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August 2003 Archives

August 4, 2003

Fresh Meat

The last two nights, I’ve gone out with the girl I decided to name Lucy. We’re okay now — no need to fret, loyal fan — or, at least, closer to okay than we were last week. I apologized in my roundabout way, which mostly involved explaining in 50 words or less why I am a jackass.

It was nice talking to her again. It was like back in the olden days, when I could actually hold a conversation with somebody that didn’t revolve almost entirely around movies or video games. I don’t do that very often anymore. Oh well.

She told me some funny things, and I told her some moderately depressing things, and I gave her some really shitty advice, and she gave me some pretty good advice. For the first time in about eight months, I feel like I’m moving forward. It’s nice to be out of that rut. Actually, I’m still in it, but, much like a car trapped in the mud, I’m slowly but surely shoving my fat ass out of it while trying to soak everyone else in as much slop as possible.

It was nice to get some feminine perspective for once. Most of my women friends are a little too dykey to give a genuine perspective, or they, like Lucy said, just tell me what I want to hear. Fuck, if I wanted to hear what I want to hear, why would I ask anybody else? The world makes no sense. But she’s right about it.

She was also right about The Ex. I told her about the horrifying demise of that relationship last night. I haven’t really told anybody about it, at least not in any significant detail, since it actually happened. Bits and pieces here and there, or a sort of glossy, pleasant version of the way it went. But never the full, horrible dramatization of what occurred.

I guess it was nice to get it off my chest. It doesn’t really feel like I’m any more unburdened than I was before, but it’s nice that now I have a partner in crime. Lucy knows; therefore, the badness is spread around. It’s not all bottled up between The Ex and me. Maybe, if we go out together again this week, I can let her in on some of the more pleasant details of the relationship. Then again, maybe not. I dunno. It still makes me uncomfortable and miserable to talk about it, especially the good stuff.

I’m sort of tired and incoherent, and maybe still a little depressed, especially now, because I’m sort of rambling about the whole Ex thing. I shouldn’t have started writing about that, because all it does is make me think about it, and nobody wants that.

Fortunately, I’ve begun redirecting my rage and depression into a new novel, one that has actually held my interest for more than 30 seconds. By gum, I might actually get through this one, assuming I’ll have some time to write once my class ends.

I’m going to sleep now. I’ll try to update some more this week, but I’ll be vaguely busy, so if I don’t, fuck off and don’t e-mail me bitching. I’m really not that interesting.

Posted by Stan on August 4, 2003 11:18 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (1)  | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em

August 1, 2003

Friday Five (14)

Friday Five

1. What time do you wake up on weekday mornings?
   Seven a.m.
2. Do you sleep in on the weekends? How late?
   Sometimes. Ten a.m.
3. Aside from waking up, what is the first thing you do in the morning?
   Shower.
4. How long does it take to get ready for your day?
   Twenty minutes.
5. When possible, what is your favorite place to go for breakfast?
   I’ve always enjoyed a good, old-fashioned, disgusting, greasy Sausage McMuffin & hash browns combo from McDonalds. I was actually thinking about going and get one this morning, since I haven’t had one in a long time, but I am pretty ridiculously lazy.

Posted by Stan on August 1, 2003 7:24 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friday Five/Albums of the Week

Editing Excitement

Yesterday, I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. Literally, anywhere. I was just going to stay home and do absolutely nothing. It was one of those mornings.

Then, I checked my VoiceMail and had a message from Gina, who wanted to edit. I had gone in on Tuesday and Wednesday, alone, and the result was that I had what approached a final cut. All I needed to do was record the sound effects and ambient stuff, and what video I did need to edit could be done in about ten minutes.

So, what did I do? I went down and edited. For seven hours. Despite the fact that I was done in ten minutes. Hooray!

Posted by Stan on August 1, 2003 7:20 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | School Rants

August 31, 2003

Joysticks

I watched the Joe Don Baker classic Joysticks today. It was a tremendous piece of shit, but it was filled with a lot of familiar faces who were nobodies at the time (and are, in the grand scheme of celebrities, still basically nobodies…but they all fall into the “Hey, it’s that guy!” category).

Strengths:

• Joe Don Baker
• Lots of nudity
• It’s actually almost amusing at times
• nice cinematography
• The acting wasn’t completely atrocious, which is probably why most of the cast members rose up to become C-list celebrities

Weaknesses:

• Poorly written
• Most of the nude women are not that attractive and/or have terribly fake breasts
• The one girl who actually is really hot doesn’t actually get naked
• Too bogged down in a worthless plot
• A few of the gags actually start out well, but they’re stretched for such a long time they stop being funny; I call this the Death to Smoochy Syndrome
• Possibly the stupidest movie ever made
• Not enough Joe Don Baker

All in all, I wouldn’t recommend it.

Posted by Stan on August 31, 2003 12:50 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (1)  | Reviews

August 30, 2003

My Day at Cingular, or: A Confederacy of Dunces

My dad’s corporate cell phone has been taken away because the company got sick of those damn employees using their phones to, you know, talk to people and stuff. Since that happened, my mother has been talking almost daily about switching to Cingular’s family plan. I leaped on that bandwagon, because $10 a month for a phone I’ve actually started using semi-regularly is a lot better than paying $40 a month for a phone I almost never use.

Since we have a Cingular shop in what passes for “downtown” in our li’l suburb, the family decided to trek up there today so we could join my account with my mother’s and then add our dad. It seemed simple enough, until one realizes that we’re dealing with Cingular here. At Cingular, nothing is simple.

I will admit, though, that the clerk who helped us was extremely helpful, thorough, and patient. And hot, although she had a long-term boyfriend, so I decided to not try to move in on that territory. Well, that and the fact that I had absolutely no chance with her to begin with.

Our first caveat: in order to switch to the family plan, we need to have GSM-compatible phones. This means my mother’s ancient phone and my slightly less ancient phone needed to be replaced. “What kind of phones would you want?” the clerk asked.

“What’s cheapest?” my dad asked.

“These Siemens are $10,” she said.

“We’ll take them.”

“But,” she said, soft-selling, “these Motorolas are only $30 after a $50 rebate.”

The Motorolas were nice, and I am a Motorola kinda guy. I insisted on getting the $80 - $50 = $30 phone for myself. I’m glad I did, because the Siemens phones are sort of shitty.

Next, my mother and I had to “conjoin” accounts. Here was the part that still makes no sense to me: the only way to conjoin was to call up Cingular’s customer service. But…wait…I thought this was Cingular’s customer service.

“No,” the clerk said, offering no further explanation.

So, I called up customer service, waited on hold for ten minutes while we all stood around with our thumbs up our asses, only to be told that my mother and I have to go to a store in order to conjoin our accounts.

Hey, wait a second —

“Give me the phone,” the clerk insisted.

I gave her the phone. She bitched at the customer service representative, got as confused as I was, figured things out, and then bitched some more. Then, she hung up and explained the only way for us to conjoin would take at least two billing cycles. Efficiency: Cingular’s number-one priority. Ironically, the company is so inefficient they haven’t gotten around to making themselves efficient. Zing!

I gave up. The only reason we were doing any of that was so I could keep my same, crappy phone number, but how hard would it really be to call up both of my friends and tell them I have a new phone? I told her to just start from scratch, and I’d cancel my current account. She seemed please with this and got started setting me up.

Several decades later, I was out the door with a neat-o, brand-new phone and a lengthy explanation of the benefits of GSM over digital.

This story kind of petered out, didn’t it?

Posted by Stan on August 30, 2003 9:57 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (2)  | Stories of Hilarity and Humiliation

August 29, 2003

Yesterdays

I found myself getting misty-eyed and depressed yesterday. Despite the misery and irritation of getting the actual work done, this class is the most fun I’ve ever had (academically) in college. I really didn’t want it to end, and I prolonged it by hanging around with my classmates afterward for a few hours. But, man, leaving pretty much bummed me out. Especially since Gina’s gonna be out of town for a few weeks.

The screening went well. I enjoyed everyone’s films, and the “feedback” portion of the screening was overall positive and constructive. A few people didn’t show up, but nearly everyone was there.

I remember blogging that I needed to get competent — and fast! — for this class, so I could really impress Gina with the quality of my films. Ironically, it turns out that she thought my films were great, and I sort of think hers were kind of bad. From a visual, technical standpoint, her five-minute was the second-best in the class (and the best, it turns out, was caused by a series of happy accidents), but the audio was pretty poor and the story was weak and unclear.

I don’t want to trash her, because she’s my friend and it’s not like her films were bad. I just think it’s kind of funny that I was so concerned about making shitty films, and hers are slightly shittier than mine.

After class, I went upstairs with Gina, Pothead, and a few others to lay off extra copies of our film onto VHS. We were going to go to the VHS dubbing room, which is faster, so I ran down to grab our films from our professor. He was hesitant, because he apparently had a flight to catch, so we’d have to put our films into his box, and he wouldn’t get to them for several weeks. However, we really needed to make copies.

So, I grabbed the tapes, ran back upstairs, and then discovered that the dub room was in use and would be until closing. So, I ran back downstairs to catch the professor before he left, but I was too late. I shoved them into his box, and as I was walking back to the elevator, he called me from one the halls.

“Hey,” I said. “What up.” And then I kept going.

“Hey, Stan, wait a sec,” he said.

“Huh?”

“I just wanted to tell you,” the professor said and paused for a second. He was choosing his words carefully, which is ironic because I don’t remember verbatim what he said, so I’m just making them up as I go along and trying to get the gist of it. “You have a certain comic vision that most students don’t have.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You seem like you know exactly what you want to do, and you’re actually able to do it,” he continued. He would not have been saying this if he had been even remotely involved in any of my shoots. “And there’s this underlying genius behind it that is extremely, extremely rare. You’ve got It.” That’s right, the proper noun It.

“Do I?” I said, somewhat bemused.

“You do,” he said, “and I really think you should continue to make films after this class.” He was saying this because I have expressed many times that I am not a technical guy, I am not an in-control guy — I just want to write. “I hope you do.”

He did give me something to think about. What with my newfound resolution to make The Movie™, and the fact that I really don’t want to make the film I was originally intending to make anymore, this was the sort of minor confidence-booster I needed to get the ball rolling on what I’m actually going to do.

Furthermore, I sort of pitched my idea to shoot a short sometime soon, and everybody sort of leaped at the opportunity to work on the crew, so I was really pleased with that. Not only am I going to make a real movie, I’m going to do it with a real crew.

Golly, my luck might just be turning around.

A few hours later, Gina and I left. We had an almost-tearful goodbye that was most likely caused by all the dust from the construction site across the street, but it may have had to do with some actual emotions brimming forth now that we won’t necessarily see each other on a daily basis anymore.

“Give me a call sometime,” Gina said. She said it in that tone that indicated that I’d never actually call her, and the knowledge of that fact seemed to disappoint her.

“I will,” I said. “Definitely. Soon as you get back.”

“Okay,” she said solemnly.

“I’ll…uh…see you around, I guess,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, and we went our separate ways.

Posted by Stan on August 29, 2003 5:12 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | School Rants

Friday Five (18)

Friday Five

1. Are you going to school this year?
   Yes.
2. If yes, where are you going (high school, college, etc.)? If no, when did you graduate?
   Columbia College, in Chicago’s rustic and gentrified South Loop.
3. What are/were your favorite school subjects?
   English, and I was a big choirboy.
4. What are/were your least favorite school subjects?
   Anything involving math or science. Not specifically because I disliked those subjects (though I did), but because we had some painful, pitiful teachers. At least in the remedial sections.
5. Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite?
   I’m not sure I have any specific favorite, but I’ve had a lot of teachers in high school and college who have inspired me a great deal.

Posted by Stan on August 29, 2003 11:14 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friday Five/Albums of the Week

August 28, 2003

Why I No Longer Actively Pursue Relationships

I met the future Ex a little over a year ago. A general education require threw us together; otherwise, we probably never would have met. Okay, maybe we would have, but it’s somewhat unlikely. She’s a music major; I’m a film major. We don’t really mix well, or at all, even though I used to be a music major.

Like most women, I was immediately attracted to her because she was intelligent, articulate, and witty. Also, she was hot. Really, really hot. Absolutely stunning. Beautiful to the degree that one could successfully argue that I was extremely lucky to be dating someone so attractive, it will never happen again, and I was foolish to give her up so easily.

I’d be the one making that argument, by the way.

Being antisocial, or “shy” as Lucy insists, I spent the first several weeks of class being my usual, non-participatory self, casually making pathetic moon eyes at The Ex. Like most women, she didn’t seem to notice or acknowledge my existence. As usual, I didn’t take any great effort in making sure she was aware of me. I forced myself into the mindset that relationships were a waste of time; too much effort expended for something that doesn’t mean much in the end. That’s antisocial, right? Not shy?

One day, I got to class early, and I was waiting for the elevator when The Ex, a guitar strapped to her back, showed up. We exchanged mild pleasantries, but that was it. It was nice to know that she actually recognized me from the class. She got off on a lower floor for some reason.

We didn’t say another word to each other that day, but when I sat and read on one of the benches on the 10th floor, I put something together in my head. I had noticed that, every Tuesday (the class was Tuesdays and Thursdays), she showed up extremely early with a guitar. On Thursday, she was generally late and guitar-less. I put two and seven together and realized that she was most likely taking guitar lessons, or at least doing something with the guitar before class, but the important thing was that she was there early.

I thought, if I started showing up early on a regular basis every Tuesday, I’d end up running into her, and I could strike up a conversation with her about the guitar. I’ve played since seventh grade, and I know a whole assload about a lot of music genres, so I figured I could at least fake my way into creating a meaningful dialogue with her.

So, the following Tuesday, I arrived extremely early, sat on a bench near our classroom, and read while I waited for her. She showed up, smiled at me as she walked briskly past me to the vending machines, and normally that would have been the end of said chance encounter. However, I was feeling extremely audacious (that’s a synonym for “stupid,” right?), so I decided to very subtly approach and engage her in conversation.

She had gotten a 7-Up from the vending machine and drank it as she stared mindlessly at a bulletin board listing various apartments for rent, movies to screen, and/or bands to join.

I happened to randomly see an advertisement for a band I liked, who were apparently performing locally in a few weeks.

“Oh, wow,” I said, trying — and failing — to sound very cool. “I should go catch that show.”

“Yeah,” she said apathetically. Strike one.

“So,” I tried again, “you play guitar.”

“Yeah,” she said, her tone brightening slightly, but not much. Ball one.

“Yeah, I play, too,” I said.

“Actually, I just started taking lessons. I’m not very good.” Strike two.

“I’ve been playing since sixth grade,” I explained, trying not to sound braggardly but failing. Foul-tip. One ball, two strikes.

“You must be good, then,” The Ex said, arching one eyebrow.

“I guess,” I said smoothly, redeeming myself for the unnecessary bragging earlier.

“Cool,” she said, returning to her former apathy. If I didn’t think I was good after playing for eight years, her tone indicated, I was not worth her time. This is the craft of the music-business major. She was scoping my talent, and when I denied having much, she immediately became disinterested.

I decided to go out on a limb. I really had nothing else to lose. My awkward, failed attempt at flirting was getting me nowhere, and she doesn’t like lovable losers like me. She likes men of action, I decided, so she’d respect me for asking even if she turns me down.

“Wanna have dinner with me tonight?” I spat out abruptly. Oh, Jesus, tonight? Why did I specify a time frame? She’s never gonna —

“Why?” she asked, genuinely baffled. Possibly a foul, possibly a home-run. The refs are arguing it out with the first-base coach and the left-fielder. This could be a game-losing play.

“Uh…” I explained. “I have a class after this. In the evening. And I usually, you know, go to dinner in between. Since I’m down here. And usually I’m alone, but I like you, so I thought maybe, I dunno, if you want, you could just eat with me. To keep me company or whatever.”

Wow. That was awful.

“Sure,” she said, half-grinning. I’d get used to that amused look of hers. I’m apparently pretty amusing, even when I’m serious, and especially when I’m yelling. I’ve inherited from my dad a gene that causes me to become completely incoherent and illogical when I get angry, and I’ve inherited from this area a 1930s-gangster-like vocal affectation whenever I get mad. No human can take me seriously when I’m angry, which just makes me madder.

But I digress…

Long story short, we had dinner, we sort of hit it off, and she agreed to have dinner with me again the following week. It became a semi-regular routine, and although it was more friendly in nature than “dating,” it was what the French call “the beginning.”

Things progressed rapidly, though. The class was winding down, and I thought — as is the case with most Columbia commuters at the end of the semester — that we’d stop seeing each other by the end of the semester. Not because we don’t like each other enough to maintain a friendship. It’s just a gradual thing. People get busy, and when you don’t even share a class in common, the gradual grinds to a halt.

Being antisocial, this is the life for me! However, I didn’t want to lose The Ex at the semester’s end, so I did something very brash. After what would have probably been our final dinner together, I said, “I’m going to ditch my class and walk you home.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” The Ex responded.

“I know,” I said.

“You realize I live 30 blocks away, don’t you?” she asked. “I usually take a cab.”

“I could use the exercise,” I said.

“You sure could,” she said. Zing. “I’m taking a cab, though. I’ll meet you there.”

How romantic.

“Come on,” I pleaded, “walk with me. We can talk more, assuming I don’t collapse.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

Huh. That was easy.

So, we walked to her apartment, and she was not exaggerating about the 30 blocks (actually, she was underestimating) and continued our conversation about all that pop-culture bullshit we both enjoyed so much. I feigned love for bands I only casually like, and she did the same, and we talked about movies. She was much less interested in the movies, but pretended to be excited because she knew that was my thing.

We stood on the front stoop of her apartment, which was actually just an old house that had been transmogrified into two one-bedroom apartments.

“Well,” I said, “I’m probably going to go to class now. I guess.”

“You really didn’t have to walk me home, you know,” she said.

“Yeah, well, we were having a good conversation,” I said. We weren’t, really. It was a trivial conversation in the restaurant, and it was still trivial while we walked home.

“Yeah, I guess,” she said. “Well, I’ll see you—”

That’s when the brashness took over, and I slid my arms around her waist and rammed my tongue down her throat. She resisted for a second, but apparently my tongue has wily powers, because she softened almost immediately and her tongue took evasive action.

I’ve spent several years training in classical voice, so I have pretty good breath control. I thought it would impress her if I could shove my tongue down her throat and maintain my ability to examine each of her fillings without being the first person to come up for air. I’m not sure if it impressed her or not, but she was the one who leaned back and ended our kiss.

“Yeah,” she said. “Okay.”

Not really the ecstatic response I was expecting, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as my last kiss, which went approximately like this:

Me: (kissy-face)
Her: What the hell are you doing?
Me: I thought you wanted me to.
Her: I have a boyfriend!
Me: Be that as it may—
Her: (smacks me on face)

“Can I call you tomorrow?” I asked The Ex.

“Um,” she agreed.

“Nevermind,” I said, pulling out of the embrace so I could stare down at my shoes like an idiot. “I’m sorry. I should…I’ll just go now.”

“No, it’s not that,” she said. “I just…I wasn’t really expecting that.”

“I know. I should really get to class,” I said.

“Give me a call,” she said. “It’s cool.”

“Oh,” I said, internally breathing the heaviest sigh of relief in the history of relief-sighs. “Yeah, okay.”

She smiled awkwardly.

“I guess I’m going to go now,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said, and I perked up at that.

“Yeah,” I said.

I left at that point, hopped on the train (The Ex doesn’t take public transportation — it frightens her), and made it for the last hour of my shitty class.

I did call her the following day. We spent the night together, and although nothing particularly juicy happened, we did make out a lot.

After that point, it seemed that we were somewhat unofficially dating. We started spending the vast majority of our time together, and she attempted to ingratiate me upon her circle of idiot friends. It was a nice, if utterly failed, gesture.

Basically, for the next few months, I followed her around like a lost puppy. I’m not really a take-charge guy, and she actually thought of interesting things to do. Were it left up to me, we would have spent every night hanging around her apartment, watching Buffy reruns. I didn’t mind letting her completely dominate the relationship.

Believe it or not, I was her trophy guy. She’d introduce me at certain functions as if I were some sort of god of humanity, and she was very lucky to be with me. This was a somewhat confusing confidence booster. Apparently, I clean up well enough to vaguely resemble a human male, and I suppose I’m smart and witty when I’m supposed to talk. That’s the way she felt, anyway.

Throughout the course of the relationship, I didn’t really feel used, necessarily. It’s hard to explain my feelings. I guess I felt like I was unnecessary. She just sort of had me around so she could say, “Look at my boyfriend.” She’d store me in the closet and trot me out when I required an introduction, not unlike Viki from Small Wonder.

Not that I minded, really. It made many social functions mildly uncomfortable, despite her attempts to put me at ease. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this reading my blog, but I’m sort of neurotic and paranoid. It’s a chore putting me at ease, and if The Ex has one fault that probably ensured the demise of the relationship before it even started, she wasn’t really up to that task.

I’m not saying, really, that she had to, or that she’s a failure as a person or a girlfriend because she couldn’t. I’m just saying that, after awhile, it would have been hard to deal with going out all the time and being put into awkward social positions. And, for me, any social position that involves talking to humans, especially when I don’t know them, is pretty awkward.

So, let’s flash-forward to the fall of aught-two. We’d spent a nice summer together, we went back to school, and that’s when I really started staying over at her apartment. She lived in Wicker Park, and I live in the suburbs, so it just made life easier for me. And for her, too, I guess. Heh-heh-heh.

I had more clothes at her place than at my house, I had bought doubles of all my toiletries to keep at her apartment, and most of my DVDs, CDs, and other shit of that ilk were all over there. We shopped together, we ate together, and so on and so forth. It wasn’t long before she came up with this suggestion: “I think you should move in.”

“What?” I asked.

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it?” The Ex said. “You practically live here as it is. Wouldn’t it be easier for you to not have to go home all the time when you need stuff? And you quit your job, so it’s not like you have to keep going back for that, which I figured was the only reason why you were even still living at home. And it’s not like I’d make you pay rent — it’d be like it is now, except more of your crap will be here and you wouldn’t have to go home.”

“Hrm,” I replied. “Let me think about it.”

Meanwhile, my brain had exploded. Sure, it would’ve been easier, and it was an innocent enough suggestion, but a word kept flashing in front of my eyes in bright neon: COMMITMENT. No matter how innocent it seems, no matter how convenient it is, moving in with a girlfriend is a fairly big commitment, and I wasn’t sure it was one I was prepared to make.

Sure, things were nice, and they would have been nicer if I had all my shit at her apartment, instead of spread out between two residences. And it would have been nicer to have to commute for 20 minutes instead of 100. And it would have been nicer to be, as my dad so eloquently puts it, shacking up with someone more vital than a loose fist.

For all the niceness, though, things were going a little bit fast. They had been from day one, which maybe was my fault. I made a bold move, I took us to that first step, and while all the subsequent steps had been spearheaded by The Ex, they were immediately approved by me. Too fast for me or not, I’m pretty hard up, so I am not going to turn a woman down. Hear that, ladies?

I expressed most of my fears, somewhat hostilely, to the group of acquaintances I was currently associating with. I needed to vent, and they were there. So, I vented, and they listened. And one of them told The Ex.

I had no idea she had been told anything, but apparently one of those goons took it upon himself to let The Ex know how I feel, so maybe she’d back off a little.

Like every other Tuesday, I got out of my Fiction Writing class at 5:20, and I was expecting The Ex to be waiting for me with open arms so we could watch the second Buffy episode and eat dinner.

I got up to her apartment, opened the door, and she stood in the kitchen (the front door is right off the kitchen), eyes fixed on the door. Scowling.

This was not good.

“Hi,” I said, timidly entering the apartment. I shut the door behind me and tossed my backpack on the floor. “What’s wrong? You look sort of up—”

I hadn’t noticed until right then that her arms were behind her back. This was an unusual stance for her. I couldn’t remember ever seeing her with arms behind the back.

I figured out why soon enough. She raised her right arm. In it was a porcelain dinner plate, which she immediately hurled in the general vicinity of my head. I have slow reflexes, so I didn’t duck or anything until long afterward. Fortunately, her aim is about as good as my reflexes, so she overshot it and the plate exploded over my head. I grabbed my neck to prevent any shards of dinnerware from lodging in one of my many important blood vessels.

I assessed the situation succinctly: “What the fuck?” I noticed she had her arm behind her back again, which led me to believe she also had more dinner plates.

“You don’t want to move in with me?” she asked levelly. This was eerie. The levelness in her voice did not match the rage in her eyes. It was like being in the eye of a storm.

“I didn’t say that,” I said. “I just need to think for—”

“Chris says differently,” she said.

“Chris is an idiot! You’ll listen to him before you listen to me?”

“In this case, yes,” she said. “You seemed hesitant from the start.”

“Of course I’m hesitant,” I said. “This isn’t exactly like buying a new lamp.” This was sort of a dig, since the previous weekend I had introduced her to the magic of Ikea, and she spent approximately three decades trying to choose the lamp that would best reflect her personality. She ended up getting one that vaguely resembled a frog. I never figured out why.

“Oh, fuck you!” she said.

“I think I should leave now,” I decided.

All The Ex said was, “Yes.”

The truth was, while plate-at-head-throwing was a bit extreme, our relationship had been overwhelming tumultuous, probably because we’re both crazy. It seems like it was pretty normal, overall. We had fights about normal, stupid shit. They just happened to be insane, over-the-top shouting matches about normal, stupid shit that doesn’t really mean anything. But I wouldn’t complain about it because, for one thing, I like fighting, and for another, the good times (and there were many more good times than bad) were so much better than the shitty times and the fights and so on. Its goodness nullified anything negative about the relationship.

If I could relive the entire relationship again, including the evening of painful plate-wielding, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Of course, as Austin Powers says, that train has sailed.

After that night, she calmed down a bit. We met, had dinner, and she officially dumped me. I officially tried to convince her to still see me, but she said something that still stings: “I can’t deal with you.” I guess it doesn’t really seem that cold, there in print, but man, in the context and in the tone in which she said it, it was just harsh.

We tried to reconcile again a little later, and went out once, but in the end she simply decided to shout at me for several minutes before I hung up on her.

She never called back.

Posted by Stan on August 28, 2003 10:29 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Fumbling Attempts at Relationships

August 27, 2003

The Magic of DV

I went down early to mix my film. I decided to take the nefarious and unlawful precaution of mixing my own film, for three reasons: (1) the main mixer guy is sorta nice but mostly a big dick, so I didn’t want to deal with him; (2) the secondary mixer guy, who I know better and am on pretty good terms with, hasn’t been around for three days; and (3) I couldn’t get an appointment.

Fortunately, through my hilariously inept attempts at home recording, I’ve managed to pick up some pro-tips on the subject of recording, mixing, mastering, and so on, so I thought I could do it myself.

See, the reason why they urged us not to mix ourselves, aside from all the extra work it would require to teach us and for us to actually do the mix, is because when you lay it off to the VHS, it doesn’t sound right. Some of the sound effects or ambient sounds are totally different from the way it sounds in Avid.

Students wonder why that is, but I recall having the same problem in my early days of home-recording. I was using a multitracking software program, and when I had all my tracks mixed exactly the way I wanted them, I’d save it as a stereo sound file. That was the right thing to do, no?

No, you idiot, it wasn’t. When you save more than two raw tracks of audio, no matter how mix it, it’ll get fucked up when the computer tries to pare it down to two pure tracks, one for the left channel and one for the right. It largely ignores the meticulous volume and pan settings on the majority of tracks, which ruins it for everyone else.

After several months of tinkering and refusing to read the manual, I finally figured out where I was going wrong: the way to do it is to have the multitracker mixdown the audio. There, the computer will take your tracks and actually read all of your little edits, your fades and pans and so on, and convert it to stereo tracks in exactly the way you want it to. It’s very handy.

So, I thought, if I did the same thing with my audio in Avid, one could argue that it’d have the same general effect as mixing with the pros. Granted, I’m not as good at it, but it’s faster and less tedious to just do it myself. Plus, I couldn’t get an appointment, so I was essentially fucked. Mixing down the audio was the only chance.

And it worked. I mixed everything myself, leveling and panning and so on, mixed it down, put it on the VHS, and it sounds perfect. And I finished all this in less than an hour, which includes walking down to Jewel to buy a new VHS tape because I am far too stupid to remember to bring the one I had at home.

I decided to make a reservation to lay my film onto DV, which is higher quality than the VHS. When I did that, I noticed that all of my sound edits were terrible. That’s what high quality gets you — you can hear all the little shitty imperfections you miss with the lower quality.

Oh well. Tomorrow or Friday, I’ll rip the films (from the VHS, to maintain the integrity of my poor editing) and put them online. Exciting!

Posted by Stan on August 27, 2003 8:06 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | School Rants

August 26, 2003

Life Careens Out of Control

Last night, The Ex appeared on Instant Messenger. Although our long-standing policy of not acknowledging one another’s existence unless it involves public humiliation has not prevented me from removing her from my Instant Messenger buddy list, I just can’t seem to totally drop her from it. So, there she sits, at the very bottom. Maybe I should create a new category for ex-girlfriends whose screen names I have. Or maybe I should take her off altogether.

At any rate, I did what I generally do when people sign on: I checked her info. This is a sort of OCD tendency I have. The info rarely changes, but I still feel the compulsion to get info anyway. Check the profile, check the away message, etc. Normally, hers says nothing.

Last night, it said something. It had a link to a website. A website for a band. A band in which she apparently plays an instrument that she had never, during the course of our torrid five-month attempt at a relationship, expressed an interest in playing. All the other members of the band are men. They are all more attractive than me, which is really not as difficult a feat as one might initially think. They have better teeth, they have better hair, they have better skin, they have more tasteful attire. She’s in a band full of pretty-boys making a concerted effort to not be pretty. And they write better songs than I do.

I immediately leaped to the most obvious conclusion: she is sleeping with everyone else in the band. Logical, no? No, not logical. But it left me with the burning, unnecessary desire to win her back. It’s not because I actually want her back. We had some irreconcilable problems, which will actually be the subject of this Thursday’s flashback (there, you have something to look forward to). It’s more that I don’t want her to be with any of these junior Calvin Klein thug motherfuckers.

It’d also be quite the ego boost if I managed to win her back from one of those guys. While I do realize that it’s not always a physical thing that attracts to people, and in this case, I’d say it’s definitely not, it would be nice to know that I can win a girl back based on the strength of my curmudgeonly personality and my endearing ability to point out every other human being’s shortcomings while largely ignoring or downplaying my own.

This is a bad idea, however. As if I didn’t realize it, it was pointed out to me by Lucy, who expounded, “You’re a fucking idiot.”

“Right,” I responded, fully aware.

And here’s where things got tricky. She said, “Remember when I always used to get back together with my ex-boyfriend?”

“Yeah,” I said. I remember the 378,232 times they broke up and got back together. It made life fun. I started running underground bets on the length they would stay apart.

“How did that make you feel?” Lucy asked.

“Uh…not that good,” I said, adequately summarizing my feelings. I had to wonder, though, what that line of questioning actually meant. I decided I was reading too much into it.

“Well, yeah, now you know how I feel,” she said. Was I not reading too much into it? Surely that was an indication that, being that we get so worked up about one another’s humiliating relationship groveling, there must be something deeper working its mojo between us on a subconscious level.

Nah.

“You can’t go back to her,” she said determinedly. “She has a lot of problems. She needs to grow up. A lot. And you have no guarantee that she’s done that.” This was true, I supposed. When I explained the details of the relationship decline between The Ex and me, Lucy decided that I had done nothing specifically wrong. In fact, everything I said and did was right. She was the one who was wrong — The Ex, therefore, had to pay. In blood.

Lucy just thought, and managed to convince me, that The Ex was immature. She couldn’t handle things, partly because of a lack of experience with men, partly because she was not old or curmudgeonly like Lucy and me. It was bad all around, and me going back to her — or trying to — would be even worse.

“I guess she does,” I agreed, “but I still love her.” This was not an inaccurate statement.

“Yeah, well,” Lucy said, “you should try and stop that.” Echoing a similar sentiment I had expressed to her awhile ago when she was contemplating going back to her ex-boyfriend yet again. It’s amazing how she can spend so much time pretending like she doesn’t listen or doesn’t care, but Lucy manages to remember every damn thing I’ve said to her.

“I know,” I muttered. “I guess I wasn’t really all that serious. I mean, maybe I should go to her show —”

“No, you shouldn’t,” Lucy said.

“But I feel like I should support her,” I said. “I mean, yeah, it’s sort of frustrating that, you know, her life has actually gone on without me, so in that sense I want to set fire to her house. But in the sense of not being crazy, I feel like I should go and let her know that I hope she does okay.”

“Oh, that’s a great idea,” Lucy said, rich with sarcasm. “And then, when she tells you she’s sleeping with the drummer, you can break down and cry in front of her and get down on your hands and knees and beg for her to take you back, because you’re so fucking supportive of her new life.”

“That’s the plan,” I thought of saying, but I shut up. Lucy was stressed for unrelated reasons, and she was yelling at me, which I deserved. I didn’t want to interrupt her and incur that wrath, too.

“You shouldn’t see her again, if you can help it,” Lucy said. “Ever. You shouldn’t be the guy to make any kind of move. She dumped you, and she did it very stupidly, so let her go. If she wants you back, she can come to you.”

Right. That’ll happen.

“You don’t need to support her,” she went on. “You’re not that guy anymore. It’s not your responsibility, and don’t pretend like it is because you think you want to get back together with you. You should just let her go.”

Yeah. I should, and I really haven’t. I mean, sure, I’ve moved on to other failed attempts at failed relationships. I’ve gotten wrapped up in Gina, who I’ve realized, in the grand scheme of things, isn’t really as important to me as I’ve built her up to be. She’s a great friend, and I find her attractive, and there’s really nothing else to it. This is mostly because I’m hung up on The Ex, who wants my heart on a plate and would like to eat my children as dessert.

The Ex is not really the type of person I should hang myself up on. She’s a rusty meat-hook of doom, to use the worst metaphor I’ve ever subjected my loyal fan to.

Yet, I am hung up on her. To a maddening extent. One could argue that I should go to her concert, because something will happen, and either it’ll get her out of my head or it’ll make things infinitely worse. I either get to move on or embed the rusty meat-hook further into my gangrenous back.

Then again, time heals all wounds, right? Eventually I’ll move on, and I’ll stop being in this emo funk, and then the two readers I have now will run away in droves, scouring the LiveJournal community for somebody whose life is as angst-ridden and pathetic as mine. And we don’t want that, do we?

What I’d like, in the fantasy world that I prefer over my actual life, is for some woman to just show up, like in a really shitty Nora Ephron movie, and make me forget about The Ex altogether. Drive that demon out of my subconscious and make me a forward-thinking individual commitment to the growth and development of the company. I mean — the relationship.

But, as we all know, that’s never going to happen. I can bury The Ex as far down as possible, but she’ll always be there, ruining my life.

One could argue (“one” being “Lucy”) that dating The Ex was the worst mistake of my life, but I don’t think so. Of course, things aren’t exactly peachy-keen, but I’d like to believe that they’ll get there.

I’m trying to get them there, anyway…

Posted by Stan on August 26, 2003 1:04 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Fumbling Attempts at Relationships

August 24, 2003

September

September is da bomb, yo.

Angel Season 2 is out the 2nd.

Woody Allen’s new movie opens the 19th.

And I’m seeing Juliana on the 27th. And her new album comes out the 9th.

Also, Dressy Bessy’s new album comes out the 26th of August, which isn’t really September, but it still counts, you fuckers.

And that’s just the stuff I remember!

Best. Month. Evar.

Posted by Stan on August 24, 2003 10:48 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Random Musings

August 23, 2003

I Command You to Sleep!

For those of you wondering why, specifically, I feel like I simply have to move out and cannot wait another year (or two…) until I finish college, I have a brief illustration ripped from my life circa 20 minutes ago.

I woke up around 9:40, which is kind of late for me recently. I decided this summer that I would start getting up earlier for two reasons: (1) I usually do better work in the morning, and (2) my mother started working a 6-10 a.m. shift, so I have the entire house to myself. I’ve been waking up at 7, which came in handy, because most of the time I end up leaving for school around 7:30.

Because of this, I’m tired on Friday nights, so I go to bed early, and the residual of getting up early all week usually ends up waking me up some time between 7 and 8. Which it did today. However, I decided it would be a better idea to go back to sleep than to stay up. I was really tired, and I really had to pee, so I went and did that, but instead of caffeinating myself instantly and trying to stay up for no reason, I went back to sleep.

Flash-forward to 9:40. My mother goes into my parents’ bathroom, which is right next to my room, and starts banging around, intentionally loudly. This didn’t really wake me up because I hadn’t really fallen back asleep. I had drifted off for a few minutes here and there, but it was mostly me “resting my eyes,” as they say. I just figured, at that point, it was time to get up. So I did.

I went to the kitchen to get some breakfast, and my mother came in — I thought — to greet me on this fine summer morn. Instead, she asked, in a harsh and accusatory tone, “Why did you sleep so late?”

“Uh…” I explained.

“You never sleep this late,” she said. Apparently “never” does not include any times prior to June 2003.

“I was tired,” I said. I had been going down to edit most of the week, and in addition to the strain the commute puts on me, editing is no picnic either. It’s not like it’s manual labor, but it’s just as tedious and irritating. Consequently, all of this is sort of catching me up and turning me into more of a slug than usual. I thought it would be a good idea to get a few extra hours of sleep, because when I do it all over again next week, maybe it’d be a little less irritating.

“What, did you stay up all night online?” she accused.

“Uh…no?” I didn’t. I went to bed around 10:30 and pretty much fell asleep.

She did that thing Moms do where she put her arms on her waste and cocked her head to the side. This indicated that she didn’t believe me.

“What were you doing all night, then?” she asked.

She really set herself up, and I was pretty close to saying either “Talking on the phone with Lucy” or “Sleeping with Lucy,” but instead I said, “Sleeping. I went to bed, Mom. I was tired.”

“Usually, when I want to sleep until 10, you say you won’t do that and get up early,” she said.

“That’s right, I do,” I said. I was following her line of argument; I just thought she was being an idiot.

“Why’d you sleep so late? Why’d you get up at 8?”

“I had to pee, and I went back to sleep because I was tired,” I said.

“Well, the least you could have done is come and told me you were going back to bed,” she said. “You know I always get up with you.”

“No, you don’t,” I said. It’s true, she doesn’t. I don’t know why she even said that. There have been times where I’ve gotten up around 8, and she doesn’t slink out of her room until after 10.

“Yes, I do,” she said, not taking fact for an answer.

“Whatever,” I said.

“You could have just come and told me. A little information would have been nice,” she said. “You got me up at 8, and I was just sitting there, waiting for you to come back out of your room.”

And here we hit upon one of the things that bugs me about her. I didn’t get her up at 8; she got herself up at 8, because she’s so obsessively paranoid that she can’t allow my father or me to be awake and moving around the house if she can possibly help it. Sometimes, she’s too tired, but most of the time she is there, not letting us get away with whatever it is she assumes we’re trying to get away with.

Furthermore, there has never been a time in the history of the universe when I’ve woken up, gone to the bathroom, and gone into my bedroom, closed the door, and locked it. I usually leave my door hanging wide open, unless I’m really pissed off, but I wasn’t, at that time. There was no reason for her to think that I was, I dunno, masturbating or something, and I’d be out in a little while. The only assumption she could have made was that I had gone back to bed.

At any rate, my main gripe is that there are two things I don’t really like happening when I wake up: (1) people grilling me about my sleeping habits when I’m still trying to wake up, and (2) people demanding that, for some reason, I have to be extremely courteous and explain to them every time I’m going to go back to sleep so they don’t stupidly get up.

These are reasons why I want to move out; I shouldn’t have to answer to people every time I just want to roll over and go back to sleep. Or, as it were, take a whizz and then roll over and go back to sleep. And I really don’t understand why my mother can’t put two and two together and realize this. It seems pretty simple to me. The “you could have told me you were going back to bed” line is almost as classic as the “gosh, when you go out, you should call me more than you already do.”

A few minutes ago, as I was typing this little entry, my mom walked into my room and started slamming shit around.

“You aren’t going to treat me like shit for the next year, are you?” she asked.

Apparently, in her world, treating me like shit over something that is utterly worthless is all right, but if I get even slightly irritated with her, I am instantly treating her like shit and I may as well be tossed out on my ass.

“I do a lot for you, you know,” she said, “and I won’t be treated like shit.”

Ugh. I know she does a lot for me, and I don’t treat her like shit. I don’t treat her nearly as badly as most of my friends treat their parents. I just got sorta pissed off when I hadn’t been up more than 30 seconds before she’s interrogating me and insinuating that I was involved in some sort of all-night cybersex parade. I think I have the right to get pissed off about that.

Although, to be fair, I have been getting a lot more pissed off at her lately than I usually do. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s really gone off the deep-end, or because I’m a little more tightly wound because this class is stressing me out, or if I’m just sick of the bullshit and desperately need to get out of here.

I guess I’ll figure that out soon enough.

Posted by Stan on August 23, 2003 10:31 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Family: The Horror…

August 22, 2003

Apologies

My dad called me this morning while my mother was at work. He took a brief opportunity waiting for clearance to dock his truck to inform me that I should apologize to my mother for a little tiff we had on Wednesday. He didn’t really seem to know the details, but that could have been because right when he called, he was cleared to dock, so he needed to make things brief.

“I know you were right about some things,” he said, but then quickly corrected that, “or, at least, you think you were, but your mom was more-than-average upset, so you should at least think about apologizing.”

“I will,” I said, neglecting to tell him that I already had but decided not to because, for once in my life, I didn’t actually do anything wrong. My mother is the one who brought this on herself. She got herself upset to begin with, and then she pissed me off, so I shouted several things at her, and that made her more upset. But I had the right, I think.

Plus, it was a pretty mild argument. However, the topic is somewhat of a hot-button issue in our household. The frequent reader of my blog will remember that recently, I brought up the issue of moving out, and my mother didn’t take it well and rather quickly convinced me that it’s a bad idea. I dropped the subject, but the next morning, my mother quickly re-opened the subject.

“Why do you really want to move out?” she asked me about half an hour before she got home from work. “You brought it up at 10:30 last night, and I had trouble sleeping. I want to know.”

“Uh…” I explained.

“You just want to stay out all night,” she asserted. This again. She had said the exact same thing last night, and it wasn’t right, then, either. I told her as much, but she just doesn’t believe me. This is the great irony of my mother: she basically makes stuff up to compensate for the fact that I don’t tell her all that much about my personal life (although I tell her a hell of a lot more than most of my friends tell their parents), and then when I finally tell her the truth, she refuses to believe it because it’s not nearly as convincing or nefarious as her fictitious perspective.

“No, I don’t, Mom,” I said. “I’ve never really been a late-night person. However, on the rare occasions when I do stay out late, it would be nice to have that luxury and not have anybody to answer to. But I don’t plan on moving out simply so I can become a night owl.”

“Oh,” she said, and I think she almost believed me because she quickly moved on to her next guess. “So, then, what? You want a place you can bring girls back to?”

Was she even listening to me last night? We’ve been through this. Of course, last night, I had told her “no,” which wasn’t exactly true. But that isn’t one of the major factors in me moving.

So, I decided to be a little more honest, and I said, “Yeah, that would be nice, but most of the girls I’ve been out with have their own places to begin with, so it’s not really a huge deal, especially since I almost never get invited back to their places to begin with.”

Okay, maybe that was a little too honest. But since I pointed out it wasn’t a major factor, that left one thing:

“So you’re moving because of Lucy.” Not a question, but a statement of fact.

“I don’t want this to turn into a thing about Lucy, Mom,” I said, “because it’s really just not.”

“I just don’t like her,” she explained.

“I’m more than aware of that. But she has nothing to do with it. She doesn’t even know I’ve been thinking about it.” This was a somewhat large, but not unconvincing, lie. Lucy has known I’ve wanted to move ever since I first got the idea in my head. In fact, for awhile when she was planning to go to UIC, we were looking for a place to live together. Of course, I didn’t have any money back then, either, so it sort of fell through.

Additionally, any time I ever bring up anything about my parents ever, the advice Lucy gives me is to move out. She’s right, for the most part. Moving out would solve the overwhelming majority of my home-life problems, and if I can just convince my mom that I’m not 13, it probably wouldn’t create any new ones.

But my mother never knew any of that. I never told her about Lucy’s recommendations for me to move out or about our tentative plans to move out. As far as my mom knew, the first I’d ever thought about moving out was last weekend.

“I know she has a part of this,” my mom said. Now you know where I get my paranoia. Of course, if I wasn’t such a liar, she probably wouldn’t have any reason to be paranoid, and I probably wouldn’t assume everyone else is lying all the time.

“She has no part. At all.”

“But you want to get an apartment so you can take her there,” my mother said. Jesus, trotting out one of the classics. For about six months, more than a year ago, my mother insisted — and told nearly everyone in our immediate and extended family — that Lucy and I were sleeping together. This was not accurate at all.

Ironically, when I was dating The Ex, she never thought we slept together at all, despite the fact that I stayed over at her apartment every other night for about two straight months. My mom picks her insane thoughts completely at random, so Lucy and I were sleeping together every Friday night when, in fact, we were going to the movies and having dinner, but while The Ex and I were sleeping together, we were actually just sleeping, and I was crashing to avoid the hellish commute every day.

What the fuck? Lucy was right: she’s gone off the deep end, and she’s taking the rest of us down with her.

“Okay, Mom,” I said, “this is not going to turn into an argument about Lucy, but you do have to realize that she is my friend, so if I do get an apartment, chances are she may — gasp! — come over once in awhile. And possibly crash for the night, without sexy shenanigans of any kind. It would be nice to have a place where I can actually go where Lucy is welcome, where we can just hang out. We never get to just hang out, because she hates being at home and she is banned from this house.”

“She’s banned from this house because she doesn’t like your father or I,” she said, “and she treats you like shit.”

“She doesn’t know you guys. You know how you were just saying that you don’t hate Lucy, because you don’t even know her? Is it at all surprising that she says the exact same thing about you guys? And as for treating me like shit, she doesn’t. You don’t know how she treats me, one way or the other. You know why? Because I don’t tell you. I do sometimes vent, when I need to, on one of the rare occasions she has treated me like shit, or been completely thoughtless and self-centered, but that doesn’t happen nearly as often as you’d like it to.” My voice was steadily increasing in volume and fervor. She had hit the sweet spot, and this had just become an argument about Lucy. It had nothing to do with moving.

“See,” she said.

“See what?” I asked.

“She’s trying to drive a wedge between us, just like I said she would.” My mother had donned a superiority complex, very impressed with her absolutely correctness on the subject.

“You are wrong,” I said. “You’re driving a wedge between us, and you’re using her as the excuse.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Every time I go out with her, you get pissed off,” I said. “It’s completely unnecessary.”

“The only time I get pissed out is when you come home late,” she said.

“Then why is it that every time I even mention her name, the entire atmosphere of the room gets very tense?”

No answer.

“And why didn’t you give a shit when I came home late twice from Gina’s house? Why didn’t you care that one of those times I was pretty stoned while driving on the Interstate at 1:30 in the morning? And yet, the only time you got really mad and bitched was the night I came home with Lucy after getting pulled over? That was the only time I wasn’t late just for the sake of being late. It was beyond my control.”

“Because she’s just going to break your heart again,” my mother said.

“What the fuck are you even talking about?” I asked. “When did she break my heart?”

“Right before she left for Iowa,” she said, “you came home, and you were so angry and upset because she said such awful things about you.”

“You’re goddamn right I was angry and upset, but I wasn’t heartbroken,” I said. “And what’s more, it’s not like I didn’t have it coming. And it’s not like what she said was wrong. It’s not like she was just saying it to be a bitch — she was retaliating against me treating her like shit for nearly a month, and I was doing that solely because I didn’t want her to leave. I fucked that up, not her. And whether you want to admit it or not, everything she said was spot-on right. I’ve accepted that, and that’s why I’ve forgiven her. I was never really mad at her, except for being right.”

My mother had nothing to say at this point.

“So she’s my friend,” I continued. “She’s going to stay my friend. You don’t have to like her, you don’t have to see her, you don’t even have to know she exists. She doesn’t call the house anymore because she’s afraid of what she’ll say to you on the off-chance you answer.

“I’m not going to lie to you and sneak around with her behind your back, like Tracey used to, because I’m 21 fucking years old. I think I can handle picking my own friends.”

“She’s just going to hurt you again,” my mother said.

“So what if she does? Then, I learn my lesson the hard way, and I’ve made yet another in a long string of mistakes with my friends. But, you know what, it’s my mistake to make. All I want you to do is just treat her with respect. Or pretend to. Or pretend she doesn’t exist. Or pretend she’s a different person — The Ex or Gina or someone else you like. I’m not going to give her up just because you don’t like her. I’m not in second grade; you don’t pick my friends anymore.”

This is stuff that has been pent-up for a long time, and bear in mind this is not a verbatim transcript — I am not nearly that verbose. I’m basically literalizing the subtext in an attempt to let you know what all the real issues are, the ones that don’t need to be spoken. Overall, though, this is a pretty fair representation.

At any rate, I concluded by saying that was all I was going to say about Lucy, for now and forever. I was through trying to defend Lucy’s words and actions to someone who doesn’t even know her, so now my parents will know nothing except when we go out together. That’s it.

And, as for the apartment, the subject was already closed in my mind. I am going to make The Movie™, or at least a movie, and not get an apartment. Who cares if I have a shitty senior year? I’ve had a shitty freshman, sophomore, and junior year. Why stop the fun now?

So, we left it like that, clinging in the air. Things were tense all day, so I got out of the house and went to go help Lucy clean up her room. Or, more accurately, I watched her clean her room while having fairly detailed sexual fantasies. When I got home, things were still tense, and to my knowledge, she never filled my dad in on things.

Things were still pretty tense yesterday, but they sort of ebbed away and she stopped giving me the silent treatment. I guess she thought I was mad at her, which upset her, and I was mad for a little while, but as soon as I got everything out of my system, I was fine. Still, she was upset, but things seem a little better now.

And I am not apologizing.

Posted by Stan on August 22, 2003 12:16 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Family: The Horror…

Friday Five (17)

Friday Five

1. When was the last time you laughed?
   Yesterday was the last time I had a big laugh. Gina made a funny. It’s a private joke, though, so there’s no purpose in relaying it here.

Otherwise, I’m easily amused, so I laugh — out loud — constantly while I watch television.

2. Who was the last person you had an argument with?
   My mother. Ugh.
3. Who was the last person you emailed?
   My sister.
4. When was the last time you bathed?
   Yesterday morning.
5. What was the last thing you ate?
   Rice Krispies.

Posted by Stan on August 22, 2003 7:31 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friday Five/Albums of the Week

August 21, 2003

Flashback Thursday!

I’ve decided, although I’ll probably forget almost immediately after writing this entry, that I will devote my primary entry on Thursdays to “flashbacks,” stories that happened before I got my blog, or stories that I just never bothered to blog about for one reason or another.

So, here it goes…

I used to work at Starbucks. Maybe you’ve heard of it. To be quite honest, even though the Starbucks Coffee Company seems like a completely horrible, soul-sucking corporate venture, it’s the best job I’ve ever had. I’ve actually spent more than a few days this summer contemplating going down to the branch I used to work at and begging for them to re-hire me.

That’s neither here nor there. The point is, I used to work there. Mostly on the weekends, and the trick (and probably the reason why I liked it so much) was that we worked at a branch in the middle of our town’s industrial park. Hence, nobody is ever around during the evenings and weekends when I worked. Weekday mornings, however, are insane. They’re actually a big part of the reason I quit; on the rare occasions I had to work a weekday morning, followed by going to class, I was prepared to slit my wrists.

This isn’t a story about that, though.

This is a story about a Sunday afternoon, when I had a pretty long shift. I was working with Laurie, who was pretty much a housewife who worked at Starbucks because she was bored (both of her kids were in college). She was the shift manager, and it was just the two of us on duty. On weekends, we never need more than two people on at a time.

Around 2 or 3, we had a sudden and enormous influx of people. I’m not sure the specifics, but it was pretty clear that a soccer game or some other sporting event had let out. The soccer dads, cell phones in hand, rude kids demanding hot chocolates in tow, were swarming. Soccer dads aren’t bad — their orders are usually pretty simple. Sometimes, though, they’ll throw you a curve ball: “Yeah, tall hot chocolate and a no-foam soy grande latté with three shots of espresso and a shot of Irish crème.” Once you translate that, in the proper order, it takes you approximately eight decades to produce such an irritating drink. And, after all that, it probably tastes like ass. Come on, soy and Irish crème?

The soccer dads were followed immediately by a group of teenage cheerleaders, who were either cheering at the kids’ soccer game for some reason or had just been released from a practice of their own. Teenage cheerleaders order nothing but Frappuccinos. Trust me. Nothing wrong with Frappuccinos — they’re actually the only drinks Starbucks makes that don’t make me want to cut out my tongue so as to prevent me from ever tasting anything again.

The problem with Frappuccinos is they take a loooong time to make. You have to mix everything meticulously, then you have to blend it, then you have to pour it, and then (usually) add whipped cream and a topping of some sort. They aren’t difficult, mind you; they’re just very time-consuming.

So, here we are, with this mega-line, and Laurie is trying her best to keep up with it. What am I doing? I’ve just been assigned to take care of The Worst Customer in the Entire History of the Known and Possibly Also the Unknown Universe™.

What’s so wrong with this woman? Considering it’s the entire reason I am telling this story, I suppose I may as well tell you.

Initially, she asked for two drinks (she was with another woman, who seemed incredibly embarrassed the entire time): a tall mocha Frappuccino and a grande caramel Frappuccino. Not complicated. Pretty simple, in fact. So, I went and made them quickly and then presented them to Evil Monster Lady of Pain.

Pleasant Lady took her caramel Frappuccino and started sucking it down like it was an 8-ball. Monster Lady looked at her mocha Frappuccino like I had taken a shit in it (which, being a mocha Frappuccino, probably wouldn’t be too far off the mark as far as suspicions go).

“Where’s the whipped cream?” she demanded.

“Mocha Fraps don’t come with whipped cream unless you ask for them,” I responded.

“But aren’t there supposed to be chocolate sprinkles on top?” she asked innocently.

“I —” I was about to scold her when I realized she had probably intended to order a Chocolate Brownie Frap. I suggested maybe that was what she wanted.

“That was what I ordered,” she said.

The customer is always right. “Of course you did,” I said. “My mistake.”

She glared at me. Suddenly, I was the enemy, despite the fact that she and I both knew very well that it was her mistake.

So, I went and made another Frappuccino. I tried not to trip over Laurie, who was huddled underneath the counter, cradling a box of soy milk and muttering something in a Slavic-sounding language. She was not dealing well with the influx of customers; I was taking my time. I was still new, so it wasn’t about speed: it was about satisfaction.

When I had finished making her second Frappuccino, the lady asked, “Why does it look so…brown?”

“Because of all the coffee and chocolate in it,” I explained.

“I thought it was supposed to be white,” she said.

“Only our crème Fraps are white,” I said. “Those are milk-based; the one you ordered is coffee-based.”

“Oh,” she said disappointedly. I realized at this point that what she seemed to want was a chocolate crème Frappuccino, but she wasn’t making me do it over again, and I certainly wasn’t offering.

“Okay,” I said and gave her the total on the register. When I looked up after reading from the total, I realized that she was gone. Not out of the store; she was no thief. She just has the attention-span of a gnat, so she had wandered off to one of the shelves and was searching for some sort of horrible-tasting candy that we sold.

I looked at Pleasant Lady, who shrugged and gave me a sheepish look.

Eventually, Monster Lady came back with a couple of chocolate-covered graham crackers.

“I want these,” she said, “and a lemon bar.”

“Oh…kay,” I said and looked over at Laurie’s station. The line was stretching almost to the door. Nobody dared get into my line. Somehow, they knew.

I added the chocolate-covered graham crackers and the lemon bars, and I swear she bought some other crap, but I don’t remember what. The total was 20-something dollars.

Monster Lady handed me a Starbucks card. Cool, easy transaction — I wouldn’t even have to wait for the computer to call up the credit card company for approval.

And then the computer vomited out a receipt and gave me a message: “Insufficient funds.”

The receipt said there was a total of $1.87 on the card.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said, “this card doesn’t have enough on it.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “I must have given you the wrong one. Here.”

She handed me yet another Starbucks card, identical to the first, and I ran it through. Again, insufficient funds. This one had $5.32 on it.

“I thought that had more on it,” Monster Lady explained and handed me yet another Starbucks card, which had $4.12 on it.

And she kept going. I had a total of six cards, which maxed out the available slots for payment type in the computer, and she was still coming up short. One of them had as low as 37 cents on it.

Meanwhile, Laurie was tearing her hair out trying to make Frappuccinos, lattés, and take people’s orders. Man, this was not going well. I needed to finish with this lady so I could help Laurie out.

Now, the magically crappy part about the Starbucks’ computer is that it won’t compute the amount that’s on a card if you run it through. It simply says, “Insufficient funds,” gives you a receipt with the amount the card has on it, and you have to manually program it to put in the amount you want.

Bear in mind that I’m an idiot, so I sort of lost track of the cards after awhile. Monster Lady kept insisting, or at least kept misleading me into believing, that there was one magical card that had at least $25, so I wasn’t being careful about placing the receipts with each card.

So, when it became abundantly clear that she ran out of Starbucks cards, I had to use all of them to try and reach the total, which meant I had to run them all through again, so I knew which card had which amount, so I could program that amount into the computer, so I could finish the transaction and possibly follow this woman out to her car with a cricket bat.

I ran them all through, and then I ran them through again and programmed the amount they needed, and we were a little over a dollar short.

So, Monster Lady says, “No problem.” She reaches into her magical purse again, and I assumed there would yet another Starbucks card.

Instead, she hands me a $20 bill. Cash.

Instead of jumping over the counter and murdering her like any self-respecting U.S. citizen would have, I maintained composure. After all, I work for Starbucks. It is very difficult to Build the Third Place™ when you are Murdering Customers™. I entered that the remaining amount would be paid in cash. And then the computer took a shit all over me, saying that I had exceeded the amount of payment types. Not only did it explain this, it also canceled the transaction.

“LAURIE!” I shouted at an inappropriate volume, causing Monster Lady to flinch.

“What?” Laurie gasped. She was out of breath from her current acrobatics, and she had barely made a dent in the line, which was only getting longer.

At that point, the phone rang.

“SHIT!” Laurie and I agreed.

“Do you want to get it, or shall I?” I asked Laurie. She gave me that woman look that I’ve mentioned on this blog before. It’s usually reserved for significant others, but I find myself getting it from women who bare no significant relationship to me at all. This should probably be telling me something.

“Excuse me a minute,” I said to Monster Lady and answered the phone.

It was a fellow co-worker, the one who would be relieving my shift in less than half an hour.

“I’m running late,” she explained, “so I’ll probably be in around 3:30.”

“Great!” I said and hung up on her.

“We need more whole milk!” Laurie shouted at me.

I looked from the phone to Monster Lady to the register to Pleasant Lady to Laurie. “I’ll get it!”

I ran into the back and sobbed quietly under the guise of getting more whole milk. Laurie ran back, too. Apparently, not only did we need whole milk, we needed a brief commiseration session.

I sort of ruined the fun of that when she asked, “Who called?”

“Oh, it was R.C.,” I said. “She’s going to be a little late.”

Laurie almost shit herself. Instead, she beat her head against the freezer door in frustration. “Fuck!” she explained. It was the first time I’d heard her use that particular word.

We both returned to the counter, heads hanging, and I said to Monster Lady, “Listen, we’ve got too many pay types. We can only do six, and you have seven.”

Monster Lady huffed noisily and said, “Fine. I already gave you a $20. Just take the rest off the card.”

“You mean the cards?” I sniped.

Monster Lady then gave me The Look. Twice in one day — damn, I’m good.

“Fine,” I said, and I ran one of the cards and did the rest in cash.

She was about to leave when she said, “Oh, I also wanted a blueberry scone.”

“What?” I said, my face falling.

“I said that earlier,” Monster Lady said incredulously.

“No, you didn’t,” I said.

Monster Lady was stunned. She looked over at Pleasant Lady. “He’s right, you didn’t.”

Way to go, Pleasant Lady. I was going to ask her for her number. Instead, I rang up the scone and gave it to her. She paid using one of the larger cards, thank the Lord. And then she left, which was the happiest moment of that day.

With Monster Lady vanquished and the kingdom saved, I worked the bar for Laurie and we got the entire pack of people out in less than five minutes. Hooray for unity!

But Monster Lady’s still out there…somewhere…

She’s the reason why I’m never working in retail again.

Posted by Stan on August 21, 2003 5:20 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (1)  | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace

August 20, 2003

The Movie™

Last night, I thought it would be a good idea to pitch the “Golly, I should move out” concept to my mother. That was probably the worst idea I’ve had this week, and I’ve had a whole lot of bad ideas this week.

I started by listing a couple of the decent apartments I had found, and the cost, and how it could be affordable by avoiding simple things like eating or having electricity.

The first question she asked: “You’re not just doing this because Lucy wants you to?”

“Uh…” I responded succinctly. The truth is, Lucy has suggested that I move out more than once over the past few weeks, and while that has made me think about it more than usual, she wasn’t really a deciding factor.

The next question my mom asked was, “You don’t just want someplace you can take girls back to?”

Because I’m a big ladies’ man, right? And, Jesus, when I was dating someone, I was practically living at her place, so it’s not like I need some sort of love den. My mother is illogical and not very smart a lot of the times. Now you know where I get it from.

I decided to outline the few non-sexual reasons why I want to move out:

1. I have actually made a decent core of friends over the past few semesters, and it would be pleasant if I could be generally closer to them.
2. It would also be nice to be able to spend my senior year (the first of three) actually socializing with humans who don’t end up throwing stuff at me.
3. I will be gainfully employed by Columbia College in Chicago’s beautiful South Loop, and I’d like to be closer if I’m going to have a job there and go to school.
4. I need what I referred to as “alone time,” which was a polite way of saying, “Christ, you guys bug me. I need to get out.”

Of course, my mother was personally offended by all three reasons, so maybe I should have just agreed that, yeah, I want a pleasure palace nestled inside a saltine-box-sized apartment.

I said, really, it wouldn’t be that much money, and I’d be on a work-study, which will shovel $5700 into my bank account every year (and that’s excluding the small stipend they give us every two weeks), so whatever I have left after expenses can go back to my tuition.

Despite my lengthy explanation of the cost-effectiveness of this arrangement, my mother said, “It’s an awful lot of money to ask your grandparents’ for.”

“I know,” I said, “but it doesn’t hurt to ask. I mean, if they say no, they say no, but what’s the harm in asking?”

“It’s a lot of money,” she repeated. “You should think long and hard about this before you ask them.”

As if I hadn’t been thinking long and hard about this since my sophomore year.

“And what if you have to take summer school next year? And what about that L.A. thing? How much does that cost?”

She was bringing out the big guns, but my mother is foolishly insistent that I will, in fact, be graduating in four years, or if not, I’ll finish in the summer. This is patently untrue, and I’ve told her on many occasions that I’ll at least have to stick around until the fall, if not for another full year. Of course, that’d be as a part-time student. There’s a certain linear pattern one must follow, so I’ll be finished with everything this year except for the last few screenwriting classes I’ll need, none of which are offered in the summer.

I tried to counter her without specifically addressing the fact that, on top of blowing an enormous amount of money next year, I’ll probably need similarly exorbitant emounts next year, as well. The possible summer semester and the L.A. semester are nothing in comparison to another full year of part-time tuition, apartment rent, etc.

So, I said, “Well, hopefully I can talk to an adviser and take the classes I need to concurrently instead of having to do prerequisites.” This actually was something I was going to do in the fall, when the advisers return, because I don’t want to stick around for another year any more than the Columbia faculty wants me to. I think the chances of getting approval for this are mildly slim, but you never know. I could get lucky.

“Plus,” I said, “the summer in L.A. isn’t that expensive, and they’ll put me to work out there, so I could probably pay them back for it, if I need to. Cheaper than student loans.” That’s an old ploy — begging for money that I insist I will, at some point, pay back. I’m always refused, which is why I do it. I’m not evil so much as a grifter.

My mother made that special Mom noise that only they can make. That sort of irritated Marge Simpson “Hrm” kind of noise. Then, she reiterated, “It’s an awful lot of money.”

I rolled my eyes and said, again, “I know.”

I really had nothing left to say about it. I don’t really need to get her permission or approval, since she’s not really the one paying for it. I just wanted to tell her so that my parents will be adequately prepared and unsurprised when, in mid-fall, I announce, “Golly, I’m moving out,” and then take all my stuff and go.

I was going to go to bed when she brought out the final big gun. Actually, it was more a cannon of doom that shot an explosion of “you’ll stay at home until you’re 50” at me.

She said, “What about your movie?”

Oh, shit. My movie. No, not my movie. The Movie™. The one I begged my grandparents, who if I haven’t mentioned are fairly wealthy and have nothing to spend it on but cat food, to finance. The one that, as yet, I haven’t even remotely made. I took four shots last spring that were far too blue because I was too thoughtless to change the white balance. That’s all.

The fact is, I didn’t not make this movie because of some grand desire to bilk my grandparents out of money so I could own a DV cam and a new computer for editing. I actually was intending to make a movie that summer. I had a script, I had locations, I had props, I had actors.

And then everything fell apart. I spent most of the time almost getting screwed on eBay (note: when you are actually doing something remotely important, pay the extra money to buy from an actual store; do not use eBay), and then my lead actress dropped out for reasons I never figured out, and by that point I was so frustrated with the horrible script and so preoccupied with a new idea that I abandoned that film.

Full thrusters ahead, I worked on this second idea. I have everything meticulously prepared. All the shots, all the storyboards, overhead shots with cinematographic information that is probably outdated because I didn’t know anything legitimate about lighting (I still don’t, but I was going to force Gina to photograph it for me), and I had pestered enough friends to act in it that I had a rag-tag but at least unquitting cast.

The only thing I didn’t have was money. I’ve spent buckets full of money getting things that I need, bit by bit, slowly but surely, but it’s not nearly enough. When my mother brought up The Movie™, and the fact that I shouldn’t ask to live in an apartment when I haven’t done anything with it, I realized that all the money I’d be getting for my work-study could be used to finance this film.

I mean, that’s over $5000, which is more than enough to cover everything, since I have all the equipment and a great deal of the props.

Of course, the other problem is that I started this whole “ohmigod i should make a movie!” thing back when I was stupidly optimistic, and I really thought I can do it, or I wanted to do it. Now that I’ve gotten my feet wet with production classes, I realize it’s not really for me. But, hey, I may as well. Everybody keeps saying I sell myself short and that I’m a lot better than I think I am, so I think it’s about time I get off my ass and prove them wrong.

With that said, instead of moving out — which I still desperately need to do, but I suppose I can wait at least another year — I guess I’m going to get the ball rolling on this film. As soon as my class is finished, I’ll start going back over all my pre-production plans and notes and so on, and then I’ll try to start coordinating everything with the actors, assuming any of them are still interested.

And so, here I am, with new resolve and an irritating mother. I will make a film.

I will finally make The Movie™.

Posted by Stan on August 20, 2003 9:41 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Family: The Horror…

August 19, 2003

Editing Fun

We took our final today. It was easy.

My film came back, and I spent all of today editing it. It looks great (well, not great, but every single shot came out and is usable, so I’m happy), and it should turn out pretty well. Yay for that. Jeff did a terrific job acting in it. He’s even funnier than I thought he was during the actual shooting.

Posted by Stan on August 19, 2003 8:31 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | School Rants

August 18, 2003

Moving

Sorry about the lack of posting lately. I actually do have a few posted nuggets stored up, but I’ve become completely anal and need to revise them, so I won’t be posting them until the end of the week. Since the next two weeks are destined to be boring as all get-out, I’ll dip into the StanFiles™, where I’m sure to find at least a couple of interesting stories I never bothered to blog about.

Right now, though, I’m here to talk about moving. Far, far away.

See, I’m often thinking about moving. I want to be off on my own, because I can’t do anything productive when there are other people around. Even on the rare occasions in which my mother isn’t nagging me, the mere fact that she or my father are in the house prevents me from getting anything done. And since my mom, seriously, leaves the house for roughly four hours each day, most of those in the early morning when I’m still trying to wake up, it doesn’t leave me much time to get any work done.

And it isn’t even just a writing thing. I mean, yeah, I hardly ever write anymore (except on this damn blog). Maybe once or twice a week, tops, and that’s being somewhat generous. I just don’t do it, and it’s because of all the distractions around here. These are distractions I wouldn’t have if I was just, for the love of God, living alone.

This doesn’t mean that I’m going to isolate myself from the rest of humanity — necessarily. I just want to be able to take a break for awhile in a Fortress of Solitude-like place. And I can’t do it here. Even when I hide in my bedroom, doors closed and locked, music cranked, my mother still comes and bugs me.

What it comes down to is that I just need to get out. But I don’t have any money. I found a few decent apartments, and if I swing low on the rent (i.e., live in a saltine box) and don’t eat, I can afford a place in a good neighborhood. I can eat if I live in a bad neighborhood, but that will be somewhat difficult to do with bullets and knives lodged in various, somewhat important parts of my body.

This leaves me one option: ask The Grandparents™. They have buckets full of unspent retirement money, and they certainly love helping out their grandson. However, I feel wrong asking them for $6100 — that’s how much it’d cost, per year, to live in the cheapest of three places I’ve found that are nice — solely because I’m sick of my parents, I want to have some “alone time” to work, and I want to have a somewhat active social life around my school’s campus.

But, hey, it doesn’t hurt to ask, I suppose.

Posted by Stan on August 18, 2003 4:51 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Family: The Horror…

August 16, 2003

The Party

I hate parties.

No, really, I do. I hate them a lot. I’ve been to many, many, many parties in my short, horrible existence, and I have never enjoyed any of them. Ever. They’re just not my thing. I don’t have fun at parties. It is not a good atmosphere for me.

So, if you’ll remember my recent lapse in judgment, I invited Lucy to attend this soirée with me. I was confused as to why I did it, and I was concerned as to what would happen, but now I’m incredibly glad I did. I don’t know why I was so worried.

She called me around 1:30 yesterday and told me there was a choral concert down in Grant Park. I dimly recalled this, because I had considered auditioning for that chorus since they pay actual money, but I didn’t have time this summer, so I didn’t. She wanted to go to the concert with her ex-boyfriend and wondered if I wanted to tag along, and then the two of us would go to the party afterward.

I did, and I didn’t. Mostly, I didn’t. I told her as much, so after several hours of arguing about whether or not we should go and all the various methods of transportation we could use to go to the concert, eat food, and go to a party without actually dying, she finally agreed that we were simply packing too much into the evening.

Instead of going to the concert, she and I went to check out this new Chinese place on Roosevelt, near Wabash (and my school). I’d heard it was good, and she wanted sushi, which I hate, so I figured general Asian cuisine was a nice compromise. It really was a fantastic restaurant, despite the fact that they gave us roughly five times as much food as we could actually eat. They will be receiving my business quite frequently. I will spend the next eight months living off crab rangoon and fried shrimp.

Afterward, we wandered around, trying to find a coffee place so that I’d actually be able to stay awake for this dismal gathering. Lucy was frightened and dismayed by the South Loop after dark, so we took the train up to the party apartment, which is in Lake View. The closest thing to a coffee shop we could find, other than a trendy and obscenely crowded café, was a Burger King.

The Burger King was nearly deserted, but that didn’t stop me from waiting 20 minutes in line. Either the guy running the register was a trainee, or he was really fucking stupid and incompetent. Maybe both. And all I wanted was a coffee. Several times, I contemplated just throwing a dollar at his face, grabbing a cup (they were stacked right next to the counter), and getting my own coffee. But I’m too nice.

After that, Lucy decided it’d be a good idea to pick up a six-pack of beer, so she wouldn’t be mooching off our hostess. Plus, she wasn’t sure what the hostess would have, since I don’t drink and therefore don’t give a shit and didn’t ask (I didn’t think, at the time I found out about the party, that I’d be going with anybody who did drink; I wasn’t simply being a dick).

She doesn’t like walking, and it turned out there weren’t any actual places that sold liquor, not even the White Hen Pantry. We decided to risk her spending a night not drinking and went to the party, which was difficult for her, I know. For those of you who don’t know me personally, be aware that it is quite difficult to spend more than an hour with me without hitting the bottle at some point.

So, we went to the party. We actually got lost because I am mildly dyslexic, and I was under the impression that the party was located somewhere within Graceland Cemetery. I called the hostess to clarify the address and realized it was actually two blocks west, in a non-mausoleum apartment. Then, Lucy made fun of me. I deserved it.

The hostess’s apartment was enormous and beautiful. And surprisingly inexpensive. She is also extremely attractive, and like most attractive women, she was pleasant for awhile because I actually showed up, but then she decided to ignore me. People started to show up, but none of them were from my class. I had been given the impression that this was sort of a class affair, to blow off steam as the semester winds down. Apparently, that impression was false.

Lucy talked it up with the party guests for awhile, and I sat around and contemplated existence. I don’t really like wasting the time talking to people I don’t know and will never see again. Some people consider that antisocial or some form of relationship sabotage. Lucy is among them, and she got sort of frustrated with my impenetrable reluctance to have a good time. She apologized for me when two attractive women, on two separate and remarkable occasions, attempted to flirt with me.

We stayed for about an hour and a half. I wanted to leave after an hour, but Lucy slapped me around for awhile, and then Fellow showed up. His presence didn’t really liven up the party, but he was the only person from class to show up. We chatted for awhile about movies, and I did get confirmation that he was, in fact, the guy who commented that he had no ambition to be a director. He also seemed like Lucy a bit. So, that was good.

We left around midnight, and Fellow went with us. He actually shaved off more than an hour from our commute by insisting we take the bus. I don’t ordinarily take the bus, because I’ve heard horror stories about it, but he essentially said, “You’re with a big black guy — who’s gonna fuck with you?” I couldn’t argue with that logic, so we took the bus straight down Irving Park to the Blue Line stop, which is only about 15 minutes away from Cumberland. All told, our two-hour commute dropped to about 45 minutes.

On the train, somebody who was either insane or on some sort of fun drug (my vote is the latter) decided it would be fun to crush a grasshopper in his fingers and then kiss it. Lucy and I found this amusingly terrifying.

Driving home, after the train ride, I expressed my disappointment with the party, especially since nobody from class showed up other than Fellow. I went to this shindig because I felt obliged, but there really was no point. Lucy implied that I am an idiot, and then politely informed me that if I just got liquored up, I’d have fun at parties. This, I feel, is a lie, but she explained that I’ll never know until I try it.

“That is true, but I don’t drink,” I explained, “so that won’t really ever be an issue.”

“You don’t drink,” she said, trying to catch me in some sort of moral hypocrisy, “but you’ll smoke weed.”

“Yeah,” I replied, politely.

“Why?” she asked. Lucy is genuinely confused by this, despite the fact that I’ve explained to her on more than one occasion why, specifically, I don’t drink.

“Because,” I explained, suddenly doing my best impression of Toby Ziegler, “I don’t have a genetic predisposition to become horribly addicted to weed and waste most of my adult life trying to recover.”

“Touché” is what she probably would have said if I hadn’t turned into such a dick at that moment. Instead, she was silent. I wondered what her eventually response would have been. I never really found out.

As I slid through the intersection at Mannheim Road, the car behind me suddenly started flashing blue and red, very brightly. Oh, Christ. A cop. And he intended to pull me over. I could tell because I was the only car on the road.

I believe my exact assessment of the situation at that point was, “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, WHAT ELSE CAN GO WRONG?” Lucy, who is the only person on the planet who has the miraculous ability to calm me down almost instantly merely by existing (which is no small feat, being that minor dirt smudges on my kitchen counter make that forehead vein bulge and pulsate and turn red before exploding and spurting precious blood all over the place), simply said, “Don’t worry.”

I have no idea why that worked. It’s just her. Suddenly, everything was cool. I got out my license as the officer approached, and I had her go through my glove compartment to find my proof of insurance. Fortunately, my mother raised me to be polite, so I addressed the officer as “sir,” apologized profusely, and insisted that I had just checked my speedometer, and it said I was going 45, not 52. That is actually true; I’ve thought for awhile that my speedometer is a tad off, and I suppose this confirms my suspicion.

The officer asked me, “Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

After having coffee and six glasses of water, my first instinct was to say, “Dude, I really gotta pee,” but I actually said, “It’s just late, and I wanted to get home.”

“Okay, wait here for a minute,” he muttered, and then he did that cop thing, where he disappears to his car for approximately 785 years.

Meanwhile, I started freaking out again. I was going to get another ticket, and I’d have to go to traffic school, and I can’t afford to pay for a ticket because I keep wasting my money on bullshit crap, and so on, and Lucy put her hand on my arm and said, “Stop being retarded.” Damn, she’s good.

The officer returned and handed me my license and said, “Okay, Stanley, you can go, but you’ll want to slow down a bit.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. “Thank you, sir.”

Suddenly, I was elated, but I was still freaking out about what could have been. I don’t know why I do that. The guy let me off with a warning, and all I really had to do was just drive the speed limit, if not five under to compensate for what I think is a faulty speedometer, and nobody else would pull me over.

I don’t know why I was so freaked out, but Lucy was able to calm me down pretty quickly. She simply caressed my arm and then squeezed my inner thigh. This is a surprisingly effective calming agent.

We drove home, and with the perspective that always comes with being sexually aroused, I started to develop my sense of humor about the whole thing. We sort of replayed the entire pulling-over incident as I finished the drive to her house, making fun of my reactions and everything that was going through our heads.

When I dropped her off, I stopped inside for a few minutes so I could urinate. When I was finished, and I went back into her kitchen to leave, she was standing in the doorway to her TV room, just sort of standing. I stopped and just stood there, staring at her, suddenly filled with the animal lust that I am ordinarily able to keep at bay. I wanted to simply grab her, throw her on the kitchen table, and take her right there.

I suspected this would be a bad decision, being that her parents were in the next room, not to mention the fact that she would have slit my throat at some point during what would most likely be a fumbled attempt at passion. I decided maybe it would be a good idea to stop being friends with attractive women. Either that, or I should just started satiating my needs with prostitutes.

I never used to be this obsessed with sex. Lucy attributed it to the fact that once you have it, you gotta have it all the time or you wither and die. I guess this is something else I can blame on my Ex. Maybe I should call her.

Clearly, Lucy had the same sexual feelings inside of her. My overlong stare was cut off when she cocked an eyebrow and summarized those feelings: “Get the hell out of here, I have to pee.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Sorry.”

I simply said goodnight and drove myself home. I realized that, even at the party, I hadn’t thought of Gina the entire night. I started to re-think the way I feel, or the way I think I feel, about her. I really have no idea anymore.

In summary, prostitutes.

Posted by Stan on August 16, 2003 2:04 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em

August 15, 2003

Friday Five (16)

Friday Five

1. How much time do you spend online each day?
   Too much. On a day when I’m pretty busy, I’ll still manage to squeeze in at least three hours or so. Not all at once, necessarily, but I’ll get it in there. On a not-so-busy day, it’d probably be double that, if not more. I desperately need a life..
2. What is your browser homepage set to?
   about:blank (w00t!).
3. Do you use any instant messaging programs? If so, which one(s)?
   I use AOL’s Instant Messenger. Every once in a blue moon, I’ll use MSN Messenger, though I hate it with a furious passion..
4. Where was your first webpage located?
   http://members.aol.com/lionhead/.
5. How long have you had your current website?
   It’s been awhile. Since February, I’d say, but I’m too lazy to double-check.

Posted by Stan on August 15, 2003 8:24 AM  | Permalink  | Comments (0)  | Friday Five/Albums of the Week

August 14, 2003

The Pussy

Regarding my current, whiny situation with Gina, I have been told many things by three people, but one sticks close to what I actually believe: “Stop being a pussy and make a move.” It makes sense. Either that, or I could continue being a pussy but at least shut the fuck up about it so as not to irritate or alienate my dear and gentle reader. But no, I decided that today was the day to make a move. Or, at least, to make the preamble to making a move, setting up a situation so that move-making will be in my favor.

The only problem: I made it on the wrong person.

I got down to the lab around 9:30, when it opened, and checked to see if my film had come back. It hadn’t, so I flirted with the blonde in the lab for awhile before wandering around to steal donuts from the orientation spread. I called Gina, who had just gotten out of the shower and informed me that her alarm was set for PM instead of AM, so she wouldn’t be down until around noon.

Damn.

So, I called Lucy, who I knew wouldn’t be awake in any sense of the word, and left a message indicating that (1) my film wasn’t back yet and (2) I was not bound to any set class schedule, so if she wanted to go out, that’d be cool. I walked to the bookstore down the street and wasted some money on a Hubert Selby Jr. novel. He was recommended to me by my Fiction Writing professor, but the writing style still makes me want to die. The book is decent, if you can get around his style choices (I am trying to). I can see why it appealed to her, though.

Eventually, Pothead showed up and told me she was going to be editing. She was looking even more super-hot than usual, and I was about to wipe the drool off my chin and follow her when I ran into my professor in the hall.

“Hey, Stan, what up?” he said. Seriously, he talks like that. He does the same blatant white-man-trying-to-act-black schtick that I’ve done since high school. I think that’s why he throws around words like “genius” and “brilliant” when he grades my bullshit projects.

“Nothing,” I said sheepishly. I explained that I was waiting for Gina, who at that point was supposed to arrive at any moment (I stopped caring when I saw Pothead, however — I am a horrible monster), and my film hadn’t come back yet, so I wasn’t editing.

“Oh,” he said, half-caring. He was pretending for the sake of the fact that he likes me. He didn’t really care, though, and I have a tendency to ramble (obviously), so I think he got sort of bored when it took me seven minutes to explain what I just explained in one sentence. “Well, have fun.”

“Right,” I said, chuckling.

He kept going, but then stopped and whirled back around. “Hey,” he said, and immediately I knew that he had pretty much rehearsed this entire scene in his head. Maybe that was another reason why he didn’t care. His entire intent was to ask me the following question: “Remember when we did those comment cards?”

No, really, he asked that question, and it does lead somewhere.

“Yeah,” I responded. About three weeks ago, he had us write, on a half-sheet of paper, basic comments regarding the course and what we have learned so far as film majors.

“You didn’t happen to write something about how this class has made you lose all motivation to become a filmmaker?” He paused, and I had nothing to say. “Did you?” he said with more urgency.

Still, I had no response. It sounded like something I would say on a bad day. I’m not really big on the production or directing aspects of making movies. I’ve always been a writer, pretty much. I don’t enjoy the controlled chaos, the responsibility, or the headaches that come with being a producer or director. I just want to write, get paid, and go back to bed.

I didn’t remember writing anything like that, though. I was pretty happy and caffeinated at the time we filled out those comments, so I think I probably mixed my usual blend of sarcastic hilarity with some genuine comments about the quality of my education.

I told him, “I don’t really remember what I wrote. It doesn’t really sound like something I’d write.”

“Oh,” he said, and his face sort of fell.

“I mean,” I decided to elaborate, “I’ve always been more of a writer type. I’ve always said that. I just happen to like writing dialogue a great deal, which made me want to write screenplays, which made me go to film school.” This is essentially true, although I find myself diving more and more back into fiction. I do love dialogue, and I love the way people speak, but I also like creating a completely artificial, imagined visual. You can’t tap the imagination with film like you can in books (actually, you can, you just don’t see it much, but that’s a whole other rant).

“Right,” my professor said, “I realize that.”

“I just don’t like production. I don’t like being in charge of everything. Maybe if I had an actual crew or something, or if I was actually good at it —”

“You shouldn’t sell yourself short like that,” he cut me off, the bastard. “You have much more talent than you give yourself credit for.”

That was a somewhat unexpected compliment, and I appreciated it. However, I am awful at articulating appreciation in words, so I said, “Hrm. Well, let’s see how my five-minute turns out.”

“Even if it turns out bad,” he said, neglecti