortable; they didn't understand the whole concept of a nice adult dinner, but I thought it was totally normal and fun because I pretty much grew up at dinner parties. The only awkard part was the unbearably trite discussion of politics (communism/Hussein=Bad, market-economy/American style democracy (cough cough COUGH COUGH cough)=Good). We went to bed pretty early.

First thing Saturday morning, we went back to the Kotonoa train station and met up with Danny's friend Jen. She reached out to shake my hand and I extended the hand that was holding my cigarette--not such a faux-pas, I've seen it done--and instead of the usual "hello" or "hi, i'm ____", Jen said "Uh, cigarette," as if I was some depraved juvenile delinquent. Oh well.

Or first real stop once we got to New York was Other Music, a really indie record store in the village. We probably browsed for the better part of an hour. I bought an Otomo Yoshihide album and an EP by the Rapture; I was really dissappointed that they didn't have Asa Chang and Jun Ray, the purchase of which was one of my prime motivators for going to New York. Now I'll have to get it off of the internet. We went to lunch in some unknown and uninspiring little spot. For the whole meal, Jen didn't say a word to anyone but Danny. I tried to talk to her, but all I said was that I had just shot heroin in the bathroom, and I think she may accidentally have believed me. We went to a gigantic vintage clothing store, but it was a big let down, because it was mostly crap. I had wanted to go to those smaller vintage boutiques on St. Mark's place, especially NYC Japan, but Isaac, Bontempo and I got the feeling that we couldn't continue to drag Jen around. She continued to not speak to any of us--mostly she just talked on her cell phone to her girlfriend in California. We went to Strand, got lost in the 8 miles of books, and decided to go to a smaller bookstore. I bought an introduction to literary theory, the Foucault Reader, and Baudrillard's Simulation and Simulacra. PoMo weekend! Finally, we decided it was about time to get some dinner and then hit the concert scene. Jen wanted to go to Arturo's, a restaurant we had already tried to go to for lunch, but it had been closed. We took a cross town bus because the subway station we wanted was closed or something. We could have gotten off at Union Square, and walked four blocks to Arturo's, but Westchester Jen and Westchester Danny thought it would be wiser to stay on the bus as long as possible. We finally got off the bus, and aimlessly followed Jen, figuring that she knew where the hell she was going. We passed about sixty pizza places, but apparently none of them were good enough for Jen. She needed some special pizza.

"Special ugly pizza," said Isaac. "Because ugly pizza is the only thing uglier than her face, so it's the only thing she can eat without feeling bad about herself."

We joked about ugly pizza all night, and Jen never knew we were talking about her. We also decided that she was autistic, since she didn't talk, and like any autistic person, she probably had a special area of interest. Isaac and I decided that Jen almost certainly knew everything there was to know about garbage trucks.

Anyway, we never found Arturo's, because garbage truck-obsessed Jen had no fucking idea where she was. We took cabs to midtown, and got some not-so-ugly pizza at the first place we saw. Then we walked to 52nd and 10th, where we hoped to find the Roseland Ballroom. Nope. 53rd between 8th and Broadway? Nope. I'm pretty sure we finally found it on 51st between 8th and 9th. By this time, we were all pretty uncomfortable and upset. I was almost reminded of my last trip to the city.

From there, though, the night was golden. We got our will call tickets and walked inside to the opening band, the Black Keys. Gross--I expected so much more. At least we got to smoke indoors. Blonde Redhead was up next. I'd never heard them, but they were the main reason Isaac, Bontempo, and Danny wanted to go to the show. They were really good, and the Japanese singer/guitarist/bassist/pianist was really cool, as was the other singer/guitarist, a guy dressed in the most fashionable all white ensemble ever. We kept waiting for them to get over their slo-mo hump and break into some sort of spastic noise explosion, but they never did. Sleater-Kinney quickly took the stage, opening with a bunch of songs from One Beat. They really rocked the fuck out, striking poses and screaming and all. It was really a good time. If there had been more space around me, I would have been dancing all over the place. They came back for an encore, and in very good form, they played a cover, Creedence Clearwater's "Fortunate Son" in honor of the huge anti-war protest that had happened in the City that day. Good choice. Then they played what was either three distinct Sleater-Kinney songs or one extremely long Sleater-Kinney song. The encore was a little too long, I guess.

We said goodbye to Jen, still not having spoken with her, except for the "Uh, cigarette" incident, and when she joked with us a little about one of Danny's more humorous vagina encounters....
.....
......
FOUR FINGERS! THAT'S MOST OF A FIST!

We went home to Danny's mother's house, although his step father was the only one there. Bontempo and Isaac, inspired by Maryland's violent subculture, decided that we all needed to sleep in one room, straddling two mattresses. For warmth, we had just two quilts and one paper thin blanket. The heater was barely working. I don't think I managed to fall asleep at all, the cold was so acute. Danny had similar troubles, Bontempo kept falling out of bed, and Isaac occupied about half of the available space by curling into a fetal position. At about 6 am, Bontempo and Isaac made a dash for Danny's sister's room, and took over a very comfortable and warm bed. I was quite upset about this betrayal. When I tried to take Bontempo's spot in the bed, he dead-legged me, which is a special kind of punch in the thigh that can be temporarily debilitating if administered correctly. Still, I brought Bontempo and Isaac breakfast in bed, in an attempt to counter their violent tendencies with Southwestern hospitality.

We really had no way of getting back to school from the Wassaic train station, but we got on a train anyway. Once there, we called Judd and Catherine, but the only thing they could do was call us a cab. We sat on the platform, in a heated room, for what seemed like days. Isaac and Bontempo were literally climbing the walls. Bontempo got so bored that he decided to run out on the platform and smoke a cigarette in nothing but sneakers, boxer shorts, and a yellow beanie, just to break the monotony. I was cold and tired, so I made a bed on the ground by spreading out my jacket. Then I covered myself with my friends' pea coats, wrapped my head in a scarf, and Isaac added to my coverings by layering me with pages from the Sports section of the newspaper. I looked and felt like a homeless person. It was nice.

The taxi finally arrived, in the form of an ancient ford Eurovan with green interior. The ride cost us 80 dollars, and we had to listen to terrifying country music the whole way, but at least we got to smoke in the van.

It's nice to be back at school, but that was a really fantastic trip to New York. It made me look forward very much to DC over winter break.

Since I've been back, I've only had two classes, the rest having been cancelled do to inclement (?) weather (it snowed like 20 inches yesterday). That's good, because it gives me more time to think about how to approach Lauren Webster...I've had a huge crush on her all year, and I finally gave her a mix CD for Valentine's Day, but she sort of told me (indirectly, by telling Catherine, who tells me everything) that I had a reputation as a player and that I'm not the safest bet. Is that true? Player? Me? I only lost my virginity like two weeks ago....

Anyway, I should probably try to become friends with Lauren anyway, because she seems like one of the smartest people on campus, so she's probably worth getting to know better...

mmmph....

mmmmph.....

::understands women even less than he understands post-modernism and Vietnamese::

2003-02-14T10:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm going to be in New York all weekend. So no more posts for a tit bit.

For the last half week or so, there's been a war on. It started when Isaac slapped Judd in the balls one night. The next night, while reading his fresh sem paper, I avenged Judd by whackin' Isaac in the nuts. Then, he got me back. Soon thereafter, Judd stuck a sausage in Isaac's ear. Isaac slapped Bontempo in the nuts, and while Bontempo was keeled over saying "I can't get any lower," Judd threw a sausage in his face. I don't know where it'll go from here. Probably weapons of mass destruction.

We're soooooooo mature.

Last night Bontempo, Isaac, and I went to Kellogg and rocked the fuck out. There was this old really beat up drumset there, and it was kind of hard to play, because I kept having to pull the bass drum back towards me 'cuz it was sliding across the floor. Bontempo had his guitar tuned to something weird like DDGBbGD or whatever. Isaac played prepared piano (probably not a good idea to 'prepare' one of the school's baby grands), and spent a lot of time locked in a cabinet screaming at the top of his lungs. It was rough, but a lot of fun. At the end, Bontempo threw his Strat on the ground and jumped on the neck, breaking the nut in the process (a little piece at the end of the neck, not a big deal). I need to be in a band.

::steals most of his ideas from trendy magazines and Isaac Linder::

2003-02-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

2003-02-12T13:13:00.000-07:00

My fiction workshop was cancelled, so I've had the afternoon free. I still need to finish the Transcendentalist homework that was due yesterday, and do a final revision of a paper for Seminar, but it's only like three o'clock, so I guess that can wait.

I'm reading The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. It's pretty hot. Or noise. Noise is pretty much the only word for 'cool' that is still 'cool.' Inventing slang is the new orange. Anyway, the corrections...it's really hilarious, and very culturally informed, which probably means it won't become one of those 'timeless' books; but it's good, even if it does (in the beginning part) have a lot to do with the college professor/student dynamic that's in every contemporary novel (Blue Angel, Wonder Boys, on and on). Whatever's hip is hip, I guess. I can't put it down, which is really unusual for me lately. It took me like a month to read The Red and the Black. Maybe post-revolutionary pseudo-humanist French Lit is a bit much for me...but I sort of like to believe that I'm this noise young member of the literati, so I need to read things that my friends and especially Bontempo haven't read.

I really like to live in people's shadows sometimes, eh? I should probably locate some sort of personality for myself.

Write now Bontempo is banging his Stratocaster up against a wall and bending the neck so that he can get that good sort of feedback. He's such a nice young man.

2003-02-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

See, look, I'm writing another entry, the day after the last one! I broke things off with Lisa last night--it wasn't a very comfortable relationship I guess, it seemed like the thing to do. She's doing fine. So is Bontempo. He's sort of been falling apart for the last few weeks, partly because he broke up with his girlfriend Francie awhile back, but he took yesterday off to pull himself together, clean the room, read, think things over. I'm pretty sure it worked, he seems much more awake and put together now. He's as calm as a fruit stand in New York (first person to get that song reference probably gets a prize).

I think I may die from my dietary habits. I pretty much eat a garden burger and french fries at every meal, because the dining hall really doesn't have other decent vegetarian choices. They have weird deep fried vegetables, and usually some sort of sketchy "ethnic" casserole, but I can't really handle that stuff. They don't even have pasta at every meal anymore! I can't handle the changes to the dining hall at all...it's totally meat focused now, there's less variety even though ostensibly there' s more choices at each meal...they just serve the same things all the time. And it's not like I can't cook for myself, because the RD's decided to lock off the Kendrick kitchen because it was getting too messy.

God Ben, why don't you just whine some more. Emo bastard.

2003-02-10T13:27:00.000-07:00

I think an explanation is most likely in order. I haven't posted in a very long time because I have been, for the most part, intensely busy, and after a week or so, so much had happened that I knew when I finally sat down to post, I would need at least an hour or two to detail everything, so I would have to find a lot of time to set aside for blogging. I'll try to keep up with things from here on out.

Immediately when I got back to campus, about two weeks ago, I met a few of the JA's, January Admissions. I think there are about 12-15 of them, maybe more, mostly boys. They are a pretty interesting bunch, I guess. My group of friends (Judd, Bontempo, and Catherine) has really embraced four or five of the JA's: Danny, a tall thin bisexual (mostly gay) from Westchester, NY, who is hilarious and blunt and tons of fun; Isaac, a friend of Bontempo's from DC, who is very indie rock and oftentimes a little unsure of himself, in an endearing way; Cleo, an adorable girl from somewhere nearby, whose father is a playwright, and who Bontempo is sort of getting involved with; and Lisa, biracial (Asian American), younger daughter of the jazz music professor, also very cute.

It didn't take long for Lisa and I to hook up; it's kind of embarassing, but we met on a Sunday night, and by that Thursday we were dating. She works in Great Barrington, in an expensive all women's consignment shop; she's been a part time student for a little while, playing saxophone in the jazz ensemble and taking music theory, but I hadn't met her until she became a full time off-campus student. Her mother also works at the school, with the website. She's interested in painting, jazz music (and some indie rock, I guess), and writing, although we never really talk about books and I've never seen anything of her writing. She's also very interested in being intimate, to the point where her libido is way more active than mine. I definitely jumped right into the relationship, and I'm a little overwhelmed by the feeling that I've lost touch with all my other friends because I only hang out with 'the gang,' a few of the JA's, and Lisa. Maybe that's not a big deal.

Bontempo and I are roommates this semester, which is working out really well. We sleep on the same schedule, we listen to the same music (mmmm, sweet sweet Interpol), we play guitar together (he's practically a virtuoso, so it's often difficult for me to keep up with him). We really want to put a band together, and we totally could, all we need is ready access to a drumset.

I can't really remember all the stuff that's happened since break, but there are some highlights:

- Lisa, Cleo, Ben and I went on a very wonderful double date. We went to The Doors, which is a really uppercrust nouveau Italian restaurant. We had this great pizza as an appetizer, mushroom pizza with romano, leeks, and deliciously expensive truffle oil (a substance more expensive, pound for pound, than gold). Normally I hate mushrooms, but this was really good. Bontempo and Lisa ate pasta with wild boar meat in it, which seemed exciting to me. The whole time, we kept trying to act really prim and proper, like we had to impress the waiter or something. Maybe we did need to impress the waiter; you could tell the restaurant was really nice because there were wine magazines and dried flowers in the bathrooms. It cost 200 dollars (with tip) for the four of us. Wow!

- Bontempo and I performed at open mic. In contrast to our early musical collaborations, notably the infamous music concrete of Der Musiklauden and the C chord drone at the talent show, we did a straight forward acoustic rock performance. We played "Bankrupt on Selling" by Modest Mouse, an original song of mine, and a few bars of the blues. I sang on the first two songs, and Bontempo was going to sing some Robert Johnson lyrics for the last one, but he forgot to. He was very nervous.

- We played scare the fuck out of you ball, which is game where two people stand twenty feet part, and take turns throwing a dodgeball at each other. The person who is the target has to hold perfectly still with their eyes closed and their hands behind their back, and the round is over when someone gets hit in the face or in the crotch, and admits that it hurt.

- One day Isaac gave Bontempo a wedgie so bad that his boxers ripped, and then three hours later, Bontempo walked by Isaac's room and screamed "Isaac sucks." Unexpectedly, Isaac lept out of the window, into the snow with his socks on, ran Bontempo down, and gave him another wedgie, ruining a second pair of boxers in one day.

- I poured an entire box of Reese's Puffs on Isaac's bed, and after we finished getting our war on (wedgies and noogies galore), I had to eat all of the cereal off the bed without using my hands. So much cereal!

- A little bit of partying. Probably not prudent to discuss in this venue.

My classes are all going well, except for Spanish, which gets more depressing as Edgar grows more frustrated and more haggard. I have class at 9 am every day, which kind of sucks, but it isn't such a big deal. I'm actually probably sleeping much more this semester. I'll be going to DC for winter break in like two and a half weeks, and this weekend I'm going to New York City to see Sleater-Kinney and Blonde Redhead with Bontempo, Isaac and Danny. Possibly the most exciting upcoming event: Sigur Ros in Boston on March 15. We've got the tickets and the ride and I'm so excited!

I'll try to get back on schedule with this whole blogging jaunt.

2003-01-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

So then on Saturday I didn't really do that much at all. My friends were all at the Amy Goodman speech in Albuquerque, which of course I was much too lazy to get tickets to. My mom and I ended up going out to dinner and seeing a movie. Which was fine...my mom is cool, I guess. We saw the Trials of Henry Kissinger, which was pretty cool, and Amy Goodman made a guest appearance in the documentary, so it was almost like the real thing.

Sunday was much, much more exciting. Thales, Nick, Conor, Alex and I went to Conor's Mom's Boyfriend's House to watch the Tampa/Philadelphia game. Thales and Alex sort of sat in a corner and tried to figure out the rules of football together--Alex only knew anything about football because she's friends with Stephanie, so it's kind of weird that Thales is so ignorant about it since he dated Steph for like a year. Conor and Nick were rooting for the Bucs, and I was definitely hoping for the Eagles to win. It was such an unusually boring playoff game. The first half was really close but nothing cool happened, and then in the second half the Bucs just ran away with it. Anyway, we were feeling all testoteroni (well, maybe not Alex), so we went to the Rose Park and played Ultimate Frisbee, with Alex and I rather consistently losing. However, there is an ultimate frisbee rematch tomorrow at 4:00, and I will have my victory.

By the time it was starting to get dark we were all totally winded and sweaty and asthmatic and stuff. Nick went to run errands and we were supposed to track him down again later but I guess we all forgot. Alex and I went Brittany and Peter's Golden Globe party. All of my younger (ie, sophomore) friends were there, including, of course, Emily. It was pretty dull so I got back in touch with Conor and Thales and kidnapped Alex and we all met up again. We went to Denny's, where dinner/breakfast for four only costs seventeen dollars. Thales entertained us with a story about the first time he got drunk. Basically, he was in some French town cornered between the Atlantic and the Spanish border. He wandered about the town ordering Jous du Strompf (which is the very very inaccurate spelling of the french term for Smurf Juice), a concoction that involves unhealthy amounts of electric blue curacao. Then he ran into this Swiss girl that he had met the night before. They didn't exchange names, because she barely spoke English. Thales spent the night with her on the beach, thus proving that he is some sort of Golden God.

Thales and I drove Alex home, but we took the very long way so we could play "Sex," which is a game where whenever you drive under a yellow light, you yell 'sex!' and whoever says it last has to take off an article of clothing. It's hard to strip while driving. The game was taking an inordinate amount of time so we decided that we would just yell whenever we went through any lighted interesection. By the time we reached Alex's we were all topless, which was fun but it makes you sort of paranoid. You can get arrested for that kind of stuff I think.

Then Thales and I went to meet Conor at a party. It was at this girl Kelly's house, and I just met Kelly on Friday, but I knew a lot of the people at the party. It was a major scenester event, most of the Warehouse crowd was there. Kelly's parent were down with the whole thing, they just told us not to go out front because the cops would get called. Someone showed up with a bunch of alcohol, which disappeared in about half an hour--I didn't get drunk because I knew I had to drive home. It was a blast. Anna from Deadman Joaquin was painting everybody's fingernails, but really most people were getting nail polish all the way up their forearm. I met a kid named Jesse who goes to Bard, which is the bigger school that runs my tiny little sort-of-college. He seemed really cool. I also "met" this girl Eve, who I've actually met probably a dozen times since we have had most of the same friends since about fifth grade. She never remembers me of course, but this time she apparently thought I was hot, because after I left she instructed Conor to hook the two of us up.

So, Eve and I went out last night after my newspaper meeting. It was relatively fun. We met at Cafe Oasis and talked and had some coffee. Just about the time it was getting a little awkward Conor wandered in, being that we were at Oasis and Conor lives there. We stayed there with him for about two hours. Then we drove to Eve's house, and she showed me her photograhpy. I liked it, but photography is probably the art form that I least understand and feel the least passion for (I definitely didn't mention that to her). We were listening to Death Cab for Cutie and were all sprawled out on her bed and it seemed totally obvious that we should hook up, but since I didn't feel all that horny I decided to just wait and see if she made a move, because having the girl make the first move just makes it so much better. She never did, so I just went home. It was a good time, although I was really, really, really quiet the whole time and I'm sure she realized that I actually am a complete dork. However, she called me again tonight and left a message saying she wanted to hang out again. Maybe I'm more charming than I thought. Or maybe she's totally desperate.

She was on that Disney Channel show Bug Juice, by the way.

2003-01-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

oooooooo the weekend does rush by like a flock of swallows or a murder of ravens indeed.

On Friday night the riot-girly Eyeliners played a delicious, improving on the first time that I saw them. They played all the hits, ending with "Rock'n'Roll Baby," which I have as a seven-inch single and cherish as my favorite bit of vinyl (except perhaps Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom). I introduced myself to the lead singer and the bassist after the show, and they seemed very nice. They're all totally hot, although I suspect they might be pushing toward my mom's age.

The opening acts were scorching as well. Alex Devore started the show with his WeHeartMetal routine--he's moved from solo acoustic guitar to solo electric, a move that I'm not altogether sure about. It did provide for some fun effects with harmonics. As usual Alex sang a lot about power breakfasts--"two eggs, french toast, and you can substitute hash browns for meat...if you don't eat meat." Unfortunately, some drunk asshole wearing sunglasses at night started talking shit during the show and sort or ruined Alex's night, he's such a fragile boy.

Dead Man Joaquin also played, another all-girl band.

WHY ARE THEY ALL FUCKIN' FOURTEEN YEARS OLD!!!!!! NOBODY LOOKED LIKE THAT WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN!

(although to be fair, Emily definitely looked like that when she was fourteen)

Dead Man was alright, nothing revelatory, Anna and Julie are very very charismatic, wunderbar stage presence. Julie threw candy at the audience between songs and Anna screamed with an impressive fervor.

Yes, I did see Emily at the concert, and yes, we did drive home together so that we could 'ketchup.' I let her drive my car, which was almost legal. She did a fine job, and I'm not that protective of my car anyway. I'd say that the whole event was medium-awkward, which was fine, I was kinding of expecting well-done-awkward. The new haircut is tizzy-tight, but not as short as I had hoped.

I have to run and pick up my little brother so I'll have to finish "The Tale of the Last Weekend In Santa Fe" a little later.

2003-01-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful day yesterday. Here is why that was: I got my grades for the first semester in the mail, and I got a 3.813. That's two A's and three A-'s, which is super good, and it means that I get to keep my scholarship. I also got my schedule in the mail--I got the Fresh Sem teacher I wanted (Weinstein) even though his class was totally full and the waitlist was huge and I didn't think I would get it. Then, I took an SAT practice test and scored a 1530! And I found the first X album and the Text album in the bargain bin at Borders! And then I slept for twelve hours, and then I talked to Emily on the phone and we might do something after the Eyeliners concert tomorrow night and everything is going exceptionally well and........wooooooooooshh, I'm a little too excited, eh? I need a breather. Valium to the stage please!

2003-01-14T22:32:00.000-07:00

the Complete "things that make me happy" for the week of January 13, 2003:

kiwi-strawberry soda
Ship of Fools by Richard Paul Russo
"Attack of the Ghost Riders" by the Raveonettes
previously useless pants made beautiful with dye
random phone call from Alex
Pitchfork

the Complete "things that most certainly Do Not make me happy" for the same week:

finding out my dad has a crush on Serena Williams
random phone calls from Conor
not getting to see Emily's haircut that I've been hearing about forever despite my best and silliest efforts
everyone being back in school

happy: 6
not happy: 4

it seems like I'm having a good week so far

2003-01-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

every time my phone rings I think it's you...

2003-01-14T11:35:00.000-07:00

I made my family dissappear...

It's really weird to wake up and have the house empty. My brother's at school and my mom's at work, but my dad should be here and he's not. I guess I'll just take advantage of this unusual occurence and walk around the house naked...

Yesterday I went to visit St. Michael's. Conor and I managed to stay on school grounds for seventeen minutes before being asked to leave. We were even escorted to the door! I didn't see Emily, but I did see all of her friends and they said she was sick. When I got home I decided to make a care package for Emily. There was some tea and potato chips and a mix cd...I took it to her house to drop it off, figuring she'd be home sick, but no one was there. I came home and was a little depressed so I ate all the potato chips. Then I went back by her house later, jammed a get-well card with the cd tucked inside into her front door, and ran off. I am such a dork.

2003-01-09T13:32:00.000-07:00

Alright, sorry, I realize it's been awhile since I've posted. It doesn't seem like much has happened in the last week or so, actually. I went to dinner with Alex (mmmm.....vegetarian crispy fish....[don't think too much about it]), I hung out with Conor, Nick, a little of Ben Reininga, I've been playing the Sims: Hot Date like, all of the time, (if someone wants to buy me a copy of the Sims Online, that would be wunderbar), watching a lot of movies.

The other day I saw this old black and white French film by Truffault called Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez Sur le Pianiste). It was so good and whoever that girl was that played the main love interest was just unbelievably gorgeous. I fully intend to watch more old pretentious artsy type movies in the future.

I've also been spending a lot of time studying for the SAT's, which really sucks. My mom is forcing me to take them again, even though a) I'm already in college and b) I did alright when I took them in 8th grade. Apparently she's convinced that I'm going to transfer to an Ivy league school or something. Yeah, I'd like to go to Brown, but really, I'm so in love with Simon's Rock that I'm seriously considering staying there for four years.

All of my friends here are of course back in school, so there's not nearly as much opportunity for me to get out of the house. I'm thinking I should go visit St. Mike's, although I'll have to sneak in somehow since they wouldn't let me in the building last time I came to visit. I really want to go to one of Br. Paul's religion classes and bring my guitar and sign Modest Mouse songs about Jesus. "All the Apostles were sittin' in the swings/singin' I'd sell off my savior for a set of new rings/and sandals with the style of straps that cling best to the Arabs."

I've been playing guitar and working on song-writing constantly. It's actually sort of depressing, though, because every time I come up with a cool guitar riff, I realize that it's probably been done before. Like, the other day I played something I really liked, but then I realized that it was from a song by the Fall, and it's also in a song by Uncle Tupelo. But maybe it's okay to steal guitar riffs. Rivers Cuomo took the guitar part from "Hash Pipe" from a song called "He Shot Himself Up" by the Shods, and that doesn't make "Hash Pipe" any less of a cool song. I'm also sort of struggling with lyrics, because it seems like every lyric I write is sort of forced and trite. It's all too literal and obvious and emo bullshit. Like, when am I going to stop writing pointless heartbreak songs about Emily? No one wants to hear that crap, it's all empty sentiment. Steve Albini said often that love songs were dead--that's why his band Big Black had an album called "Songs About Fucking" that was mostly just about serial killers and child molesters and stuff. I guess I should focus entirely on writing political songs ("let's turn this mall into a mosque/build something beautiful out of a nest of wasps") or songs about criminals or I could just totally rip off Modest Mouse and write songs about Jesus and strip malls.

2003-01-01T19:44:00.000-07:00

I had a really wonderful New Year's Eve, which was kind of surprising because it's generally the least exciting holiday for me (yes, less exciting than Secretary's Day). I went to Irena's very small, very subdued party. I finally got to see Becca again, it was really funny, as soon as I came in the room she threw down this glass of water and jumped on me. She seems to be doing very well, and getting along quite well with her boyfriend (was he stoned last night?). We played a bunch of typical party sorts of games, like Taboo, and we played Friends Trivia. Becca and I tied for first at that, so we had to have a lightning round. I ended up losing. I guess I should be proud that I did not win Friends trivia...I also met Irena's step brother Koko, who seemed very cool. He plays in a hardcore band.

I was sort of miffed to pass another year without a New Year's Kiss, but my libido has been slightly in decline lately and it wasn't a big deal...who the hell did I think I was gonna make with at that party anyway?

Ben Reininga, Kevin, Conor and I bounced right after the ball dropped--the party was really wound down by that point. We went to Reininga's house and hung there for a little while. Then Conor and I crashed at my place. We stayed up 'til 4 am talking about schools and history and women, and, y'know, partying.

I spent today with my family. We watched the Rose Bowl on TV because OU (my parents' alma mater)_was playing. They beat Washington State by a lot and it was pretty nice.

I've been really obsessed with guitar lately. I can't quit playing, and I think I'm getting a lot better very quickly. Could practicing actually be effective? ( !!! ) I really really need to be in a band again, drumming with a group or playing guitar by myself or whatever. I really love that performance feeling--I don't get 'stagefright' and I don't get embarassed so there's really no downside to me performing for others. That's something I miss a lot about speech. Maybe I'll become a performance artist and turn my whole life into a twisted avant art project. Maybe I could be like that guy who lived for a week in a New York City gallery with a wild coyote, or the Hunger Artist from that Kafka story. (not that i'd ever want to be any character from a kafka story).

At Irena's party we played a game where we tried to figure out what everyone would be like in 60 years. They all I decided I'll do something amazing in my youth but end up a boring and forgotten librarian, until I'm sought out by some kid a la Finding Forrester. I thought that prediction was pretty boring. In exactly 60 years, Conor will be drunk driving off a cliff face while smoking through one of those neck holes emphezema patients get and suffering his fifth heart attack.

I've been thinking lately that my blog has gone from a really personal thing to sort of a blah, boring weblog where nothing interesting goes on. In light of that revelation, some stuff that will upset or at least interest a few people:

Dear Casey: Cheer up sunshine!
Dear Alex: Break up with Owen!
Dear Nick: Quit obsessing over Perry Mansfield!
Dear Emily: ...yeah, i'm absolutely not over you...
Dear Ben Bontempo: I really need to quit trying to impress you. have you noticed how much i've been stealing your life? isn't it creepy?
Dear everyone at Simon's Rock: seriously, aren't Bontempo and I kinda creepy?

2002-12-31T14:33:00.000-07:00

First a few thoughts on music:

Sahara Hotnights: This is an all girl Swedish garage rock group; pretty much the Hives with better melodies and, y'know, vaginas. I bought their album, Jennie Bomb, and it rocks the fuck out. I recommend. I also caught a video for that band Soundtrack of Our Lives, who are also from Sweden. I didn't like it as much, but the video is funny, and they are Swedish so I guess they're great.

Tom Waits: I've had Alice and Blood Money for awhile, but I hadn't listened to either until last night, when I listened to Alice while doing some work on my computer. It was great! The album seemed to be loosely based around Alice and Wonderland, which was cool and resulted in some really off beat songs, like "Fish and Bird" about a fish and a bird that fall in love but realize they can never be together. I like how Tom Waits uses several different vocal styles, like carnival barker style, the Serge Gainsbourg cabaret style. The music sort of waivered between ultra-lo fi lounge and steam powered pirate zydeco--very nice. Now I'll have to listen to Blood Money and see if it's as good.

I read an issue of Wire the other day and it's made me much more musically pretentious. It made me wonder. Is it possible that traditional music, annotated melodies, harmonies, and rhythms, is dead? Has every melody already been thoroughly explored? It's quite possible, especially when a melody that's pleasing to the human ear is limited by the limited number of effective scales and modes. Where then is music supposed to go, if traditional modes of songwriting are exhausted? The frontier of the musical avante is pushing ever closer to the barely audible border between music and sound. Today's most exciting experimental musicians focus not on notes and rhythms but on problems of musical physics, exploring different timbres, acoustic settings, and resonance patterns. Laptop computers and ProTools have opened up the world of electroacoustics, wherein artists combine field recordings with studio noise. This is reminescent of John Cage's theories on interpenetration, highlighted by his piece 4'33'', which is three movements where the perfomer does not play anything. This is not silence, however--the audience is supposed to realize that the music lies elswhere, in the ambient environmental sounds.

Are we getting close to the days when musicians will have to start describing themselves as sound sculptors instead?

*****

Nothing particularly exciting has happened to me in the last couple of days, but Saturday night was a blast. Conor and I went out to eat, and then we cruised around the St. John's area for awhile. We went and picked up Alex to get a cup of coffee. We went to borders and I preceded to make a fool out of us by spilling Alex's chai everywhere. The staff was really nice, though, and they ran over to clean it up and give Alex another Chai, compliments of the house. Then we took Alex home and went in search of other fun. We stopped at Irena's house and started ringing her door bell (it was 10:45 PM by now) but didn't get a response. I decided I desperately needed a pack of gum. There were plenty of all night gas stations nearby, but I was mysteriously drawn to Walgreens. We went to one and found out it was closed, which was weird because I thought Walgreens was 24 hour. Anyway, we drove all the way across town to a Walgreens that was 24 hours, and ran into Ben Reininga. Apparently my inexplicable need for Walgreens was justified! Conor and I hung out with Ben for awhile. We went to Dunkin' Donuts and talked about bizarre medical phenomena (this guy at Longevity Cafe had a seizure and it wasn't such a big deal, quoth Ben Reininga) and Buddhism. Then I had to cruise on home.

Happy New Year's Eve, everyone.

2002-12-27T22:11:00.000-07:00

Yay for New Mexico, the little territory that brings new meaning to the term welfare state! For every dollar that the New Mexico pays in federal taxes, our beautiful state receives $2.03 back in federal aide! While states like Connecticut and New Jersey are getting screwed and only getting back a fraction of what they pay into the system, New Mexico is getting %200 of its tax-money back in federal programs! Too bad that with all that money we're still ranked among the highest in teen pregnancy and heroin addiction, and the lowest in education!

View the source article here

2002-12-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and today I pretty much just have to sit around the house and make sure my little brother doesn't injure himself, or at least, y'know, die. It's not such a bad gig--he doesn't bother me and I certainly don't bother him. The only problem is I can't go out at all when I'm watching the kid. Conor called me this morning and asked if I could drive him to the DMV and I said I'd be right over but then I realized that my mom wasn't home--she never works on Fridays but somehow she chose to put herself on the schedule for today. Kind of a bummer--I was excited about going out for lunch and cashing checks and buying some new cd's with the gift certificates I got for Christmas. Oh well.

Last night I had been planning on just staying at home, but Irena called me at like nine o'clock and invited me to come try out her new hot tub. I raced over there--it only took me like 15 minutes to get to her house from El Dorado, and I even stopped for gas (oh my god, stopping for gas was the coldest experience of my life, it was 12 degrees out and my hand froze to the gas pump nozzle thing). I rang the doorbell but no one answered so I just let myself in. Casey, Kassi, and Irena were in the hot tub outside. I love being in a hot tub when it's cold out. Some of my best winter memories are of being at Ten Thousand Waves after a ski trip with snow falling.

(I remember many years ago when my whole family went to Steamboat Springs, Colorado for Christmas, a whole huge group of us was out in a hot tub and then everyone went inside except for my uncle Jeff and my aunt Joni [siblings-in-law]. They were getting really drunk [Joni drank some sweet girly drink, probably peppermint patties, and Jeff drank martinis like always] and Joni started talking about this guy she'd started to fall for [her husband, my uncle Terry had died the summer before, I think]. He was a client of her real estate firm. She talked about how nice he was, he'd do things like come over and fold her laundry. I don't think the rest of the family heard about Brian until later. Joni married him in the fall.)

Kassi reached her hand into the hot tub filter and then shrieked, she had touched something gross-feeling. She told me to find out what it was. I reached my hand in and in felt like some sort of soggy foam pad. Then I stuck my hand in again and realized it was more like nylon or something. Kassi pulled it out--it was Irena's mom's bathing suit! We'll never know how it ended up in the hot tub filter...although a few educated guesses can be made.

The four of us stayed in the hot tub until it was way too cold and then we ran shivering inside. We watched a music video that the girls had made for their history class. It was a music video for the song "I'm Just a Bill," from Schoolhouse Rock. It was very professional and impressive. Then Kassi had to leave. Casey, Irena, and I played Taboo. I had never played before. It's a really fun game. You have these cards with a word written on the top, and then a bunch of other words written below that. And you have to make your partner guess the word on the top without saying it or any of the bottom words. Example:

Sunflower
---------------
Yellow
Seeds
Plant
Grow
Summer

It's really fun. The best round that we played went like this:
Irena: Okay, this is something that we burn, and turn upside-down
Casey: A flag!!!
Irena: Yes!

Irena's parents came home. They were kind of mad that we had been messing with the hot tub and that Casey and I had come over. Dr. Lopez (Irena's mom) asked me very angrily who the hell I was, but then she recognized my name when I told her. I went home pretty soon after that.

This morning I cleaned my room, and 'moved in.' I'm going to be here for a month so I figured I might as well get comfortable. I brought a stool in from the garage and made it into a bedside table, and I took the family stereo out of the living room and put it in my room. The rest of the family never uses it anyway. It's a nice stereo, this really big Sony thing from the mid-90's. It has two things that you just can't find on shelf-system stereos anymore: a manual equalizer and a phono preamp. I like it a lot.

After seeing "The Two Towers," I decided to try reading the book again. It's pretty good, and very easy reading. I'm going to try to finish it, and the third Lord of the Rings book, too, by then end of the weekend.

I heard this band, The Transplants, on the radio the other day and I really liked it, which was weird because I never like the radio. The Transplants have a guy from Rancid and a guy from Blink, and I don't really respect either of those bands, but I still like them: guilty pleasure.

2002-12-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a pretty nice little holiday season there.

On Monday Conor, Nick, and I went Christmas shopping together. I felt a little inadequate, because those guys spent so much money on stuff for their parents, and I really just didn't have the cash to spend. It was alright though, my family were all pretty happy with what I got them. The guys took me to the outlet mall, a place that I pretty much never go to--I don't buy leather products, I can't afford to buy a nice suit like I'd like at Brooks Brothers, and no one would want any of the books at the weird pseudo religious discount bookstores (I think their motto is "books nobody else wants, at prices nobody else could offer.")

By the time I got home from my little shopping adventure, my mom's parents were here. It was nice having my grandmother, Sue, around for the holidays, but I really don't get along with my grandfather, Roy. They're from Norman, OK, big supporters of OU, really conservative, Southern Baptist; clearly not my people.

On christmas eve I went to see the new James Bond movie. It was good, except for Halle Berry sucking really hard and that invisible car. I also went on the Farolito walk, my favorite Christmas tradition, but because of all of the annoying family around, we rushed through and were only there for like 30 minutes. I would have rather gotten a cup of cider and spent an hour doing the walk by myself; I feel that way about a lot of things, it's so much better to be by myself.

Christmas was pretty nice. I got stuff for my drumset, a lot of books, and gift certificates (of course). And, I went out to see the new Lord of the Rings with Ramon. It rocked.

Now, I have to figure out how to spend the rest of my break. I'm thinking of trying to get in touch with Emily...all of my friends think that's a terrible idea, and I'd guess that Emily would think it's a terrible idea, too.

2002-12-22T20:40:00.000-07:00

"One study showed the SAT scores of football players at Division I-A schools to be 271 points lower than incoming nonathletes." --Michael Sokolove, "Football Is a Sucker's Game"

If you've got some time and any moderate interest in college sports, I'd really recommend the above article, from the New York Times Magazines. It really exposes how ridiculous college sports, especially football have become. It's all about money, now, and the big schools don't even pretend otherwise; the scandals are piling up fast. Check out the article.

2002-12-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

"Because really, when you get down on your knees on the pew, you're just giving God a blowjob." --Nick McDonell, Twelve

Well, I'm back in New Mexico having a holly and jolly holiday season. I got here on Thursday night, after an unusually long and rather dull day of flying. During my day of airports and gigantic flying machines I read through two magazines (the New Yorker winter fiction issue and the new Wired) and almost finished reading Twelve by Nick McDonell. I was not very impressed with the latter--it was a big fake, fake characters that don't act like real people, fake dialogue that doesn't sound like the way teenagers talk, a fake plot that gets resolved to conveniently but at the same doesn't get resolved at all. There's too many characters and none of them are interesting, and despite the constant references to Manhattan locales, the book is so totally lacking in descriptive passages that it doesn't seem to be set anywhere. McDonell tries to artsy it up with some vague existentialism, but honestly kid, name checking Camus doesn't win PENawards. A perfect example of why I don't like it when teenagers try to write novels.

On Friday night Kat had a birthday party for herself. I stopped by sort of by surprise and got a chance to see most of the old gang (although the marked absence of Casey, Irena, Kassi, and Becca was pretty upsetting). Nick and I left for a little while to check out the Don't Shoot Noah reunion show. We only stayed long enough to hear their version of the Ranma 1/2 theme song. That cool kid who always wears goggles got up on stage and sang the song in Japanese after Alex's english version. It was great, but then we had to bounce, the party was still waiting for us. Of course, the party was turning kind of sour by the time we got back--Steph and Thales were having this whole relationship meltdown crisis thing and it was really putting a damper on everybody's night.

Yesterday was Ramon und Ben time. We cruised around town in search of Firm Organic Tofu (squishy corporate tofu just doesn't cut it!) and pretentious French novels (oh! Stendhal!). Then we played Mario Party 4 until our thumbs bled. Ramon's friend Jakob came over, dressed like a Quaker. That was my cue to leave--I had to catch the Kidcrash's CD release party. It was good fun, I got a free copy of the CD!

"Everybody who tells you how to act has whisky on their breath." --John Updike, Rabbit, Run

2002-12-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

I've pretty much wasted my reading period by doing not much work. I'm sure glad that I don't really have much work to do anyway! (those of you taking math and science classes, please feel free to punch me in the mouth during a jealous rage).

Today I: was not sick, ate breakfast twice, experimented with dodgeball on ice, found five dollars in the frozen tundra, watched about eight episodes of the simpsons, wrote two papers, and...I don't really remember what else happened, it seems like it was a long and very uneventful day.

Here we go, the Top 10 (I couldn't pick just 7) albums of 2002:

1. desaparecidos "Read Music/Speak Spanish"
2. wilco "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"
3. interpol "Turn on the Bright Lights"
4. the streets "Original Pirate Material"
5. sonic youth "Murray Street"
6. sigur ros "( )"
7. white stripes "white blood cells"
8. queens of the stone age "songs for the deaf"
9. n.e.r.d. "In Search Of...."/blackalicious "Blazing Arrow" (Tie)
10. coldplay "A Rush of Blood to the Head"

2002-12-14T18:57:00.000-07:00

"On the first day of the nondenominational winter holiday, my temporary non-committed life partner gave to me..."

from "A Simon's Rock Twelve Days of Christmas" by Kevin, gleefully stolen from Mel's Blog

2002-12-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

I'm sure that somewhere on the vast internet this has been noted before, but I'll go ahead and say it:

The Trent Lott scandal of the past week has helped to highlight the importance of blogging. In 1998, a scandal broke when it was indicated that Trent Lott was involved with the Council of Conservative Citizens, a very outspoken white supremacist group. That scandal was quickly swept under the rug and eventually amounted to nothing. Last week, Trent Lott made remarks where he supported Strom Thurmond's 1948 presidential campaign, which was built entirely on segregationist policies. Most pundits agree that the accusations made during the 1998 scandal were more severe, but this most recent scandal seems to be getting a lot more media coverage and leading to many calls for Trent Lott's resign. Why? Because blog columnists like Andrew Sullivan and Joshua Marshall have made a big deal out of it. Newspapers and TV news outlets would have let this scandal pass after a few days, but bloggers, who are not profit-driven or limited by corporate interests can afford to keep the focus on Trent Lott. Bloggers have made it known that they will not tolerate racist tendencies from the Senate Majority Leader. Because the story has been flourishing on the internet all week, it has returned to the forefront of newspaper and television coverage, and now it seems like Trent Lott may be forced to resign. Congratulations to the blogosphere.

A quote from Josh Marshall:
"Right now we're debating whether the Republican Senate majority leader is a racist who yearns for the days of segregation or just a good ole boy who says a lot of things that make it seem like he's a racist who yearns for the days of segregation."

The Christian Science Monitor story today does an excellent job of summarizing and contextualizing the Trent Lott Scandal. And no, the Christian Science Monitor isn't some weird Jesus freak news outlet, it's associated with the Church of Scientology and it is a wonderful, award-winning newspaper.

2002-12-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

Oh man, I'm ill. Last night and this morning I've been slowly edging towards death. Many parts of my body are throbbing with a special sort of insistent pain, but that's not quite as bad as the intensely sore throat. Why get sick now? I've been perfectly healthy all semester, and now when I have three final papers to right, I catch throat cancer? Shit.

Last night I ate chicken--first taste of animal flesh in about 15 months. It was good...I don't if this means that I'll be completely giving up on veggie-ism. I've just really had a lot of meat cravings lately.

2002-12-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day of classes all semester! Yay! I have to register for my next semester of classes at 440, which is a shit registration time....i'm gonna be stuck taking mushrooms of southwest massachusetts or something. Today is also Benjamin Bontempo's birthday! We celebrated by getting up early for breakfast with him. Kat and Judd baked him a cake and wrote a quote on it with icing: "all these bitches equal sex to me." I made him a mix tape. Yeah, with an actual CASETTE. It's probably not pretensious enough for him.

This morning the gang watched the Simpsons, the episode where the Simpsons get a race horse and Lisa's band loses at the State Fair. It's far from my favorite Simpsons episode, perhaps because it is so recent. The last two seasons of the simpsons have been almost as formulaic as scooby-doo. They're still better than almost anything else on television, though.

There's a bunch of new people working at the Burrito place! What the fuck? Only the original Burrito Man is good enough to make my burritos. The Burrito Man trained for years in West Indian burrito stuffing, folding, and rolling. He's a pro, a zen master of the burrito. Who could compare? I'm going to have to switch to the Cuban sandwich place. Unfortunately, the Cuban Guy has been getting lazy and he keeps closing his sandwich shop a little earlier everyday. The sign says 'winter hours 9-5,' but he's packin' up at about 4.15 now. I predict that by February he'll be opening at 9 and closing at 9.20.

Last night the novelist Howard Norman read in Blodgett House. He was a really funny guy, he seemed very shy and he sort of had a nervous tic to him and a little bit of a stutter. At a lot of these reading, kids will bring knitting needles and work on scarfs or whatever (simon's rock is very textile intensive: alongside the almost constant knitting there's the beautiful work of something you would only find at the Rock: the Radical Women's Sewing Circle). Anyway, Emma Silverman was knitting and Howard Norman stopped in the middle of the sentence and asked her to stop and he got really flustered about it. Priceless. His story was interesting, kind of long and kind of unfocused. It was about the wreck of a milk train somewhere in Vermont in 1912, inspired by the photography work of Phillip White, a disaster photographer of diminuitvie stature. After the reading a lot of people wanted to ask questions about milk trains and museum guards and it was really inane--what I really couldn't stand was all these people ooing and aweing over Howard and telling him how they 'loved the use of image and reality in your first novel' and stuff like that. Those sort of public events seem to me like such the wrong place to compliment someone. I don't know why.

2002-12-08T17:48:00.000-07:00

Whooooooo sorry. It's been awhile since I've posted because things have been moving at such a speedy pace in my life!

Since I got back I have spending quite literally ALL of my time with Ben Bontempo, Judd, Catherine, and Laura. We're a posse! We roll down the street in Laura's ghettoed out Honda Civic and blast The Streets, our new favorite super-british rap group. All the spindly white kids on campus are scared of us!

We've been really busy. One day we went to Catamount to get jobs for Laura and Judd. It's a relatively large ski resort that sort of sits on the New York/Massachusetts border. Judd got hired to work with little kids on the bunny slope. He's a ski instructor but he doesn't know how to ski or snowboard. It's wonderful.

On Tuesday some of us went to a forum in town about Living Wage, a political cause after my own heart. Living Wage is basically any movement intended to raise the minimum wage for any workers somehow tied to state funds (ie, government employees, government contractors, or businesses with tax exemptions). In Boston, a really successful Living Wage movement combine with a general strike led to janitors and cleaning staff for commercial buildings getting %30 raises across the board. Now, all of the radical elements of Berkshire society (which basically means the Economics and Sociology departments at Simon's Rock) want to get the minimum wage raised significantly in South Berkshire County. It's a great idea, but there's really no organization, nobody knows how to accomplish that goal, and all of the people involved are rich yuppies, not underpaid workers.

I read Franz Kafka's "metamorphosis" while listening to Bjork and it was awesome.

I can't really remember what else we've been up to...it's been pretty fast paced and it seems like I've been doing work all the time but not getting anything done. I decided to take a super hardcore literature class next semester, along with disgusting math and maybe a fiction workshop (if I get in, it's placement-by-submission and filkins killed my confidence in my fiction writing)...i may even apply for an exception so that I can take 19 credits (which is a boatload; the limit is supposed to be 18, and most people avoid taking that many credits at all costs).

pretty soon I need to turn my Top 7 Albums for the year 2002 list. Please comment if you have any last minute recommendations.

2002-12-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back in Massachusetts, and it really is starting to feel like Massachusetts. The ground is covered in snow and it's probably been well below freezing all day. It's wonderful! I love it when the ponds freeze over, and then it snows on the ice. So, a quick rundown of my break:

Saturday: be on airplanes. read Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins.
Sunday: be at home. read End Game by Samuel Beckett.
Monday: be at home. read Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.
Tuesday: be out and about with Conor, Nick, other Ben, and Alex. Make mural out of sugar on table in coffee shop. get lost on closed off roads near the mall. see Bowling for Columbine.
Wednesday: be at home. finish Lolita. play way too many videogames with Ramon.
Thursday: be at home. read The Stranger by Albert Camus. continue to play way too many videogames with Ramon. do not eat turkey, but pass the mashed potatoes!
Friday: be at home. read the Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs. Take little brother to see new Harry Potter movie. Pretend to do homework.
Saturday: be downtown shopping. buy Christmas presents for everyone! eat perfect nachos. finish reading the Soft Machine.
Sunday: be on planes. try to read Horns Strings and Harmony by Aubade, but get irreparably sick (do not throw up, gross). Return to Simon's Rock!

As usual, my first two days back at Simon's Rock have probably been more exciting than my whole Thanksgiving break--not that New Mexico isn't exciting, but a lot of people were gone for Thanksgiving and I was really more interested in reading than in making any sort of effort to get out of bed.

Everyone is completely stressed out this week because of course nobody actually thought to do any homework over break. I was up quite late last night writing a paper for sem; it's not really due until next week, but I was completely awake so I thought I'd take advantage of the time. I was pretty sure that I didn't sleep at all last night until I remembered that I had a dream, so I guess I probably did fall asleep. The dream had two parts: sex and strawberries. Try to guess which half had more marshmallows.

2002-11-21T14:37:00.000-07:00

Things have been rather boring around these parts. The courses for next semester were published, and I'm frantically trying to put together a schedule. This semester, I'm basically taking no difficult classes and having to do no work; it's like high school, except for the fact that I'm actually interested in most of what's going on. This arrangement is really great. However, I will at some point have to take at least one math class and at least one science class. This presents a problem, simply because math and science classes will require a categorically different set of skills and a whole lot more time than english and history classes.

In order to fulfill all my requirements and get an AA degree from simon's rock, I need a math class, a natural science class, a cultural perspective, an art class and a full year of language. I've already fulfilled the culture requirement with japanese history. One possible schedule, whereby I would fulfill all my requirements next semester:

Freshman Seminar
Spanish Cinema (miraculously fulfills the rest of my language requirement!)
General Botany (a 200 level science class, probably hard and I might not be able to get into it).
Introduction to Statistics
Graphic Art and Social Protest

That wouldn't be such a bad schedule, 17 credits, which is more than I'm taking right now.

Alternately, I could take writing and social studies classes, like I'm doing this semester. But then I'd still be stucking having to fulfill all these crazy requirements!

2002-11-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

everything's a mess! Room inspections are coming up soon and I really should have cleaned my room today. More importantly, I need to talk to roommate boy about why he is going to have to clean out the fridge this time. I have two reasons:

1) I cleaned it out last time and that meant scrubbing his exploded soy sauce packets and melted ice cream stuff out by hand. No fun.
2) I refuse to open the refrigerator because he put some weird dining hall sandwich in there and it swiftly rotted and for whatever reason, said sandwich now seems to be emitting the demon stench. I refuse to clean his demon stench!

enought being whiny though. I'll tell you about the last few days.

On Sunday Ben Bontempo and I played in the talent show. We decided to be as confrontational as possible so, here's what we did: first, we acquired three keyboards. Then, we taped down a few C major chords on each keyboard. Then, we sat among a bunch of keyboards, amps, and microphones in the center of the stage, casually thumbing threw sheet music and occasionally hitting a random keyboard key or adjusting our droning tuner thing. That went on for three 'movements,' each lasting one minute. Some say that we may have gone too far with "Three Movements in C." However, a droning c major chord is just as valid as any other music; it encourages interpenetration, or participation from outside sounds. The audience has to make their own rhythm and melody. Also, if we had played something more traditional, people would have liked it too much.

Another act at the talent show was John Schneider and his guitarist-with-large-petal board, who I've heard aren't actually allowed to play Simon's Rock. They weren't that great, which was a let down since I had heard so many great things about them. Many people compared Bontempo and I's last music project, Der Musiklauden, to John Schneider's work. He's a great drummer, but the guitar guy had no sense of tempo.

I woke up at five a.m. today, so that I could watch the meteor shower. There were about thirty people out in Siberia (big empty field near science building) looking up at the sky. Too bad for all of us, the sky was completely blanketed in clouds. I went back to bed after not too long, only to awake again at 8.... I was absurdly tired all day, which inspired me to try to take a nap at around 1.30. I ended up sleeping through Japanese History and not waking up until almost 4.30. I've barely managed to stay awake since then and I'm actually kind of concerned about this seeming bout of narcolepsy. I'll try going to bed early tonight...

I'll be back in Santa Fe next week, please invite me over to your house for Thanksgiving.

2002-11-16T16:51:00.000-07:00

It snowed today! Starting early in the afternoon, a nice light snow. Totally different from the way it snows in New Mexico, or it seemed like it....maybe that's just because if it snows at all in New Mexico it snows at night or really really hard during the day. It also started to rain tonight, which kind of sucks because the whole campus will be buried in slush tomorrow.

2002-11-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

Alright, I'm sorry, I know I've gone more than a week without posting, and that's far from acceptable. I've been having trouble with blogger, but more importantly, i've had more important stuff to do.

On Tuesday night a blackout saved my life.

I was in the athletic center when it happened, having just finished my pilates class. The lights flickered and went out, plunging us into total darkness until the emergency lights kicked in. the kids that had been on the rock wall were reasonably freaked out. I didn't know it was a campus wide event until I walked outside and did not see any lamplights. In order to celebrate the almost total darkness, I stripped my shirt off and skipped around topless in the drizzling rain. I went spelunking through a black hole hall with one of those cool head strap flashlight thingies. then I stole an umbrella and watched a rather large group lament the death of their stereos by beatboxing and tap dancing in the rain (musical event of the year). Then, I did what any reasonable citizen would do and spent some alone time with the girl in the pitch blacknicity of my room. Later, after the lights had gone on for a moment and swiftly retreated again, we climbed the crosby stairs in the dark. Katie's hall was really dark and really full of the people. One of the highlights of the evening was wrestling with Sadiek, because when his 6 foot + frame fell on top of me, I involuntarily screamed out "Oh, Sadiek, you're sooooo big!" Soon afterwards, power returned to the campus, and it never left again.

Later that night, the all boys dorm, Dolliver, hosted a drag night. I had not planned on dressing up, since I've spent enough time in ridiculous outfits already this semester, but I ended up doing it anyway. I played the role of Grammy Jean, the unusually frazzled little old lady with an unmentioned addiction to mild prescription pain killers. I didn't win anything, because Dan Houston went all out and wore a thong.

Probably other interesting stuff has happened lately, but I'll get to that.

2002-11-07T20:47:00.000-07:00

Soundtrack: Velvet Underground, self-titled third album

This is Act II of one of those notorious epic posts. I would strongly recommend starting with Act I, below (the entry for November 5).

....

The five of us of us made our way to the nearby Irving Plaza concert venue, where the tragedy began.

The Bright Eyes concert, which was part of the CMJ label showcase festival, had sold out long before we even knew it existed. Therefore, the success of our trip largely depended on our ability to find a good scalper. A few weeks prior, Ilana had scalped tickets to a Dashboard Confessional concert, so she had a reasonably good grasp of the process. Andrew and I, who come from tiny tourist towns, were absolutely naive about the whole thing. As we approached the concert venue, we were of course accosted by a number of aggressive scalpers. We stopped one that looked just as shady as the rest, and haggled only very briefly--we ended up paying $90 for two tickets, even though the face value was only $17.50 for each. Ilana told us we could have talked the guy down a lot more. Then she left with Alex and Jamie, to go see the Jackass movie (she's not old enough to get into Irving Plaza).

Andrew and I walked all the way around the building to the beginning of a very long line. We were right behind a pair of slightly too cute emo girls, makeouteclub.com'ers for sure, and behind us was a card carrying posse of emo snobs. Andrew and I talked in our broken Spanish so that we could talk about our neighbors. The girls, one of whom was chain smoking clove cigarettes, turned out to be from North Carolina, and Andrew's from South Carolina, so he talked to them about that for awhile. It seemed really strange that they had flown all the way up from N. Carolina for an emo show, especially when they had seen all of the bands besides Cursive before, but the length of their journey proved to me that they were actual music fans, and not just giggling junior high students.

As we got closer to the front of the line, people in line began talking about "FAKE TICKETS! THOSE GUYS ARE SELLING FAKE TICKETS!" Andrew and I took large gulps, and took a long hard look at our tickets. We had bought tickets where cursive was spelled "cursius," which was bad news--I wasn't all that worried though, because Ticketmaster ALWAYS gives me misspelled tickets, and our tickets had perforation marks which was generally considered to be the mark of authenticity. We made it inside the venue, passing security and everything. But the black light test proved that we were not city folk. As soon as we passed through the vestibule, we entered a black lit room, and our fake tickets glow an ethereal neon purple, throbbing in the relative darkness of the room like some unhealing bruise. We were pointed back towards the vestibule.

"Hey? Did you guys have fake tickets? Y'know, we actually have a couple of tickets at the box office for face value?"

Hearing that statement from behind the ticket window my stomach tweek and bend. "Do you take Visa?"

No, Irving Plaza only takes American Express. So much for Visa being everywhere I want to be. Andrew and I ran around the corner searching for an ATM machine. We found one inside a grocery store, and as I emptied my checking account in slow motion, withdrawing all but $3.71, we managed to rationalize the expenditure of another $40. We weren't leaving NYC as failures. We ran back to Irving Plaza and nearly got ourselves killed by a security guard. Sorry, that line is closed, he said, we just sold our last ticket.

Suddenly, we were nearly broke, completely lost, and beyond emo. We had come to New York expecting that we might miss the concert. We did not expect that it would cost us $90 to miss the concert.

We criss-crossed Irving Plaza wanting to roll over and die. We got some consolation when we ran into another young woman who had spent a lot on fake tickets. Still, we walked in near silence to a cheap looking pizza place. It was not nearly as good as Roma, but it was food. The restaurant was also a pseudo convenience store, stocking the following items: canned soda, small bags of chips, paper towels, and toilet paper.

A pair of African American men, one much older than the other, sat down at the table next to us. The younger one pulled an ATM receipt out of his bag and said: "Donna Claremont, man! I knew she looked familiar." I imagined elaborate scenarios for how he happened upon that receipt, and wonderered whether it had been accident or crime. The young man soon began playing with his new cell phone. He called his girlfriend and tried to get her to guess which cell phone plan he had purchased--I don't wish to elaborate how pathetic it is to be familiar enough with multiple phone plans to guess which one would be best for each of your acquaintances.

After eating we walked to the gigantic Virgin Megastore, one of a dozen or so humongous chain stores in Union Square. Five stories of Barnes and Noble, three or four of Toys'R'Us, on and on like that. We browsed the book section, reading the latest Onion book and checking out the bizarre graphic novels. After more than hour, we went back out into Manhattan, and called Ilana.

She was worried about us and felt guilty for letting us by fake tickets. She gave us detailed instructions on how to ride the subway to her, and it was almost like an adventure for us to ride the Q line without Ilana there to guide us. We got out at 42nd, Times Square, and found Ilana with Alex and Jamie. Immediately, Alex chided us for making her stand out in the cold. We followed her quick pace to a seedy looking restaraunt somewhere just off Broadway. She wanted to go there because she knew the bartender and waitstaff and she wanted to drink. Andrew and I had already eaten, so we just sat in silence and watched as Alex sipped from a bloody mary and slowly developed into a horrifying image of Brooklyn private school trauma.

She talked, loudly and about herself, shooting narrow glances when we laughed at the wrong moments. She managed to make me hate her when she said that "Rich told everyone that all they have to do to get with me is talk about Rent and art. Which is stupid, because I HATE art!"

After she finished only half of her bloody mary, we left and wondered out loud what we could possibly do in Manhattan. It absolutely depressed me, three kids from Brooklyn and two small town boys having no idea what to do on a Saturday night in the biggest city in America. We rode a train down to the village, and began to drift. We passed a clothing boutique on the way, and in the window was a flowy tan shirt, expensive looking and too tacky for manhattan. Alex's jaw dropped when she saw it. She was in love. I turned towards her, and satisfied myself by saying "that shirt is garrish." She was confused by the word but hardly oblivious of the intent, and we were now firmly established as arch nemeses. Of course, in the role of the hero, I was much better dressed than the megalomaniacal super villainess.

We made our way to a small sex shop that didn't care about underrage customers. I browsed the flavored condoms, wind up sex dolls, and hilarious gay porn titles. We all played with the oh-so-UNrealistic latex vaginas, and spent a long time toying with different vibrator models. (Our favorites were the 'vibrating thong for men' and one that was designed to stimulate the clitoris and vagina at the same time, with a head that whipped around like a whirling dhervish.

All of the coffee shops were closed, and bleary eyed we headed towards a subway station. I wanted to stay in Manhattan; I wanted to stay in Manhattan alone, window shopping the village and people watching in NoHo, searching for some jealous diversion to end an awful evening. I love walking through cities alone after dark. It isn't some fear induced high but rather a sense of wonderment that I would rather keep for myself than express to others. Ilana, ever the mother figure, put me on the train, and promised that in Brooklyn we would by liquor.

Instead, we bought videos, Y Tu Mama Tambien at Hollywood Video. We got to Ilana's house at a painfully early hour. I was sullen and most of all frightened: I can't make it here, I thought to myself, I can't make it anywhere. I called my mother to let her know that I had made it home safely and she told me that my new baby cousin had been born and christened Willow. As the receiver clicked down I started to weep a little. I do not know if anyone noticed my redder than usual eyes.

We watched the film and I was soothed. The followed a depressing journey across Mexico that made my trip seem better but somehow even less exciting. The sexual energy in the film was high, and it upset me that I was having so much trouble getting loved and getting fucked.

Alex and Jamie stayed at the house after the movie ended, inviting themselves to spend the night in Ilana's parents' now vacant bed. I curled up with a book and discman on the couch, a mating in each of the rooms on opposite sides of me.

And when I woke up only the ringing phone could cut through the harsh tones of yelling in Swedish. I was on the third floor, with a staircase on either side of me. On the second floor, a swedish family was yelling at each other in their native tongue from all across the house. With a staircase at each ear, I heard the nordic screaming in full stereo. Despite the high level of noise and the half hourly phone ring, we all managed to stay in bed until noon. Alex and Jamie left in a hurry realizing that hadn't told anyone that they weren't coming home. I smiled as they skittered towards the nearest subway, but I knew that the orphaned Alex would never be punished for her transgressions.

Ilana, Andrew, and I slowly packed our bags and helped the Swedes get out the door. We walked to Ilana's favorite restaurant, a cheap Israeli place on Coney Island Avenue. We had planned to eat there on Saturday, but remembered that it was closed for the Jewish sabbath, and on Saturday night, every Orthodox Jew in the neighborhood converged there for kosher food. So, we enjoyed a leisurely sunday lunch, me feasting on tiny flavorful falafels and pita bread, while Andrew and Ilana ate loads of dripping shawarma (kind of like a gyro). Then, Andrew looked at his watch.

It was 3:15 and we had an hour to get to Port Authority to catch our bus to Great Barrington. We hauled ass back to Ilana's house, grabbed our things, got on a train, but by the time we reached 42nd, we had missed the bus. We got on the Grand Central Shuttle with a bunch of NYC marathon contestants (it had been run that morning at 9 am and we really should have gone). We were going to have to wait until 6:15 for a train to Wasaic, and from Wasaic we were still an hour from home. We curled up under a Grand Central payphone and I made a panicked call to Katie.

"Katie, I'm going to be stranded in Wasaic at 8:30. Could you help us get a ride?"

And she did. When we finally arrived at Wasaic, a platform in the middle of the woods that seemed infinitely preferable to the Brooklyn wasteland, Kat and Alli were waiting for us. We made it home, broke, depressed, and behind on school work, in love with Simon's Rock, with home.

2002-11-06T22:38:00.000-07:00

I know that you're waiting for the second half of my latest epic personal narrative.

In the words of Joe Ray Sandoval:

"Relax, I said I'll get to that"

2002-11-05T11:45:00.000-07:00

Again, I think I will grace my readers (all seven of them) with an epic post.

Soundtrack: Tea for Tillerman, by Cat Stevens

I sat on the floor of the Wasaic train station and watched a series of Metro North trains pull up and then head to the yard; I was waiting for the 8:20 to Grand Central Station, in Manhattan. I would have been on the six o'clock, but of the three people I had asked for a ride, all had fallen through. Ilana, Andrew, and I were forced to pay our RA, Nick, to drive us, and it cost $50, of which I paid $30. That was a small price to pay for the end of the worst panic attack of my young life. I had been screaming and closing in on tears in the library as I realized that my first trip to the City this year could be ruined before I ever got to the train station.

Wasaic is nothing but a platform in the middle of the woods. It has a few payphones, and an enclosed space with an expensive heater, but no bathrooms or snack machines. At the train station, Ilana, Andrew, and I ran into Lenny, Sean, and Kevin, who were also headed to New York for the weekend, for purposes unknown. We sat reading books or playing computer chess, acting just like the "Younger Scholars" we are. Every sixty seconds, exactly, a computerized voice would come on the loud speaker and announce that our train would be five minutes late. The only break in the monotony came in the form of Mr. Eisner, owner of Eisner's Limousine. He opened the door to the warm enclosure and immediately began talking, illuminating us on numerous subjects of little interest to us. Mr. Eisner seemed to be upset, disturbed, anguished even. He told us about the problems his business was having, as another limousine company was encroaching on his license to operate at the Wasaic train station. He told us how much he has to pay to take a four axle limousine onto the MassPike (it seemed odd that he told us, because one of the first things he said was "you reall don't want to know how much toll I pay on that thing). Finally, he told us that the train would be on time, and he knew that because he was close friends with the engineer, who had been the best man at his wedding. None of us spoke to him, and when he seemed satisfied that he had one us over as Eisner's Limousine customers, he left. Soon afterwards, we boarded the train, paid $9.50, and were well on our way to the grandest city in the world.

We arrived at Grand Central at 11:00, a quicker trip than usual because the train did not make any of its usual stops in Harlem. Andrew ran off the platform and into the shopping mall mayhem of Grand Central because he cannot stand the smell of train exhaust. Sean, Lenny, and Kevin went on their way, and my troupe headed up, out of the underground and into the frigid air of midtown Manhattan. From Grand Central, Andrew, Ilana, and I walked to Times Square, complaining all the way of empty stomachs. Despite my best intentions, I was acting like the archetypical "little boy in the big city," commenting every five steps or so on how excited I was by City culture, and how different everything was from Santa Fe. We found a spot to eat right in the middle of Times Square, some Chinese restaurant that seemed to still be under construction. Andrew was excited by the opportunity to use his rudimentary Chinese. He tried to speak a little to our waitress in Mandarin, and I quickly pointed out to him that she might speak Cantonese. We she came back, and Andrew tried to ask her some questions about how to say certain things in Chinese, we found out that I was right--she spoke Cantonese, not the more common Mandarin. Andrew was a little dissappointed, but all of our spirits were lifted by Shanghai noodles and Lo Mein.

We exited the restaurant and found of ourselves face to face with a gigantic billboard featuring a shirtless Tom Welling, star of the WB's Smallville. Ilana shrieked "Tom welling is SO hot." And I instantly responded with a shocking and confusing comment: "Not as hot as John Weinstein!"

John Weinstein is the theatrical, thin, and homosexual Chinese professor at Simon's Rock. I'm not attracted to him, or any adult male (Edward Norton notwithstanding), so I guess I just had Chinese on the mind.

We returned to the 42nd street train station, and waited for our all powerful Q line to Avenue H (Ilana's metro stop). As we stood on the platform, and group of a dozen or so similarly dressed African American men approached me, led by a 50 year old man with his 6 year nephew. The were wheeling a large gibson amplifier through the train station. The old man stopped in front of me, and began to talk. He grabbed the burnt shreds of an American flag tied to my messenger bag (the way that I tie it on makes impossible to tell that the flag is altered), and said: "My nephew was just looking at this and wondering.....yeah....me and my boys, we play music, and I'll tell you, if you don't like my company, well, YOU BETTER LIKE SOMETHING NIGGER!" They walked away, leaving me slightly frightened but mostly just amused.

We got to Ilana's house in Brooklyn very late. Her parents were still awake, watching television. Andrew and I had both met them before, during parents' weekend. We all hit the floor in Ilana's room, tired and distressed. Soon, Ilana was quibbling with her mother over some minor issue, and the situation escalated until Andrew and I felt very awkward. Ilana was somewhat justified in arguing with her mother; Mrs. Berger is a psychologist and she seems to relentlessly psychoanalyze Ilana, a habit that even I found irritating. Eventually, the Mr. and Mrs. Berger retired to their room, and we younger scholars decided to go to sleep as well.

Andrew immediately rolled out a sleeping bag and made himself comfortable on the floor. Ilana and I watched this, somewhat perplexed. Ilana and Andrew are a very serious and affectionate couple; why wasn't Andrew going to share a bed with her?

"I was raised in a Southern household, and it is disrespectful for me to sleep with Ilana while her mother is in the house."

Ilana and I mocked him and tried to convince him to toss his manners by the wayside, but he stayed on the floor and I ended up sleeping with Ilana, which really isn't such an uncommon occurence. We're very close friends and sharing a bed hardly seems unusual.

We didn't wake up on Saturday until after 11 AM, and were immediately bombarded by Brooklyn/Jewish hospitality: what did we want for breakfast? Ilana tried in vain to explain to her mother that we were meeting someone for lunch at 1, and we had no time or need for breakfast. After much pointless debate, we found ourselves crowded around the kitchen table, shoveling kiwi, raisin bread, and Costa Rican coffee into our mouths at an alarming rate. After breakfast, we were milling about in the living room, and I noticed a guitar. I eagerly asked who played. I found that Ilana's father had given up the guitar long ago, but he was eager to give us a demonstration of his other musical talents.

"I will play for you my dirigible"

"You mean didgeridoo?"

"Yes, that's it." His didgeridoo playing sounded like an odd combination of an asthmatic grunt and a dromedary mating call. More practice was in order.

The Bergers drove us through Brooklyn's biggest Pakistani neighborhood to Park Slope, the wealthy commercial heart of Brooklyn. We got out at Roma pizza. $1.60 for a plain slice, so of course we each ate several. At Roma, we met up with Ilana's beautiful, petite, and utterly helpless friend Shanna. In Shanna, I saw a glimpse of what Ilana's life must have been like in Brooklyn, the petty, drunken, and sexed starved life of the prestigious Berkeley Carroll school. Shanna was dumb, horny, and dressed in expensive but tacky clothing. She was recovering from and ovarian cist operation and preparing for a second one (relentless drinking had caused them to return), and she needed a calculator to divide 150 by two. Still, she was a sweet girl, and turned out to be the most impressive of Ilana's former associates.

From Park Slope, we hopped on the Q train to 8th street, eager to spend our afternoon in the East Village. Just across the street from the train station was the home of DJ Lenny, an eccentric hip hop fan who sold a surprising variety of used music out of a booth the size of a Manhattan newsstand. He was listening to one of my favorite Nas songs as we passed by, and the Ramones were at the front of one of the record bins, so of course I gained great respect for him. Ilana and Andrew spent a long time looking for just the right body jewelry, and I peered into the window of a store that seemed to deal exclusively in rare varieties of Chuck Taylors, going beyond the common red, black, and blue, delving into greens, pinks, and the most coveted of all, plaid. I didn 't have enough money for anything, but next time I'm in the City....

From the Village to SoHo, SoHo to NoHo, we drifted in search of a bathroom and instead found the perfect record shop (Other Music, mentioned in the latest Spin magazine, and far, far too indie rock for me). We also stopped at the Swatch store, but I thankfully failed to convince myself that I need a new watch. We were finally forced to abandon the search for a toilet and take the train to Union Square, where we would be meeting up with Ilana's friend Alex and then heading to Irving Plaza, where we would find the reason for our trip to New York: the Bright Eyes concert.

We found Alex in the Virgin Megastore, as Andrew and I shifted in the line for what seemed to be the dirtiest and onliest bathroom in Union Square. While she describes herself as a model, "pretty" isn't really the most apt adjective for Alex. I think I would call her, more than anything, "awful." Her jeans cost her $200, because below the knee the were covered in exciting sequins and glitters (many of my friends at home have sequined and glittered their own pants, the only cost being $ 0.99 for materials), and her jacket was obviously too thin to be anything but a fashion statement, a compliment to her overdone hair and her overly bushy eyebrows. Her boyfriend, Jamie, seemed like a genuinely nice guy, although he exuded positively skanky skater boy vibes, and as far as I know, he never removed his cheap headphones from his neck.

The five of us made our way to the nearby Irving Plaza concert venue, where the tragedy began.

2002-10-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

Humm diddly hum, my weekend was fairly dumb.

I saw the Gokh-Bi System play and it was a monstrous let down. They were cool, yeah, and they did have really impenetrable Senegalese accents, and I got to shake my white booty, but it all seemed so cliche. They kept trying to rap, and every song was about "Peace, Love, and Justice." Oh man, you guys are brilliant! No one's ever thought of peace love and justice before! Not only was the performance itself weak, but I had been invited to something else and I spent the whole night regretting that I didn't go (get drunk and play Tekken with a bunch of seniors).

On Sunday, I successfully slept through brunch and unsuccessfully worked on school stuff. I wasted a lot of my afternoon in town with Judd and Katherine, buying burritos, shermans, and watching a very amateur jazz band in a coffee shop. I bought the keynote piece for my Ziggy Stardust costume. I don't want to reveal too much, but know this: it's bright red with blue polka dots and it doesn't cover my belly button. I went to see Life is Beautiful with the girl and enjoyed that, but we had a little confrontation afterward that was uncomfortable....I'm really not sure if we'll continue seeing each other.

Yesterday I watched A Beautiful Thing with a sophomore that I might as well refer to as the boy, because if I decided to date a guy, he'd be the one for sure. The movie was pretty good, but I thought it was a little too ridiculous for a serious film about homoerotic issues. Plus, there were no gay sex scenes. Or any other kind of sex scenes.

Due to the Inevitable Random Kendrick factor (or IRK Factor, which I use to explain bizarre goings on in my dorm), I ended up playing Strip Poker Round Three last night. This time, it was one on one, so it was definitely nothing but an excuse to get naked and dance. My roommate showed up in the middle. I opened the door in boxers and a tie. So he left for a little while.

Design elements rule.

And now, a brief discourse on Rosey the Riveter:

I refuse to accept that a symbol of support for war is a viable feminist icon.

2002-10-26T13:18:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I: missed Spanish class, whiled away the afternoon in someone else's bed, played a lot of jet set radio future, met everyone else's parents (it's family weekend!), got awarded my big friendly scholarship at the honors convocation, watched taxi driver with the girl, and retired to my room with a case of the blues. Then, I realized I wasn't having an emotional breakdown--I was just really really hungry.

After lots of cookies and rice cakes, plus a bowl of thai rice noodles and some sugary sodas, I was feeling really good. I enjoyed many rounds of strip poker with a lovely couple that I'm friends with. We all got naked, and then played reverse strip poker to put our clothes back on. I spent a lot of time wearing nothing but a scarf. Needless to say, I was up very, very late.

Just now I was partaking in some family weekend activities. I was probably the ONLY student at the "Life After Simon's Rock" Forum, but it was pretty interesting anyhow. I watched the first half of our soccer game against the Culinary Institute of America. We're losing three to zero. Knowing my dad and all his chef friends, it was hard for me to picture the CIA kids as culinary professionals, and some of the girls on their cheerleading squad looked younger than the girls here!

Tonight, I'm going to dinner with either Ben's family or Katie's...Ben invited me first, and hanging with his parents would probably be less awkward than spending an evening with the parents of the girl I'm romantically pursuing....and then there's the whole Japanese vs. Chinese food debate. I dunno what to do! I always hated the fact that I didn't spend time with Emily's parents, why fuck up again, right?

At 9.00, there will be an exciting performance from the Gokh Bi System, a group from Senegal. Be there. Even if you live in Santa Fe.

2002-10-24T22:46:00.000-06:00

I had one of those extremely good days.

In Japanese History it was Movie Day, Part II. We watched the second half of Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha. Quite goodness. Unfortunately, despite the stunning visual effects, brilliant acting, and engrossing plot, I fell asleep for most of the first half of the film. Anticipating a similar episode of narcolepsy today, I brought along a pillow to class. Sure enough, I was out after twenty minutes. Paul didn't care, or perhaps even notice, that mel and i were sleeping under the table throughout the class. I did catch the ending, though. And the ending was really good.

I got good food for dinner! Ahmet invited Henry and I to attend a special dinner for Michael Klare, professor at the Five Colleges and writer for the Nation magazine. There were about eight students and six professors. Michael Klare was very nice and very funny. I mentioned something I read in one of his articles, and I hope it didn't sound like I was sucking up. There was a lecture in the Arc afterwards, and Mr. Klare talked about global resource politics.

I found out so much. For example: I already knew that when Iraq went to war with Iran in the 80's the US supported Saddam Hussein. What I didn't know was that Donald Rumsfeld was sent as the emissary to Iraq, and he literally lavished Saddam with gifts, like US military aide and technology. Also, while Rumsfeld now talks all the time about how much of a threat Saddam's chemical weapons are to us, he didn't say a thing when Iraq spent six years repelling Iran's human wave attacks with almost daily use of chemical weapons. The US continued to support Hussein monetarily and ideologically until the country invaded Kuwait. Just one week before the invasion, our ambassador to Iraq told Saddam that the US had no position on the invasion; we basically gave him the green light. In fact, we probably would have just let Saddam take Kuwait if he hadn't bumped into our good friends Saudi Arabia.

After the lecture, I even asked a question! I was so proud.

*******

In speech and debate tournaments, we used to make fun of the idea of a debater hitting on another debater.

"Contention One: I want to sleep with you tonight."

Well, since Katie really REALLY likes debate, I actually did that. I wrote a three point analysis of why we should get involved. With a resolution and everything, just like LD. I certainly hope that turns out well....

2002-10-23T11:51:00.000-06:00

Soundtrack: Herb Albert and the Tijuana Brass, Greatest Hits Volume One.

Laundry day! I really feel that I ought to be doing laundry more often, because my laundry bag is really huge and I continuously fill it to almost overflowing. Right now, it is full of washed and dried clothes. After creative writing, Katherine promised to help me fold them (that would be Katherine McCullar who remindsmeofhannahflake, not Katy [the girl]. In creative writing today, my story is going to be 'workshopped.' I'm quite exciting. This is the story (please excuse the awkward paragraph arrangement; it's a side effect of pasting huge text files into blogger):

LYRICS

In between sets on Friday night, while the usual hazy eyed crowd pushed into the bathrooms and ordered another round of cheap drinks, I sat down at the dark end of the bar.
ìI havenít written anything in weeks,î I said to the new bartender.
ìI guess that means ëmake it a double,í then?î he replied.
ìYeah, perfect.î I took a long breath and a long drink, and then looked back at the stage and piano with disgust. ìI mean, I really havenít written anything. Iím afraid to pick up a pen or a piece of paper.î
The bartender pushed a napkin in front of me, and handed me a cheap-looking pen from his beer stained pants pocket. ìWrite,î he said. ìAnything at all. You can only write so much crap before something brilliant drips out.î
I got off the bar stool, knocking over a drink and his cheap pen in the process, and crawled back up to the piano. Time for my second set. Since I was too tired for anything else, I played some covers that no one recognized, Leonard Cohen and Nick Drake, and finished with a long, drawn out song that I had written ten years ago, in college.
A decade ago, and that was still the best goddam song I had ever written. It had occurred to me a long time ago that I was never going to be famous; I was never even going to be written up by a critic. A washed up songwriter, the only career more romantic and depressing than ìstarving artist.î
Most of the time, I stayed and got a little drunk after my set, but I stormed straight out of the bar as soon as I finished playing that night. In my hurry, I left behind my bag with a camera and a notepad. I was only two blocks away when I remembered it, but I decided not to go back for it until next week, when I played again. I was rather upset. During my last song, I had tried to figure out how many times I had played in that dirty, smoky bar. When I lost count, I started to sweat and get frustrated and miss notes and forget the lyrics. My emotions can be rather hard to control.
Thatís why I started writing songs. I had to find some way to get those emotions out of my body. As I stormed through the ice and fog of the January avenue I realized that, at the moment, I was a pretty pissed off guy. But I was sure that I wouldnít be able to write a decent song about not being able to write decent songs, and I didnít give it another thought.
My apartment was on the other side of town, so I didnít quite know where I was going. I could have hailed a cab right outside the bar, and I had already passed two train stations. I ducked into a different, nicer bar, and sat down in a well-lit booth. The bar was nearly empty, which was sad. It had just opened, I thought, because all of the stainless steel was still shiny and the bottles of liquor were all still full.
The one waitress was ignoring me, so I thought about the new bartender in ìmyî bar. His name was Joseph, and I had gotten him the bartending job. He was a clumsy, terrible bartender, but a bloody brilliant poet. Part of me liked his advice, about just writing until something good happened, but songs are so different from poetry. They have to have some rhythm, some rhyme, some verse, chorus, and bridge, middle eight and all of that. Songs are about mood, and for weeks, I hadnít been in the mood to write songs.
*****
I stumbled home at about three A.M. The apartment smelled like nicotine and coffee grounds; Maria was still awake. I walked into her studio. It was really a second bedroom, but we had set it up as a painting studio for her. She wasnít in there, which surprised me, and even stranger, all of her brushes and paints were cleaned up and put away.
ìJackson...î
Startled, I turned around. She was in the doorway, dressed in jeans, t-shirt, and a jacket. Traveling clothes.
ìIím leaving, Jackson. Iím leaving right now.î
I wasnít listening to her at all; I never did. I mean, of course I heard her say ëIím leaving,í but I wasnít paying enough attention to care. I just stared at her t-shirt. I had never seen it before.
ìDid you hear me, Jackson? Iím going right now. Thereís a cab waiting for me downstairs.î
ìWhere are you going?î I was being stubborn and stupid on purpose now.
ìIt doesnít fucking matter, anywhere but here.î
There were dozens of reasons why a girl would leave me. I was poor, I was boring, I was drunk, and I was lazy. But I couldnít think of any reason for a girl to leave in a rage at three in the morning.
ìCouldnít this have waited until the morning? Or the afternoon, when Iím not drunk or hung-over?î
ìNo, no, Iíve been waiting for the right time for weeks. Jackson, I just donít want to live with you anymore...I wasnít going to leave until you were writing again, I thought it wouldnít hurt you so much if the rest of your life was going well....î
I pushed her out of the doorway and went into the bathroom. No slamming doors or anything. I just sat on the floor and cried. She didnít have to remind me that I was washed up. And she didnít have to leave.
ìBITCH!!!î
I washed my face and then looked around the apartment. She had already left. There was a note taped to my stereo, where I would find it. I didnít look at the note. Maria had a couple of good bottles of wine in the kitchen, and I poured myself a glass. I looked through my records, and pulled out a Lou Reed album. With great care, I set it on the turntable, touched the needle to it, and then took the note and sat down on the couch to read it.
Jacksonó
Iím sorry but we cannot be together anymore. It isnít about you; I need to get out of this city, this state, this life---
The note was a few pages long, and that first bit didnít really interest me. I tore it up and left the pieces on the coffee table. I didnít care what the letter said. Maria and I had probably fallen out of love a long time ago anyway. I wondered if she was going to come back for her things. There must have been something about that in the letter, but it was too late for that now. I fell asleep on the couch.
*****
My eyes opened before noon--early. I took a short, cold, shower, and put on some comfy looking clothes.
I walked into the kitchen and starting pulling liquor bottles down from the shelf. Then I poured the contents of all of them down the drain, except for an unopened bottle of whiskey that I thought I could give away as a gift. I walked down five flights of stairs instead of taking the elevator.
A lot of the ice and snow had melted that morning; everything was wet and smelled a little worse than usual. At the stationery shop around the corner, I bought yellow legal pads and the most expensive pens and pencils they had.
There was a Starbuckís across the street. Just like the three teenagers in front of me, I ordered some sugary coffee drink with lots of whipped cream, and I sat down at a dirty looking table. I folded one of the legal pads open to the first page, and with a black pen, I wrote at the top in big, clear letters:
ìLYRICS.î

2002-10-22T11:26:00.000-06:00

I got my grades, and I got a B, two B+'s, an A-, and an A! That means my GPA this semester will definitely be good enough to keep my scholarship. Oh, for joy!

2002-10-21T23:11:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I awoke to a campus full of signs on pickets. The signs come courtesy of CHI, the campus health initiative. CHI is probably the most proactive group on a campus where the only thing that seems to get done is "interest meetings." During orientation they gave everyone mugs. They put chocolates in our mailboxes (and gave directions to jolly ranchers so vegans could enjoy candy too.) And now, they've given us about one hundred signs stuck along the pathways that tell us everything you could every want to know about date rape. There are some saddening/maddening statistics: one in six women in the United States has been victim of a sexual assault (the common figure is one in four women has been raped by a man, but I think that's a worldwide statistic.) 90% of all completed or attempted rapes are commited by someone the victim knows. And 84% of rapists say that "what they did was definitely not rape." And all of the signs come complete with citations, which makes them that much more effective.

My friends and I are planning to actually perform a concert as The Velvet Undergrads, my long-planned Velvet Underground cover band. Erick is having some indie rock friends of his perform here, and we're hoping we can open. And use their drumsets. After that, Bontempo and I want to try to have a real post punk band, The Faux. It could be cool.

I took a little jaunt out into the woods tonight, and three of my friends fell into a well. Not at the same time. One fell in and got wet. Then another fell in, and right after that the completely oblivious third one somehow managed to find his way down there, too. Falling in wells is something that is only supposed to happen to Timmy from Lassie. We also basically got lost in the woods. Too bad we didn't get eaten by a bear. That would have been the perfect end to a cold, cold evening.

2002-10-19T21:29:00.000-06:00

Playlist: 20 Years of Dischord 3-CD boxed set from those straight edge punks at Dischord Records.

Yesterday I had a pretty decent time. Their was a surprise kiss with the oft mentioned girl. I gave blood for the first time, which was cool. There are tons and tons of restrictions on who can give blood, and some of them are ridiculous. Men who have been sexually active with other men since 1977 cannot give blood ever, but straight men who have had frequent sex with 'high risk' partners can give blood after only a year of 'clean' living. One of my friends was turned away because she lived in Italy for a year or two. I didn't get really light headed or anything, but I did have some trouble breathing later in the day, or rather, not very strenuous activity like walking a few blocks really wore me out.

I went out to dinner with Bontempo, Maia, and Caroline. I enjoyed my now favorite meal of pancakes and a cheese omelette, plus milkshake and coffee and I split cheese blintzes with the table. So, yeah, a lot of food was consumed. But that's okay, I needed it! Then I watched But I'm a Cheerleader, which was playing as part of the campus Queersa (Queer Straight Alliance) Film Festival. Later last night, I played strip poker with two really adorable girls who live in my building, but just down to the underwear. It was a great way to spend the evening.

Next summer I'm either going to be an intern at a music magazine or a camp counsellor at a pro-Palestinian socialist Jewish Camp. "Oy!" slash "Oi! Oi! Oi!"

I didn't wake up today until approximately two o'clock, which made me feel gross and dirty. At three I went into town with Bontempo to buy CD's and to eat (the ideal burrito), and he bought some art supplies. He's working on making a collage for some girl in DC that he's going to see next weekend, Francie or something. This evening I had my guitar restrung and I watched Fargo. For the last few hours, I have been doing quite a bit of sitting in my room, which is fine I guess, but I should have done at least one to two protective things with my evening. I will have to wake up at around seven tomorrow morning to make myself feel better and get all my work done.

Things to do this weekend, a brief rundown:
Write a review of the Dischord Box for the paper.
Write a review of myself and Der Musiklauden for the Llama Ledger (school paper).
Write a Socratic Dialogue for Freshmen Seminar that proves that my professor is completely wrong about Plato's Forms.
Read tons of Japanese History, some Spanish, some Seminar (including delightful Thoreau).
Revise a short story for Creative Writing and make copies for my class (please comment on whether or not you would like me to post short stories on benrogers.blogspot.com).

That's not really too bad. But it will probably occupy my entire Sunday.

Like, whoa Scoob!

2002-10-17T22:14:00.000-06:00

Ben Rogers in an accent that drifts between Russian and German: "My comrades are clearly incompetent so I will have to fill the time with an introduction. We are Der Musiklauten from Great Barrington, Germany. We are going to do a cover of a John Cage song because we think he is very brilliant"

[looks around and sees that no one is ready to play]

Ben Rogers as himself: "They're still not ready so I'm going to perform a poem by Joe Ray Sandoval. I don't really know the title or a lot of the lines in the poem, so this is more of a paraphrase."

[Performs "Laundry" by Joe Ray Sandoval with painful innaccuracy but no one notices because he shouts it confidently]

[Ryan Mitchell begins to riff on a modified autoharp along with two tape recorders playing static. Ben Rogers begins playing weirdness on a great drumset. Ben Bontempo and Judd create a mess of guitar feedback and insane delay effects. Minutes later, Ben plays five cymbal crashes. He gets up from the drumset, takes the microphone]

With an accent:

"ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR"

[And then he leaves the building, followed shortly after by the rest of Der Musiklauten.]

That was my performance at open mic night. Were we a hit? No one could say, but I think that I really continued the legacy that I created with my Britney Spears costume lipsync at the first open mic night. How will I top those? Impossible to tell.

2002-10-16T23:51:00.000-06:00

It is rather late at night, so I probably won't be getting much since I still have a little homework to do and I would like to read a lot.

Contrary to what I said in the last post, I actually have a date with the girl. Or, rather, a raincheck. It went like this:

"Would you like to go to a movie on Friday."

"Yes!"

"Awesome"

"Wait, Ben-- I'm going to an (out of town thing that would reveal the identity of the girl"

"Some other time then?"

"Great"

So, unlike the long forgotten Cute Russian Girl (iheartyoumasha) debacle, a date was definitely set up. All very clear cut. I'm excited.

Today I tried really hard not to go to spanish class, but my roommate made me, which turned out to be a good thing, because Edgar drew fallopian tubes on the board in class, and it was the funniest thing I have seen all year. I made plans with Bontempo and Judd to play Musique ConcrÈte at open mic night tomorrow. One keyboard, two feedbacking guitars, tape loops, and me with a snare drum and some serious gray turtleneck action. It'll be a rock'n'roll show to remember. If I'm really brave I'll play the song I've been working on. Here's the lyrics:

Love Song #35/37

Iím getting awful head
In the back of her brotherís car
Both of us wonder
If we let it go to far
Her eyes are closed because
Sheís wishing she wasnít there
And mine are open because
When Iím nervous I always stare

Please forget me
Iím not very good for you
And things youíd do for me
I never ever would for you

Itís my last night in town
Sheís the last girl on the list
Both of us wonder
If we really wanted this
Iím hoping sheíll say ëneverí
And then I can just go back home
The last thing I need is ëloveí
Iím already in love with ëaloneí

Please forget me
Iím not very good for you
And things youíd do for me
I never ever would for you

Once again
I pretend
That I donít hate
The things I do
Everyone else hates me
Shouldnít you? Shouldnít you?

Please forget me
Iím not very good for you
And things youíd do for me
I never ever would for you

--end

I'm actually using an alternate chorus that is equally uninspired: I wanna run/I wanna hide/I wanna fall like a star from the sky/I wanna leave/Don't wanna regret/Can't you just teach me how to forget. The chords are Cadd9, Em, G, D, and Am, with some weird variations on those, added ninths and maj 7s and stuff. I love guitar lessons so much.

I'm sorry that those lyrics are so (dashboard) confessional and probably Too Much Information for everyone, especially you Santa Feans who in all likelihood know who when what I'm singing about.

Tonight a couple of my friends were tripping on acid out in the woods and Sadiek made us go looking for them because it was dark and raining and they could easily have tweaked and died. We walked about a mile into this huge random field seemingly in the middle of nowhere, 5 shivering indie rockers in search of a couple of naked LSD elves. When we got back from our 90 minutes of sheeting rain, the two were in their room. I mean, fuck.

2002-10-14T16:35:00.000-06:00

Possibly for my first time at simon's rock i'm developing an actual not-just-physical crush on someone and i think

i.am.failing.in.my.attempts

to get close to this person.

And I keep getting close to these people that I'm never ever going to fall in love with, as much as I'd enjoy that convenience.

Boy Slut.

Oh well. I had a great day today, I slept too much and Spanish class was fun because we just told stories the whole time and of course it's always great when I have a 1.30 advisor meeting. I wore a jacket and tie today because it is monday (and i have decided to always do this on Mondays from now on). The jacket and tie look gets me mad compliments. Heather, adorable hippie, told me how much she wants to make babies with me, and Juice made sure to remind that I'm the cutest boy she's ever seen. That makes me Quite happy.

There is a Freshmen Seminar lecture tonight, which might be really interesting. I was expecting the first one, about Sophocles and Tragedy, to be fantastic. But it was actually beyond dull. Tonight's is about Plato, and I hopehard that it will be brilliant, engaging, all of that. I should have started my homework before now....oh dear.

2002-10-13T20:00:00.000-06:00

Y'know, here's an idea:

Everyone vote for your "Album of the Year (so far)" right now.

Just click on the little comment button. It's that easy.

do it, right right now.

2002-10-13T18:32:00.000-06:00

Okay, I have been on vacation for quite awhile now, and as you can tell, when I'm on vacation, benrogers.blogspot.com is on vacation too.

First off, to answer the question that has not really been bothering any of my readers much: no, it was not a date. The really hot russian girl and I went over the evidence, and mutual attraction stuff, and decided against. It's okay though.

So, vacation: I came HOME for a week. And it felt bizarrely un-home like. It was a vacation. My parents even redecorated my room so it looked kind of hotel room like. But gorgeous.

On Sunday, I went to The Least Effective Anti-War Protest Ever. It was a lot of fun though. About one thousand people gathered at the Roundhouse and the Plaza and did a bunch of chanting, banner waving, and ill advised public speaking.

I went to St. Michael's on Tuesday. Only a couple of people knew that I was in town, so when I showed up at school, there was a lot of screaming and hugging and "What are you doing here?" which made me happy to no end. Even though the front office tried to kick me out.

And, joy of joys! i went to a speech tournament. It was in far-far-Farmington, which is a fucking huge town...a lot smaller than Santa Fe, but I never realized how large it was. The tournament rocked. I got to see all my buddies from Los Alamos, and I got to judge two events: Humourous Interpretation and Lincoln-Douglas Debate. That was actually really hard. I'm not experienced enough to judge debate well, and I had to work really hard not to be biased in HI since my friends Sarah and Andrew were competing.

Early morning flight today...it was so fantastic to get back! Beautiful. Beautiful. The trees and the people and the cigarette smell on everything. The stereo and the T1 line. The new X-Box across the hall and all that wonderfullness.

I'm going to try to write a column now, so I better go.

Frequent updates return tomorrow!

Note: Read Music/Speak Spanish by Desaparecidos is the album of the year.

2002-10-01T14:16:00.000-06:00

Parts of this post have been changed for legal reasons.

Onward with the epic post.

I woke up around noon on Sunday, which is always a nice time to wake up. I did homework all day, like the dull, dull boy I am. At around 8, I went out dinner with Masha.

Masha and I had made plans earlier in the day. The only thing that was lacking was a ride into town. We got one [description of how we got a ride removed due to allegations of slander. The author apologizes for slandering you].
We arrived at Bizen, the most lovely sushi restaurant in town.

Masha was delighted to find that our waiter, Alexander, was Russian, and from Moscow, like her. They had a brief conversation, of which I understood more than I thought I would be able to. Alexander assumed that I was her boyfriend (there is no Russian word for boyfriend, so they use the English) and she did not correct him. We ordered vegetable tempura, shu mai dumplings, and sushi--plain cucumber and ume kyu, plum-cucumber. I had been craving Veggie Tempura ever since I had Heather's leftovers on Saturday. Oh, Japanese food! I paid for dinner, which was remarkably cheap for two people at a relatively nice restaurant.

After dinner we went to Bev's, one of the coolest ice cream shops ever. Liming was working, so of course we got a free sundae, overloaded with fudge and cream and nuts and my personal favorite, chocolate jimmies (what's the difference between jimmies and sprinkles?). I was very amused by an old man that walked in an said this:

"I want one thing, and one thing only! A single scoop of praline in a sugar cone!"

Such determination in ordering ice cream....I wanted to hug him.

Our friend wasn't going to be back to pick us up for another half an hour or so, and we decided to walk around town a little bit. We sort of ended up with our arms around each other. And then, we sort of kissed. And then I was sort of surprised with myself.

I had not really intended that outing to be a date, but as far as I can tell, it had all of the elements of a date: I invited a girl out, there was a romantic restaurant, late night walk, kiss, guy pays, there's a gorgeous russian girl involved...I think my loyal readers should vote on whether or not this counted as a date.

Once we got back, we found that the protesters had arrived! Lenny was coming back later in a different car, but the other five guys were all safe. Ned even made it back! We didn't really talk too much, but I did get to hear their one most exciting story: Ned, Lenny, Ben, and Judd were locking down a street, and they were dragged onto the sidewalk by the police. They were held there with pepper guns pointed at them as an empty Metro bus (which had been used to hold protesters all weekend) pulled up. They were sure that they were going to be arrested, but somehow they got off with just a warning. They also became the proud owners of a giant trojan horse, which I think was confiscated or destroyed by the police at some point.

I did my homework and did not get to bed until after two.

I was supposed to meet the movie crew at six again on Monday morning, because Jack had not really been happy with our Saturday morning footage. My alarm went off at 5.20. I figured that it wouldn't take me 40 minutes to shower and get on my costume, so I thought I would rest my eyes for a minute. At 6.15, there came a tappin, a gentle rapping, at my chamber door. I did not notice this. My roommate had to tell me there was someone at the door. It was Jack, not seeming too upset, just surprised at my tardiness. Fifteen minutes later, I was in jack's car, showered an dressed like a shepherd.

Jack wanted an entirely different approach to my scene this time. He decided to cut the dialogue down to two lines, one for me and one for Rebecca. He instead wanted the focus to be on action, playfullness, general frolicking. I was very, very dissappointed with this. It meant that my part was suddenly smaller and more ridiculous. I personally thought it would be better to combine the action with the original dialogue, like we had done in rehearsal. Our rehearsals had gone so incredibly well...I think that was because we rehearsed in an area with lots of rocks and trees to play around with, and we actually filmed with only one tree, so it was much harder to use the environment to our advantage. Again, on Monday morning, I had to run barefoot. Much further this time. And we did three takes. It was at that point that I realized that I had gotten up before the sun on two separate occasions, just so I could dress up like a shepherd and freeze my toes off for a couple of hours. And unlike most of the crew, I am not receiving credit for any that. No money, no credit, two pieces of pizza, and if all goes well, FAME. I guess that isn't so bad.

Shooting only took a couple of hours. I was back at school before nine, so I actually got to go to breakfast. Very weird, for me. Between breakfast and spanish on Monday, I sat down and wrote the previous post. While thus occupied, Mary wandered into my room. Crawled into my bed. And slept. She didn't get up until almost three hours later. Very few words were exchanged between us about this.

Spanish class was actually really good. We went outside and read poetry and short stories the whole time. I was very impressed with my translating ability....however, I still can't write in Spanish. Someday, perhaps, someday.

I made it through creative writing, and then at 4 i got in bed. I woke up at 7. That's a lot of napping. I don't think it was healthy, at all. As a result of this, I missed dinner, and i didn't get started on my work until probably 11 (I spent a lot of time cleaning my room because room inspections are tonight, Tuesday). Mary tried to give me a massage while I worked, but I found it too distracting (she got a lot of knots out before I made her quit, though). Another distraction: Adrian, who seems quite straight-laced, wandered into the study room looking a very different kind of laced--y'know, the lace and leather look generally associated with dominatrixes. Shocking.

Again, no sleepy for me until 2. I had a class at nine o'clock this morning, but I opted to sleep until 8.55, take a long shower, and hope that nothing important happened during the first 20 minutes of class. As it turns out, I wasn't even marked late, because Ahmet didn't take attendance until the end of class. The rest of my tuesday was very stereotypically tuesday-esque, and in about 15 minutes Henry and I are going to go get a burrito, and then we will attend a film being shown in town about George Seldes, which is mandatory and free for my Reading Newspapers class.

2002-09-30T07:40:00.000-06:00

Alright. I finally have plenty of time to write about my long, tiring, pseudoeventful weekend. I'm going to try to make this pretty complete and detailed because I intend to use a lot of it for the process notes I have to write for the film.

Thursday was "revise my Freshman seminar paper" night. My paper was called "Morals, Ethics, and Minor Deities: Good vs. Evil in the Oedipus Cycle." It was an examination of the struggle between divine law and human stubborness. The eventual conclusion was that there are no gods, and the only "divine" power is Morality. I used awesome quotes from Nietzsche, Persig, Yourcenar, and (duh) Sophocles. I was so happy with my product....it even had a halfway decent works cited page.

Then I took it to the on duty writing tutor, and she wanted to take out all the best parts! She liked the paper, but she kept trying to shorten it and focus it. I would have been less insulted if she had just ripped the paper apart and told me to change my topic. I decided not to make most of the changes she recommended, because it was already late at night and I knew that I could always hand in a revision of the paper next week if I got a shit grade on it.

On Friday I managed to make it all the way to my one class, which I think is a damn impressive feat. Much like I planned, I basically spent 12 pm to 6 pm in my room, compulsively checking DC Indie Media and watching the phone just in case one of my friends at the protest were to get arrested. I did take a break to visit Mod 9 (the Mods are the coolest housing on lower campus, two story four person homes), the Activism Mod, so that Tali could call DC legal and check on some of her medic friends (the DC police arrested a lot of medics). I also delivered my paper to Jamie and another to my Reading Newspapers professor. Later on, the Mod 9 girls brought me a Perfect Burrito from La Choza Burrito (not to be confused with Santa Fe's lovely La Choza AND The Shed restaurants).

At eight on Friday night I went to the Lecture Center and watched Wonder Boys. That is a brilliant. I had seen it of course, but it was much better the second time. I'm not sure why--maybe I take writing more seriously now, maybe I take Tobey Maguire more seriously now, I don't know. There was another movie after that, Jean Luc Godard's Breathless, and I would love to see that, but I was so movedinspiredshockeddepressedmesmerized by Wonder Boys that I had to leave. I walked around smoking in the rain for a little while, which is when I wrote the haiku that appears in the last post.

Somehow, I went into this weird sort of depressed anxious state. I was really upset about Ms. Gregory's possible heart attack and Mr. Pepin's really bad injury. I wanted to call Emily and give her my condolences or something....I was stressed out by the whole DC protest thing, and stressed out about homework, and stressed about Jack's movie, and I had this terrible terrible realization:

I have no close friends here, and I am letting my close friends at home slip away.

Right then, I needed someone warm and naked. Oddly enough, I was in a position to find that, and I spent a few hours being really depressed and horny with the sophomore girl that I keep accidentally hooking up with.

At two AM, I fell asleep. Three hours later, I woke up, showered, and put on a little shepherd costume. Film history was about to be made. I met the film crew at six outside the dining hall. I actually got there early. Ben PC, the director of photography, was pretty early as well. We were taking four cars to the location. Nathaniel, the producer, and Bobby Anne, the art director, both took their own cars, and the rest of piled into Jack's car and his dad's. We stopped at Cumberland Farms, a 24 hour convenience store thing, and got assorted beverages and weird snacks. Then we headed to the 'set', a gorgeous meadow/cowfield on Divistion Street.

It was already six thirty, and the sun was coming up really fast. It was pretty cold out, and drizzling, so the ground was not only dewy but rained on. The sky was quite cloudy, and there was a little bit of fog. The crew tested out equipment and videotaped some cows while Bobby, Rebecca (the star), and I worked on hair and make up. Rebecca was having problems with this 'silver' hair clip Jack had picked up at the dollar store; it did look very fairy-tale, but it also refused to work well with actual human hair. Bobby had to go back to town to get some Bobby Pins. Rebecca tried to do my make up, and I ended up with a lot of eye shadow....at least, more eyeshadow than the average shepherd wears.

Bobby and eye spent the first part of the shoot standing behind the crew and making "documentary footage." I guess it was pretty post modern to film the filming, and god knows I love pomo. I'm sure the footage will be interesting because Bobby and I spent the whole time talking about stuff not quite related to the movie, so the soundtrack probably won't fit with the footage.

Rebecca was obviously extremely uncomfortable throughout this process. Her dress was not going to protect her much from the cold, and the red marble slippers she wore weren't doing anything to keep her feet warm and dry. There were a lot of random problems on the set. We found out that Rebecca's radio mike was basically useless, and so were Eric's (sound boy) new expensive headphones. The beautiful Sony DV camera was working perfectly, thank goddess. Nathaniel, the producer, was very producerish throughout the shoot, making sure to correct everything, being far to organized for anyone's good. I actually liked the way he handled things, because every production needs a hardass, but everyone else seemed to find it disagreeable.

Bobby had to leave just after eight to go to work (she's a tour guide at some local museum), and soon after that, it was my turn to be filmed. The script seems to indicate that I have a very, very small role in the film, but Jack claims that I'm important, and that I carry "a lot of the emotional impact of the film." We basically filmed my part of the movie in chronological order. Rebecca walks up to me while I'm playing my flute; I leap up in surprise; we have a short conversation; I take her magic box and run into the woods with it; I return it and she walks away. I also have a part in the end of the movie, but we did not film that until later on Saturday.

The conditions on Saturday morning were extremely difficult to work with. It was cold, and wet, and generally unpleasant. The sunrise was a huge letdown, so it was hardly worth getting up that early. The real problem with that shoot was that it we were simply too cold to act. I think the whole point of the scene was that there was supposed to be a lot of fun sexual tension between Rebecca and I; unfortunately, we weren't awake enough or warm to look, feel, or act very sexy. We tried really hard, but the closest we got to sexual tension was our body warmth huddles between takes. We made a cute couple, but a sexy shepherd and seductive gypsy servant? No...

Another problem was that I kept screwing up this one line, which is upsetting because it was one of only five lines I had that I could screw up. In the original script, I was a shepherd. I said "it calms the sheep." However, our meadow was full of cows and turkey-things, not a sheep for miles around. So the line was changed to "it calms the cows" at the last minute. I have to say, "it calms the cows" is a terrible line. Say it out loud. No one could ever sound sexy saying that. The alliteration is terrible, disgusting! And in all the best takes, I missed the line completely. After Jack would yell cut, Ben and Eric would invariably "Moooooooo" at me to let me know that I had screwed up.....again. At least I didn't say "it calms the turkeys."

The worst part of the morning was the barefoot running. Our field was not an ideal location for that activity--the grass was not normal, there were a lot of sharp things and stick in it. Plus, my feet were freezing AND I'm not in the best shape. Having to run around barefoot was, well, less than ideal.

By about ten, we managed to wrap up the shoot (which had been scheduled to end at 8). Everyone else had to shoot again from 1-4, but I was done until 5 PM. Off to Mod 9 for some homework doing and phone sitting by!

See, on Friday, my comfortable wonderful bedroom was the contact number for our six teenage rioters. On Saturday, the All Knowing Queen of the Activists, Tali, decided that the contact number needed to be her Mod. So it was that I spent my Saturday afternoon there. I finished my Haruki Murakami novel, and read some assorted other short fictions. I also took an hour and a half long nap, which was so nice. Heather and Tali went to town, and they brought back some left over Vegetable Tempura. Oh my, even cold and soggy that stuff is too good to be true.

I rejoined the movie crew at five, and we went back to the set. This time, filming was much more comfortable, and because we knew what we were doing, it took much less time. We filmed the ending sequence of the movie, and I think it turned out really gorgeous. We used the sunset to our advantage, so Rebecca and I were casting these ten meter long shadows. Romantic. They shot about twenty minutes of me being "nothing but a lonely shepherd." I was supposed to convey the idea that by giving Rebecca a trinket from my flute-horn, I had given her all my music. Jack told me to imagine what my life would be like without any music. That wasn't too difficult. I know that music is a huge (the hugest?) part of my life, so it was easy to make myself look sad and loney by imagining life without it.

It probably took us less than an hour and a half to film, so we went to dinner at Manhattan Pizza, then came back to campus.

I could have gotten some work done right then...yes, that was possible. But no, there was a sound a'callin' to me, and that was the sound of an electric cello. Gideon Freudman, the inventor of a special jazz-classical funk subgenre he calls cellobop, was playing in the student union. It was some incredible music. I love cello, it's probably my favorite orchestral instrument (except of course for clarinet!). I bought two of his CD's. One of them, Hologram Crackers, is really great, and the other, Ukrainian Pajama Party, really isn't anything special. The coolest part of Gideon's concert was Jeffrey Young, a sophomore here. In the middle of Gideon's first set, Jeff asked if he could get onstage and jam. He ran and got his violin, plugged in, and proved himself to be a virtuoso violinist, something I already knew but hadn't heard for myself. Gideon and Jeff really sinked well--the finale of the concert was another improv jam between them, and it was as good as any space jazz jam I've born witness to (and I've seen medeski martin & wood live).

The rest of the night was spent just doing homework. I have to wake up the girl that fell asleep in my bed and then go to Spanish class now, so I'll blog about Sunday a little later.

2002-09-28T21:42:00.000-06:00

When I get done with my wretched loads of homework, I will write for all of you an epic post. In the meantime, haiku:

first frost is coming
rain filters through smoke and breath
under a lampost

2002-09-27T15:31:00.000-06:00

Okay, I spent an hour screwing around with Blogskins, trying to find a nice template for my blog, and then trying to get my Archives to work with said skin, and with the comment mechanism.

I gave up, and reverted to my original, well loved layout.....

2002-09-26T19:55:00.000-06:00

An open letter to Brian Kemm:

Justin from Real World Hawaii is an alumnus of Simon's Rock College of Bard.