Monday, April 30, 2001
potluck tonight was nice. i surprised myself and made some damn good apple crisp stuff and some passable crawfish bread. i definitely have to refine that recipe, because all the crawfish migrated to the bottom of the bread. it was more bread than crawfish, less crawfish than bread... it was ok, but not jazzfest quality stuff. and then kate and i won a game of trival pursuit. charles and rod left early, so they could study, or sleep so they could study tomorrow. but they didn't. or at least charles didn't. he's having motivational issues with this studying thing. i know the feeling, and it makes me wonder what's going on in his head that's putting him off the books. because it's always something in my head, and i usually know what it is, if i think about it, and am willing to admit it to myself. that said, knowing it doesn't make the issue go away - it usually just makes you more frustrated that you're stuck in that situation. anyway, instead charles apparently went home and wrote an epic blog story. he a good writer. it a good story. it sad. otherwhere, i've updated - no, created anew, really - my photos page. i like it for now. it's simple. it's plain. it works. it pops up in a new window. it is better than what i had. i sleep now. Sunday, April 29, 2001
went to jazz fest yesterday, with ashley and jay and kate. i took pictures. the weather was amazing, the music was great, and the beer was expensive. i went with a whole list of what music i wanted to see on what stages, but we ended up just hanging out on a blanket people watching, and not even really caring who was playing... i think we heard los hombres calientes, the funky meters, and buckwheat zydeco, when all was said and done. we met this cool girl from new york whose name was jen martino, she's a radiologist, in town for a well timed radiology convention - and she hung out with us pretty much all day. then we went and crashed a barbeque at the cotton mill, where ashley lives, and I got a ride home from joanna. then i went to charles' house, watched some patton, and decided (largely at charles' urging, and with his financial assistance) to go and meet bebe at cafe brazil for freddy omar con su banda night. did that, and met bebe and her friends from boston ... long day. Friday, April 27, 2001
wow. two things happened today that have made me feel particularly inadequate, from a creative perspective - first, my may/june issue of communication arts arrived in the mail today, and just roughly paging through it put me in a mood - i mean, people just like me, all over the world, are creating amazing beauty and order and communicating ideas and emotions and for god's sake, what am i doing working for an itty-bitty damn telephone company? to say nothing of the whole law school/lawyer thing... the second volley in today's battle was my stumbling upon a network of blog sites - on a journey which began here - and i don't even remember how i got there, a google search or something... anyway, all of these sites are of fairly uniformly amazing design. good navigation, good color, great layouts, very clean & logical, some good dhtml tricks thrown in - nice stuff in general. and the all seem to two things in common - they show an interest in japanese 'bishoujo' manga, but of the darker sort - girl power stuff - and the computer game final fantasy 4 - which is not surprising in light of the fact that all of these webdesigners are girls age 13 -19. it's at the same time inspiring, and incredibly depressing.
i have a tendency to fall prey, in any situation in which i teach or show a friend how to do something, to the old adage of "student surpasses the master." I guess that speaks more to the qualities and talents of my friends than it reflects negatively on me, but there it is. today's case in point is charles' weblog, which i set up for him, but it looks like he's developing a better voice and style in three posts than i have in a month. as a matter of fact, i think i've been at this for almost exactly a month, as of this post. so i'm going to work on setting up my archive today... Wednesday, April 25, 2001
i've decided that it's better to be drunk, or even slightly hung over, and relaxed than it is to be tense, irritable, and/or verging on postal. ergo, today is a better day than yesterday, by any account... Sunday, April 22, 2001
i could live on purple marshmellow peeps alone. no doubt about it. Saturday, April 21, 2001
"there are some days that catch the light. days like diamonds." well there are some evenings that catch the twilight, and this seems to be one of those - just strange nights. for example, i just came from dinner at my grandfather's house - a topic which needs to be explored in more detail at some later date - and came away with 11 cans of guinness draught, and two avocados... and now i'm drinking wine with law students. and thinking that i'm very sad, not too deep under the surface. that also is a topic which needs to be explored more fully, but sooner than later. as a matter of fact, i meant to discuss it now, but well, i'm drinking wine. so it'll have to wait. Thursday, April 19, 2001
i need to stop making promises i can't keep - like " i'll tell you more about it tomorrow" - which i never seem to do. maybe one of these days i'll do a big catch-up post and write completions to all those entries. till then, we'll just ignore all the big gaps of several days, and all the cliffhanger stories... on another note, i saw "ghost in the shell" last weekend. good movie, i'm still captivated by motoko's voice. what a great character. great quotes. "overspecialize, and you breed in weakness." "... and what does the newborn do now? the net is vast and infinite..." i'd like to get my hands on the manga the movie was based on. though i don't have much experience with manga and anime, it's something i'm casually interested in. i've been keeping up with one manga called 'shadow star' - kind of a strange, cute, dark story - very simple yet very emotive art... Tuesday, April 17, 2001
about to go see billy joel and elton john in concert. i'll tell you about it when i get home... should be pretty awesome, despite elton john... now that was a concert. four hours plus of songs i knew every word to. except the elton john stuff, which was really pretty great anyway - and i did know the words to "levon", and i think everybody knows the words to the chorus of b-b-b-benny and the jets, and crocodile rock... but billy joel was unstoppable. he opened every song with some little new orleans-related tune - a little 'blueberry hill' here, 'house of the rising sun' there... he really played to the audience, and you could tell he was having a good time, and he played almost everything you'd expect... they traded songs, and occasionally just verses, a few times, and one thing i noticed was that when elton did a billy joel song, he used joel's intonation and phrasing, and sounded a lot like billy- but when billy took an elton song, he made it distinctly his own. elton looked ill the whole time, and was less of a performer in general. great show, all in all. oh, and in other music news - joey ramone is dead. moment of silence. _. Thursday, April 12, 2001
so i've come to the conclusion that new orleans isn't necessarily the best of all possible worlds. amazing, i've had friends telling me this for a long time - but all i really had to compare it with was memphis. i love new orleans, but in comparison to dc, it's just not much of a city. kind of a downer. i think i've known this, but willfully forgotten... Monday, April 09, 2001
ok, i'm back. and i'm tired, so i'm going to bed now. but i'll write more in the morning, once it's all had time to settle in. though i'd kind of rather write more now, while it's all vivid and new and still swirling around my head like... a hangover. no, that's just the hangover from this morning, refusing to be quelled even now... i just summed up the weekend to andrew, who is in town for a week - as "two drunken blurs separated by a museum." but really, there was much more to it. quite a good time, in some amazing places, with some great company - and over too soon. i'll elaborate tomorrow. i'm going to download these pictures from my camera, and get some rest. Saturday, April 07, 2001
right, i'm here in DC, in the middle of a 'party' that's not quite happening ye't. went to the national gallery today, and saw an exhibit on Alfred Steiglitz and his various gallery exhibitions... lots of Georgia O'Keefe, and Marsden Hartley, and Charles Demuth. Also liked Frances Picabia's 'mecanomorphic' portraits - they're like dada graphic design... and I really like Hartley's clouds . anyway, gotta go, since i'm tying up the phone lines at Charles' friend Julie's apartment. Julie, by the way, is very cool. anyway, reporting live from DC... Friday, April 06, 2001
tomorrow - er, ok, later today - i'm going to baltimore & dc, with charles. this should be interesting. i'm really not sure what i'll be doing there, but i plan on taking plenty of digital photos to document my journey. this marks the first time i'll have left nola significantly in four years ( i'm not counting several trips to destin, a couple to memphis, and one weekend in atlanta as significant.) but this will be significant. from what i understand, we'll be visiting charles' parents, hanging out with rick, who is meeting us there, and charles' sisters katie and christine, who are way too cool to really be his sisters - and who have every right to be really pissed at me for not putting pictures from mardi gras on the web yet - and going out on the town with various other schnurman cohorts and associates. maybe, just maybe, i'll even update this page from dc somewhere, just to say I can do it. at very least, it'll give me something to report - and i'm sure lots to write about - next week. till then, i'm sure i'll have the magnetic fields' cheerleader anthem "washington dc" on heavy rotation, - it's the only non-schoolhouse rocks song about our nations' great capital of which i'm aware. or something. here goes. Thursday, April 05, 2001
hmmm... i've been thinking about civil disobedience tonight, and where exactly one draws the line between civil disobedience and criminal mischief. it's an interesting concept, and i know that several activists - daniel berrigan, s.j., comes to mind - have a lot to say on the issue. but my thinking today was, what's "civil" about civil disobedience? after all, isn't it really criminal disobedience? criminal statutes are broken, the 'disobedient' are arrested and tried under criminal laws, not civil ones, in most cases... it seems that in common usage, 'civil' disobedience is really in reference to 'civility' in the sense that it's usually used - to signify nonviolent protest, passive resistance, etc... but passivity and nonviolence are really not inherent in civil disobedience, which is, i guess, part of what justifies radicals like the berrigans and the earthfirst tree-spiker types in the northeast. i've always been fascinated with liberation theology, and specifically the idea of praxis, which as i understand it is that if you see a wrong in the world, you are under an obligation to do what you can do to correct that wrong.(i could be totally off on that definition, it's been years since i read up on it...) taken to an extreme, this results in religous crazies offing abortion doctors. bad bad bad. but in the case of radical priests in central america toting machine guns and fighting alongside the rebels to resist unjust dictatorships that torture and 'disappear' dissidents at will, maybe there's a case for it. anyway, the point of all this is - getting back to my original thoughts today - that sometimes, in the spirit of righteousness, equity and general good karma, certain acts of mischief may be justifiable. and if that mischief isn't criminal, then it must be civil - and so, it would be, in a manner of speaking, a form of civil disobedience. see? Tuesday, April 03, 2001
well, this writing every day thing is tougher than i thought - witness the ominous silence of the last four days. saw the movie pollock this weekend, really enjoyed that. ed harris really got the neurotic intensity thing down cold - i've always been fascinated by stories of how pollock would paint, moving around the canvas in a trance... what struck me the most was the month that pollock spent contemplating - intimidated by- an immense mural canvas. i know the feeling - i've had a canvas streched for a few weeks myself, and have no idea where to go with it. and think of all my websites - or potential websites - are a sort of blank canvas, and they scare the hell out of me too. the fear of never living up to the potential, and never exploring all the possibilities - of that great white space - it's like agorophobia, it makes you want to retreat into something close and confined and rigid with boundaries. not quite as rigid as, say law work, but more like a good, cozy creative graphic design problem to solve. like, for example, an fun logo project for a group of your friends...
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