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May 27, 2003

[BLOGpoll] Should I Go See Cremaster 3?

As we all know, Matthew Barney’s ingeneous and frightening Cremaster Cycle has long been on my list of masochistic must-sees. As luck — if one can call it that — would have it, the third part of this five-part epic, Cremaster 3 is playing at the Landmark Century. Unfortunately, I have discovered that it is 182 minutes long, which doesn’t seem so bad when you’re watching The Godfather, but I assume will be interminable when watching anything remotely associated with Cremaster.

This is the nature of the poll. There are several options below as to what I should do, so leave a comment instructing me. Should I:

1. Ho and see it, alone, in the cover of darkness?
2. Insist that The Crush see it with me to gauge whether she will either laugh uproariously or never talk to me again?
3. Invite The Cheat to see it with me after politics and then ditch him, leaving him alone to be tortured?
4. Force one of my high school friends, who seem to be trickling home right about now, to see it?
5. Not see it at all, and let us never speak of this again?

Posted by Stan on May 27, 2003 1:57 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (3)  | Random Musings

May 23, 2003

Friday Five (5)

Friday Five

1. What brand of toothpaste do you use?
   Colgate Wintergreen.
2. What brand of toilet paper do you prefer?
   I tend to eat out a lot, and because I’m fat and eat out a lot, my metabolism doesn’t work nearly as well as it probably should. Needless to say, because of the rough and terrifying nature of my bowel movements, I prefer soft, 2-ply toilet paper. The brand itself doesn’t matter. Now you are an official member of the “Holy shit I did not need to know any of that, you die now” club.
3. What brand(s) of shoes do you wear?
   I wore Converse All-Stars in various colors, literally from fifth grade until my senior year of high school. At that point, I started getting sick of them because while they may look cool (and they made me seem unique, since for awhile I was the only person in town dumb enough to buy/wear them), they don’t hold up at all. Somebody recommended Vans to me, so I bought a pair towards the end of my senior year, and I didn’t need to buy a new pair until about a month ago (for the record, that’s about three years). And even then, I didn’t really need to buy a new pair so much as I was sick of looking at the old ones.
4. What brand of soda do you drink?
   Coca-Cola or 7-Up.
5. What brand of gum do you chew?
   I don’t chew gum. I am an Altoid man. I don’t want Fop, goddammit.

Posted by Stan on May 23, 2003 11:16 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friday Five/Albums of the Week

May 20, 2003

The Incredible Waste of Time

I have to stop skipping my politics class. Of course, I say this knowing full well that there are only two sessions left (yay for having Memorial Day off!), and one of them is the final, so I definitely can’t miss anymore. But, you know, I’ve been skipping it for two perfectly legitimate reasons (ha!): (1) I pretty much enjoy my sad life of following around The Crush like a lost puppy and being surprised that she still wants to talk to me, and (2) I really, really can’t stand being in the same room with The Cheat without having any allies.

And in my politics class, he’s the one who has all the allies. Every time I get in there and want to bitch about him, I feel like I’m in a Twilight Zone episode where he’s the king emperor of losers who are interested in how Bon Jovi set up their amps.

So I’ve been cutting class. The prof doesn’t seem to give a shit. I’ve seen her on my way out the last two times, and she’s just said “Hi” to me like it’s no big deal. Maybe she sees me following around the sole attractive girl who is willing to talk to me and understands. I really don’t know.

At any rate, like I normally do, I went to my humanities class. I was pretty excited when I saw The Cheat’s Girlfriend, but no actual sign of The Cheat. My elation was not long-lived, however, because he showed up shortly before class began. But class became a little unusual, as The Workhorse and I made a completely passive attempt at rebellion.

The Workhorse has, for the past two weeks, had a “no talking” rule in effect with regards to The Cheat, but it hasn’t been a very effective form of passive resistance, because The Cheat doesn’t want to have anything to do with him, anyway. It would be more effective if I had done that, because apparently I am his best friend now.

But we decided it’s time to do something bold, something different, something The Crush insisted we do and we both listened because, as we have discussed, we both have crushes on her. When we were asked to shove ourselves into small groups to discuss portions of our weekend reading, The Crush insisted we form a group with her.

This is abnormal; usually, she goes into a group with a couple of other girls, and The Workhorse and I form a group with The Cheat and The Girlfriend. That’s how we ended up doing our midterm project together. That’s how it’s been since the beginning of the semester. But not anymore! The Workhorse and I changed desks and shoveled ourselves into a group while the stunned and baffled Cheat and his complacent and apathetic Girlfriend looked on.

“Well, fuck you, too,” The Cheat said, defeated. I actually kinda felt bad because they were two, cut loose into space, with no real group. And nobody wanted to join theirs. It reached a point where The Professor pleaded with other groups to donate one or two people to form a group with them. I was pretty close to giving up and joining their group, to take a hit for the team, when The Professor volunteered two others.

After class, I cut politics again (hence my seemingly disconnected rant at the beginning of this entry) and decided to keep The Crush company while she edited her Image Design film. I recall the pain and torment of editing by hand, alone, in a darkened room, bored out of my mind, so I figured it’d be worth the effort to keep her company. Plus, honestly, it’d be more fun than politics.

So we wandered down to the film building, checked out editing equipment, and tried to find a room in which to edit. Being that it’s getting close to the end of the semester, most people are editing like madmen, so most of the spaces were filled up. We found one nearly empty room, and we discovered it was nearly empty because (1) a class had just gotten out and (2) another class was meeting in half an hour. So she just bummed a projector off some guy to watch her footage. It turned out pretty well.

In my wanderings around the fifth floor, I kept seeing The Filmmaker wandering around like a dope, as always with camera, tripod, and lighting kit in tow. And half the people on the floor kept recognizing me as “the guy from The Filmmaker’s film.” I had no idea I was famous among Production I students, but I guess that’s the price you pay for giving such a well-rounded (by which I mean I am overweight) performance.

Since we couldn’t find an editing room, The Crush decided to check out her slides. Apparently another part of her Image Design project was to tell a story using photographic slides, so she needed to check them out, arrange them, and make sure they weren’t all assed up by the people in the film cage.

She asked me to wait outside one of the lecture halls, which apparently had a lighted table (I have no idea if there’s a technical term for this or not) so she could examine the slides. She said, “I’ll only be a minute.” At this time, I was already mildly bored. To be honest, manually cutting and taping film always gave me the sort of ghoulish rush that solving quadratic equations gave me. I am not particularly good at either, which is why I think I have such a tremendous feeling of victory when I do it, even if I am doing it badly or incorrectly.

Standing around is slightly less exciting. Especially when you’re standing outside a lecture hall, like a dope, holding all of her editing equipment, thinking that this is the longest minute of my life.

It was actually more like ten minutes. I stood there, somewhat enjoying the fact that, despite how irritated and bored I was, I was doing something pertinent to help The Crush. Finally, she came out and whispered, “I don’t know how long I’m going to be.”

“Okay,” I said, and she shushed me. My irritating, booming voice would apparently disturb the guy in the lecture hall, who I just thought was rambling incoherently.

“Listen,” she whispered, “do you have to go or something? I mean, I could just take this stuff. You shouldn’t have to stand around like this.”

“Well,” I said, glancing at my watch. It was almost 1:45, the time my politics class was supposed to get out. She shushed me once again, so I decided maybe I should actually whisper. “This is the time I normally leave, so I could go.”

“Do you want to go? I mean, I’m just checking these slides. I’m not going to be editing or anything because I guess there isn’t any room. I’ll just come in Friday and try to get it all done,” she whispered. “I was just going to go home after this, so you really don’t have to stand around waiting for me.”

“Okay,” I said, wondering why her statement was filled with so much of the backstory that I left out. I guess I must have embellished that a little because I’m too lazy to go back and fill in the plot holes.

She shushed me a third time, and I started to feel like a tool.

“Let me take that,” The Crush whispered, taking the split and take-up reels out of my hands. I grabbed the MovieScop (it’s foreign, so it doesn’t get an “e” at the end) and handed it to her.

“I’ll see you on Wednesday,” she said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Hey, are we still doing that registration thing?”

“Uh…” I had totally forgotten about the registration thing. A week from Monday, we were both going to get up at the asscrack of dawn and meet in the film building for summer registration, so we could guarantee slots in Production II. I was in charge of providing the coffee and donuts. Also, I had completely forgotten about it.

I had assumed, over the weekend, that it was a waste of time. As I understood the paperwork I’d received, getting clearance for online registration for the fall meant that I was cleared to register, from home, for late summer registration, late fall registration, and add/drop for summer and fall. I didn’t think it was necessary to get up at 6 a.m., on the first day of what would be a short and irritating summer, so I could shower, hop a train, get coffee and donuts, and sit around for two and a half hours waiting for registration to actually open.

But, hell, I was gonna do it. The Crush was gonna be there. I’d be an idiot not to. Or possibly I’d be an idiot to. Or possibly that sentence was terrible.

After I used the “uh” to grapple with such thoughts, I whispered, “Yeah, we can do that. It’ll be fun.” I realized later on that this registration thing would be the perfect way to get her contact information (yeah, I still haven’t done that yet), because I’d need to call or possibly e-mail her to straighten out the details of “the registration thing.”

“Cool,” The Crush said. “I’ll see you later.” She waltzed back into the lecture hall.

I went home.

Posted by Stan on May 20, 2003 11:54 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (1)  | Fumbling Attempts at Relationships

May 16, 2003

Friday Five (4)

Friday Five

1. What drinking water do you prefer — tap, bottle, purifier, etc.?
   Whatever is available. The only thing I don’t like is Evian, which tastes oily to me.
2. What are your favorite flavor of chips?
   Sour cream ‘n’ onion Pringles.
3. Of all the things you can cook, what dish do you like the most?
   Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (I cannot cook many things).
4. How do you have your eggs?
   Scrambled.
5. Who was the last person who cooked you a meal? How did it turn out?
   I will not refer to her by name, but many of my avid fans know her as The Ex [insert ominous musical sting]. It turned out well. The meal, that is.

Posted by Stan on May 16, 2003 6:07 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (1)  | Friday Five/Albums of the Week

May 14, 2003

Anonymous Letter

The Cheat handed me a CD-R. No case, nothing. Just a cheap, semi-translucent CD with something scrawled on it in black magic marker. He said, “This CD really sucks. You can have it.”

“What is it?” I asked. I thought, considering his taste in music, that maybe I’d actually like it.

“It’s some Indian music,” he responded. “It’s really bad.”

“Indian music? Like Ravi Shankar?”

“No,” he said. “This is much worse.”

Man, The Cheat is pissing me off. After class, he said to me, “Hey, maybe we can hang this weekend.”

“NEVER!” I thought. Instead, I said, “Oh, gee, my sister’s coming into town this weekend.” This is actually true; my sister is coming to town tomorrow, and even though she’s leaving Friday evening to go to Galena or something fucking retarded like that, it’s a good excuse to use.

“Oh,” The Cheat responded, clearly disappointed. “Well, then, we have to next weekend.”

“We’ll see,” I said noncommittally.

“Yeah, it’ll be fun,” he explained with disturbing enthusiasm. “I’ll hook you up, and you can…you know…” He glanced at The Girlfriend and then smiled at me.

“I have to go now,” I said calmly and left the room.

“See you on Monday!” he called after me. I didn’t respond.

Instead of going to politics (which The Cheat was going to miss, too), I went with The Crush and The Workhorse to one of the residence halls. She needed to register for the fall, I needed to straighten out a minor problem, and The Workhorse was bored so he decided he’d go with us and wait around until we were done.

We had lunch afterward, and The Crush and I discussed nightmares that mostly involved sex and violence (or sexual violence). The Workhorse, meanwhile, ate uncomfortably. The Crush’s flirting has increased substantially, and I really wish I could properly read her. She flirts with me like I’m the last man on Earth (and, trust me, I’d have to be), but then she’ll suddenly start talking about her boyfriend and how wonderful he is, or she’ll talk about The Cheat and what a piece of shit he is.

When she started talking about The Cheat today, she devised what was actually a viable solution to our mutual guilt over the Things We Know. See, as I’ve mentioned on several occasions, We Know Things. I hate Knowing Things, so I immediately spread them around so I am not alone in my Knowing Things. But, because of this whole almost-cheating thing, we all feel guilty but don’t really know how to solve our problems satisfactorily.

And then The Crush hit on the perfect plan.

“I should write an anonymous letter,” she suggested. “To The Girlfriend. I could say something like, ‘Hey, I’ve seen you around with The Cheat, and I don’t know if you guys are dating or how serious you are or anything, but I just wanted you to know that I’ve seen him at a lot of parties, hitting on girls. He even hit on me and tried to get my number. I thought you should know.’”

“Holy shit,” I said, “that’s a good idea.” And then we hit on our fundamental logistical problem: it’d be far too obvious if we slipped it into her bag during class, but none of us knew The Girlfriend’s address or had any other contact information. During the project, The Workhorse mainly worked through The Cheat, who passed along all the information to The Girlfriend.

“Well, we could always find out,” The Crush said. “Plus, there are other ways.” This was true. It wasn’t like we were the only people going to the school. We might be able to use our resources, limited though they may be, to find The Girlfriend in a more isolated capacity and then slip her the note.

“I think we should do it,” I said. I really didn’t think we should do it, but The Crush was mildly obsessed with the idea that The Girlfriend should know all. While I sort of agreed, I didn’t really give a shit. Plus, based on what I knew of them and their relationship, I was of the opinion that she already knew and didn’t give a shit. Moreover, I don’t particularly like either of them enough to separate them; they sort of deserve each other.

“Yeah,” The Crush said. She smiled at me awkwardly. I have no idea what the awkward smile meant.

Afterward, The Workhorse departed to make his trek to Union Station. I made up an excuse of something I had to do at the film building, so I could walk The Crush to her class. On the way, we talked about England for some reason. Then, she told me about a girl she saw pulled over yesterday who was apparently so attractive that The Crush herself wanted to get this person’s number.

It’s official: women exist to befuddle me and ruin my life.

Posted by Stan on May 14, 2003 4:46 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation

May 9, 2003

Friday Five (3)

Friday Five

1. Would you consider yourself an organized person? Why or why not?
   It depends. I can be organized, if I want or need to be, but I’m generally not. Although I do like to consider my disorganization “chaotic order,” because even though I have shit scattered all over the place all the time, I know exactly where everything is, how it got there, and why it shouldn’t be shoved into a file folder or onto a shelf. But, really, “chaotic order” is just an excuse for me to not clean.
2. Do you keep some type of planner, organizer, calendar, etc. with you, and do you use it regularly?
   Sometimes I buy a day planner, thinking to myself, “Gosh, I really need to get organized. I need to write down all of my assignments, my class schedules, and important events in my life. A day planner would definitely help me in such an endeavor.” But since it’s kind of hard to forget my class schedule, most assignments are printed in syllabi, and there are no important events in my life, it usually ends up a waste of money. I don’t think I’ve ever written a thing in any of the day planners I’ve bought.
3. Would you say that your desk is organized right now?
   Ha!
4. Do you alphabetize CDs, books, and DVDs, or does it not matter?
   Yes, I do.
5. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to organize?
   Um…well, my mind doesn’t really work in a linear, logical, or organized manner, so doing research is really, really difficult for me. And the stuff I’m researching for my novel currently is kind of complicated and time-consuming, so creating organized notes that I’ll be able to go back to when I need to will not be easy. That’s why I’ve kind of stopped and decided to work on my sci-fi script, where I can pretty much make everything up without worrying much about research.

Posted by Stan on May 9, 2003 11:52 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friday Five/Albums of the Week

May 8, 2003

In the Words of Ice Cube…

Today was a good day.

Or, more accurately (and surprisingly), it wasn’t a bad day. I wasn’t feeling particularly well, so I thought maybe I’d skip my screenwriting class. After a night that mainly involved me not being able to fall asleep until I figured out my game plan from here until graduation (which is likely to happen sometime before 2017), I assumed that screenwriting would be rotten. I was certainly well enough to go; I just didn’t want to. But I did, and I guess I’m glad I did.

I got off the train, got all coffeed up, and then I decided maybe I would skip class after all. I’d drop my homework in his box and skedaddle before he ever knew I was there. Naturally, as I walked up the pleasant and noisy stretch of Wabash Avenue between Dunkin’ Donuts and the film building, my screenwriting professor emerged from the building, almost as if he had been standing there, waiting for me.

He walked toward me, and I expected an exchange of pleasantries followed by me disappearing. Instead, he rushed toward me looking like he had something to say. I assumed, then, that he was going to bitch at me, half-jokingly, for (1) leaving early last week and then (2) forgetting to e-mail him for the assignment until Wednesday night. He didn’t do that, either. Instead, he shook my hand and said, “Congratulations.”

I accepted this graciously by intoning, “Uh…”

Sometimes, weird things happen to me that make little to no sense. I assumed this sudden and seemingly inappropriate congratulations had something to do with one of those things. Perhaps word was traveling around that, somehow, some of the stuff I’ve been writing leaked out and I was being hailed as an underrated genius by the higher-ups, who were also planning on presenting me with an honorary doctorate and a harem of 30 16-year-old virgins, and I’d no longer have to attend classes.

Or maybe my 5-minute Production I film was making the rounds, and the poor match cuts, bad lighting, and high-iris-induced granularity (as a result of using a bad stock for outdoor shooting) had taken the entire college by storm. My distinctive style of rushed incompetence was now being imitated by all of the best and brightest students, and critical analysis students were writing their theses on what can only be called “Stanteurism.”

If that were the case, I decided to think of the ways I could exploit my newfound popularity and success to acquire a harem of 30 16-year-old virgins.

Of course, my rich and generally perverse fantasy life had little to do with the actual reality of the situation, as my screenwriting professor explained.

He said, “You wrote one of the best second drafts I have ever fucking read.”

“Oh,” I said glumly. My dreams of an enormous, penis-shaped bed (complete with full-length ceiling mirror) filled with squirming, nubile women were dashed, but I appreciated the compliment. “Thanks.”

The professor continued, as he attempted in vain to light a cigarette, “I’d like a copy of it.”

“I already gave you a copy,” I said dumbly.

His face screwed up; suddenly, he was as confused as I generally am. Then, he figured it out. “Oh, no,” he said. “I meant a fresh copy, for me to keep. One that doesn’t have my notes written all over it.”

“Oh, right,” I said, and he could tell from my tone that I had absolutely no idea why the hell he wanted a permanent copy. I think he thought that I thought he wanted to steal my idea or something, because he explained himself promptly. Mainly, though, I just thought the script kinda sucked and wondered why he wanted it so badly.

He told me that, eventually (and this seemed far-fetched), he wanted to compile a book of short screenplays from students that would be published, like the Fiction Writing department’s annual book of shitty short stories and poems. Failing that, though, it would always be nice to have spare scripts lying around to use as teaching supplements.

My thoughts on this could be summed up as follows: “Hmm.” Instead of expressing that complex assessment and analysis of the situation verbally, I just said, “I’ll bring you a copy next week.”

“Any time before the end of the semester would be fine,” he said and grinned inhumanly. I sipped my coffee and he blew smoke in my face. Then he introduced me to some other grad student/faculty member he knew. Apparently, my script was good enough for me to be privied to formal introductions to the elite inner circle of decade-long film students.

I guess that makes sense, considering I’m basically on the track toward becoming one of them.

Okay, I’m kidding. Assuming everything goes exactly the way I have planned it on paper*, I should be able to graduate next summer. Or possibly the following fall. If bad comes to worse, however, I probably won’t graduate until the spring of 2005. And if worse comes to worst, I will never get a degree and end up living in the cardboard box of failure.

*It won’t.

Posted by Stan on May 8, 2003 8:52 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation

May 5, 2003

Album

I got out of humanities around 11:50 today, and since my politics class is an arduous 13-foot trek down the hall, I had 40 minutes to kill before it started, and I was far too lazy to do anything kooky like leave the building. Instead, I sat outside my politics classroom and attempted to read. And failed, not because of illiteracy, but because of The Cheat.

As usual, I was reading and attempting to ignore The Cheat and The Girlfriend as they attempted to paw and rub each other as if they had just regained their sense of touch. As they attempted to reenact some sort of fascinating barnyard animal interaction, which basically involved a lot of licking and writhing, The Cheat decided it’d also be fun to engage me in conversation. Fun for him, maybe.*

He said to me, “You know, I should take you out and get you laid this weekend.” It’s sad that I am perceived as a sexual chairty case by somebody who is nearly three years younger than me. Still, since I am at the moment a sexual charity case, maybe I should take what I can get.

The Girlfriend responded, “No, we’re going out to dinner at (insert name of unpronounceable fancy restaurant here) on Saturday.”

“Right,” said The Cheat, and then turned back to me. “How about I take you out and get you laid next weekend.”

“No, no,” The Girlfriend responded. “Why can’t you do it this weekend?”

“Because I’m taking you out Saturday night,” The Cheat responded, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. “We’ll just have to do it next Saturday, when you’re out of town.” Back to me: “I’ll get ya laid next weekend, huh?”

This was getting steadily worse, so I decided it was time to put down the book and actually step into the conversation. “I really don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Oh,” he said with a noticeable sting od disappointment. His wish to live vicariously through me was being dashed by my stubborn unwillingness to get any number of venereal disease. “Oh, okay, then.”

Suddenly, he was struck with a monstrously important epiphany, one that would forever change the way in which Americans look at their country. “You have to listen to my album,” he explained.

The album, of which The Cheat has spoken quite frequently since the beginning of the semester, was currently being mastered. Supposedly, the mastered EP and the many hundreds of copies they ordered to sell at gigs would be arriving on Wednesday. What he had with him were an LP’s worth of premasters, which he gladly shared with me. He shoved a pair of headphones on my head and hit “play” before I could say, “Kitten rapist.”

To my surprise and disdain, I actually liked what he played for me. I listened to three of the tracks, all instrumental, all pretty fucking good. Sort of like Tool or Korn or System of a Down — you know, that shitty metal that thinks innovation is changing the time signature every two and a half measures? And yet, despite my general loathing of the genre (although I admit I liked Tool’s Undertow album quite a bit), I liked the songs quite a bit.

Perhaps the key to being a shitty metal band who think they play jazz because they occasionally play in 7/8 is to just not sing. I didn’t realize the barking and screaming had such an adverse effect on me, but since there was a noticeable lack of vocals on the tracks I was played, and I liked them a hell of a lot, I think my reasoning is almost logical. But whenever I think that, people usually ask me to turn over my crack pipe to the DEA.

As I listened to the tracks, which were pretty loud but not loud enough, I heard The Cheat and The Girlfriend continue the conversation. Or, more accurately, I listened to The Cheat soliloquize while The Girlfriend stared off into space (possibly thinking about how much better her life would be if she had never met The Cheat). Basically, he talked me into going out with him and getting laid without actually directly addressing me or anyone who isn’t a voice in his head.

“He’s gotta get laid,” The Cheat offered. “It’ll loosen him up a bit. I think he’s hit a dry spell or something. When did he say his last date was? October 30th?** God, he’s gotta get out. Gotta get drunk. Gotta get laid.”

I admired the Budweiser commercial approach to solving my problems. And it’s not that I didn’t want to get laid — though I certainly didn’t want to get drunk — it’s more that I didn’t want to go out carousing with him. Honestly, I don’t like him. On top of not liking him, I see right through his apparent gesture of kindness (and most likely pity), right to the ulterior motive, which is: if he won’t cheat on The Girlfriend, he’ll do the next best thing by enjoying all the grisly details of my sexual encounter with a frizzy-haired girl whose blood-alcohol level is 1.2.

The Cheat seemed determined, and who am I to argue with someone when I am not even a participant in the conversation (except for the fact that I was the subject)? I didn’t argue because I was too busy pretending I couldn’t hear him, but if he tries to make a bigger issue out of it, I will have to lay the verbal smackdown. And he does not want that.

He just doesn’t realize that yet.

*Note that this is a not a denouncement of heavy petting, licking, or any other heat-producing physical contact that is actually quite fun. It’s more a denouncement of doing this in public, two feet away from somebody who is very uncomfortable and possibly waiting for an invitation to join.

**Yeah, if you can believe it, I actually did reveal this information, while we were working on our project. The Cheat and The Girlfriend insisted on “hooking me up” with several of their homely and possibly lesbian friends. I don’t usually talk about my personal life with people I barely know, but I also don’t lie if I am directly asked, and I was directly asked. I’m just surprised he remembered.

Posted by Stan on May 5, 2003 11:08 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (1)  | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation

May 4, 2003

Why Women Make Me Die

When we left off, I was hanging in perilous female limbo in a McDonald’s located at the corner of Wabash Avenue and Jackson Boulevard in beautiful Chicago, Illinois. It is Monday, April 21st, 2003, and I have just received some pitiful advice from an acquaintance I have taken to calling The Cheat.

“So then what happened?” you ask with bated and somewhat foul-smelling breath.

Nothing particularly interesting. But I’m going to write about it anyway, because I can.

What happened was this: I finished lunch and left the McDonald’s. I started walking down Wabash to the film building, because I needed to register for summer classes so I can graduate sometime before 2008.* As I walked, I started to think about what The Cheat said about getting women’s numbers not because he was desperate to get involved with a woman, but to prove that he could.

Suddenly, that overwhelmingly stupid perspective on things seemed downright enlightening. I never have been one to just randomly walk up to a woman and try to get her to go out with me, based purely on the fact that she looks attractive to me across the smoky and dank dwelling in which we are both seated. There are two reasons for this:

1. My appearance is frightening to other human beings with functioning eyes. Therefore, I need to break some kind of terror barrier to get a woman to acknowledge me as the ruggedly masculine hunk of beef that I am. I usually do this with my disarming charm and my impeccable and often irritating wit (and believe it or not, once in awhile it actually works).
2. A girl sitting across a bar does not exactly scream “relationship potential!” to me. Sure, it is possible she’s sitting in a bar for the same loser reasons I am sitting in a bar, in which case we’d be perfect together. But that’s unlikely.

But, when I thought about it, if there’s no real intent behind my actions, if my goal is small enough, maybe it is worth the effort of going up to a random girl and flirting with her. If I stop thinking, “Gosh, I probably won’t want to marry her” and start thinking, “I wonder if I could get her phone number,” I’d keep my mad flirting skills honed while at the same time proving my self-confidence until I become what every man aspires to be: an ADD case who cheats on his girlfriend.

Epiphanies like these are what keep me out of the good schools.

So I was deeply mired in these thoughts when I realized I could see, through the magic of what little peripheral vision I have, a girl standing next to me. She seemed attractive, although it’s difficult to tell when she is squished up in the recesses of side-vision. I thought it might be a good idea to turn, confirm the attractiveness, and possibly say something witty.

So I turned, confirmed the attractiveness, and said, “Man, this is a busy street.”

SCORE!!!

She smiled nervously. Clearly, I wasn’t a hobo, which I supposed played in my favor. “Yeah,” she said, her voice as nervous as her smile. Or maybe she was just irritated.

“Do you go to Columbia?” I asked, trying to raise the complexity of the conversation.

“Yes,” she said. This was good, because now I could start bitching about any number of horrible things that are wrong with our school, and she would immediately agree and enjoy our newfound rapport.

Instead of doing that, I said, “I was just going down to 1104 South to register for summer classes.”

“Oh yeah? Me too.”

Cool. We were going to the same place, which — unless she decided to cross the street to avoid walking near me, which hardly ever happens anymore — meant I would have an excuse to walk with her for a few blocks, and maybe even wait in line with her to register.

“Are you a film major?” she asked. This is a common question at Columbia. Not to discriminate against the many other fine majors one can choose at our school, but you’re either a film major or “not a film major.” Either that, or I have the greasy, unkempt look of a man destined to be behind a camera for the rest of his life.

At any rate, I replied affirmatively, and she explained that she was a Fiction Writing major. This gave us something somewhat legitimate to talk about.

“I was thinking of changing my major to Fiction Writing,” I said, and I actually was for reasons that aren’t particularly relevant right now, “but I want to graduate sometime before the end of the decade, so I figured I’d better stick with film.”

“Ah,” she said, and smiled (not nervously this time).

Right about this time, the light changed, and we started crossing the behemothic intersection. We kept on talking as we walked down Wabash, and we actually got along quite well, despite the fact that most Fiction majors are pretty loopy. She was actually grounded somewhere in this plane of reality, which made my conversations with her seem a lot less like a William S. Burroughs convention.

Eventually, we reached the film building and both got into the registration line. We continued talking as we waited, when I spied across the room something so overwhelmingly evil I found myself unable to speak, move, or even think.

I saw…The Ex.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the ex-girlfriend I’ve often praised for her Boy Scout-like adeptness with rope, was standing across the large Herman D. Conaway Center, standing in line in the shitty little pseudo-cafeteria, probably getting a plain bagel with raspberry cream cheese (aka, food of the devil). She had her back to me, which was fortunate. I was hoping to get through the line and up the stairs to the computer area before she saw me or, God forbid, we made eye contact.

You see, we didn’t really break up well. Or, more accurately, she didn’t break up well, and I followed suit by committing arson. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. A very slight exaggeration.

Here is the basic breakdown of events prior to us breaking up:

• The Ex asks me to move in with her, citing the fact that I was generally there more than I was at home, that her place was more convenient to the school than my parents’ house in suburbland, and that — gasp! — she was in love and wanted to be with me as much as possible.
• I internally freaked out, but calmly and politely said I would think about it.
• Instead of thinking about it, I externally freaked out on a small group of acquaintances.
• The Ex caught wind of my minor freak-out, which was foolishly done in a Columbia-dominated public place, and decided to question me about it.
• I freaked out again, and she started yelling at me.
• We didn’t speak for three days.
• She asked to meet me, so I met her.
• We met, and she dumped me, citing the fact that she could no longer stand the sight of me.
• I, no longer able to stand the sight of myself, scraped together my dignity and wandered home.
• She called me the next day, bitched at me some more, and I got depressed and hung up.
• She called me the day after that, and I started shouting inappropriate things at her and informed her that I never wanted to speak to her again.
• We stopped speaking.

And there you have it. I am a horrible person and ruined a relationship with the only girl who has ever looked at me and said, “Well, he’s not too disgusting.” Needless to say, The Ex and I aren’t exactly on friendly terms, so when I see her standing in the same general area as me (which doesn’t happen often, but it has happened before), I begin to sweat and panic and explode with hemorrhoidal fear.

I also tend to run away when I see her. It’s not that I’m nonconfrontational so much as I’m afraid of her. But in this case, waiting in a line for something I really needed to do (I ended up running late before class in the morning, when I was going to register, so I had to do it before I went home), I wasn’t exactly in a position to run in terror.

Which was unfortunate. Because she saw me. And then she stared at me until I turned around. And then we made eye contact. And then I started to cry.

“Is something wrong?” the girl with me asked. I had forgotten she was there. Here I was, all flushed and looking like I needed to find the nearest toilet; I was probably not making the best impression in the world.

Oh, shit, The Ex started walking toward us. And she saw me talking to the girl. That means she knows we’re there together, or at least we’re talking. This couldn’t possibly go well.

“Hello, Stanley,” The Ex said. I looked into her eyes and saw rage and evil boiling together into some sort of Stew of Death™, and I started to get really scared.

“Hi, The Ex,” I muttered.

“I haven’t seen you in awhile,” she said, faking a friendly disposition. It may have fooled the girl standing next to me, but it didn’t fool me. “Where have you been hiding?”

Oh, God, she knew I’d been hiding from her!

“Nowhere,” I said, trying not to sound like a total idiot (and failing). “I just, you know, we hardly ever see each other. It’s not so unusual that we’d —”

“Who’s this?” she asked, looking at the girl, suddenly uninterested in me.

“Um,” I said. I couldn’t remember her name. We had just met, we were walking down the street — did we even exchange names? We must have, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what it was.

“I’m April,” the girl said sunnily. “Who are you?”

“I’m The Ex,” she replied, smiling like at April like a lunatic. “Stan and I used to date.”

Oh, God. This is going to get worse, isn’t it?

Yes, it is. “Did he tell you about me?” The Ex asked.

“We just met,” April said, “a few minutes ago.”

“Yes,” I said when The Ex looked at me for confirmation. “We haven’t reached the pivotal ‘who recently ruined your life’ phase of the relationship.”

There are two things wrong with this statement. Aside from the obvious in-road for The Ex to open up a can of verbal whup-ass on me, I mentioned the word “relationship” in reference to myself and April. We, as of that point, had no relationship. Not even a friendship. Not even a casual acquaintanceship; we were merely two people who were alive and happened to be on the way to the same place to do the same task. “Relationship” does not enter that picture, and if it does, it is almost certain to scare away the innocent party.

Here’s what I should do from now on: not talk.

The verbal whup-ass came first. The Ex said to me, “Gee, you haven’t? I’m sorry.” Then she turned to April and continued, “Let me save you some time.” Oh, shit. Now I should turn around and run, registration be damned.

The Ex went on to explain in humiliating detail why I am quite possibly the worst human being who has ever existed in any capacity in this section of the universe. I wish I was in a position to argue with her, but I am not.

When The Ex was done, April stood there, utterly puzzled by what had just transpired. Here she is, an Innocent, forced to walk to a building with a person of the opposite sex, a seemingly harmless task. And, somehow, she has to stand there and endure the bloody aftermath of an unresolved, unclosed but still highly failed relationship.

It wasn’t fair to her. It was certainly fair to me; I deserved every pitifully accurate thing The Ex said about me. But these are not things April, who had known me for an approximate total of twenty minutes, needed to know. Certainly not. If she wanted to pursue it, she would find out on her own. But that’s her decision, not mine or The Ex’s.

Obviously, in addition to feeling humiliated, I also felt bad for April. I really didn’t know what to do at that point, but I figured the best thing to do would be to get The Ex the hell out of there.

“Why don’t you just get the hell out of here?” I suggested.

She huffed in that girly way that girls do. “Why don’t you just get a life?”

Not the best comeback in the history of the world, but it was difficult to argue with. I said, “I will, as soon as you get out of mine.” I said it with a sneer, and I was very melodramatic. I thought I was being cool, and I thought it was a good comeback. In retrospect, I failed on both counts.

She did that huff again and just said, “Fine.” Then she turned, bagel in hand, and stalked away. I tried not to look at her ass as she went, but I did not try hard enough. Man, I need a (non-insane) girlfriend.

With that storm over, I turned back to April. “I’m really sorry,” I said. I really was.

“Whatever,” she said, with a tone of finality that indicated that, in addition to being generally pissed off about getting inadvertently caught in the crosshairs of The Ex’s wrath, she would also want to have little — if anything — to do with me after this point.

I struck out. Not that I’m not used to it; it’s just not usually a direct result of my ex-girlfriend being completely evil. I remember when she used to not be evil; those were the days.

But this just proves, to me, that bad things happen. I try not to be particularly fatalistic, but it all seems like karma. As soon as I did something that, deep down, I didn’t think was really a good idea (no matter how much I justified it consciously), it came back and bit me right the hell in the ass. Maybe it’s proof that the way I do things is the way they should be done. Maybe I’m just overthinking everything to justify my (well-earned) rotten life.

But either way, I must’ve done some bad shit, because the turnaround time on that karma thing was amazing.

*This won’t happen.

Posted by Stan on May 4, 2003 10:39 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (5)  | Classic Issues, Fumbling Attempts at Relationships

May 2, 2003

Friday Five (2)

Friday Five

1. Name one song you hate to admit you like.
   Every single song Michelle Branch has ever recorded. What the hell is wrong with me?
2. Name two songs that always make you cry.
   Now, is that cry with sadness, cry with joy, or cry with ear-bleeding pain? I’ll assume “sadness,” and say that I really don’t have a “song” that always makes me cry. However, I have never not cried at the end of La Bohème. And also, the Tara theme from Gone with the Wind.
3. Name three songs that turn you on.
   Every single song Michelle Branch has ever recorded. What the hell is wrong with me?
4. Name four songs that always make you feel good.
   “Pick Up the Pieces” by Average White Band
   “Table For One” by Juliana Hatfield
   “Soma” by Smashing Pumpkins
   “Smog Moon” by Matthew Sweet
5. Name five songs you couldn’t ever do without.
   “Get Myself Arrested” by Gomez
   “Everything I Want to Be” by Save Ferris
   “President Garfield” by Juliana Hatfield
   “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” by Pearl Jam
   The Lacrymosa from Mozart’s Requiem (does that count?)

Posted by Stan on May 2, 2003 4:20 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friday Five/Albums of the Week

May 1, 2003

What a Week I’m Having!

It’s been about a week since my last legitimate update, and many exciting things have happened in the interim. Please note that “exciting” is used here in its false, or ven-faced lie, connotation. What I’m saying is that nothing interesting happened.

I have to backtrack, though, before I get to this week. There’s a lot of stuff I never wrote about because I just didn’t have time, and because my frame of mind last week was entirely different from my frame of mind this week (funny how that happens).

Last Monday – April 21st

Part of my pitiful Monday that I never wrote about was this: a member of my humanities group, who is also in my politics class right after, offered to buy me lunch. He did this because I forgot my wallet, and he was pretty lonely because his girlfriend was out of town. For reasons I am about to explain, I’m going to nickname him The Cheat.

Now, The Cheat is an ADD case who is obsessed with his music-store salesman job, despite the fact that he’s not very good at it, and even more obsessed with women. Now, because I roughly resemble the Elephant Man in appearance and do not regularly shower, I am pretty unscrupulous when it comes to women. I have to be. But even I have a certain set of invisible moral lines that I will not cross, and I immediately lose respect for people who do cross said lines.

The Cheat was in the midst of crossing those lines. Like I said, his girlfriend (I guess I’ll call her The Girlfriend, for lack of a better alias), who is also in our humanities project group, went out of town for about a week. So over the previous weekend, he went to some shitty-sounding party, and he got a girl’s number. He was pretty proud, so I imagine that in his private universe of horror, this was quite an accomplishment.

After pointing out a woman wearing a purple thong and a few other attractive women, he settled on an extremely good-looking blonde who was sitting near us, talking to somebody on a cell phone. After loudly admiring her various and impressive physical attributes, The Cheat decided it was time for me to go and talk to her.

I decided this was a terrible idea. For one thing, The Crush (you know the one) and I were at that point making moon eyes at one another (despite recent developments, we still are; more on that in a bit), and I didn’t want to possibly jeopardize that in favor of randomly wandering up to some stranger who was more than likely talking to her muscular, terrifying boyfriend on that cell phone. For another, I just don’t go up and try to pick up women. Despite my many, many, many, many flaws, I think guys who do stuff like that are embarrassing and sad. I think most of the women they try to pick up, on the off-chance they’re sober enough, think the same thing.

When I explained the latter reason (I was keeping the former mostly to myself), The Cheat decided that it was time for a pep talk. He pulled out a small, mangled piece of paper with a phone number written on it in bubbly, girlish handwriting. He said, “Do you know how I got this phone number?” I didn’t respond, figuring the question was rhetorical; also, I had no interest in continuing the conversation.

The Cheat, who apparently had taken his ritalin that morning, elaborated. “You know I’d never do anything about this. If it weren’t for The Girlfriend, I wouldn’t be who I am today*. But I still had to get this girl’s phone number. To show myself that I still could.” You have to admire the pureness of such backwards logic.

I said, “I don’t really need to show myself anything.” Of course, immediately thereafter I second-guessed that statement, which led to a series of circumstances that, when combined with the rest of the day, led to the worst Monday in recent memory. Maybe I’ll blog the rest of that story another time; it’s irrelevant right now.

The important part is that The Cheat basically spent his weekend trying to pick up women. Whether or not he was serious in such an endeavor doesn’t matter. I don’t really mind a testosterone-soaked evening of carousing in search of the lady who is just drunk enough to talk to me. But it’s different when you in a serious, theoretically committed relationship like theirs. It crosses one of my deadly moral lines and goes straight into Wrongville.

At any rate, that little lunch was followed by the lunch I had on Wednesday with The Crush, in which she went off on what a scumbag The Cheat seemed to be, without even knowing any of the information I had learned during my lunch with him. So, being the gossip and shit-talker that I am, and attempting to impress her with my moral code and hypothetical commitment to an even more hypothetical relationship, I told her everything that I learned.

The Crush was aghast, and suddenly her seemingly unwarranted contempt became vengeful rage.

This Monday – April 28th (finally!)

So on Monday morning (that’s the Monday of this week — wow, back on track!), we began presentations in my humanities class. Our group didn’t present until Wednesday, which was the one day our professor could get the VCR, but we had to suffer through two oral reports. One was done by a pleasant, portly girl who discussed the differences in Renaissance paintings with as little detail or insight as she could possibly muster. The other was done by this piece of shit who loves hearing the sound of his voice, despite the fact that he never has anything worth saying. He droned on for approximately six decades, discussing the wildly uninteresting ways Christianity has been grafted onto other beliefs over the centuries. Wow!

Meanwhile, The Cheat kept going on in his ADD world, cracking terrible jokes that I politely laughed at because he has an irritating habit of repeating his terribly jokes more loudly if nobody laughs. Every time I laughed politely, The Crush would lean over and whisper to me, “He got another girl’s number!” Granted, I agree this is bad, but it was easier to laugh politely than to hear the joke again. But I felt bad about it.

After class, our group ironed out plans to meet and finish our project on Tuesday night. One member, let’s call him the Workhorse since he did pretty much all the work, was pretty down about the whole project, frustrated that it was turning out like shit and he was putting way too much time into it and he hated one of the other members of the group. He was pretty pissed that we even had to meet on Tuesday, but he made all the arrangements. More on that in a little while.

The Cheat invited me out to lunch after class. Our first lunch, last Monday, was pretty irritating in itself, but the fact was, I owed him money and I didn’t have any cash, so he said I could buy him lunch and we’d call it even. In retrospect, I should have hunted down an ATM.

One of the first things he said to me after we sat down was this: “Remember how I told you I got that girl’s number?” How could I forgot? “Yeah, I did it again.” How proud you must be. “Yeah, and I met up with the first girl last Friday.”

Uh-oh. He just crossed another line. Getting two girls’ numbers behind your girlfriend’s back is bad enough; meeting with one of them is on the border of cheating. Maybe it can be considered cheating; just because you don’t actually touch a girl doesn’t mean that meeting them behind your girlfriend’s back with plainly nefarious intentions is hunky-dory. I don’t really know the finer points of cheating, since it’s hard enough for me to get one girl interested in me at one time.

Realizing that we still had another horrible evening to spend together, I decided not to rock the boat. I said as little as possible, and what I did say was humoring his statements and actions.

Then, he started talking to me about The Workhorse. “I think The Workhouse has a thing for my Girlfriend.” Oh God. I am not getting in the middle of this. I had noticed The Workhorse flirting with The Girlfriend, but it didn’t seem particularly serious. Even if it was, I am not getting in the middle of it.

“He hasn’t said anything to me,” I said.

“Yeah, I didn’t think he would. Eh, it doesn’t really matter if he has a thing for her or not, but if he touches her, I’ll kill him.” Good to know. I guess it’s perfectly acceptable for him to go to parties and try to pick up women, but if anybody tries to make a move on his Girlfriend, they deserve death. Seems fair.

“I don’t think he would,” I said.

“Me either. He’s smarter than that.”

One thing you have to realize about The Cheat is that he is painfully unthreatening. He is short, scrawny, and dopey. When he makes statements like these, I find it difficult not to laugh.

After trying to sell me a new soundcard (for retail!), the lunch was over.

Tuesday

I showed up nearly twenty minutes later on Tuesday night. I decided to take a shorter route that, while still shorter, was not short enough. When I arrived at the studio where The Workhouse works (and where we did most of the work on the project), The Workhouse was in a rage. He could not separate The Cheat from The Girlfriend, and because they were together, no work had been done. The Cheat rambled on and on about the poor quality of the audio; The Workhouse didn’t give a shit, because it’s a five-minute video for a gen ed. The audio was good enough. Meanwhile, The Girlfriend stumbled incompetently through her lines. Mostly, though, they just screwed around.

Meanwhile, I’m the in-the-middle guy, whether I want to be or not. The Girlfriend instinctively trusts me for reasons I cannot explain; The Workhorse and I get along pretty well, especially after spending Friday and Saturday nights without The Cheat or The Girlfriend, and we actually got most of the project done in a few hours; and The Cheat takes me into his confidence because I Know Things. I hate Knowing Things.

But when I got there, they pretty much swung into action. I got fairly unpleasant last week when I wanted to just get the goddamn thing done, so they’re kind of afraid of me now. This is a good thing. For lack of anything better, The Workhorse and I decided to write The Girlfriend’s lines onto a roll of paper towels, which The Workhorse would roll up like a TelePrompTer.

Meanwhile, I sat in the control room with The Cheat. He started whispering things to me, such as, “See what a good mood he’s in now that he’s alone with her.” I saw that he was, indeed, in a better mood, but the mood was invariably soured — whether he was alone with her or not — when people started screwing around. He just wanted to get the damn thing done, and I was with him on that.

When The Cheat couldn’t get the audio to work properly, he went out to adjust the boom mic (which for some reason he insisted on using instead of a clip mic), and The Workhorse came into the control room to adjust the audio level. It is difficult to imagine the barrage of obscenities that flowed from his mouth when he realized The Cheat had been trying to control the wrong mic, hence the poor audio quality. It was pretty bad, though.

Things were disintegrating. I hoped the project would at least get nearly finished before things completely dissolved.

We finally shot the stuff with The Girlfriend, did a brief shot with myself and The Cheat, and then we went back to The Workhorse’s house to finish up the video. The Cheat decided it would be in his best interest to play Unreal Tournament on The Workhorse’s laptop, with the sound cranked up, while The Workhorse tried to edit the video. That led to an irritating and nonsensical argument that eventually resulted in many pairs of headphones.

Meanwhile, The Girlfriend decided it was her duty to flirt with me. Great, she’s flirting with me with her boyfriend right there. While The Cheat may not be even remotely threatening or intimidating, I’m usually pretty passive when I feel like the group needs to get along. I didn’t want this to turn out badly. Fortunately, it didn’t (as far as I know).

Later, The Cheat and The Girlfriend got into a fight that led to a lot of tension and awkwardness that, really, The Workhorse and I should not have been privied to. The Cheat mused over how wonderful it would be if The Girlfriend’s dad was beaten to death with a broom. This did not go over well. The Workhorse decided to step up the pace, so we finished shortly thereafter, and I drove home as fast as I possibly could.

Wednesday

The video went over well. Our professor liked it, despite the notable lack of any intellectual content. Fortunately, we followed a really, really awful video that put Oedipus Rex into a Jerry Springer context. The Workhorse said he talked to the people who made it, and they said they shot the whole thing Monday night and edited it Tuesday night, and they were mostly drunk in both cases. It showed.

Because I spent such an enormous amount of time on that fucking project, I only wrote about half of my politics paper. I decided it would be beneficial to cut that class and have lunch with The Crush and The Workhorse. The Workhorse and I got to have an extra-long bitch session without the irritation of getting caught. I was also able to share all the information I had gathered from my lunch with The Cheat on Monday. This further enraged The Crush; The Workhorse just thought it was moronic.

Afterward, I walked The Crush to the film building. We talked about the fun and excitement of academic advisors, early registration, and the school’s leap into the late 20th century by finally embracing online registration. The cool thing about my beautiful school is that it’s so full of shit, it’s obscenely easy to complain about everything, and you can use this as a way to pretend like you have things in common with women. “Gosh, I had that professor. He is such a dick.” It rarely backfires if you know who is who around campus.

I’m slowly digging my way into her life. Next week’s challenge is to get to hang out with me during non-after-class hours (i.e., over the weekend). Since I don’t have this rapely project hanging over my head anymore, I should be able to keep both of my readers updated on my progress with shorter, less boring entries.

Thursday

I decided I wasn’t going to go to screenwriting today because I was extremely afraid of reading my partner’s script. His screenplay details the life of a bug chaser. For those of you who are unaware, bug chasing is a bizarre and terrifying phenomenon in which people (mostly gay men, if I’m not mistaken) seek out HIV+ men so they can get the disease. The HIV+ men who are willing to pass the virus along are known as gift givers.

Needless to say, this script was not wholesome. Not only was it pretty graphic, it was also so melodramatic and terrible that it became unintentionally hilarious. The first time I read it, I almost pissed myself. I uploaded it for my friends at 8-bits, and they all found it equally hilarious.

My job, in reading the script to the class, was to read all the body copy. So I was afraid that I would either laugh uncontrollably and inappropriately while reading it, or I would start vomiting during some of the more gruesome descriptions. So I decided the easiest way to avoid either of these would be to not go to class at all.

But I still had to go downtown. My advisor meeting for registration was today at 4:20, so I figured I’d get there around the same time I usually go to class, pick up a class listing for the fall, and plot out my semester. However, I couldn’t find any class listings, and after awhile I got bored and paranoid, so I just went to class, about half an hour late.

For those of you keeping track, that means I read the script. It went over surprisingly well: nobody laughed. In fact, there was so much tension from the disturbed students that even I couldn’t laugh while reading it. I just sat there with a dopey grin on my face and tried to hide it. I actually did crack up at the “Prepare to kiss your negative status goodbye,” but I was the only one, and I played it off as a nervous titter.

Afterward, when we went around the room giving constructive feedback about the script, the overwhelming majority of the people prefaced it with, “I really liked the story.” This has been fairly uncommon so far in the class. We’re not really allowed to say “I liked it” or “Wow, that sucked.” So that was strange. Also, The Filmmaker said that it was a “harrowing portrait of human depravity.” Yeah, he really talks like that. All the time.

I left almost immediately after that for my brief and surprisingly non-irritating advisor meeting. And then I went home. Which brings us up to now, so I’ll stop talking.

Thanks for putting up with me. Next time, I’ll add MS Paint illustrations to make it more bearable.

*No big loss.

Posted by Stan on May 1, 2003 7:32 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (1)  | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation

May 30, 2003

Friday Five (6)

1. What do you most want to be remembered for?
   My writing, assuming anybody will ever read it. Or possibly my uncanny ability to alienate everyone I don’t dislike.
2. What quotation best fits your outlook on life?
   “Between the Pope and air conditioning, I choose air conditioning.” — Woody Allen
3. What single achievement are you most proud of in the past year?
   I think the most significant achievement is not failing African History last semester, but it wasn’t really my achievement; more accurately, it an act of benevolence by a professor who — rightfully, I might add — thought I was pathetic and that failing a class might drive me to suicide.

   So I guess I’m gonna have to go with the whole not being brutally murdered by the many people — but by one special lady in particular — who want my blood for one reason or another.

4. What about the past ten years?
   Well, I could go for the easy one and say “graduating high school,” but that doesn’t really seem like a big deal to me, since it seems to be the popular thing to do these days. Unless you’re FUCT, who seems pretty proud of his lack of diploma/GED.

   I guess, if we’re going on the basis of how proud I was at the moment of high achievement, the biggest deal would be the first time I actually finished an entire, feature-length, genu-wine screenplay. Looking back on it, it wasn’t even remotely good, but at the time, I was incredibly pleased with myself and my work.

5. If you were asked to give a child a single piece of advice to guide them through life, what would you say?
   “Look at everything I have ever done and will do, and do the exact opposite. Trust me, you’ll be a lot better off.”

Posted by Stan on May 30, 2003 11:19 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friday Five/Albums of the Week

May 29, 2003

Last Day

I finished my last class, so I can cast off the shackles of the oppressive dictatorship I call college.

For one week.

But today actually wasn’t so bad. I sold back my books and made a whopping $117.25. Wow!

And then I wandered over to my screenwriting class. The last day. Sigh. This version of Screenwriting I was much better than the original version, which sucked monkey-balls. I’m gonna kinda miss it, although not that much. Today, instead of just dropping off our scripts and leaving, our professor decided it would be in our best interest to sit around talking about our “writing process.” My lengthy, detailed explanation of my writing process did not impress my peers or professor. I should have just said, “I write the ending first and work my way back.”

That, believe it or not, took roughly an hour and a half, so we had our standard break, during with the professor took myself and several other students out into the hall and explained, in hushed tones, that some new class is looking for good short scripts, and that we should all submit ours. Wow! I feel so elite. I think I actually will submit my script. I sincerely doubt I’d ever shoot it, so I may as well hand it off to somebody who will. It’s nice for the ol’ portfolio.

After the break came the real fun. We watched several student films. It’s amazing the pride they all took in the Production I finals. I hated my final film so much, I set fire to it. Okay, I didn’t really. I just left it with my professor and never picked it up. It is either rotting away in her “out” box, or she’s thrown it out. Either way, I will never touch it again.

Of the films we watched, I only liked two. One was a Production II final about how hard it is to come up with an idea for the Production II final. The main character kept coming up with original ideas, only to realize they actually come directly from other movies. There were extremely well-done parodies of Reservoir Dogs, Run Lola Run (leading to the classic line: “Why are they all speaking German? I don’t even know German!”), Requiem For a Dream, and Memento. In the end, of course, it all turned out to be an elaborate parody of Adaptation.

It was really fucking well-done.

The other one I liked came out of some sort of workshop. Apparently, the entire thing was conceived, written, shot, and edited in 20 hours. Part of the gimmick is that they were supplied an opening and closing shot, which they are required to build the film around. It was all about a pretentious artist dictating a letter to a benefactor, demanding more money. The caveat: the typewriter has no letter “J,” but the artist insists on calling his piece “Jennifer,” and the benefactor is named “Jackson.”

Okay, it amused me.

Two others were unimpressive; actually, I zoned out during one of them, so I don’t know if it was impressive or not. I was too busy thinking that I need to cut my fingernails and write my novel. The other one was a pretty standard ghost story, which is a Production I staple. It wasn’t badly done, but it wasn’t really thrilling, either.

The final two were a perfect way to end the semester. The first was the final film of The Filmmaker. It was a strange statement about the cruelty of animal testing. It actually had a lot of impressive shots, and he did a lot of stuff that most Production I students don’t do. Call it ambition, call it cheating; it all turned out pretty damn well. I don’t particularly like the subject matter, but it was really well-made. Either he got a maximum-strength dosage of competence, or it’s just a lot easier to deal with pretentious filmmakers when you aren’t an actor. I’m not sure which.

And then, rounding out the day and the semester in the greatest way possible, we got to my screenwriting partner’s Production I magnum opus: Chaser: The Movie, graphically portraying the even more graphic screenplay of the same name. Unfortunately, since it was silent, he cut out the lines that made it an instant comedy classic over at 8-bits. He didn’t even have a title card saying “Based on the true story of bug chasing.” I was highly disappointed.

However, he made up for this with an excess of bug-chasing IM conversations and a lot of footage of bareback.com. I guess the world balances out in the end.

Overall, I have this to say: BEST SEMESTER EVAR!#!@$!@#! Except for several days in there that I would rather do without.

Posted by Stan on May 29, 2003 7:29 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | School Rants

May 28, 2003

Closure

No Cremaster 3 for me. It’s a damn shame, too, but I encountered the following problems in my quest for spiritual enlightenment via incoherent filmmaking:

• The Crush adamently refused to go with me, on the grounds that she has a class at 1:30, which doesn’t get out until 4:20, which is 30 minutes after the movie starts.
• Inviting The Cheat to go would require me to actually talk to The Cheat for more than 30 seconds, which will quite possibly make my head explode.
• I couldn’t bring myself to go alone.

Here’s hoping it’s playing next week. I might be able to coax The Crush into going on Monday. If not, I can always pay somebody from high school to go with me (I am looking at you Jonathan P. Marko).

On a non-Cremaster note, we took our humanities final today, being that it’s the last day of class. It was tougher than I expected it to be, but I don’t think I did too badly. Not nearly as bad as The Crush — but, of course, she went home sick last week before our professor told us what to review, and instead of calling me or someone else in class or studying everything we’ve done, she decided to do nothing and study nothing. This is why I like her: she is just like me, only not nearly as irritating or unattractive.

I decided not to go to politics after the final. We’d be watching half of Bowling For Columbine, which I’ve already seen and didn’t really like enough to want to see more than once, and while I did want to get my final back to see how I did, I really didn’t care enough to wait around, since I got out of humanities about 45 minutes early. The Cheat begged me to stay, but I pretty much told him to fuck off and left.

Instead of going to politics, The Workhorse, The Crush, and I went down to the bookstore to sell back our books, and then we went to some sandwich shop. The food was all right, but the coffee sucked and I think something I ate is making me ill. I do not think I’ll be going there again.

The Crush and I agreed to meet on Monday at 9 for registration. I am in charge of the coffee and donuts. That should be fun. If only I didn’t have screenwriting tomorrow…today was kind of a nice way to end the semester.

The Cheat and her Girlfriend, it seems, have broken up. I’m not sure who dumped whom or what the circumstances were, but it all seems pretty clear to us. Everything was abnormal: The Girlfriend and The Cheat arrived separately (which they’ve done before, but it’s still moderately unusual), The Girlfriend barely talked, The Cheat only spoke when spoken to, and, perhaps most the most damning evidence of all, they didn’t touch each other once. Not even an entering-class peck on the cheek. No arbitrary rubbing. No hugging. No hand-holding. No touching of any kind.

This was highly unusual.

After the final, The Girlfriend bailed as fast as humanly possible. The Cheat sat down, alone, and when he pleaded with me to stay, he said, “Come on, we have an hour before class. I don’t want to wait here all by myself.” Again, this is abnormal. Usually he and The Girlfriend dry-fuck while we wait for class, so the fact that she bailed out so quickly and was not planning to return seemed suspicious.

Needless to say, nobody asked about anything. That would require talking to them. Instead, we just speculated, and we assume that she dumped him, because he seemed a lot more humbled and pathetic than she did. He did mention “find a new girlfriend” when he was trying to cajole me into going out with him last weekend, but I assume that endeavor was fruitless. Or perhaps he got caught in his efforts, which caused the big break-up.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t pretty. And we were all glad.

Posted by Stan on May 28, 2003 7:54 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | School Rants