Wash and Dry

I finally figured out why I hate the bathroom hand blowers. It stems from my unfathomably complex desire to be lazy. I pretty much only use my intellect and powers of deductive reasoning to further my quest to be the laziest person in the world. So how is wiping your hands with a paper towel lazier than having a machine do it for you? Multitasking! Thats how!
Some say multi-tasking will never be faster than single-tasking, and then single-tasking again. Say the alphabet from A-J, and then count from 1-10. It will assuredly be faster than alternately reciting the digits, A-1, B-2, etc... Its a logical argument, but it doesn't apply in this situation.
The fastest way to exit a bathroom with dry hands is to walk out while drying your hands, and you can't do that with any kind of stationary blower.

NY Times (followup)

I subscribed to the New York Times shortly after mentioning it in the blog. It was awesome. I recommend anybody try it. I kept up with the world for about 8 weeks. Read it every day, and ever purchased the occasional $4 sunday paper extravaganza (it'll take you the whole day, try it sometime). I kinda got off the habit when the end of the semester happened. And expecially now that I'm broke (come on summer work!) I had to end our relationship. We experienced highs and lows together. It was a spring fling. It just wasnt meant to last. In some future time and space, we will meet, and perhaps dare to dance again.

Three Questions I Fear

In simplest terms:
1. Where have you been?
2. Where are you now?
3. Where are you going?

I never seem to have a good answer. I usually just take a deep, deep breath and start the uncomfortable verbage. I even avoid some social gatherings because of a deep fear of feeling forced to answer these questions all night.
The problem is, theres no simple answer. All throughout school, we've been tought to summarize and condense our responses into concise, neat little cubelike answer-packages. Verbose essay responses are graded as 'fuzzy' or 'unclear'. But summing up any of these answers into a complete sentence or less will not satisfy the question. I'm terrified to talk about myself, so lets talk about you.

Independant Film

I love independant films (as I may have mentioned before). Here are a couple great ones I've seen from the new Netflix downloads section.

Living In Oblivion - Steve Buscemi plays a director of an extremely low budget movie where everything keeps going wrong on set. Very funny.
One Last Thing - A 'make a wish' kid wishes to spend a weekend with a super-model rather than go fishing with a football star.
Conversations with Other Women - Helena Bonham Carter and Aaron Eckhart meet each other at a wedding, the story unfolds in a very interesting way. The film is shot with a split screen the whole time. Cool dual camera work, but it doesnt add much to the movie.

The New York Times

I really want to subscribe to the New York Times, but I have several factors disuading me at the moment. 1) No steady job. I'm still a college student buying day old bread and meat thats about to expire. 2) What do you do with all those papers afterwards? 3) Do I really want the New York Times, or do I just want to be that guy who subscribes to the NYTimes? 4) Would I actually want to read it everyday? 5) Would I have time to read it everyday? 6) What if someone takes my paper in the mornings? that would suck. 7) Am I really ready for this kind of commitment? A twelve week subscription would be longer than any relationship with a lady friend I've had. (maybe thats because I insist on refering to them as 'lady friends')

I just bought last monday's paper, and it was awesome. I enjoyed reading it. I read it while waiting for some laundry at the corner laundromat. So actually, I'm not sure if I actually greatly enjoyed reading the paper, or just found it more interesting than watching my clothes get dry. I'd love to have more of a connection to NYC, and to be more in the know of all the happenings. I just dont know if I'd read it every day. Maybe I'll just subscribe for a week. I wouldnt want to move too quickly, or be too forward.

A guy younger than me just won a job with the Boston Symphony. He hasn't even finished school yet. I'm sure there were guys there with many years of experience playing in major orchestras. And they lost out to a kid.
What lessons can be drawn from this? Theres hope for newbies. Anything can happen. But more appropriately, it doesnt matter how many years of experience or how much education you have, you're still likely to get beat by some 22 year old phenom.

coming next week!

Every show on NBC seems to end with a sneak preview for next week's episode. This tantilizing little nugget of tv-porn eludes me entirely. I don't understand the attraction. If I am planning on seeing next week's show, I'll see it. If I miss it, whatever, I'll catch a re-run. If I don't plan on seeing next weeks show, I don't need that 30 second clip of what I'm not going to see. I don't wan't any misconceptions of what might happen in the next show, I'll watch the plot unfold as it happens. I don't want the mozzerella sticks, I'll just have the pasta with the grilled chicken. I've actually been shushed during one of these previews. I felt like I was being shushed during the coca-cola commercial before the trailers at a movie theater.
There is too much comic book influence in entertainment today. Action driven plot is so boring. I want to see unconventional characters. I want to hear interesting dialogue. I want an uncontrived storyline.
I saw Heroes tonight again for some reason. Its just too boring. There are no thoughtfully developed characters in this show, just archetypes. They have no distinguishing personality traits. They just co-exist in a baseless plot outline. The dialogue is boring, and the plot moves at a snail's pace. How do people put up with this? How are people so enthralled with the teaser at the end that they watch again the next week? Coming next week, something might actually happen!

Soldier

There's an old Kurt Russell film called "Soldier." In it, Kurt plays an stoic warrior, bred from birth to be an unaffectable killer. As badass as he was, he was replaced by a new genetically enhanced breed of soldiers hopped up on roids and meth. Kurt's kind was eventually killed and discarded on a trash planet.
This weekend I heard a professor speak about making today's standard difficult repertoire the new intermediate repertoire. And then he talked about how his young students are doing the kind of stuff I'm working on now. He calls it "pushing our craft forward." I feel so disillusioned right now. Disabused, dissappointed, disenthralled, disentranced, and shattered. Well not quite shattered, more cracked than shattered. I can't seem to shake this lingering thought: "How am I supposed to get a job if these people are going to be my competition?" I figure I have about 3 years to get the job I want before these kids will be ready for the job market. If it takes longer than that, I'm probably to have to find a new line of work.

The Puffy Chair

I saw the movie "The Puffy Chair" (2005) this evening. What follows is an attempt at a movie review without giving up too much away, while still trying to analyze the piece.
In an effort to stick with a binary opinion system such as the one originally outlined by Siskel and Ebert (I don't buy into this whole 'an apprehensive thumbs down, but if you want to see this movie you'd probably like it' crap), I'd have to say it was worth watching. Thats it, a movie can only be worth watching, or not worth watching. That's my binary system for rating movies. It should also be on the record that a movie not worth watching is also a movie not worth writing about. You won't see too many negative reviews from me.
Fundamentally, this movie examines a relationhip already on the rocks, sent into the pressure cooker that is the cross country road trip. Superficially, the movie could be described as 'a dude buys a chair with certain centimental value on ebay for his father and delivers it while bringing his girlfriend and eventually his brother.'
I don't feel like doing this anymore, so I'll stop trying to think of how a movie should be reviewed and just finish up without any unnecessary big words. See it if you have netflix. You might hate it, but at least it was genuine. The writer/director set out to make a movie that describes a relationship that many of us probably have been in or will probably be in at one time. It was shot entirely on a hand held camera for two reasons (it was all they could afford, and the unsteadyness added a little extra reality to the story), so if you are easily perturbed, take your dramamine about a half hour before watching. The Puffy Chair was unsettling at times, but get through it. There'll be plenty of post film convo.

Clock Radio

My alarm clock is about 12 years old. Of all my stuff, it has to be the oldest. It has a nine minute snooze button, but I can hour-snooze with a dexterous flick of a thumb. It has a conveniently placed volume knob. Its got am, fm, AND tape. I could wake up to any of those media, yet I still choose to wake up to that old standard. A sound so horrible, it had to have been engineered by satan.
I wake up every moring to the furious pulses of my alarm clock. Gee gosh, that sound is irritating. Seriously, worst sound ever. It represents years of deep-seeded psychosomatic torture. I hear that sound and immediately, a full body shudder tears through me. Fear, horror, dismay, panic...ugh. There is no pavlovian response stronger than this.
Waking up is the worst part of my day. And its too bad it has to happen every day. I remember when going to sleep used to be the enemy. I remember absolutely refusing to go to sleep. Now waking up is far, far worse. When did this paradigm shift occur? My best estimate is about 12 years ago.

Radio Static

I once listened to radio static for a good ten minutes because I thought it was a piece of new music. Let me tell you, it was the most interesting radio static I have ever heard. It wasnt repetitious at all, through-composed probably. I wonder what was causing the static to be so virulent. "What was the motivation behind such fierce energy?" I mulled, and mulled again. After about the 10th minute or so, I became suspisious. I eventually flipped the station.

Today I reminisced to that day long ago. There could be a chance that it wasnt static, and it was some sort of Cage-ian revival. Or maybe even an Andy Kauffman tribute drawn out to considerable length. We'll never really know the whole story. Damn my impatience.

The Real Me

I used to put a lot of thought into trying to figure out myself. Its probably been two years since I last pondered. This leads me to believe that I did indeed find myself. But here I am, in my mid-early twenties (23), and I don't know any more about myself than I did back then. What has changed? Its not the answer. I guess the question has changed entirely. I no longer dwell on who I am. I now wonder if I like this person I've become.
I really don't understand why I spend time thinking about this. Its not because I'm vein enough to care what other people think about me. And I don't think it stems from an unconscious motivation to change my personality.
I really like solving those tricky mensa word and number problems. Its not because I'm especially good at them. Solving the problems isn't my favorite part. I really love the feeling of looking up the answer after unsuccessfully trying to solve the puzzle. I love the feeling of being enlightened of the solution. They're usually quite elegant and simplistic. Yet the problem was so devious, I had to completely surrender myself to it.
That is who I am. That says it all. Draw your own conclusions.

The Station Agent

I just saw "The Station Agent" (2003). Good flick. No gratuitous sex, violence, or unrealistic action sequences. Just a good story, with good characters.

Chapter 1 - Redbull and Boredom

I'm sure writers who are more talented than I agonize about the opening to their masterpiece. It is somewhat ironic that it took me about 10 minutes to write that sentence, rewrite it, and then proofread it, and then finalize it to the form that you are now familiar with. I am unsure why I chose to create my first blog on this day Thursday, January 4th 2007 at 5:00 am, although it may be due to some combination of redbull and boredom. I make no certain claims at this time that this will be my masterpiece. I also make no claims that these writings will contain musings inspired by anything other than redbull and boredom, but as of lately, this seems to be the only way I can output creatively. If the reader is of similar disposition, I welcome you to peruse my meandering observations, and perhaps we'll have more in common.

P.S. "Pale and Sincere" is taken from a line in Nick Drake's 'Cello Song' from his first album Five Leaves Left (1969).