the gate to my condo complex's parking lot has developed a rather annoying squeak - if you can call that chill-inducing metal-on-metal sound a squeak - and since it's right outside the window of my computer room/study i keep hearing it as i sit here typing, whenever anyone gets home. not pleasant. i've begun to have a constant apprehension that someone else will come home soon and i'll be caught unsuspecting by that horrible fingernails-on-a-chalkboard noise, for the nth time tonight.

what else, as enforced study breaks this week, i've read two short books - well, a book and a comic book, i guess - the first was ann morrow lindberg's a gift from the sea which i can't say enough good things about. written from a middle-aged female perspective, i think it's applicable to everyone's life in one way or another - in it's ruminations and lessons on life in general, the progressions of our lives and relationships with others. i'm not usually into this sort of thing - it's like something my mom would read (and she will, since i got her a copy for her birthday this week) but it really got me thinking on several subjects. Lindbergh is at the same time idealistic and pragmatic, a rare combination. it's a very simple book, elegantly written and certainly of an earlier decade, but it is refreshing and thoughtful and hopeful. it's a small book about putting one's life in perspective. a welcome change, i think, from my usual media diet, which is generally darker and more cynical.

a good example of that usual diet is "ghost world", the daniel clowes comic book / graphic novel about two late teenage / early twenty-something grrls in the late nineties - their adventures, attitudes, and encounters with the freakishness of the world and in themselves. it's quite realistic in tone and dialogue and character, i've known several girls who fit the enid archetype - too-hip-for-thou, snide and artsy on the outside; insecure, gentle, smart and inquisitive on the inside. i found a lot i could identify with in enid, and her friendship with becky, as well. a good, 1-hour read. of course, storyline aside, it's worth getting just for the drawing. i've been an admirer from afar of scott clowes' work - he's an excellent artist and his characters - ugly or beautiful - are always hugely expressive of emotion, and are drawn with stong, confident lines. i like.

i also saw the movie "the anniversary party" tonight as a study break, and really enjoyed it incredibly. but i'm tired, so i guess my review of that will have to wait until my next break.

   7/19/2001 10:17:21 PM

Wednesday, July 18, 2001

ok... after several listens to the beta band album, i've formed a better opinion - i think it's fucking brilliant. in an understated, hushed-but-urgent, beta band sort of way. yes, the pink floyd influence i complained about before is there, but it's not overwhelming, and frankly, pink floyd was never this catchy. to me, at least. it's a fun album to listen to, but not distracting.

   7/18/2001 06:16:31 PM

yay! loobylu is back from hiatus! and better'n ever!

   7/18/2001 11:45:12 AM

Monday, July 16, 2001

back to the grind studying today, but i've been edgy and anxious all day, for no good reason. difficult to keep concentrating. it's been a fierce dance all day. argh.. on one study break i took a walk and got the new oxford american music issue and southern music cd sampler. it's good this year. of note: earl scruggs and billy bob thornton covering johnny' cash's "ring of fire" - and passably well, too. makes me curious enough to actually get his forthcoming album when it comes out. with the addition of that track, i've got two movie star / singers on my mp3player today; the other is kevin spacey singing "that old black magic" from the midnight in the garden of good and evil soundtrack. he's not bad either. much worse (horribly, horribly worse) is clint eastwood's take on johnny mercer's "ac-cent-chu-ate the positive" on the same disk.

i saw 'sexy beast' last night with amy. i did not like it, not a bit. it was plotless, it was unoriginal, it was predictable, the dialogue was annoying. not the scottish burr, the dialogue. "the anti-ghandi", one review called it. i agree. "ghandi" was a good movie.

i've been changing some of my links over here on the left lately; doing so made me think a bit about what sites i really like, and why - and at least as far as my favorite blogs go, it's clearly the same criteria i apply to my favorite poetry and fiction: do i wish i had written it? do i wish that i had been able to express myself in that beautiful, or direct, or honest, or witty a manner? all my favorite blogs make me think along those lines with nearly every post. there is an art to making the mundane details of one's life and thoughts accessible and appealing to others or to yourself, even, and a real internal editing process involved... what i'm getting at is that i'm beginning to think that blogging is an art, it's a literary form which has never existed before, on par with poetry and letters and fiction and journalism. i guess that sounds self important or grandiose, but i don't mean me... it's just that i think there's some real literary value out there. (and cultural and social value as well - just imagine if anne frank's wwii diary had been a blog, and not just a log: would the world have allowed that to happen? i'd like to think not...)

ok. too heavy. i must be procrastinating...

   7/16/2001 08:21:37 PM

Sunday, July 15, 2001

it's my birthday! last night rod and holly and amy and i went to adolfo's, the italian restaurant on top of the apple barrel bar on frenchmen street, which i think may be the best italian place in town. amy made me some red velvet cupcakes, and holly gave me a birthday-in-a-box thing which had confetti and candles and a noisemaker, and a medallion that said 'today is my birthday' but i refused to wear it until midnight, and then i had forgotten and left it in the car. i think i got the most use out of the noisemaker-horn thing, though, because it embarrassed rod every time i did it, which was fun. and when the little paper thing rolls out, it looks like a frog tongue, which was useful since holly was wearing a dragonfly sundress. oh, and rod got me a memory card for my mp3 player, which was above and beyond the call of duty. it was great just to be with friends, and i was happy. and then they wouldn't let me pay for dinner, which made me slightly less happy. but i got over it. then we went across the street to d.b.a., and met ashley & jay and ro, and bebe & jeff and jeff's sister. ashley gave me a refrigerator magnet with a picture of the lion headed fourth avatar of the hindu god vishnu. which is pretty cool.
today my parents took me to brunch down the street from my house at delmonico's, which is always a pleasure. yum. god, i love this city.

   7/15/2001 03:53:26 PM

Saturday, July 14, 2001

i went to the used cd store yesterday, and spotted - on the counter, just sold to the store by some delinquent college radio dj, i'm sure - the new beta band album, hot shots II - which i immediately picked up, along with a copy of the kcrw morning becomes eclectic disc, which i've been eyeing for a while now, and now i have both for less than the price of one of them... so - pre-release (by what, 4 days? whatever.), you heard it here first, because i'm not bound by any of the silly agreements that real reviewers are, and i bought it fair and square: good album, if you like the beta band. i like them, but on hearing this album for the first time, i had a moment of thinking, "you know, no matter how hard they try they'll never be pink floyd." which is true, and they do seem to try... but still come up with some catchy songs and bizarre lyrics. anyway. off to keep studying, and give it another listen...

   7/14/2001 03:57:55 PM

wow. heavy on the studying this week = light on the posting. oh well. what else... saw "tomb raider" tonight, and enjoyed it, for what it was - ie., an absurd, plotless, shoot-em-up, silly, gratuitously violent video game of a movie, which was really just about lara croft's ample breasts. they could have just as accurately titled it "boom! raider" or "boob raider". it was, in fact, probably as good a movie as could have been made as a spin off of this particular absurd, plotless, shoot-em-up, silly, gratuitously violent video game. and, like the game, if you're just there for the fun of it, it's a heck of a ride. take it the least bit seriously as a movie, and it sucks. indiana jones, it ain't. james bond, it ain't. but true to the game, it is. of course we could go into all the analysis - lara croft: absurdist sex object for adolecent males with violent tendencies or strong, intelligent, *badass* female lead character and role model for adolescent girls? both, of course, and this movie just serves to support both, er, arguments...
but it's fun. and angelina jolie's brit accent is actually remarkably consistent throughout, which makes it that much more watchable.

oh, yeah. and tomorrow's my birthday.

   7/14/2001 02:06:26 AM

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

i'm studying in metry, at my parent's house, in my old room, which now bears only superficial resemblance to it's previous glory - which is to say it doesn't look much like it did when i lived here. (it's relatively clean, for starters.) a couple of my poster-collages are still on the walls, and the furniture is the same. but beside that, it's kind of empty-looking and has been used as a guest-room / storage closet for years. why did i come here to study? i don't know. i knew it would be quiet and empty; and i've always found something about that room - that furniture - oddly conducive to concentration. maybe it's that the desk, made for kids, is a bit too small, and kind of makes you crunch up real close to your books, where you can't avoid them...

there's a big storm brewing outside, a wind storm at least, and the wind is such that i think metairie is about to get blown into lake pontchartrain. or at least my parent's house will be. the trees are whipping at the windows, and a door downstairs just blew open, and i had to run down there to stop bailey and ginger - my parent's two little norfolk terriers - from going outside and being picked up by the gale. or hit by a flying rake, or getting wet and dogsmelly in the rain, or something else my mother wouldn't have liked to come home to.

i like the wind, in an escapist sort of way, for all the thoughts it carries with it of being carried away.


   7/11/2001 03:31:06 PM

Monday, July 09, 2001

i quit work today.
this is an incredible weight off my shoulders.

there was no major cataclysm, no ill will. i was nice. i was firm. i was somewhat eloquent, to my great surprise. and i said all the things i wanted to say, more or less.

i'm going to study for the bar again, full time, for two weeks.

i realize that this bears explanation, but i think i'll just let it all sink in for a few more days before i go talking about it much more.

i feel good. this is the first step in the right direction i've taken in quite some time.


   7/9/2001 09:51:36 PM

hate to keep posting like this (no i don't) but this scares the bejeesus out of me, if i ever had any in me to begin with. it's called apokamon, and i'm very disturbed. it's like a jehova's witness flyer done in flash with pokemon characters. or something. and the worst part is, i'm not sure if it's serious or not. but regardless, the fact that it even exists will keep me up worrying tonight.

   7/9/2001 12:44:46 AM

ok. just have to give a quick shout out to jenny, who tonight became the first person i didn't know beforehand to send me mail about my blog... (maybe because i just got the contact page working last week, after four months...) anyway, i really appreciate the contact, glad to know i'm not really all alone out here... and everybody should go check out flakmag, which she works on and which rocks - that is,if you're the type who appreciates intelligent, articulate commentary on art and culture... thanks jenny...

   7/9/2001 12:30:21 AM

Sunday, July 08, 2001

it's been a strange weekend. high emotions - positive and negative ones - and nobody to really talk to about it. three of my closest friends - reverse that, my three closest friends - are all out of town this weekend: (in order of duration of absence) charles in france for the summer; simeon in memphis and ohio for two weeks; and rod in shreveport for the weekend. and all those things that you can only talk about to that inner sanctum of friends who know you best have had to wait, and in the mean time most of those thoughts have dissipated or lost their ugency or been forgotten, and won't be remembered when people come back, lost to discussion forever. but that's ok, that's life, mine and other's, and there will be other things, as important, to talk about later. ( see Fred Rogers " ... i'll be back / when the day is new / and i'll have more / to say to you / and you'll have things / you'll want to talk about / and i / will / too!" )

   7/8/2001 07:09:40 PM

this has been a weekend out of the ordinary, in so many ways. not all good ways, either. it all started on friday when i found out that a girl i had worked with in the 'quote room' of my father's insurance agency when i was 18 - and been friends with, and had a crush on - was killed on the fourth in an attempted carjacking/burglary in mandeville. her name was samantha. she left four children, and a heartbroken husband. of course, i hadn't talked to her in eight or nine years, or really heard anything about her, but it's still kind of painful. things like that aren't supposed to happen to people you know, people you've crossed paths with, people who you thought about and talked to and who knew your name. i might never have seen or heard of samantha again in my life - very possibly - but it's still strange to think that i'll never randomly run into her at a grocery store or out at a restaurant or any of those million sorts of little chance, momentary meetings that former acquaintances have at some time or another.

and ernie k-doe died. you know, the 50's r&b hit, "mother-in-law"? new orleans eccentric personality - and dare i say, complete freak -extraordinare?

i also saw the new speilberg/kubrik movie, "ai." which i liked much more than i expected. it's very fairy tale - specifically, it's pinnochio, with a little 'close encounters' thrown in. figured out after the movie the 2001 allusions, namely the robot kid's name is 'david' - as in dave, the human in 2001 who survives the extermination of the crew by the hal 9000 computer, and destroys hal... not to mention a bunch of other references, it's a very literate movie, and well done, but definitely a spielbergian emotion-manipulating roller coaster, as could be expected. then, just when you think it's over, the spielbergian part ends, and the kubrik part keeps going and it gets even stranger and more surrreal.

oh, and i had an anxiety attack on friday night which resulted in a late night drive to the french quarter, to the virgin megastore, just to look around and see what they had - an effort at what bebe calls 'retail therapy' - and as i was leaving the parking lot i was in, i handed the attendant a 10 and she gave me back 16... and i was glad, and it made me feel much better, like something had gone my way, finally, that day. payback, literally. and i so left. and if that makes me a bad person, oh-fucking-well.


   7/8/2001 03:29:12 AM

Thursday, July 05, 2001

last night was bebe's "colonoscopy challenge" - she had to drink a gallon of 'golytely' as part of her pre-procedure regimen, at the rate of 10 oz every 10 minutes. for moral support, and to celebrate the fourth, rod, jeff, holly and i decided to match her - beer for golytely - at the same rate. by the time it got too much for poor bebe, rod and i were on nat lite number nine. having wisely decided to ride bikes to bebe's we rode back to 4007, followed by holly in her jeep (she had opted out early in the challenge) and then we all went to the riverwalk to catch the fireworks on the river. it was pretty cool, (though objectively speaking it was kind of a mediocre fireworks show) and reminded me of watching the nightly fireworks at the '84 world's fair. it's strange how stirring a bunch of explosions can be. and i just realized, there was no patriotic music to accompany them, or at least i didn't hear any. or i don't remember any. but i was drunk, so i'm not a reliable witness. but not really that drunk. it was nat light, after all.

then i almost got arrested. or at least i was told that, but it wasn't really very convincing. we were walking back to holly's car, past harrah's casino, and it had just rained. the street there is lined with little crepe myrtles, saplings really, and i decided it would be fun to shake them and rain water down on rod and holly. which it was. fun, i mean. so i guess i shook one too many trees, or i got water on the wrong people (in one case i was chastized by a rather masculine lesbian. a slightly wet masculine lesbian) because along comes mister rent-a-guard and tells me to come back here and proceeds to bitch me out and threaten me with "going to jail for vandalizing harrah's property." which was funny to me at the time (and still is) because i was just shaking water off of trees onto my friends, and nothing like vandalism, and i told the guard as much. but whatever. we crossed the street and got off of 'harrah's property' anyway, because, you know, why tempt fate?

we tried to leave, but the line getting out of the parking lot was still about an hour long, so we decided to kill an hour getting something to eat. we ended up going to the hummingbird grill, on st. charles downtown, which is one of those sketchy downtown greasy spoon places that you'd only go to when you're really drunk. found out that holly had never eaten grits before, despite being born and raised in north carolina. puzzling. must be the irish thing...


   7/5/2001 03:43:17 PM

Wednesday, July 04, 2001

yes, i know it's the fourth of july. and i'm working and i don't have to be. but it's nice and quiet and alone and very productive. but i don't want to talk about that. i want to talk about the clouds. first i guess i should mention that last night, i did two things i've never done before, but knew i should: i went to a zephyr's ( new orleans aaa baseball team) game at zephyr stadium; and i went to the saturn bar in the ninth ward. neither were particularly impressive. but the company was good, in both cases... anyway, the clouds. the clouds in (over) new orleans, since about the time that we saw the last traces of tropical storm allison, have been absolutely fucking impressive - almost every view of the sky lately has been beautiful, even the dark, depressing rainstorms cut a fine profile, looming thick and heavy ...

   7/4/2001 03:59:59 PM

Tuesday, July 03, 2001

so rod and i are leaving the airport monday after saying our goodbyes to jennifer, and we stopped to marvel at the amazing phenomenon of free, ad-supported internet kiosks in the airport. this is new orleans, after all, and you just don't expect such things - it'd be kind of like seeing a tribal shaman in the deepest reaches of the amazon rainforest consulting his handspring visor - it could happen, but you're damn surprised the technology has gotten that far... so we sit down and try it out - my first reaction is to try this site - all i got was the background - and the supahstah page, where we got the graphics but the frames didn't render. all the big news sites seemed to work fine, presumably because they have scripts that sense that you're at a stupid airport browser and dumb down the html accordingly. of course, there was a porn filter, which saved us from any moral indiscretions by saying that "the site you're trying to reach may have content that is inappropriate for public viewing" - and we toyed with getting the domain name "ivegotabomb.com" just for the purpose of leaving it on the screen at random airport kiosks. because that would be funny. and "bomb" rhymes with "com". so on a whim last night, i checked directnic, and someone's already got it... which lends credence to a theory rod's college roommate jay had - there are so many people in the world, that if you've thought of it, it's probably been done, and in fact, it's probably happening somewhere right now.


   7/3/2001 10:47:36 AM

Monday, July 02, 2001

it's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring, he went to bed, he bumped his head, he won't get up in the morning... ever realize how morbid that is?? well, it is raining outside, and i'm tired as hell, on the busiest day of the month. can't wait till wednesday. oh, and i'm very soon to be 26; jen came and visited this weekend, she brought us bagels and lox and we went to peristyle and saw quintology at the funky butt, and i made her what i must admit were some pretty amazing mix cds last night and kate is going to maine with jen's aunt sandra. what a strange world.

   7/2/2001 03:31:20 PM