An insincere apology

So, glancing back at some old blog posts, I've noticed that a) I tend to misspell a lot of stuff and b) I tend to use words that don't, technically, make any kind of logical sense in the context in which they're used (see: "an infinitely loop").

I just wanted to quickly post and say that I know that I do this and that I'm sorry. Oh, and also that I'm not really sorry. Oh, and also that if you had read one of my blog posts and been really disgusted by the spelling or syntax, that you should probably look into procuring yourself some kind of life. I know I plan to do so, just as soon as I'm done reading my own blog at 3:30 in the morning.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

I love Christmas! And I've had a great one! I opened presents (and got lots of great stuff), I spent a lovely afternoon with my family, I watched both "White Christmas" and "Holiday Inn," I had a great Christmas dinner, and then the family settled in for a lovely yuletide vieweing of "Live Free or Die Hard."

Afterward, most of the family went to bed, and my dad and I watched a few episodes of "The Office" on TBS. During which I saw this commercial about fifty times: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiV0vvFvl1M.

My day was so good that I thought I would take this opportunity to finally finally finally vent all of the vitriol that has been mounting inside me about this commercial since the first time I saw it, about nine months ago! Ahh... I feel relieved already. What a lovely gift to myself.
So, I grew up in Maryland, and I'm used to Mattress Discounter commercials with poor production values. But, right off the bat, this is something different. This is a national advertising campaign. This is a commercial which gets run, presumably, against commercials like the Dominoes thing with the guy with the Oreo beard and that one with all the pickup trucks and that John Mellencamp song. All right, so it's not the AFI 100, but these are presumably ads which are created by professionals who are supposedly schooled in the art of making people want to buy stuff.

It's also different because it's been running for nine months. As near as I can figure, this means one of two things: a) Jose Cuervo has an advertising department which is either too stupid to know that they've got one of the worst commercials on television, or b)this ad campaign actually makes people want to drink Cuervo Black Medallion. Now, I've blogged extensively on the anti-intellectual/condescending/destructive nature of most of what gets sent out on the air waves (especially things which purport to show cool people acting cool), and I'm fully prepared to expect the worst from people, but to think that anybody's opinions are swayed by this ad is just too much for me. Just suggesting that it might makes me want to go take a long nap.

What is so offensive about this ad campaign? What has roused my ire such that I have deemed it a Christmas gift to myself to write this post? What, in short, makes this Jose Cuervo ad the single worst commercial on television? Oh, a few things. Let's make a list, shall we?

1) Right out of the gate, the commercial is structured like a how-to on how to order a Cuervo Black and Cola. Okay, I'll be honest, that kind of rouses my interest. Obviously, there's virtually nothing easier than ordering a drink, especially when the sole ingredients of the drink are listed in the name of the drink. But, apparently order a CBC (as I like to call it) requires more finesse. I'd like to hear more. I mention this only because the slight rise in expectation only deepens the crushing blow to follow.

2) The commercial is shot like a music video. Edit: a bad music video. And with enough bad fades and bad transitions to make me think that it was probably edited on iMovie. To this point, my criticisms are minor and mostly matters of taste, but things are about to go way downhill.

3) STEP ONE: WALKUP TO THE BAR. There are at least two major things wrong with this. First and foremost, "walkup" is not a word. I assume that they mean "walk up" and they've fallen victim to the same misapprehension that sees fourth-graders writing sentences like "I eat ice cream alot." How does something like that get passed a copy editor? Really? And after so long? Nobody thought "There's a major type-o right in the middle of the second title. Maybe we should pull the ad?" So so so lazy. So so so unapologetically stupid. Second big issue: the first step in ordering any drink is walking up to the bar. They may as well say "STEP ONE: DRIVE TO A PLACE THAT SELLS CUERVO BLACK." Whoops... sorry. "STEP ONE: DRIVETO A PLACE THAT SELLS CUERVO BLACK." Why even bother choosing this stupid step-by-step form? Because otherwise this commercial would literally cease to exist.

4) Who do you think is sexier? The dark-eyed guy in the muscle shirt with the five o'clock shadow? Or the dark-eyed guy in the peasant blouse with the five o'clock shadow?

5) STEP TWO: ORDER A CUERVO BLACK AND COLA. Wait a minute. Wait... wait a minute. I don't know how to do that. Right? I mean, that's why I'm hear, right? Okay, so... let's just see here... So, I want to order a CBC. So, following these directions... I just walk up to the bar. I order the CBC. Wait a minute, how do I do that... Let's see... Okay, I just walk up to the bar and I... Great. Now I'm stuck in an infinitely loop. Again.

6) "No no, buddy. With Cola." You idiot. You fucking loser. God, I don't know why I even come to this place. Seriously. You think I'm just some kind of fucking jackoff who just comes to a place and orders a shot of Cuervo Black? Did you even see my five o'clock shadow? This obvious message here is: "Listen up, hip people of the world. Those bartenders, they're gonna try to hold you back. You're going to order the Cuervo Black and Cola, the MOTHER OF ALL HIP, COOL DRINKS, and they're just gonna be like "What? Cuervo Black in a shot glass? Coming right up." You're going to have to be constantly vigilant. Don't expect the world to understand. Sometimes all you can do is shake your head and say, "No no, buddy. Friend. Pal. I believe I said 'with cola.'"

7) Oh, and feel free to have a good laugh with your hip friends when that total homo behind the bar reaches for the shot glass. You can feel free to spit in his face if you feel like it. Anybody who fears the CBC is gonna get trampled by life eventually anyway.

8) STEP 3: SIT BACK, RELAX AND... You know, I almost begrudgingly admire this moment. The obvious message, as is almost always the case with these kinds of commercials is, "Use our products and you can fuck hot chicks." But here, subliminally, the Cuervo people almost actually say that out loud. To my mind, the obvious ending to this sentence, in context, is "Sit back, relax and fuck this blonde girl." And, because the sentence doesn't end on the title card, and because we jump right from the narrator to the girl saying "Enjoy," it feels just about the same as if they came right out and said it. I don't have much more to say on that topic, because if you think that drinking cool drinks means that you get to bed hot chicks, well then... I'd love to hang out where you hang out.

9) It's sort of a throw away, but because the longest continuous narration comes at the end, it seems like the apt place to point out the narrator's voice. He's got that awful, lecherous morning DJ voice, but it's filtered through a phone filter, so it sounds... I don't know... even cooler? I don't mean cool in terms of reality cool. More cool in the terms of VH1's "I Love the 90s" cool. Like, basically, I totally believe that the guy with that voice would hang out with the guy in the muscle shirt.

So, I don't know about you, but I feel a lot better having written this. I mean, I don't have much of resonance to say about it. It's basically just the most vapid, uninspired, illogical, counter-intuitive commercial that I can possibly imagine. It is the apotheosis of the shallowest possible version of coolness captured on film and played (by my count) at least three times in a half hour broadcast. And, in the end, I'm most offended by the idea that that version of cool is going to sell product. I mean, apparently it does, but why? Why does it and why should it and why can it? Those are the questions which immediately come to mind every time I see that stupid dance step title that starts off the whole abysmal mess. And that rush of disgust at humanity is about enough to ensure that, despite being a great lover of tequila, cola and non-conventional drinks all, I will never ever ever ever order a Cuervo Black and Cola.

For more on this, I invite you to check out my MySpace blog on MTV reality television, which explains in far greater detail the ways in which TV is probably unwinding the fabric of society.

Merry Christmas to me!

Let it be known!

Let it ring throughout the hills and the dales!

And all across the land!

I love Christmas!

Here's a free tip: if you start drinking at 1:30 in the afternoon, and drink until 6:30 at night, that's probably it for you. You're probably not gonna bounce back for a party later than night. Probably best just to eat an entire pizza and pass out for an hour and then spend the rest of your night wallowing in your pre-sleep hangover. At least, that's what I did.

Just for the record: two fantastic lines which jumped out of me. The best thing about these lines is that both work in or out of context.

"Tentacles, yeah." -- Myron, "The Mist"

"You don't get the nickname Lucky Larry for nothing. You gotta be lucky." -- Lucky Larry, "Poseidon"

http://www.iesb.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3789&Itemid=99

Actors are expensive these days. You can't always afford ones who can sing and act at the same time.

No Country For Old Men

What will follow here will be an unapologetic sermon on the beauty, brilliance and importance (yes, importance) of both the Coen Brothers' movie "No Country for Old Men" and the Cormac McCarthy novel on which it is based. You have been forewarned.

The best political tracts, I think, are the ones that don't immediately register as political. Shanley's "Doubt" is a prime example. Without evoking the names of any presidents or generals or sandy foreign cities, Shanley cuts straight to the center of the American political atmosphere. We're right and they're wrong? Do you really believe that? And what if you don't? And, come to think of it, what if you do? That play speaks more to the American experience in the Iraq War years than any five plays which point out weak correlations between the War in Iraq and, say, the dropping of the A-bomb or, I don't know, the Athenian war with the Corinthians (I have actually read that play).

I've just finished Cormac McCarthy's novel, and, sitting here, I have an image from the Coen Brothers' adaptation burned into my mind. For those who haven't seen the movie, avert your eyes for a sentence or two: it's the ultimate image in the movie. Ed Tom Bell, erstwhile rough-and-tumble Texas sherrif, now retired and listless, haunted by his defeat at the hands of a killer he can neither catch nor name nor picture, sits at his breakfast table and recounts a dream in which his father passes him in the darkness, carrying fire in a horn to camp somewhere ahead. Ed Tom finishes, "And then I wake up." And for a moment, Tommy Lee Jones channels a feeling of pure, innocent confusion and a look of desolate desperation comes to his face, a look which is so potent that it honestly moves something within me to bring it to mind.

Here, Cormac McCarthy, writing in 2005, and the Coen Brothers, directing a movie this year, capture a feeling which is so distinctly American and distinctly of our time that it stirs a powerful feeling of sad recognition in me. Ed Tom Bell is a man who has built his life on the strict adherence to rules, but, when confronted with an entity that doesn't fit into those rules, in fact runs totally counter to his entire world view, his sense of security disappears and he is shaken so badly that he quits his life and runs for cover. Of course, there's no comfort in that either.

Does that feel familiar to anyone else? Does anyone else feel like we are being of disillusionment. We make rules. We set boundaries and guidelines. We establish a view of the way the world is. And does it scare anybody else (and I'm trying to be honest here) to think about what would happen if you suddenly realized that the world was absolutely not the way you thought it was. If your views were totally obsoleted? If your innocence was even slightly pulled away? How confused and disoriented and lost and helpless would you feel?

I think we all have some idea of how we would feel. And in that fact is the brilliance of McCarthy's work and the Coen Brothers' adaptation of it. Our world has become a place of no moral absolutes. Of no perfect rules. It's a cliche to talk about the loss of American innocence, but I think we all feel it. We don't know who to trust. The world has become more complicated than even I (at 23) thought that it could. We've got a war that nobody seems to understand, being orchestrated with no transparency or accountability. We receive a constant flow of information about it. Everywhere. Credible information? Who knows? We are talked at by a thousand different people a day, people with different perspectives and agendas and loyalties. Can we trust the people who are supposedly working in our best interest? Can we trust the people who are supposed to be protecting us? Is there anywhere to understand what is really going on in the world, or has the whole situation become so massively huge and infinitely tangled that no one person could ever hope to see the whole picture, let alone unravel it enough to form a thesis about it, or even to be able to really and adequately explain it in the way that we need -- we NEED -- for it to be explained to us. Will we ever really understand our world?

It sounds fogeyish to write like this. To say that things have gotten out of control. But, I don't think I'm even saying that. I'm just saying, basically and honestly, that I don't understand them. Really. And that... scares me? Frustrates me? Bothers me, at any rate. Bothers a lot of people. I don't think that the world was always like this. I mean, of course it's never been just like this, but I don't think that things were always this confusing, people this untrustworthy, information so ubiquitous, the world so ungraspable.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't get much further from Ed Tom Bell than Alex Barron. He's a retired Texan sherriff and WWII veteran and I'm a 23-year-old theatre intern who's never serious entertained the notion of fighting for his country. And yet, I totally understand how he feels. I feel it myself. And I think -- or at least I wonder if -- other people do, too.

Now tell me that these feelings stirred up in me are not the mark of a work which speaks to the mind of the moment. The political mind. Tell me that the book and the movie that inspired these feelings don't provide more stirring political insight than any cable news special or Iraq War jeremiad. People should read the book, should see these movie, and maybe question something within themselves I think that's about the best way to encourage thought, to foster questions, and to connect with a work of (I groan to finish this idiom) art.

So, to recap. Bravo, Cormac McCarthy. Bravo, Joel and Ethan Coen.

Thanksgiving

I think I ate more food today than I've seen in the past three months. But, Thanksgiving isn't just about eating most of a turkey and falling asleep at the table. It's also about giving thanks. So, a quick list of things I'm thankful for.

1) That, after 23 years on this earth, I still possess a largely healthy and largely functional body.

2) That a year in Austin didn't totally eradicate my ability to think.

3) That I spend most of my time doing something that I a) care about, b) am good at and c) feel like I have a future in.

4) That I continue to be surrounded by a group of people who generally treat me at least as well as I treat them, and sometimes much much better.

5) That my luck, or whatever it is that determines how random situations play themselves out, tends, on the whole, to be good.

Those were the first five things that came to me, so they must be the five things that I'm most thankful for right at this moment. It's good to take a moment to sort out things like this. I should do it more often.

The walls of my apartment are pretty thin, so I can hear my neighbors pretty well when they're, say, having sex. But, let me tell you, when those neighbors are screaming and playing the bongos at two o'clock in the morning, I may as well be trying to sleep inside their apartment.

Oh, incidentally, they clearly aren't trained percussionists. I say this because, after listening to them for about ten minutes, I can't help but notice that their beatz ain't shit.

a) I love Halloween-time. Please join me in my enjoyment.

b) I've been spending a lot of time today listening to ABBA. Strange?

c) I'm having a good time. How about you?

Evening - Williamsburg

I have seen just about as many peasant blouses and skinny jeans as I need to see. Though I did, at one point tonight, find myself in a too-well-lit neighborhood bar where everyone, including the bartender, had a Russian accent, the experience was almost negated by having to wade through the sea of awkwardly dressed, cigarette smoking twenty somethings. I'm sorry to be so damning, but I'm all pissy from getting irony spilled on me all night.

At the Intersection of Stupidity and Alarmism

First, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTgvCVGxmsI

So... Star Simpson. 19-year-old MIT student. Walks into Logan Airport in Boston wearing a sweatshirt with a circuit board glued onto the front of it. The back of sweatshirt reads "Socket to me Course VI." She goes up to an information desk and asks about a flight. She walks away. The information desk lady thinks the circuit board might be a bomb and she calls the state police who arrest Simpson at gunpoint. "She was lucky," they later comment, "that we didn't shoot her."

A couple of things:

1) Star Simpson. It was, perhaps, not the smartest idea to wear that particular sweatshirt to an airport where one of the September 11th planes took off. That's really the only thing I have to say to Star Simpson, because her only crime in this situation is wearing a sweatshirt with a circuit board on it. Not a sweatshirt with a bomb on it. Not even a sweatshirt with a fake bomb on it. A sweatshirt with something that is in no way a bomb glued to the front. A circuit board is not a bomb. A circuit board is not a bomb. A million times a circuit board is not a bomb. This will be important later.

2) For the second time in a year, the city of Boston has to scramble to assign blame for their own underinformed overreaction (see The Great "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" Debacle of Ought-Seven). It must be embarassing to find out only too late that you've shut down a major airport and held an innocent young woman at gunpoint for no good reason. So, what do you do? You hold that bad reason up in front of the world and say "Isn't this a good reason?"

Quoth Major Scott Pare of the Massachusetts State Police: "I'm shocked and appalled that somebody'd wear this type of device to an airport in this time. We're currently under orange. The threat is there against aviation."

Allow me to break that down and add referents where he has used pronouns or vagueries.

Ahem: "I'm shocked and appalled that [a 19-year-old college student] would wear [a circuit board glued to a sweatshirt] to an airport [in a time when a 19-year-old college student can get arrested for wearing a circuit board]. We're currently under [a terrorist activity designation that is totally arbitrary and which no one seems to understand]. The threat [from people who aren't Star Simpson] is there against aviation."

It's an insidious rhetorical device that I notice more and more these days. You take an authority figure, put him in front of camera and have him gravely rattle off five or six buzz words and phrases, and people believe him because, after all, he is an authority figure and he is standing in front of a camera.

And suddenly it doesn't seem like the Massachusetts State Police arrested a girl who had done nothing wrong.

I just wanted to take a second to point out the fact that the entire CNN news story more or less covers the Mass State Police's efforts to cover their own asses.

3) And don't think that CNN is getting off the hook that easy.

There have been books written about the need for 24-hour cable news networks to sensationalize the news, simply to fill up their cycles. Still, one would hope that CNN might be able to do a little better than to demonize an innocent student. To hear CNN cover the story, you would think that Star Simpson was either a) a moron or b) a terrorist. Or c) both.

From Dan Lothian. "...she had been wearing this sweatshirt -- believe this or not -- she was wearing this sweatshirt to help her stand out at a career fair at MIT where she is an engineering student." [the italics are mine]. Believe this or not? That would suggest that it was somehow unbelievable to think that she would be wearing an outlandish piece of clothing to a career fair. Which is not at all unbelievable.

Carol Costello. "Yeah, that's an understatement [that this is a serious incident]. What kind of punishment should--could she get for this?" One, is it an understatement? I think it's actually a massive overstatement. And if it is a serious incident, it's a serious incident because so many people overreacted to it. And as far as "what kind of punishment should she get for this?" Well... that's really up to you to say, isn't it, Carol?

Also from Carol Costello: "Yeah, I wouldn't think it was very funny if I saw it at an airport." Nothing like a little us vs. themism. On one side: Carol Costello and upstanding, circuit-board-fearing, terrorism-is-not-funny set. On the other: Star Simpson and her liberal, hippie, unpatriotic, disrespectful, circuit-board-wearing friends. So, you tell me... Did you think it was funny? Whose side are you on?

And just listen to the rhetoric throughout. Especially when they get to her website (lest we forget that many middle Americans probably still view the internet as the unpoliced international electronic waters where pedophiles and terrorists freely mingle) They repeatedly refer to her sweatshirt as a "device," a term which immediately brings to mind the home-made bomb. And they describe her website (which chronicles her many inventions, some of which are pretty fanciful and creative) as though it were some sort of terrorist nexus. "There are other electronics here... There's plenty more online here. Instructions on how to make these gadgets. Some of them been viewed thousands of times by people."

Oh dear God. Don't tell me that they saw the rocket skates plans... Please, Carol. Please don't tell me that literally thousands of people had access to the schematics for a box that tells you whether or not Star Simpsons is in her room!

4) It's things like this and the medias reaction to them that makes me think that there is a real chance (however slight) that fascism might someday have a fighting chance in this country. We should be appalled that a girl was arrested who hadn't done anything wrong. Or we should acknowledge that there is an outer limit to our liberty, and that we aren't free to do or say or wear certain things. Or we should admit that people make mistakes, that Star Simpson is perhaps not the most responsible chicken in the coop, or that when people are scared, the cops can get called out to a place where there's no crime. What we shouldn't do is unequivocally damn the innocent one. We shouldn't laugh at her mistake. We shouldn't smile when we discuss how much jail time she might get. We should shake our heads and say, "Well, isn't that just like those kinds of people."

I thought it was that kind of divisiveness and restriction of freedom that we were supposed to be fighting against.

Cherry Jones and Colm Feore as the First Family on "24"???

[swoon]

IPHIGENIA 2.0

What can I say? Give me a show with dance numbers, acrobatics, plate smashing and a grand filicide and I'm happy.

And that's exactly what I got from IPHIGENIA 2.0 at the Signature. Nobody beats Chuck Mee for delivering to the modern stage the kind of blood, sweat and tears that would have been common fare in Greece 2500 years ago. Did it drag at places? Yes. Were the performances uneven? Yes. Was it a little too on the nose? Definitely. Did I leave the theatre feeling excited and stimulated? Most definitely.

The story of Iphigenia is a compact little gem, as can be said of most of the Greek tragedies. Agamemnon and the Greek troops are laid up in Aulis, waiting to start the Trojan War. In Mee's adaptation, Agamemnon (played by Tom Nelis with the earnestness and manipulative power of a seasoned politician) has received an ultimatum from his troops: before they will march on Troy, before some of them will undoubtedly die in battle, Agamemnon must show them that he understands sacrifice. They demand that he kill his daughter Iphigenia (Louisa Krause). And in the kind of moment of self-manipulation of which only seasoned politicians are capable, Agamemnon resolves to do so, for the greater good of Greece. Agamemnon summons Iphigenia under the pretense that she is to marry the soldier Achilles (the nebbish and charming Seth Numrich). Iphigenia arrives with a wedding train which includes her mother, Clytemnestra (Kate Mulgrew channels Kathleen Turner in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) who, on learning of Agamemnon's plan, threatens to kill her husband if he kills her daughter.

What can I say? Greeks!

The beauty of Mee's adaptation is the deftness with which he translates Euripides' legend to the modern day. Agamemnon is not an unerring patriot, but the kind of leader who is slightly out of touch with real life. In truth, he can ask his men to make the ultimate sacrifice, but cannot make it himself. His brother, the Greek general, Menelaus (Rocco Sisto), by contrast, understands the complexities of life and death and that difficult times call for difficult chocies to be made. In place of a chorus, Mee provides four nameless soldiers (J.D. Goldblatt, Will Fowler, Jimonn Cole and Jesse Hooker), four men who will eventually have to do the fighting and seem motivated mostly be a want to control some small part of their own honor and destiny. The myth is, of course, very timely with its war setting and its questions of the true honor of sacrificing oneself in battle and the danger of trusting the wrong leaders, but it's in the small overlaps, where Mee can slip the modern into the ancient, that make the interpretation so vital and interesting.

Not that it takes a whole lot to make Mee's work vital or interesting. One of the playwright's trademarks is his fearlessness in using theatricality to rocket his plays out of the realm of intellectualism into the open sky of pure emotion. To that end, IPHIGENIA 2.0 is full of celebratory dances, uninhibited bacchanals, syncronized movement, fighting, acrobatics, and lip syncing. These little theatrical treasures make the play almost unavoidably likable, appealing to something deeper than the critical mind, and creating a sense of revelry, like a carnival celebration. Unfortunately, it must be said that these moments do stop the action of the play, and contribute to some structural problems. On balance, though, its these purely emotional outpourings that make Mee's work so vivid and compelling and stimulating.

Blythe R.D. Quinlan's set is a masterpiece, a representational mish-mash simultaneously representing a Greek village, a battlefield, a barracks, a fox hole and a war room. The structure, which stands three stories tall and stretches from the deck to the top of the proscenium, is constructed of pipes, polls, ladders, steps and platforms, and the actors navigate the space like acrobats, sometimes rocketing from the floor to the top of the proscenium in seconds. Scott Zielinki's lights blast the set like the Middle Eastern sun one minute, and burn up red like fire another. Zielinki's light and Jill BC Duboff's sound design move in lock step, slamming, tearing and cutting through the play, wrenching the audience from scene to scene, moment to moment, emotion to emotion.

All of this under the watchful eye and hand of Tina Landau. I know a lot of people don't like her. This is the first thing of hers that I've seen, and I was bowled over by it. The staging was innovative and effective, and yet simple and refined. In a play which is made up of a thousand moving parts, never did two gears seem to gnash against each other. In the design of the machine and in teaching its operation, Tina Landau has excelled. The only criticism that I will lodge is that the actors performances were inarguably uneven. Kate Mulgrew emoting like a melodrama starlet from the 50s. Louisa Krause's unfocussed and sloppy presence on stage. A little more smoothing is arguably all that Tina Landau could have done to improve my experience.

Here's a newsflash: I'm extremely excited to be back in New York. So excited, in fact, that I think I may have gone just a splash overboard with this review. I'll try to pare it down later. But, for now, take it as evidence of how overjoyed I am to be out of the theatrical hinterlands of Austin, TX, and back into a place where things like this can happen.

I feel like Willy Loman...

...in that I have a job.

And that that job has some bearing on American theatre.

You know, after a year spent in Austin, delivering newspapers and generally feeling out of place, there simply are not words enough to describe how wonderfully strange it is to be back in a place where I'm not only expected to work hard, but where I actually want to work hard. My body wants to reject the hard work. I feel a little bit like a marathon runner coming back from a debilitating injury. I want to complete the run, but my body isn't sure it's capable. But, like the long distance runner in this decidedly long form metaphor, I will push myself until I am comfortable doing the hard work that is necessary.

I'm happy and tired and happy that I'm tired. And, for the first time in a long while, I'm excited to get up tomorrow and go to work. Beat that with a stick...

Troutman

...is the name of street on which I will be living come the first of September. Troutman Street. In lovely Bushwick or maybe Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I'm pretty happy with the place. The apartment is under construction, but should shape up nicely. All of the ingredients are there, if covered in sawdust and scrap wood. The building, however, looks a little bit like something out of Mogadishu in the mid-90s. I have high hopes (including a banister which you can use as a banister).

I'm pretty excited.

For now, my great thanks to Ross Michaels for letting me stay with him and even greater thanks to his roommates for moving out early and leaving an empty bed.

Now, to hit the hay, as I've got real actual work tomorrow. And then I have to come home and blog about it! Hurrah!

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was awesome and let me tell you why. In fact, let me make a ten point list as to why.


1) As a boy, he threatened to set his mother and stepfather's house on fire and burn them alive

2) He created calculus and then didn't tell anybody about it for 27 years.

3) As a student at Cambridge, he never once finished an assigned book.

4) He was an undercover detective.

5) While he was Warden of the Royal Mint, he conducted over 200 interrogations leading to 10 executions and then ordered that all records of the interrogations be destroyed.

6) He committed more time to the study of alchemy and theology than he ever did to science or math.

7) He did groundbreaking work on orbital mechanics and then lost the papers he had written it down on.

8) He once did an experiment where he stuck a thick sewing needle into his eye socket between the eyeball and the bone just to see what would happen.

9) He also one did an experiment where he stared at the sun for as long as could just to see what would happen.

10) He would often wake up, swing his feet out of bed and then sit for hours, overwhelmed by his own thoughts, unable to move.


Oh, there was also no apple. Gravitational mechanics just came to him.

Addendum

I got a haircut today at the mall. The woman asked me what I wanted and I said, "Just clean it up a little bit. Not too much shorter. I got it cut about a month ago, six weeks ago."

She said, "So, just like it is, but shorter."

"Sure," I said.

I should have known. "Just like it is, but shorter" was my instruction to anyone who cut my hair from when I was about 10 until I was 18. It is a command that one gives when one wants the same haircut that the stylist has given every boy -- regardless of age, appearance or style -- that he or she has ever seen. It's the hairstyle I had in middle school, it's the hairstyle I had in high school, and it's the hair style I have right now as I'm writing this.

Short on the back and sides.

Long on top.

Sideburns optional.

She even took the time after the haircut was over to get out some gel and try to get the front of my hair to stick up like Lance Bass' hair used to.

Congratulations, Howard County. You had made me feel 14, and now you've made me look 14. Perfect.

Okay, so there are worse things, but it just seems to perfectly... appropriate to the experience of the last three days.

After 48 Hours at Home

I don't think it matters how much you grow up. When you go home, you'll be 14 years old again.

Jiggety-jig

I don't think that a day can offer more of a Howard County experience than today did. An afternoon spent at the mall and a night at the county fair? I think I just described my own high school experience, relived within a day, my first as a Northeasterner in over a year. Welcome home, Alex.

On Leaving the Great American South

For dinner tonight, I had "Southern Fried Chicken and Spaghetti" at a place called Cafe Annie in Pass Christian, MS. Cafe Annie was once a chic bistro on the beach in Pass Christian, but since Hurricane Katrina, it has moved to a building that looks like a portable classroom of the type they park behind overcrowded schools. The interior design looks like a cross between a chic bistro, a Starbucks and a Cracker Barrel.

I guess, in my mind, I had pictured a pasta dish adorned with little fried chicken strips. I thought of the "chicken ranch salads" I used to buy for $4.99 at the HEB in Austin, which amounted to an entire head of iceberg lettuce with an entire fried chicken breast sliced and laid on top. I thought the "Southern Friend Chicken and Spaghetti" would be a fitting tribute to the low cost meals I used to buy in Austin, as well as an accurate representation of the a kind of posh soul food southern style of cooking. Instead, what I got was a KFC four piece value meal with spaghetti and bread as my two sides. It was a forlorn little dish, the fried chicken confused to find itself paired with spaghetti, the spaghetti buried and forgotten underneath the meat, a curious sprig of green languishing in the corner. Confused and disappointed (I don't much like fried chicken, actually) I ate as much as I could, wolfed down the spaghetti and politely asked the waitress for the desert menu (which she never did actually give me).

I mention all of this because that fried chicken meal is likely the last serious meal I'll have as a southerner. Tomorrow morning, my parents and sister and I will pack up our two cars and drive the 17 hours back to Maryland and I probably won't see this side of the Maryland-Virginia divide (the real division between North a South) for quite a while. I ordered that dish because I wanted something momentous, a symbolic dish to be the last of this chapter of my life. I wanted it to be memorable and important. I wanted a meal that said something.

And looking at the half eaten chicken and the greasy plate, I realized that that's exactly what I got:

1) It was something I thought I wanted, but turned out not to especially care for.
2) I consumed and enjoyed a part of it (maybe even a large part of it), but found some of it distasteful.
3) It was constituted of things I thought I liked but turned out not to like in combination.
4) It was unfulfilling.
5) I left it and asked for something I really wanted and got it.

So, that's the symbol I offer, for now, of time spent living in the south: "Southern Fried Chicken and Spaghetti" half eaten, at Cafe Annie in Pass Christian, Mississippi.

BlogSpot

I think that what happened was basically just that I really liked blogging but didn't feel that anyone was reading what I was writing. And when it gets to that point, then you just have to say to yourself, "Am I going to just keep this gold for myself, or am I going to make more of an effort to spread it around?" It was basically a decision between selfishness and selflessness, and, throwing Objectivism to the wind, I chose to be selfless.

So sue me.