Friday, May 31, 2002
us: nuke war would kill millions" ya think? is it just me, or is it really fucking frightening to see this as a seriously stated news headline? salman rushdie apparently thinks so too. oh, and i'm not sure, but the 10 story building next to the one i'm in seems to be on fire. lots of firetrucks and people standing around outside. Thursday, May 30, 2002
ick. it's been a slow week, but it's almost over. i've actually written a few blog entries over the past few days, only to reconsider and not post them; things seem to be slow all over the blogosphere these days. maybe it's lethargy brought on by the onset of summer - i know it's not official for another 23 days or so, but it's here - at least it is in new orleans. last week's brief respite of cool air and low humidity now a distant, faded memory, we're finally under the hot thick wet blanket that covers the city in the summer. hot thick wet mosquito infested blanket. and the rain no longer brings cool fronts, now it just sizzles and steams on the pavement, and the trees and plants and grass get a little bit too lush and vascular and green and healthy looking - like when you steam broccoli, or like they're getting ready to take over the earth... yesterday amy finished her last exam of her first year of medical school, and so to celebrate we went to clancy's - a nice restaurant, mildly expensive but very neighborhoody, traditional new orleans kind of place. i've been meaning to go there for years, and all my friends have always loved it - but i had never been there. it was quite pleasant; i had a nice softshell crab, some lump crab salad, and homemade peppermint ice cream (which was a bit salty, to tell the truth. odd. ) by no means am i a restaurant connoseiur, but i kind of pride myself on having been to most of the nicer restaurants in town at least once - either with my family on special occasions or with friends - but especially the local favorites. and now, i'm planning on leaving town soon, and there are still a few i've yet to hit: traditional ones like uglesich's and pascal manale's, and the newer, more trendy, chic places like marisol, herbsaint, cobalt and belle forche. oh, well. not enough time - much less enough money - to visit them all. it'll give me something to look forward to on visits back. writing things like that up there - talking about leaving - is good for me. the more i say it, the more real it becomes. the more i repeat it, the harder it becomes to recant... and i won't. recant, i mean. i will leave. i can't hide the fact that it's difficult, though; that it's a bitch trying to break out of this orbit-gravity-inertia thing, out of the rut i've been in, out of the habits and routines and familiar circumstances; and i can't hide that i've not been doing such a good job of moving forward with it. i've been working on my portfolio forever, and i just need to get it done and online so i can apply for some real design jobs. i see amazing portfolios online every day, and it's both inspiring and frustrating at the same time; i have the ideas and concepts... i've just got stop being bogged down by the everyday things, the excuses and the procrastination. oh, and after dinner we saw starwars, episode 2, my second time. i like it. and you know what else i like? vanilla coke. though i think it's got a carbonation problem - i've bought two, and both have exploded all over when i opened them, though they hadn't been shaken. strange. Monday, May 27, 2002
i'll be the first to admit i'm no pool shark, and i'm sure most of my friends would back me up on that. but amy and i played such a pathetic neither-one-of-us-can-sink-a-goddamn-ball game of pool last night at the brothers three that the only onlooker - a one-legged, stetson-wearing, gnarled old man - a brothers three regular known as cowboy - bought us a round of drinks and wrote us this note. it felt a bit too much like a scene out of a david lynch movie - but then the brothers three always does. it's a tiny hole in the wall on magazine street, tucked between a french bakery and a soul food stand, that's populated by a strange and twisted cast of local characters and an ancient jukebox, neither of which look like they've changed much since the late 50's. it's an odd oasis of patsy cline-ness in the midst of a world of funk and brassband jazz. Friday, May 24, 2002
if you like good online writing, you should go download "manual", the new pdf collection of stories and essays by a collective of some of the best personal blog and news weblog writers out there - textism, the morning news, fireland, coudal...the list goes on. and did you know that scott adams - the creator of dilbert - has a veggie foods company? apparently they've been around for a while, but it's news to me - no stores in new orleans sell them. good veggie meat substitutes are hard to come by this far south, even in a pretty progressive city like nola. i've also been trying to get quorn down here, to no avail. i'll just have to keep sticking with my lightlife veggie hotdogs for now.
i found a weblog last night by a friend of mine from college who also lives in new orleans, (though she's leaving this summer, too) and it's really pretty witty and insightful and candid and cool and everything an online journal ought to be. but then i wouldn't have expected any less from her. just thought i'd mention it. (and not to be confused with nubbin, also by a friend of mine from college who lives in new orleans, and also one of the wittiest, funniest weblogs i know.) also last night, i ran into james at st. joe's, and we talked for a while about his project for the summer - grant work on a very interesting thesis which combines modernist fiction, queer theory and the theory of relativity. makes me pine for my english major, lit-crit days - it's difficult to even think on that academic level now. i need to get back into more theory at some point - i always enjoyed it. ah, jacque lacan, i hardly knew you... my friend jen (who just graduated from colombia law school and is now working in a chic new york law firm) sent me this sad article this morning. i've been a big fan of the oxford american since college, with an on-and-off newsstand subscription, and i think the south - and the world in general - will be a less literary place for its loss. and randomly, if you've ever wondered how barcodes work, this page is a pretty interesting dissection, if you can ignore the context: it's an extra-cruchy-christian website which speculates that all barcodes are the work of satan or some silliness like that. what-the-hell-ever.
a quick friday five before bed: 1. what's the last vivid dream that you remember having? i remember that i woke up with a dream in my head this morning, but i've lost it. 2. do you have any recurring dreams? not anymore. when in was a kid i had a recurring dream that was basically a slideshow of snakes. after volunteering at the audubon zoo as a teenager, and handling lots of snakes, i pretty much got over being really afraid of them - but they still creep me out. 3. what's the scariest nightmare you've ever had? i dreaded the above-mentioned snake slideshow dream for a long time. other than that, i know i've had some horrible ones, but i don't remember them. 4. have you ever written your dreams down or considered it? Why or why not? i don't write them, i dictate them - or, well, i keep a dictaphone (mini tape recorder) by my bed, and when i wake up and remember a dream, i tape record it. i've got a full tape and then some - i've been keeping it for maybe 2 years now - but i've never listened to it. someday, maybe soon. why? just to see what i get, i suppose. 5. have you ever had a lucid dream? what did you do in it? never. i've tried, i'd love to - but never have. or at least not that i remember, and i'd remember that. Tuesday, May 21, 2002
"the time has come," the walrus said, "to talk of many things; of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings..." lots on the mind lately, lots i've been meaning to write here... let me see what i can remember... pictures and details of the past weekend are forthcoming; it's emotionally and physically exhausting to help one of your best friends move away, and then again to recap it here; but on the other hand it was a weekend of good company and good conversation, and i really can't complain. charles' sister katie, and his friends roger and jeannette came down from nashville and lexington, respectively, to see him graduate from tulane law and help move, and it's always great to see all of them...rodger and jeannette are true characters, just the greatest - they run a bed and breakfast in lexington, which badly needs a website redesign, which i'm calling dibs on here and now... katie has been something of an inspiration to me, since last year when she packed up and moved from virginia to nashville, sight unseen, to pursue her dream of becoming a real live rock singer. and she'll do it, too. this story is really nothing more than a curiosity, though what caught my eye was a new (to me) and interesting difference between u.k. and american english - what we here in the states refer to as a "proctor" - a teacher who supervises a test or exam to watch for cheating, etc - is there known as an "invigilator" - which word is entirely new to me, and sounds pretty cool, too. if you're into flash sites, this one is particularly beautiful. oh, and i'm giddy that finally, after waiting a long, long time - i was able to get my name on a list to contribute to a journal from the 1000journals project. and speaking of big web-based collaborative projects, i've got a new mirrorproject submission that should be going up soon, too. i'll link it when it goes live. i forgot completely to mention that the best snowball stand in new orleans (and therefore the world, since we're the only place to have snowballs and not snowcones or somesuch; i figure this is because we don't have enough snow here *ever* to have the other kind of snowball, that you throw at people...) - hansen's snobliz - opened for the summer season a couple of weeks ago, and npr did a segment where they spoke to judge hansen, one of the proprietors. he lives across the courtyard from me in my building. his daugher ashley, who's my age and actually does the serving of the snowballs there, is maybe the closest thing new orleans has to a helen of troy - widely recognized as cute and completely inattainable, she's notorious for her great - and ever present - smile... and she remembers my favorite flavor... speaking of summer and snowballs - it's been unseasonably cool here (and lots of other places, i know) - in the 70s for the past week - and i just don't want it to end. because when it does - oh, god, when it does, the heat and humidity won't let up until... october? if we're that lucky no, i didn't see the x-files finale, like i said i would, because i was still helping pack charles' entire house into 14 feet of moving truck until quite late sunday evening. no, i haven't seen "attack of the clones" yet, because... well, i just haven't. and yes - i am still planning on moving to d.c. this summer. slowly but surely. Monday, May 20, 2002
*sigh* i hate goodbyes. i'm no good at them, i've been choked up all weekend... but we got charles and christine all packed up and headed outta town last night... Friday, May 17, 2002
time for a nice, clean, refreshing friday five: 1. What shampoo do you use? St. Ives Raspberry & Jojoba. they don't test on animals - not that i'm big on that issue, but every little bit counts, no? whatever. 2. Do you use conditioner? What kind? don't use it every day, but i have a bottle of St. Ives Raspberry & Jojoba conditioner to match my shampoo. 3. When was the last time you got your hair cut? last wednesday, may 8th. 4. What styling products do you use? citre shine gel, if at all - and usually not. 5. What's your worst hair-related experience? hmmm. none in particular - it always grows out, you know? and i've never dyed it or bleached it or anything, for the very reason that if i had, i'm sure it wouldv'e been my worst experience... Wednesday, May 15, 2002
i, too, was once an x-files junkie. not from the beginning, really - i managed to ignore the show through most of college, only really being introduced to it in my junior year - early 96, i guess. from then on, i was a faithful viewer - a cult adherent - and managed to borrow, rent or buy tapes of the first three or four seasons, figuring out all the basics of the meta-plot about the syndicate and the black oil and the bees and and the aliens you can only kill in the back of the neck. and learning to trust no one. i even played and solved the x-files game. like almost every other x-files fan i know, the movie was the beginning of the end, but i kept watching through law school ( it was the only show i watched with any regularity during that time.) but by the time mulder left the show, the plot had gotten too attenuated and confused, and without that mulder/scully sexual tension thing, what was the use? i lost what remaining interest i had and stopped watching. apparently, so did everyone else. after 9 years, the the x-files ends for good this sunday. the last episode is called "the truth", and apparently mulder is coming back "to be tried before a military tribunal that seeks to justify and prove the very existence of an alien conspiracy... and the x-files." i'm thinking i'll tune in, for old times' sake, to say goodbye to mulder and scully...and to see if, in the final analysis, the truth is out there. ( i was inspired to write this entry after reading this great article on the demise of the x-files at poppolitics.) Tuesday, May 14, 2002
i was going to just leave this on the music page, but on second thought, i'll copy it here: i had intended to write my own reviews of the new tom waits cds, alice & blood money, which i got last tuesday when they came out - here's short version: both albums draw from tom's long discography, and pull tricks from his bag of off-kilter rhythms and dark, beautiful melodies, surreal voices and odd instrumentation - but as with black rider, the first installment of this trilogy of soundtracks, each of these albums tells its own self-contained story, which lends a consistency of mood to them which, for example, mule variations lacked... but then i just read the pitchfork review, and all i can say is that it is absolutely, precisely right-on. say no more. go read it. then go buy the damn things, if you haven't already. Monday, May 13, 2002
"lion chomps arm off busch gardens zookeeper" geez. you'd think cnn could come up with a slightly more tactful/sensitive headline there. i'm sure this poor zookeeper's family appreciates the term "chomp" after they've just witnessed their daughter's arm get bitten off. it's been a quite a weekend. nice mother's day brunch at delmonico's with the family, which went well enough; nice crawfish boil last night at charles' place - that went off beautifully. i made fried green tomatoes and some remoulade sauce, and got update: hehehe. i was right, i was right! overnight, cnn changed "chomps" to "bites" in the above headline. Friday, May 10, 2002
i don't know what's up with my karma these days. first my windshield gets cracked by a rock on monday - just a little impact that has grown slowly into two diverging silver branches, which will no doubt require my getting a whole new windshield, and soon. then today - just now - i've been stuck in an elevator at the office for the past half an hour. thank god i'm not claustrophobic. what happened was this: one of my father's legal clients - also a family friend - had come to pick up a box of files from our office, and offered to help carry the box down to her car. after i had done my good deed, i got in an empty elevator in the lobby and hit six, as i have thousands of times before - but when the elevator got to the third floor, the doors opened - but only the inside ones on the elevator, and not the corresponding outside ones on the actual third floor. no exit. and then the elevator doors wouldn't close all the way, either, and the elevator wouldn't budge. i tried to close the doors myself, i tried to open the other ones - nothing. when i finally resigned myself to the fact that i wouldn't be getting out of there anytime soon of my own accord, i hit the "emergency call" button and told whoever was on the other line where i was, and they said they'd send out a mechanic to get me out. so i just waited. caught in a small, empty box suspended three stories in the air - with no cell phone, and no reading material - i was faced with the realization that i wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. i paced a bit, ate the starlight mint that was in my pocket, read everything on the mint wrapper a few times, counted out how many feet the elevator was ( 6 x 5 ) and then just sat on the floor and looked up at the lights and daydreamed, and thought about life - it was quiet, calm, austere, and restful, actually, knowing that there was absolutely nothing else i could do but wait ... i was almost disappointed when the mechanic came and got the doors open. almost, but not. and then i went on my way. maybe everyone should get stuck in an elevator every now and and then.
*sigh* why does everything in life have to be so goddamn complicated? Thursday, May 09, 2002
another little educational moment: tall buildings are built with construction cranes, right? but i'd always wondered how construction cranes were built, especially how they got those enormous, heavy counterweights placed that high up. i figured they must use another crane, but that creates kind of a recursive dilemma - how did that crane's counterweight get up? another crane? did they just use a succession of shorter cranes? cranes, all the way down? or did they use a helicopter, and lower the weights? i saw a crane today on the way to work and was inspired to find out. a short google search later, and i have an answer from a crane company website. "installation of all counterweight blocks is done with mobile crane as part of the erection of the tower crane." so they use a crane with a low-to-the-ground counterweight. makes sense. anyway. thought i'd share. Monday, May 06, 2002
3 hours until the two new tom waits cds, alice & blood money, are out. can't wait to see how alice compares to the bootleg i've had for a couple of years by the same name; and blood money, i've only heard about - never know what to expect with tom.
ever go to the grocery, buy popsicles, come home, put the groceries on the counter, get suddenly distracted and completely forget about them for an hour, popsicles included? and then put the box full of drippy bags of sticky colored sugarwater in the freezer, hoping beyond hope that they'd somehow reconstitute themselves in some edible form? no? me neither. i mean, c'mon. i also picked up the new kelloggs' spiderman cereal. it's "spidey-berry fruit flavored". what can i say, i'm a sucker for a good marketing tie-in. or even a bad one... one interesting thing i found when i went looking for that link on the kellogg's website is that one of the toys that's in "specially marked packages" of this new spiderman cereal is the spiderman water squirter - which attach to your wrist and are clearly supposed to resemble the web cartridges that peter parker invented in the comic book to shoot webs - the absence of which in the movie (in favor of the more plausible natural web-shooting wrists) is one of the biggest and most controversial differences from the original comic story... i even discovered a website and petition dedicated to the issue, which goes mostly to show that some people take this stuff way too seriously. but the toy thing is kinda funny, and makes you wonder how many little kids will take this squirter of the box of cereal and just not 'get' it, because it plays no part in the film... another little trivial fact i found is that this isn't the first spiderman cereal that's been made - ralston made one in the 80's. apparently i'm the only one who hadn't seen these until today, but the previews for disney's new lilo & stitch are just awesome. little alien inserts himself into beauty & the beast, aladdin, and the little mermaid. if they're going to mess with the modern classics in their ad campaign, here's hoping they actually make a movie worth seeing, for the first time in a decade. (honestly, everyone knows that the pixar films and fantasia 2000 have been the only descent animated movies to come out of disney since the lion king.) and i know this interview is old news to most of you - but if you haven't seen it, you really have to. mike tyson is nuts, yes - though i can't help thinking there's some sort of method to his particular brand of madness, some sort of savant logic trying unsuccessfully to escape there... the wisdom of fools, and whatnot. Sunday, May 05, 2002
Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round They sing "I'm in love. What's that song? I'm in love with that song." Cerebral rape and pillage in a village of his choice. Invisible man who can sing in a visible voice. i saw alex chilton live for the second time tonight. too cool. i'd seen him before at the dragon's den, when he just walked into a davis rogan show and picked up a guitar, and played a few impromptu tunes. but this show was his, headlining, at el matador. he still rocks, if you were wondering. i was standing right up at the stage, dancing next to beetle bob - who i even ended up talking to for a few minutes, between songs. Saturday, May 04, 2002
 i don't look good in hats, or so i'm told... and i've been told this my whole life, mostly by my parents but even my sister and some friends and girlfriends have agreed. no hats, any hats. hats period. i've been told this so much i've got a complex about it. (or can't you tell?) but see, the problem is - i like hats. no more than the average guy, i guess - but there are times when a hat is fun, or practical, or just part of the look you're going for. but let me repeat - i don't look good in hats.well, yesterday i bought a new hat. a cheap, straw ascot cap. it looked well made (or as well made as a straw hat can be), i liked it, and it's practical for the summer. for jazzfest, which at the time i thought i might be going to this weekend, though i'm doubting it at this point. so anyway, i'm sporting it on the current webcam photo, and wondering if maybe, just maybe - this one looks ok. leave me a comment and let me know what you think. if it's no good, be honest... i won't be surprised.
it's been called to my attention that i sent out my burn, baby burn! cd a few weeks ago, and haven't posted my tracklist. well now i have, over on the music page. so there.
i just got back from seeing spiderman. geez. great movie. go see it. it's everything they said it was. it's fun, it's cool, it looks good, it's well acted... the writing couldv'e been a bit punchier, but it was solid nevertheless - just a great experience, brings back all those childhood memories of wanting to be spidey, trying to figure out how to shoot webs made of kite-string from around my wrists... someone out there is going to complain about this movie, but it won't be me. i left happy, and with a new kirsten dunst celebrity crush that i didn't have going in. gah. and yes, i downloaded the mary jane wallpaper, i admit it. ok, i will complain for just a second, but only about the soundtrack, which is fully loaded with a bunch of the crap that passes for top 40 music these days. i suppose if a movie's going to be a blockbuster, it's got to have a mainstream-appealing soundtrack... but i mean, is anyone really going to tell me that the song "hero" that keeps being played everywhere is not just a complete ripoff of seal's "kiss from a rose" - which was a "batman returns" song, for god's sake?. it's the same tune, just listen to it. a better movie deserves better music, not second rate imitations. at least danny elfman did the score... Friday, May 03, 2002
i don't watch much tv at all - and i've avoided most "reality tv" shows since the first season of survivor ended... so it comes as something of a surprise to me that i actually happened to watch the show that everybody's talking about. no, not the osbornes - i don't have mtv so i still haven't seen that, though my mom (good god, what has the world come to?) has become a faithful fan of the ozzy household, and gives me the play-by-play after every episode... which is mostly like, "and so then ozzy walked around and bumped into things..." and i'm not really sure how that's funny. but it must be, i guess. six million people can't be wrong. er, or something. the show i'm talking about is frontier house. all the real grit of life on the range - minus the marauding cattle rustlers, hostile indians, and deadly plagues and fevers. it raises the question of whether frontier families were just a heartier, stronger bunch than today's soft, whiny yuppies, or... well, not much of a question, is it? i don't know, but it seems to be all about the attitude - there's something appealing about watching the clune family, who are clearly having fun despite the circumstances, being innovative and making a good go of the thing, while the glenn family just descends into a morass of pettyness and jealousy and negativity. the obvious next move for intrepid programming executives: the osbornes' frontier adventure. Thursday, May 02, 2002
so life continues in the midst of big changes, of course, and though i'm consumed with figuring this move thing out, i do have other things to say. like, for example, i had this idea on the way to work to day for an invention. it's a wearable computer right out of the movies, or some military application - a heads up display in a pair of regular glasses, with a wireless high-bandwidth internet connection, intelligent image, sound and word recognition capability, pupil-activated navigation, and an interface with google. see, it happens fairly often that i'll be walking or driving somewhere, and something will catch my eye, or someone will say something in a conversation that piques my interest - and i immediately make a mental note to look it up on google as soon as i have a chance. most of the time, through, by the time i'm in front of a computer, it's long forgotten. so this little device would immediately run a google search on your topic of choice, right there, give you the results and let you do your research on the fly. no, i swear, i don't have a problem. i can quit anytime i want. seriously. ...they could even call the things "googles." Wednesday, May 01, 2002
so here's the long and short of it - for various reasons, cumulative, sudden, impulsive and considered - i'm not long for new orleans. looks like - and it's not a done deal yet, but i'm working on it - i'll be joining the ranks of the washington, dc bloggers by mid-summer. i'm in the process of working out details now - job search, apartment, tying up all the loose ends and figuring out all the little things you never think about unless you're thinking about them. it's exciting, and scary, in a good way.
yes, i love new orleans. i don't know how long i'll be gone - could be just for the summer, could be a year? two? twelve? forever? no, not forever. but i've got to do this - everyone who knows me agrees, one way or another. i love new orleans, and it would be the perfect place if i wasn't from new orleans. i have to create my own life somewhere else, on my own - and bring it back here later; i know that's the only way i'll ever really be happy, or be myself. i left here once, for college in memphis, way back when, but i've been back for five years now, and this city is in my blood more than ever. if you're not from here, you might not understand - but this city is alive, it breathes, it has a soul and a personality and it speaks to you with sweat and heat and banana leaves against purple-orange nights and disembodied trumpet solos floating down decaying streets and past antebellum mansions and live oaks that beg to be climbed and bloody marys for breakfast on the porch, just because. i can't leave that forever, i know i can't. but just the same, i've got to go - i know i do. i'll be crying a lot this month, i guess. i've already started. |
