Wednesday, February 27, 2002
jonno, in a recent article in a national publication, seems to be of the opinion that "all straight guys are into led zep.... also recommended: anything by yes, rush, or hootie and the blowfish. straight guys may be sexy, but generally their taste in music isn't." well, don't know about the sexy part, but as to the music, i beg to differ - i fucking hate led zepplin. can't stand that screechy-ass voice. and my taste in music is broad but discriminating, if i do say so myself... oh, and my recommendations on the topic would be more in the direction of beth orton, boards of canada and everything but the girl. subtle beats, good rhythm, sweet vocals.. oh baby. Tuesday, February 26, 2002
interesting little quiz, via missy - who's your ethical philosophy match? here were my top three matches: 1. sartre (100%) 2. rand (94%) 3. kant (88%) 4. bentham (84%) (etc., etc...) doesn't surprise me much, really. neither does this:  I'm Remy LeBeau What X-Men Character are You?
gotta get back into the swing of things here. how do you like the redesign? oh, yeah - oops, didn't get to that yet. i'm kind of feeling guilty about potentially in other news, the goddamn bar exam is over once again, and hopefully once and for all. that's all i'm gonna say about that 'till the results appear in april. which leaves me, um... without a job. and without a freelance gig. and without much savings at all. and without a car that actually starts. how i let all this happen, i won't even get into - but i'm not going to complain, i'm just going to have to find gainful employment, and soon. ad agencies, design firms, law offices - i'll go wherever the action (read: $) is. maybe i'll be lucky - gotta start knocking on doors. if any of you nola locals have any ideas, please advise... diane and dave's wedding on saturday night was the best i've ever been to, hands down. a bit on the... unconventional side, shall we say. the venue was dr. bob's "be nice or leave" folk art studio/gallery/junkyard in the marigny; they got married under a blinky-white-christmas-lights wedding arch, by a ulc "minister" friend of theirs who rode into the ceremony on his harley; diane wore a spectacular thrift-store wedding dress and ruby slippers, and dave wore a coat and tie and no pants. boxers or something, maybe. and there was crawfish, pound after pound of glorious boiled crawfish - and supahstah skits and karate demonstrations in honor of the couple. and that was me in the seersucker suit and the nice red hawaiian shirt, with my hair spiked straight up. oh yeah. i'm back. i think things are going to move quickly around here for a while. Friday, February 22, 2002
i've come out the other side. so what better way to celebrate than with a good friday five? 1. hey, baby, what's your sign? do you think it fits you pretty well? cancer. yeah, sometimes it's eerie. 2. what's the worst birthday gift you've ever received? couldn't tell you. i've lost track. 3. what's the best birthday gift you've ever received? still couldn't tell you. 4. what's the best way you've celebrated your birthday thus far? i don't know, i don't remember these things. maybe i'm just brainfried from the bar exam. i need some sleep. 5. what are your plans for this weekend? sleep tonight, then my friend diane (prounounced dee-ahn) and my friend dave (pronounced dave) are getting married tomorrow. at a place called dr. bob's studio. it's a crawfish boil, too. should be funky. oh, and i'm going to try to get my redesign up and running, finally. and then sunday - sunday is the first day of the rest of my life. anybody need some designing done? Wednesday, February 20, 2002
damn, i've never blogged from my phone before, but i guess this proves it's possible. i just finished my last exam for the day... only three more on friday... and i'm currently walking around downtown waiting for a ride home. anyway, more later... Sunday, February 17, 2002
Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect. Henry V, (III,i) bar exam time again. be back next weekend - wish me luck. Saturday, February 16, 2002
oops - forgot to explain what this is - the last half of my blogger insider interview from roni. you can see her answers to mine at goddess musings. 1) chocolate - with or without nuts? not a big chocolate fan in general, but if i had to choose it would be white, w/nuts. 2) blogcon - going or reading about it? i'd love to go, but it depends on finances. but i really, really badly want to go to sxsw - and i'm trying to figure out how to make that work. 3) favorite fried food: soft shell crabs. 4) outside of swimming, what is your favorite sport to play? golf. i'm not very good, but it's always great just to be walking around out in the open air, on a scenic golf course, with a group of friends. 5) what was the career goal at the beginning of law school? internet law. after the passage of the 1996 digital millenium copyright act, i decided that it was obvious that no lawmaker at the time knew a damn thing about the internet, and that it was about time for a generation of lawyers who did. a large part of my interest was with intellectual property issues like napster, etc. - and copyright and trademark in general, with a view to protection of my own creative work. i concentrated my studies on those issues, and entertainment law, in law school. 6) why did you sign up for blogger Insider? are you getting what you wanted out of it? i wanted a chance to be exposed to more blogs, get to know more bloggers i would likely not have met otherwise, and have questions asked of me that might give people a better idea of who i am. or something. i think it's been great so far. 7)describe your one perfect day - real or your wish: just like in the lou reed song. or not. 8)is there one thing from high school that you wish you could do again, even if it meant your whole life would change? not in high school, really. there are a few changes i'd make in my college experience, though, if i had it to do over again. 9)one thing us northerners should know about you southerners...or even just about those of you from new orleans? books could (and have) been written on this topic. i personally identify more with new orleans than the south in general - we're southern, but we're lots of other things too - and we new orleanians have all sorts of qualities and quirks and hang-ups that yankees seem to find odd or interesting - but it's a city that must be experienced. a good approximation, however, might be reading john kennedy toole's 'confederacy of dunces' while throwing back bourbon old-fashioneds, on a porchswing on a sweltering hot, muggy, mosquito-infested summer evening. Friday, February 15, 2002
it's friday five time. yum... 1. what was the first thing you ever cooked? i attempted to make an omelet for my parents. i must've been about 8, i climbed up on a chair to reach the stove and put some of every condiment i could find in it; i remember it looked more like a burned pizza than anything even vaguely omelet-like. i got in trouble for using the stove. 2. what's your signature dish? bread pudding with whisky sauce. i just made some for mardi gras day, and yesterday used the leftovers to make a bread pudding souffle, commanders' palace style. 3. ever had a cooking disaster? (tasted like crap, didn't work, etc.) describe. i have a long and illustrious history of cooking disasters (see answer to #1 for the first example) largely born of my nearly complete disrespect for recipes and my tendency to attempt to create things using whatever ingredients i have at hand... 4. if skill and money were no object, what would you make for your dream meal? boiled crawfish ad infinitum. 5. what are you doing this weekend? studying. dazzit. Thursday, February 14, 2002
b-may's behind the scenes weblog may just be the only really interesting - not to mention funny - thing about the utah winter olympics. link via biz stone.
because i know she reads this almost every day: happy valentine's day, amy. i love you. © (and on a rather creepy valentine note, i've just discovered that love, like most things these days, is a subsidiary of aol/time-warner. go figure.) Wednesday, February 13, 2002
for over ten years of my life (in middle and high school) i was a competitive swimmer. i was never great, but i was good. lacking the tall, lanky swimmers' body, i always seemed built more for football than for swimming, but i was strong and had good technique - a solid, dependable breaststroke and nice freestyle sprint. i either swam in the fast heats, but rarely won, or swam in the slower heats and kicked ass. in high school, i swam both for my school and for a USS team, the elmwood sharks. i kept a low profile in general with the swimming crowd, which was very clique-ish - but i swam with plenty of really good swimmers - including one ashley tappin, a fellow elmwood shark, who swam for a gold medal in barcelona in 1992. i didn't know her very well, and i personally never had any problem with her, that i remember, though she had a reputation as arrogant and bitchy. she certainly wasn't my idea of attractive - she had that female swimmer's physique, a little too musclebound, too sinewy, and, er... lacking in some respects. i hadn't heard anything about her since college, so imagine my surprise, then, to find this today at maxim online, via fark. i have no opinion of it, really, except: how strange.
i guess i've been caught up in my own world of mardi gras and studying, but better late than never - the biggest congratulations in the world to melly, and a great big welcome to the world to matthew, the bean, born sunday. how great is that? Tuesday, February 12, 2002
and i nearly forgot - what better day than mardi gras to unveil one of the top secret projects i've been working on lately, of interest mainly to those of you who are new orleans and louisiana locals... introducing... (drumroll, please) ... 
happy mardi gras, y'all! fat tuesday is here, and since i've gotten some good feedback on my (albeit spotty) mardi gras coverage lately, i'm going to have the webcam trained on the parades all morning long - and you may actually be able to see some of the festivities, since it will be daylight. the rex parade - the king of carnival - rolls by at around 9 or 10, and then it's more parades all day. so keep an eye out. i may even record another mp3 or two, who knows... now though, it's the wee hours (3:45am) here, and i've just finished my preparations for when the family descends on my apartment in a couple of hours (they have to come before 6am, or they'll have to park miles away) i've staked out some space on the neutral ground (that's new orleans for 'median') and put out some chairs for my family, and a utility ladder with frontage on the street - the higher you are, the more beads you catch - and i've just taken a big ol' batch of my famous bread pudding and whiskey sauce out of the oven. looks like it'll be another good time this year. i'll be trying to get some studying in edgewise, while playing host and trying to deal with the annual de facto family inspection of my digs... long day ahead. must get some sleep. Monday, February 11, 2002
it's a new blogger insider interview, this time by veronica of goddess musings. check out her site, and her answers to my first 5 questions. 1) what's the best & worst things about living in new orleans? a) best: the music. the food. the relaxed pace of life. b) worst: the inertia. the corruption. the potholes. the heat and humidity. 2) what was the funkiest thing you saw during the past two weeks relating to the super bowl? the increased security. lots of military jets overhead, lots of national guard and army troops all over the business district and the french quarter. m-16s on bourbon street - a totally different world. 3) what do you like the best about photography? the intuitive and chance aspects of it - no matter how precisely you arrange a shot, you're never really sure what you'll get, but sometimes, you get a glimpse of something that just feels right, and you take it and find something in it you didn't expect. 4) what's your opinion on people who seem to stick to just one genre of music? or are totally unable to give a certain genre a chance? to each his own, of course, but i think it's sad and somewhat ignorant to believe that good music has to fit any one particular form... every genre has a range of quality, and there is music worth listening to in every genre. 5) what is your fave pez dispenser? i'm partial to my early edition light blue batman and my asterisk the gaul dispensers. i also like the winnie the pooh series that came out last year quite a bit. Sunday, February 10, 2002
ok, i want to give everybody out there little view of what mardi gras is like - the great krewe of bacchus is marching by outside the window as i write this (7pm central) and the sound of the crowd and the marching bands is just amazing. so i've got the webcam pointed out at the parade, taking a new shot every minute - you might be able to see the floats roll by (they're the blinky lights)- and i'm uploading a couple of mp3s - parade1.mp3 and parade 2.mp3 - so you can hear what i'm hearing now. where i live, on st. charles avenue, mardi gras parades are a family affair - lots of little kids, lots of grandparents, roving bands of highschoolers looking trying to look cooler than their friends, and just generally lots of people having a bunch of good clean fun. and i mean lots of people, there are at least a thousand lining the street in front of my block alone, and that's a conservative estimate. further downtown, however - closer to the french quarter - it gets crazier and more r-rated... but down here it's pg. Thursday, February 07, 2002
1. what's the most romantic thing you've ever done for someone else? after a near break-up over the phone, i drove all night, on no sleep, to get from new orleans to memphis in time to buy a single yellow rose and meet my then girlfriend at the door to her first class with it. which bandaged that particular relationship for a little while. 2. what are your erogenous zones? the usual. ears work pretty well. 3. how old were you the first time you had sex? care to expound? 19. college sophmore. (see #4) 4. what's the most unusual place you've ever had sex? top of a college belltower, in the rain. 5. do you have plans for valentine's day or is it just another thursday? i certainly do. i'm going to study. a lot. and i have other plans, something incredibly romantic to do for amy, but i just don't know what they are yet.
damn! i take a short break from my usual blog-reading-and-writing routine to concentrate on some serious studying, and whatd'ya know, i miss all the controversy! apparently local blog-heroes jonno and melanctha have been involved this week in a high (blogdex) profile exchange with time magazine journalist and dailyblah proprietor chris taylor. quite the interesting flurry of activity, it seems, and i missed the whole thing ( though i think perhaps my hit count has benefitted a bit from it...) and elsewhere, recently mentioned blog newcomer ido seems to be stirring up emotions over at bluishorange with some hypodermically sharp (on both sides) comments... as for me, not much going on besides the bar-studying and the mardi gras-ignoring - though i did get a slick new cell phone this week, a nokia 3390 with all sorts of neat features... wireless AIM, anyone? and i've been introduced to the ephemerally captivating world of nokia tunes - customizable cell phone rings that you can compose yourself, or have sent to your phone from some satellite on high. my new gadget is currently ringing to the strains of of some of my favorites - tom waits' "earth died screaming", disney's " bare necessities" and what was to me an irresistable cell phone pun - johnny cash's "ring of fire." Tuesday, February 05, 2002
the breeders concert was a bit too crowded for the shim sham, and though they rocked, there was a certain je ne se qua about the deal twins that put me off, though i enjoyed it in general. maybe grrl-grunge just isn't as appropo in 2002 as it was a decade ago. and the show was pretty short, to boot... not completely sure it was worth the three + miles amy and i ended up having to walk on the way there and back due to the immense superbowl security restrictions downtown, and the tourist-induced lack of taxis & streetcars... though to be fair we were tipsy enough not to care too much. on the upside, i got to meet another elusive new orleans blogger himself - and plans may be in the offing for a local blogger get together sometime in the near future... also, i need to get the following off my chest in regard to the new redesign i'm working on: 1) screw netscape. and mozilla, for that matter. 2) screw css, php, includes, and iframes. 3) screw improved functionality, better design, usability and wc3 compliance. 4) aaarrrgh!!! 5) i'll eventually get it all figured out. i swear. one day. Saturday, February 02, 2002
robbie grace cripps was born today, and he's got a blog already - he's the virginia dare of the blog world, sort of. too cute.
in other news, it's superbowl time, and my fair city of new orleans is pretty much under lockdown this weekend. the entire of the downtown central business district - where the superdome is, and the game will be played (about 2 1/2 miles from my apartment) - is barricaded off and not open to traffic; the secret service, louisiana national guard, fbi, new orleans police department, and about every other available law enforcement agency are out en masse; and as i've written this entry, at some insanely early hour of the morning, i've heard the boom and tear of at least five military fighter aircraft breaking the sound barrier as they pass overhead. (make that six.) mardi gras itself is on hiatus until next week - usually there would be parades this weekend, but they're on hold for security reasons. (seven, eight...) all of this makes me feel much better about the whole thing, because usually new orleans is about as third-world as north america gets, and might seem a relatively easy mark for the evil-doers of the world on an occassion such as this. but things seem pretty well taken care of. the saint charles avenue streetcars keep rolling down the tracks, engorged with tourists; and for the most part, life continues at pretty much it's usual leisurely pace here in nola - and best of all, you can still feel that little electrical charge, that excitement in the air, that comes with the mardi gras season... to add to the excitement, today is an election day here - we're electing a new mayor for the first time in eight years. i've been doing a bit of work on the campaign for a gentleman named ray nagin, who's a local businessman and seems to me like the straight shooter among a crowd of candidates who are mostly kooks and politics-as-usual cronies. my friend simeon got roped into helping with the campaign, and he got me involved - together, we composed and edited the official campaign platform and the candidate's responses to a few endorsement surveys, including one for the new orleans music magazine, offbeat - and nagin got the endorsement. they're all nagin's answers, don't get me wrong - but our words. not bad, eh? i have no desire ever to be a politician myself, but i do love working behind the scenes on political campaigns (this being only my second one, the first was my father's ill-fated bid for state insurance commissioner in 1999) - i get a kick from writing (and designing) speeches and flyers and press releases and position papers. it's marketing, with a person as a product, and i think i have a kind of an intuitive knack for what the public wants to hear. and i love the idea that my words might influence the way people think - or even vote. (that's why toby zeigler is my favorite character on the west wing - a show i don't watch often enough anymore.) oh, and not that i know anything about football, but just for the record, i'm gonna go with the rams. we'll see. before that, though, amy and i will be going to the breeders concert tonight, which should be great - except for the logistical pain in the ass of getting into and out of the french quarter with all this security business going on... (nine... ten...) |