December 2002 Archives
December 26, 2002
Loan Me $50
I realized I don’t have any money. I barely have enough to scrape by through the next month, and I’ve already made some foolish purchases, so technically I’m in the hole some. Hopefully I can get a temp job for the bizarre four-week mid-January-to-mid-February break. If not, I’m screwed. I may have to — shudder — borrow money from my parents. Or — double shudder — get a real (well, semi-real…) job again.
If only I hadn’t been so royally screwed so consistently by Starbucks…I really did like working there. I actually miss it. It was the most fun I’ve ever had working, which probably has something to do with the fact that every day wasn’t the same. Sure, the recipes and chores never changed, but every day was a new and baffling adventure full of new customers and regulars alike.
I guess what I’m implying is that, rather than temping (teh horrar…), I’d like another job like that. Problem is, a job like that is difficult to get. Sure, I could get a job at any of the 93 Starbucks’ in the area. The problem is, they’d run my name and discover that I’ve already worked at Starbucks, and it ended badly. I might be able to get my foot in the door by explaining the situation with school and the bad hours and the crazy manager, but they probably wouldn’t buy it. And even if they did, I probably wouldn’t get the job.
I could go to a different area of the food-service industry, but the problem is that I’d argue that Starbucks is the least disgusting of them all. There was never really an excessive amount of disgusting stuff floating around Starbucks. Other than occasional spillage of frap mix (usually my fault), the job was pretty clean. And the preparation was surprisingly clean, as well.
I might be able to find a job at another local coffee shop. I’ve been told by others who work at non-Starbucks coffee shops that they’re all pretty much the same, at least where preparation and clean-up are concerned. But the hurdle I’d need to leap around is my prior job experience. I could lie and say I’ve never done this kind of work before, but that would hurt my chances of getting the job. Or I could tell the truth, admit my experience at Starbucks, but tell them that they can’t be used as a reference because I quit badly. This would probably hurt my chances more.
I dread temping again, and that’s assuming I even get a possible job to dread. Let’s just hope one of my auditions goes well in the next few months. Then, my pockets will be lined with gold pieces and crack pipes, and I’ll be able to climb my way out of my $47 worth of debt and maybe get an iBook.
…but that’s a long way off…
Posted by Stan on December 26, 2002 9:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Money Troubles
December 25, 2002
‘Tis the Season…FOR PAIN!
Christmas was about as thrilling as Parts: The Clonus Horror, but I have some neat-o toys to play with. And Woody Allen DVDs out the wazoo. And a sorely needed new stereo. And I blew some Christmas c@$h on Buffy season 2…seasons 1 and 3 soon to follow, but I needed to order 2 ASAP because a friend of mine sent me a 10% off Amazon dealie for it. Niiiiiiiiice.
And it snowed. Cool.
A few days ago, I wrote the first two chapters of the novel I’ve been not really planning for the last month. I planned to write a big, long post about it, and then I stopped caring, so I scrapped that idea.
And unless I get another desperate person at the door tonight, I’ll probably be watching It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story.
Posted by Stan on December 25, 2002 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
December 22, 2002
What a Fun Life I Lead
I went to see Adaptation tonight with Lucy. As I suspected, it was fantastic. Far superior to Being John Malkovich, which is kinda saying something. And I’m hearing that his next two scripts that are in the works — Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which I believe is coming out soon, and Enternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind — are even better. My God, Kaufman’s on a roll.
But that’s not why I’m writing. I, of course, am writing about my first actual physical encounter (hey, let’s not get dirty here) with Lucy since the last time I saw her…which was after a Juliana Hatfield concert in Iowa City. I was standing, sweating, in a shithole of an apartment at 1:30 in the morning, staring at the television and wondering why I was still there and then suddenly deciding I needed to leave. And soon. And I left her puzzled.
And we didn’t talk at all after that, until I got dumped and turned completely pathetic. Not just my usual half-hearted patheticness. But the real, genu-wine, full-on pathetic that I had been hearing so much about. And, after working some things out in my head that had been addressed in a very lengthy, depressing, and hitherto-unmentioned conversation with The Ex, I realized that in order to continue my life in a reasonable way, Lucy needed to be let back in. And that’s all I’ll really say about that. I hope I was vague enough.
When I’m with her, though, I feel good. Few people have that effect on me. I generally feel uncomfortable in pretty much every social setting. But when she’s around, I’m totally at ease. That’s a good skill to have, and it’s really her only redeeming quality. I’m still trying to figure out, though, if she has that effect on me for any legitimate reason, or if it’s just because her life is so awful, it makes mine look like…I dunno, George Bailey’s Happy New Year to me — in jail!
Maybe I’m just being masochistic. I don’t really know. Maybe this is why I hate my life so much, because my brain does things like this: when I’m with her, I’m happy. Really happy, which is somewhat infrequent. But the downside, the poetic justice, the Twilight Zone-y irony assrape of the deal is that in order to be really happy, I have to be with someone that I really don’t like very much. Because don’t make that mistake — for all the frillies I’ve lavished upon her existence, I still don’t like her. I still find her personality barely tolerable. I still tune out 93% of what she says, only surface listening so I can find the correct spots in the conversational rhythm to toss in some “Uh-huh”s and “Mm-hmm”s.
So…what the hell? And that’s the big question of the hour. There’s something criminally wrong with this picture. Maybe it falls under the category of very, very bad things feeling very, very good (not like that, you fucking pervert!). Or maybe it falls…well, I won’t get any further into this. This is entry is already painting a portrait of me that would give psychologists wet dreams for the next six decades. I don’t want to cause any heart-attacks.
Let’s just say that last night, I was happy.
Posted by Stan on December 22, 2002 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
December 20, 2002
And Then There Was FUN!
Today sort of zipped by. I guess it was because, abnormally, I had my voice lesson today at noon (as opposed to Fridays at 2:30), and then I went to go get a haircut. Or maybe it was the ten hours of Vice City. Who knows?
This evening, Lucy asked if she could call me. Apparently some major stuff has happened over the course of the last few days, and I think I have a pretty good idea what it is. But she was trying to clean up, so she didn’t want to get all engrossed in talking to me online. I nixed the calling idea, but not just because I hate the phone.
My parents hate her. They always have. I imagine they always will. I can’t say I blame them, but it does make my life a tad awkward now that I’ve let her back into my life. Or maybe it’s just awkward because I let her back in my life and didn’t tell them. Or maybe it’s because I let her back in my life and don’t want to tell them.
My parents have a power that I assume most other parents have: the power of the guilt trip. I’m 21 years old, so my parents aren’t going to dictate the way I live my life (except for certain house rules that only apply as long as I live with them — e.g., a 1 a.m. curfew), but they are going to frown on decisions I make if they do not approve. If anything in my life has to do with Lucy, they don’t approve. And then comes the guilt trips.
I don’t know how they do it. They don’t even really have to say anything — it’s all in the look. The sort of “What the hell is wrong with you?” look that I get frequently from strangers, but it only affects me when it comes from my parents. It stops me dead in my tracks and causes me to reevaluate my entire life up until this point. Because I am, and always have been, the good son.
No, not a murderous Macaulay Culkin; I mean, I’ve always been the one who did (pretty much) everything right. My sister was always the fuck-up, and I was always the one who learned from her mistakes because I was always (1) bright enough to realize that a little cheap thrill from shoplifting or smoking a cigarette is not worth the possibility of no TV and no Nintendo for upwards of three months and (2) clever enough to talk my ass out of any badness I had done.
But now there are no more punishments. There are no more “You can’t do this because I say so” lectures. There’s just the guilt. And I’ve never really been able to handle guilt, so I suppose I’m a tad sensitive to it. I’ve also been a tad (just a tad, mind you) paranoid, and I know from experience that my parents talk about my sister and I behind our backs to everyone they possibly can, including the other sibling. I can’t stand that. People can talk behind my back all they want — and I imagine they do — but when I know about it, I can’t take it. I get this vomitous little feeling in the pit of my stomach, I sweat myself to sleep at night, and I get jitters whenever I’m around the people that are — or that I suspect are — doing the talking.
I don’t think that makes me insecure.
So I was nervous about having her call here tonight, though in retrospect, maybe it would have been for the best. I could have picked it up, had a long conversation, and then smooth-talked my way into my parents’ good graces by saying that Lucy called, said (insert apology here) and (insert proof of clinical insanity and treatment of said insanity), and now I’m okay with her and she’s okay with me.
It’s too late for that today, but she’ll definitely be calling me tomorrow when she gets in, so unless she calls me during Firefly, I’ll be able to talk to her and use that same solid white lie (come on, it’s the truth — all I did was just switch the time that it happened…oh, and also, I said that she acknowledges her insanity, which is a fabrication of a lie).
Still, though, I think they’ll lay down the guilt smack. And they’ll be talking about me. I wonder if this is all worth it.
Call me a pessimist (I prefer “realist,” you fucking dick), but I doubt it.
Posted by Stan on December 20, 2002 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Family: The Horror…
December 18, 2002
This Week in Compliments
I don’t know how in the fuck it’s come to this — from being the most hated person in Fiction Writing to the most beloved in six short weeks. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating about being the most beloved, but I’m definitely more well-liked now than I was previously. My absurd satire of genres and other people’s work sort of dissolved a few weeks ago, when we were assigned to write from the perspective of what’s called an “opposite character.” Now, in case you don’t have a firm grasp of the English language, the “opposite character” is a character that is the opposite of you. Complex, ain’t it?
Initially, when we were doing exercises in class, I decided to write from the perspective of a zombie named Carl, who spent the majority of his time moving from warehouse to warehouse with the other zombies, in search of the perfect undead rave. But Carl got sick of snorting lines off the exposed and rotting stomachs of so many zombie ladies, and he got sick of dancing to “Thriller” roughly five times an hour, and if he heard “Cum on Feel the Noize” one more goddamn time —
But after class, I decided to play it serious. Come on, a zombie named Carl? True, he’s an opposite. I (1) enjoy raving/doing lines off sexy ladies’ bare stomachs and don’t think I’ll ever get sick of it, (2) enjoy dancing to “Thriller,” (3) my favorite song is “Cum on Feel the Noize,” and (4) I’m not (un)dead. Therefore, Carl’s my opposite.
HOWEVER, and this is a big however (hence the caps), if I’m to get anything out of this class, and I’d like to try, I gotta stop being my bastard self and start doing things straight. Also, as part of the novel I’m currently in the process of sketching, the female protagonist — whose point-of-view is used frequently — is essentially my opposite. So I figured, okay, I should be doing POV exercises with her to begin with, so I may as well start with this assignment. That’s what I did, and when it was read in class yesterday, the result was somewhat surprising.
Apparently, the ruse of this piece worked, since nobody guessed it was me until late in the story, when the character thinks of an image that apparently only I could conjure. At that point, everybody sort of was like, “Oh, it’s you.” And while we don’t actually give feedback about each other’s work, when we did our end-of-class session of “Recall,” three or four people brought up little chunks of that story, so apparently it was effective. Also, my professor liked it a great deal. Believe it or not, I was pretty happy about this.
Now today, I had a conference with my Writing For Television professor. Basically, she told me that I am the best writer in the class (duh…), and that when I graduate, no matter what path I choose (film, television, or anything else), I won’t have much trouble finding sales or employment. That was pretty good to hear, since my confidence in my ability to write was somewhat rattled (and has since been rebuilt, over the course of this semester) by my experience in Screenwriting I last semester.
But now, secure in the knowledge that I’m acing Fiction Writing, Writing For Television, and Aesthetics of Cinema, I think I’ll be able to make a pretty successful case to petition that “C” in Screenwriting and banish it to hell. I was even thinking about taking statements from my professors this semester. I may not do that, but I think I’ll need all the help I can get.
Lastly, I had a somewhat lengthy (lengthier than usual, anyway) conversation with a lovely and talented girl in my Writing For Television class, who arrived early to her conference as I did. The majority of the conversation was about TV, and mostly why Buffy is so fucking good, but why she hated Firefly and I loved it and am eagerly awaiting its return on another network. And why we both hate sitcoms. It’s eerie how alike our opinions are.
At any rate, when we got around to discussing the merits of our respective scripts, we both were sort of bashing our own work, which surprised me. Well, it didn’t surprise me that I was bashing my own work; my script sucks and isn’t funny. But hers, which we read aloud a couple of weeks ago, was a piss-riot, and I was surprised that she found herself so unfunny. But she complimented me in a way few people ever do. I think it’s because few people other than my professors and a very select group of students actually get me.
She said, without ever reading a page of it, “Your script has to be good because you’re really perceptive and really funny.” How did she even glean that from our few conversations? Maybe I have some sort of steely gaze that gives people the impression that I’m perceptive. I dunno. But it was pretty nice to hear. Also, she’s hot.
Ooh, I almost forgot. This cute girl (“cute” in a kid-sister way, not in an “ooh” way) in my Fiction Writing class was standing in the lobby yesterday singing politically-charged Christmas carols (sample title: “John Ashcroft is Coming to Town”) to protest the violations of civil rights since September 11th and what looks like a hefty attempt at war with Iraq. I found it amusing at best, but she invited me to go caroling with her and some other politcal rabble-rousers out on State & Randolph so all the shoppers can hear us. Unfortunately, I can’t make it either day (Thursday and Friday), which is kind of disappointing, because I think it would’ve been fun in a strange way. Also, it’d give me a chance to associate with people outside of class, which I only do very infequently because I’m either trying to hop a train or I’m too busy disliking them.
Oh well. Maybe they’ll be protesting again after the holidays.
Posted by Stan on December 18, 2002 4:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
December 16, 2002
We Don’t Need Your Education, We Don’t Need Your Thought Control!
I’ve been thinking about college lately. Maybe it was the sudden desire to change majors (again), maybe it’s the disillusionment with the quality (or lack thereof) of my education so far, maybe it was the sudden compulsion to choose to go to a different school and pursue a “real” major. Whatever it was, I’m sick of it, and I no longer want to go.
I’ve felt this way for awhile, I have to admit. It’s the primary reason why cut class about as often as I can without running into attendance policy-related horror. It’s also the reason why I pretty much avoid responsibility as much as possible without outright failing classes. And I’m still doing my part to do what I need to do — I’m still acing Fiction Writing, Aesthetics of Cinema, and Writing For Television, and I aced both English Comp I and II, so if that isn’t enough to stick up the Film Department’s ass, maybe I really will change my major to television.
Or maybe I’ll do it anyway. I’m still early in the film major game because I’ve spent so much time futzing with gen eds, so I imagine that if I wanted to jump ship, things wouldn’t get too terrible. It’s odd, considering the two media are so similar, how different the teachers are in the TV Department, versus the Film Department. The Film Department is full of grizzled, disillusioned losers (hmm, kinda like me…) who are so jaded with both the Hollywood scene and the independent scene that all they do is weird-ass experimental films that make little to no sense but are hailed as masterpieces by puffed-up ponces who think anything experimental must be art, whether it is or not.
Isn’t it funny how I’m disillusioned with the Hollywood scene, the independent scene, and the experimental scene? Now do you see why I want to switch to TV, where people actually get jobs after college? And there are so many internships. My God, I could have interned for Judge muthafucking Mathis, which would have been the greatest opportunity in the history of the universe. But when I called, they said while I technically meet all the qualifications, because I am not classified as a television major, they had to pass me over for that internship. Damn-fucking-it.
Judge Mathis. Can you fucking believe it? Best. Internship. Evar. Too, too bad.
At any rate, I’ve deviated slightly from my earlier point about the differences in the faculty in the TV Department and the Film Department. Hell, even the student base is different. There’s a strange camaraderie that is all but nonexistent among film students. Sure, there are pockets of friends, but those groups are enemies of everyone else. It’s like West Side Story, except with fewer knives and clumsier dancers. But everybody in the TV Department gets along so well, like they all got an extra shot of intropin or something. And the professors are so jovial and excited about the potential career paths of their students.
Most of the film professors, however, are disillusioned former students who went to Hollywood, failed, and came back with their tails between their legs. And so they teach — I swear to God I’m not making this up — that there’s no possible way that we can be successful. We can learn from better filmmakers than ourselves, but we will never be as good as they are. And, examining the track record of wildly successful filmmakers from my school…well, let’s just say it’s not very pretty.*
I’m not saying that what they teach is necessarily wrong, and it’s sometimes nice to have somebody there telling you not to get your hopes up for something that’ll never happen, but I have to wonder if the disillusionment they spread affects the way students make their films, why they make their films, the subject matter of their films, etc. If they’re preparing themselves for failure, they can’t possibly be disappointed, but if they’re preparing themselves for failure, how many of them actually put their heart and soul into the project? I firmly believe that if there’s no soul imprinted on the celluloid, no driving force, if it’s all just technicians wandering around doing their thing, the film suffers. And perhaps that is why our school isn’t so fantastic when it comes to rousing success stories.
*Many graduates have become the tops in their field — but they’re doing the unglorified work, like costume and set design. They’re fantastic, and I don’t mean to negate or disregard their work, but when I refer to “wildly successful filmmakers,” I am referring specifically to huge directors.
Posted by Stan on December 16, 2002 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Career-Based Rambling
December 14, 2002
Taken
I spent the majority of my day today watching Taken, the Spielberg-produced miniseries on the Sci-Fi channel. I’ve heard a number of different — and mostly varied — opinions on it, but enough of them were positive (and from people who have taste) that I decided to watch the encore today and tomorrow.
I watched the first four parts, and it was okay. It started off slow in the first hour, then picked up through the second hour and through the second and third parts, but the fourth part was fairly boring. I got sick of watching it, so I’m taping the rest and I guess I’ll finish watching it when I have time during the holiday break.
Slashdot posted an editorial about it shortly after I stopped watching, strangely enough. Basically, they (both the editorial author and the comments from users) said the first five episodes are terrific, and the last five episodes are just awful. Now, considering I’d gauge the first four at “slightly above mediocre,” suddenly it makes me fear the last six episodes. I guess if it really starts to suck it up, I probably won’t bother finishing it.
In other news, I started playing through GTA3 again. I started playing on Thursday, and I’ve got 55% completed so far. I don’t know what it is about this game that makes me come back to it even though I’ve got half a dozen other brand new games I have yet to finish ? I haven’t even finished Mario Sunshine yet because of this game! And yet I’ve played GTA3 through about five times.
And then I started comparing it to Vice City (one of the games I have yet to finish…), and that’s when things got strange. Vice City is, in many ways, a superior game…it has many improvements to the engine, it has a kick-ass storyline, and the asset purchasing system is the game’s masterstroke, but somehow, it doesn’t seem nearly as accessible to me as GTA3. I can’t figure out why. Oh well.
Posted by Stan on December 14, 2002 8:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
December 12, 2002
Class Cutter
I didn’t go to class yesterday. My sister kept me up too late finding Tori Amos bootlegs, but that’s really just an excuse. I never had any legitimate intention of going. My Writing For Television class was preempted (get it?) for individual conferences, but my conference isn’t until next week. My general thought was, “Jeez, even though it’s a bad day to miss African History, I really don’t feel like the shitty commute to go to a single class for an hour and fifteen minutes. I’ll just sleep in and stay home.” And it just happened that my sister came online with a bug up her ass to find a couple Tori songs she didn’t have.
Strangely, though, for the first time since I started cutting my African History class (and I’ve cut it many, many, many, many, many times since the beginning of the semester), I felt guilty about it. To the extent that, had I not been so tired that when I woke up at 8:30 and then fell right back asleep, I probably would have gotten up and gone to class. And when I didn’t and fell back asleep, when I woke up again, I felt bad all day.
I guess I feel guilty because of that sudden in-class rapport that I wrote about earlier (…or maybe I just thought about writing it…) when I read my little essays a few weeks ago and people realized that, despite the fact that I am in class maybe 30% of the time, I’m still doing the work and understanding the whole deal, in some cases better than they are. And now, despite the fact that I barely know these people by name, I feel guilty, like I betrayed them by not showing up for class.
Well, I guess if I’m gonna feel like this every time I ditch now, it’ll be easier to stop.
Posted by Stan on December 12, 2002 8:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
December 10, 2002
I Forgot How to Talk to Women
I used to flirt with women a lot. I still flirt with a select few who sort of invite it (did I ever write that entry about how much fun it’d be to break up a marriage?), but my skills are not really as honed as they once were. Not that I was Mr. Suave back in the days of old, but I was definitely good at flirting, especially the kind that leads absolutely nowhere.
Now I’m not.
I’m good with the one-liners, yes, but that’s not flirting. I’ll do that with anyone because I like to make fun of people, I’m good at it, it seems to come naturally to me. Also, I’m apparently pure evil. But when I get into flirt mode, I still do it; I just do it differently. I’ve got a little wink in my eye, without actually winking. I can feel it somewhere in there, this weird twinkling of my eye that says, roughly, “This joke, this is for you and me only.” And the women — they see it. I know that much.
But that, of course, is nothing. It’s nothing compared to the power of manufacturing conversation out of nothing. That’s really what flirting is all about: sustaining conversation. At least that’s what I see it as, in my evil little mind. I used to work overtime, just shooting the shit, prying shit out of them, and then storing it up to use it to my advantage sometime in the future. That’s when the flirt pays off.
But I can’t do it anymore. I’ve lost da skillz, if I ever actually had them (maybe I was just delusional — I never really got (m)any dates by putting my flirting skillz to m@d use). There’s a girl in my Fiction Writing class. A very attractive girl. A very, very — well, I imagine you get the idea. I’ve never really talked to her much, and I guess I still don’t.
Today, for the first time in the history of the universe, she came in late and the seat next to me was the only one open (surprising, I know). So she sat next to me, which was kinda cool. She smells nice. Wow, that sounds stalkertastic. At any rate, I gave her some of my patented wit under my breath during the class exercises. She seemed appropriately amused.
At one point, I accidentally laughed so hard at something somebody said that a half-dissolved Altoid shot out of my mouth, ricocheted off her shoe, and fell on the floor. I had the sense not to pick it up, call “ten-second” rule, and put it back in my mouth. I just threw it away, but she didn’t seem horribly grossed out by such an act. Also, she’s hot.
After class, I shuffled on down to the library El stop to await the lovely train that would cart me off to Quincy so I only had to walk eight blocks to get to Union Station instead of the normal fourteen. I admire the convenience of public transportation.
At any rate, standing on the platform, I was staring off to my left waiting for a train to round the corner. Then I turned my head to the right, and to my surprise she was standing there, also waiting for the train.
“Hey,” I said. I admire my cleverness and wit.
“Hey,” she responded. I love intellectual banter. “Going to catch a train?” She meant a Metra train, as opposed to a CTA train, for which we were both obviously waiting.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
At that time, the train had pulled up, so we got on together. It was only two stops, so as usual, I stood back in the lefthand doorway. She waited in the righthand doorway; apparently she, being of a somewhat lesser girth than I, was unconcerned with blocking entering or exiting passengers. We didn’t speak at all. I kept trying to think of something to say, but I came up with nothing.
When the Quincy stop was coming up, I stood next to her in the right doorway. This got her to talk.
“So,” she said, “are you a Fiction major?”
“Nah,” I said. “Film. Scr—”
“Screenwriting,” she smiled, nodding. “Of course.” I have no idea what that meant, either.
“Yeah,” I said. A few eternal seconds passed before I realized I should continue this conversation. “You?” I continued. Damn, I’m smooth.
“Fiction,” she said. “But, I dunno, next year I might switch it to poetry. We’ll see.”
“Ah,” I said, unaware that there was a poetry major. I assumed it was a concentration under the Fiction umbrella, but I really didn’t know.
“This is Quincy,” Mr. Automated Announcer intoned overhead. “Transfer to Metra and Amtrak trains at Quincy.” I think I will. Thank you, sir. You’re a credit to the patched-together loudspeaker announcement industry.
We got off. Not like that, you fucking perverts. I sort of followed her, even though she took a different route to the station that I did. I followed from behind, stalker-like. I was not exactly feeling motivated to continue the conversation after this great deal of awkwardness that had passed between us ever since she showed up at State/Van Buren (oh, didn’t I mention the awkwardness?), but if she felt compelled to stop and wait for me to catch up or perhaps engage in me in conversation, I would be there.
She didn’t. And I didn’t. We walked down to Jackson, crossed Wells, and then she wandered off into some building right at the corner. I dunno what’s in that building, except for a FedEx station jutting diagonally out of it. I assumed she was also catching a train, but maybe she wasn’t. Or maybe she had to stop off and do something before hitting the train. Not like that, you fucking perverts.
At any rate, logic — and probably some laws — dictate that it’s improper to follow a lady who doesn’t even seem to have any real interest in talking to you into a building where you yourself have no legitimate business (other than following her, of course…), so I continued down Jackson to Union Station, somewhat rattled and somewhat baffled.
And then I started thinking on the way home of how differently I would have handled that as recently as six months ago. Flirtation isn’t rocket science; if I can do it, anyone can. But when I can’t, that’s when things start to get tricky. I’ve got a few theories as to why my flirtometer conked out, and the most logical seems to be lack of practice. I haven’t legitimately flirted with anyone in months. I didn’t really have any need to. Not seriously, anyway.
Another likely problem is that she is intimidatingly attractive. I always find it more difficult to flirt with a woman when you spend the majority of your time together fantasizing naughty things that involve her. It’s sort of distracting, and in addition to my wonderful imagination, I’ve also got that gnawing (and accurate) voice in my head cheerfully piping in, “Move on, she’s way out of your league. Unlike most of the women you date, she can actually do better.”
Or maybe I’m just psychologically not ready to leap out into the field again, so my subconscious is like, “Hey, shut down all flirting lobes. Cut off the pheromone intake and output. In fact, just turn gay. It’ll be cool. Trust me.” I’m kind of sick of it, to be honest. I don’t date many people, but man, I’ve got a way (I guess) of ending up with the absolute worst possible people when I do.
Or maybe I was never good at it, and I finally figured that out. Either way, I suck at it, and if I ever had a chance with this girl, I blew it tonight. Yay me!
Posted by Stan on December 10, 2002 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Fumbling Attempts at Relationships
December 8, 2002
The Movies™
I think the last good, recent movie I saw in a theatre was Minority Report. That was awhile ago.
Back when I had a life (ha!), I’d go and see a movie at least once a week, sometimes more. Good or bad, it didn’t matter. We’d go, and it’d be fun, even if the movie was terrible. And then I realized I don’t have enough money to be going to the movies that frequently, so I started saving my money by not going to the movies unless the movie looked really good. And under my horrible scrutiny, very few movies look really good, so I haven’t been out to see a movie in quite some time.
And now, all of a sudden, within the last few weeks I’ve developed a must-see list, and I have no idea why movies have been so shitty looking for the last few months, but now all of a sudden some that look really excellent are coming out. Here’s the list (in order of priority):
- Adaptation
- Equilibrium
- About Schmidt
- Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- Star Trek: Nemesis
- Gangs of New York
- 25th Hour
- Evelyn
So how the hell did that happen? There are nine movies that I feel I have to see, and if I don’t, my soul will evaporate and my body will trasmogrify into some sort of bloody mushroom of organ tissue. Which, incidentally, is bad. I blame Oscar season for this. And also, maybe, the summer crapfest. These movies look a lot better when they’re stacked up in a row after the summer of XXX (which, for fuck’s sake, isn’t even a porno!) and Men in Black II (why, Rip Torn, WHY?!@!@!).
Posted by Stan on December 8, 2002 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
Hrm
Of all the goddamn things, I was watching public access tonight.
We recently got digital cable, so we have roughly 137 million channels to choose from, but what do I most frequently choose? If I’m not absorbed in something on TechTV or G4 (my life is so sad), or I’m not watching one of the few network shows I enjoy, I usually flip around the different local access stations. Sometimes they have good stuff, but most of the time it’s like watching a really shitty movie without having to pay rental charges.
At any rate, there are many, many, many, many, many, many bad local access shows dedicated to the budding local music scene*. There’s also one that is shitty, but which is apparently broadcast around the country. It’s called “Music Choice,” and today they featured a band that — for the first time in my long history of watching terrible local programming — I actually enjoyed. They’re called Queens of the Stone Age, and the show had a whole hour of some live concert they did at the beautiful and frightening Troubadour in Los Angeles.
I liked them. That’s really all I have to say. I think I might buy one of their albums.
*The best bad music show I’ve ever seen is called “Thrash TV.” As expected, it had rock-bottom production values, and at one time they used this to their advantage. The majority of the show was dedicated to local basement punk shows from really shity bands, but one time they went out and recorded a White Zombie concert in Chicago. Then, after showing two or three songs from that concert, they took us “backstage” to what looked like a poorly lit garage for an interview with Rob Zombie. But it was very obviously not Rob Zombie — it was just some dude in a cowboy hat trying to act like him, but it was all backlit so all you could see was hat and hair, so I guess maybe it was convincing to somebody. It was probably the funniest local-access moment I’ve ever seen.
Posted by Stan on December 8, 2002 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Random Musings
December 7, 2002
Win2K
Well, I dropped back down to Win2k this morning. I got sick of XP and how irritatingly shitty it is. The only Windows operating system I’ve ever been happy with is…well, none of them, but the closest I’ve come is with Win2k. It’s the only one that seems to actually work properly, and with Windows, that’s saying something.
Posted by Stan on December 7, 2002 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
December 5, 2002
Registration
I registered today for all of my classes for the spring semester. As it stands, this is how my schedule will look starting in February:
Monday: 11:00AM - 12:15PM: Western Humanities; 12:30PM - 1:45PM: Politics and Government in Society
Tuesday: 10:00AM - 12:50PM: Science and Technology in the Arts; 1:45 - 5:45PM: Lighting I
Wednesday: 11:00AM - 12:15PM: Western Humanities; 12:30PM - 1:45PM: Politices and Government in Society
And then, floating in space somewhere, is Intro. to Literature, which I’m taking online. I’m not sure how that’ll work, but it’ll certainly be nice to not have to go to school for it.
Posted by Stan on December 5, 2002 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
December 3, 2002
More on Fiction Writing
Today was essentially uneventful. Since I don’t absolutely loathe Fiction Writing anymore, Tuesdays are surprisingly bearable. And even more bearable now, since one of the two utterly irritating girls has officially missed her fourth class, and is therefore failing. She might be able to weasel her way out of it, but my professor seemed pretty set on her failing. The downside to this is that another girl hit her fourth absence today and is also failing, but this girl I actually liked, so that’s kind of sad.
And, believe it or not, for the first time this class has legitimately helped me come up with ideas for writing, and in the way our irritating exercises want us to come up with ideas. It’s shocking. I came up with two (count ‘em, two) ideas today that I don’t think I ever would have thought of if we hadn’t been doing those stupid exercises.
So, and I’m choking on these words, yay for Fiction Writing.
Posted by Stan on December 3, 2002 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
December 2, 2002
Film Reviews…from Hell
Today was “Alternate Forms” day in Aesthetics of Cinema, a day I was dreading for two reasons: (1) I would have to stay for the whole class, because most “alternate form” (hereafter referred to as “experimental” for the sake of not sounding like a politically correct retard) films are not exactly sitting on the shelf at Blockbuster and (2) I would actually have to watch experimental films. So without further Apu, here are my reviews of the three-ish films we watched:
If I met director Jay Rosenblatt on the street, I would only have one legitimate thing to say to him about this film: get the fuck over it. So you had a lousy childhood, or you think every male in America had a lousy childhood, because societal values instilled on the male are generally the opposite of innate feelings, and therefore we’re taught to suppress emotions. Okay, I can buy that, but newsflash: (1) who the fuck doesn’t already know that and (2) who the fuck cares? Deal with it, get over it. I don’t want to watch a film that tries to say all males will grow up to be animal-mutilating serial rapists because they were afraid of a father who told them not to cry. It’s a bunch of bullshit.
Classic line offered as proof of its crappiness (I’m paraphrasing): “He was always told to smile, even though he didn’t feel like smiling. He felt sad. ‘Smile,’ they said. ‘It won’t kill you.’ But it did.” Holy shit, it couldn’t possibly be worse if Leonardo DiCaprio was saying this to Kate Winslet on the stem of the sinking Titanic.
Rating: Zero stars (out of 4)
It would be unfair to rate this because I didn’t see the whole thing. My professor insisted that it was crap, but then again, he considers most of what David Lynch does to be mainstream narrative. Told ya he was a lunatic.
From what I did see, it looked like David Lynch was preoccupied with being Terry Gilliam. I don’t mean 12 Monkeys/Brazil Terry Gilliam — I mean Python Gilliam, with all the wacky-ass animations you can shake a stick at. Ironically, the entire short was about a minute long, but we watched maybe four seconds before the professor stood up, shouted for the T.A. to turn it off, and then said, “I hate David Lynch’s shorts. They are crap.”
Rating: No, seriously, I’m not gonna rate it
This is Diane Keaton’s directorial debut, an exploration of the great hereafter that mixes interviews with “real-life” (i.e., not actors) people intercut with various media (films, television shows, radio broadcasts, and music recordings) to support ideas about what heaven is, if it is at all, and why people are so certain (or uncertain) that there is something after death.
It was one of the funniest and most insightful documentaries I’ve ever seen. Not exactly “experimental,” per se, but since the technical name o’ the game was “alternate forms” (that being an alternative to traditional narrative), it counts. And it was brilliant, which is not surprising coming from somebody like Diane Keaton. This film is actually feature length, but we didn’t watch more than 20 or 30 minutes, but I still feel qualified to rate it without having seen the whole thing.
Rating: **** (out of 4)
LIFE/EXPECTANCY
What the fuck?
This was an experimental short by our professor’s wife, narrated by our professor (who, I gotta say, has an excruciating, grating voice, so putting up with a lecture followed by the set-up for this film followed by 30 minutes of him talking on the film essentially non-stop made me want to explode). It was basically a lot of static long shots with narration running over it, occasionally spliced in with text on the screen: definitions of words from psychological, philosophical, and anatomical textbooks, all of which were read by the narration.
All of this narration was occasionally cut in by excerpts of lines from classic movies. I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little respect or admiration for makers of experimental films in this style. They take very general problems, veeeeeery general problems, write a rambling narration on the subject, and then put images over it (this is also the style of Burning Ants). My problem with this style is that it’s essentially purposeless. What they consider unique — certainly for the images and not their writing, which is inadequate for a sixth-grader’s dissertation on the given subject — I consider worthless. But the thing that really drove me crazy about this film is that, in addition to having incoherent narration that only Jerry Seinfeld would admire for its use of the “talking about nothing” concept, the images didn’t even really make any logical sense in the context of what was being said.
I hated this film. I really did. But bear in mind that my opinion is slightly skewed by the fact that, even going into it with an open mind, I always end up hating this specific sub-genre of films.
Rating: Zero stars (out of 4)
And that’s really all we watched. There was the option of staying an extra 40 minutes and watching our professor’s own experimental short, but I opted out of that because (1) I would have hated it and (2) it concerned itself mainly with extremely graphic images of gay porn, sadomasochism, and homoerotic violence (which, believe it or not, was not related to the sadomasochism), and (3) it basically used this imagery to take a crap all over Christianity.
He told us that if we thought we’d be offended by any of this, we could bust the hell out, so that’s what I did. I wouldn’t have really been offended by it (except by its inevitable crappiness), but where the gay porn/sadomasochism is concerned, I’ve got better things to watch than that. And the anti-Christian thing isn’t such a big deal since I’m not really pro-Christian, but I do have a big problem (and generally make a big stink) about people attempting to force their religious and/or non-religious views on me in any context except humor.
So, needless to say, I have no review of that little hemorrhoidal gem of doom. And fortunately when I went home, I got to watch my daily two hours of Buffy (yay, she’s alive again!) to wash away the stink of horrible experimental films. The universe is once again in perfect harmony.
Posted by Stan on December 2, 2002 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Reviews
December 1, 2002
Cheesy Popcorn Fodder
I watched Legally Blonde this evening.
Reese Witherspoon is hot.
Rating: ******************************************************** (out of 4)
Posted by Stan on December 1, 2002 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Reviews
