so i went to see minority report. first of all, they put commercials into the slide show (you know, between movies) which i thought was cool until i saw that they still had commercials on the preview reel. second of all, we timed the commercials on the slide show and 2 of them clocked in at 2.5 minutes! and 3 of them were for coke products. one of the preview reel commercials was also for coke. you know, at the movie theater, i really had no choice but to buy coke products (if anything). why do they have to advertise it to me 4 times? i know, i know, it's so i get up and go buy one. then, the preview reel was about 30 minutes long. the movie was supposed to 'start' at 10:10, and it actually started at 10:40. we yelled 'start the movie' until the ushers came and beat us with their giant kit kats. (go simpsons generation).
i thought minority report was really well made. the effects were really low key, like, it wasn't apparent they were effects. it wasn't very cheesy, which is hard to find in a movie these days. and, and this is hte kicker for me, i didn't guess pretty much anything that happened. i'm a guesser, you know, one of those annoying people who's like, "it's gonna be the dad". to my credit, i'm usually right, but i guess i don't need everyone to hear my predictions. anyway, i didn't guess that any of the 'twists' that happened were going to happen. i didn't even think to try to predict what would happen, which is kind of interesting since the movie is all about predicting what will happen.
i also didn't know it was a spielberg movie until the end credits. i'm really glad i didn't know, because i think i wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. i did know it was a philip k. dick story, but i've never read a story by him. my roommate is a big fan though so i thought it'd probably be cool (and she liked the movie).
so that was a rather dry retelling of my movie going experience. another dry retelling: we were at the big theater at union square (though actually on 13th st.) when we got our tickets torn, the guy said, "straight back, there's a kick ass balcony" and we were all kind of confused for a while until os went upstairs and found out that there was in fact a balcony. i was so amazed. i've seen movies in that particular theater before and i never noticed there was a balcony. i didn't even notice the screen was bigger (as i am assuming it must be). go observant!
-al
6.28.2002
grrrr
that's all i say now. grrrr. i'm still trying to figure out how to deal with this mailing list bullshit. on top of everything, osc tried to send our band newsletter out with his aol account and they suspended his account for trying to bulk email. meanwhile, months ago someone actually broke into his account to bulk email porn ads and aol did nothing! what the fuck? whatever. i'm so tired. i'm just waiting to receive the newsletter now so I'll know it's been sent.
i finally signed up with nyc bloggers so maybe someone will actually read this. i didn't know how to describe the page. i almost just wrote 'brainfart' but decided i'm not sure enough what a brain fart is to know if it's an accurate description.
why have i still not received the newsletter? grrrr. i just want to sleep. i've got three smirnoff ices in me (yes, smirnoff ice) and it's just given me a headache. it tastes good but what's the point? i should stick to whiskey. (see, i'm tough.)
the writing on here has gotten very self absorbed. i'm sorry. i've just been pushing myself to write instead of waiting for inspiration. inspiration always hits at the most inconvenient times though. oh well.
-al
6.27.2002
so many titles
how come like half of my thoughts are song titles that have no songs but i can't muster up even non-sequiter titles for this stuff? why? it's like, you always come up with 1000 great band names but once you have a band, you're totally blank.
the radio downstairs in the furniture factory is particularly loud today (i imagine they play it so loud all the time so as to hear it over their electric saws and drills and such) and right now they playing that song that samples the super mario bros. music. this is of course not terribly interesting and i have little to say about it. but man is it loud.
it's still hot. i was able to just barely squeeze into my topica account. and then i found out i could have just emailed the newsletter to the list. i think. actually i don't know, i haven't gotten it in my inbox yet.
i've been working on a 'logo' or some such for this page, but the more i work on it the less excited i get about it. i wish i had more time to write, but right now it's hard to find time to even get online to do what i have to do. grrrr. the cable company has not called me back. why do they lie? they could just be like, no, we can't help you.
time rolls on. and i do nothing. it's too hot to do anything. last weekend while i was in ohio, someone asked me if i knew this someone else because the someone else had described my tattoo to her. for some reason i was reluctant to just say, yeah, that was probably me. i'm always afraid people will mistake me for someone else and i'll get embarrassed. of course, i'm embarrassed pretty much all the time anyway. people often recognize my tattoo which is cool i guess but mostly weird. probably because i don't feel like i'm being noticed most of the time. so when i meet someone who's like, hey, i saw you at the port authority once and thought you had a cool tattoo, it throws me off. most of the time i feel invisible. or noticeably uncool if you know what i mean.
speaking of ohio, which was a few paragraphs back, there were sooo many bugs there! it was overwhelming but i was ok. i can't believe i have a bug phobia now. i was sitting outside under a tree and i felt something on my neck which i thought was just hair moving. but i checked anyway and it was not hair, it was a bug, which I quickly swatted off. no lie, it was about 4 inches long. and wide. and i kept my cool pretty well, outwardly anyway. the bugs, they want me bad. and they know i'm vulnerable.
-al
and now
nothing is working still. grrrr. i can't send files. i can't access topica and i really need to. of course, i can access it. the only thing i can't get to is my topica page. grrrr.
-al
aaaarghh!!!!
it is so fucking hot. i did laundry today. nothing dries in this weather. and everything sticks to you. it didn't help that since there was an impending thunder storm (which has yet to really materialise) and i had to use plastic bags instead of regular laundry bags and everything sticks. nothing is working in my favor tonight. the last good luck thing that happened was the woman at the laundromat let me have my dry cleaning even though i lost my ticket. i had left it there back on memorial day after the initial exterminator visit. i tried to work out the phone bill and i had to go over it like 6 times to figure out who owes what and have it add up right. then i tried to find out how much i owe con ed and they're not taking any normal business calls right now because of the lightning storm. oh, and i called time warner about cable modem (or cable in general) and they were like 'there is only one listing for your building' and i guess there's supposed to be one for each apartment. the operator this time was way way more helpful than last time. she promised me a call back. but who knows. if they have to wire up the building, i doubt we'll be able to afford it. unless we can get the landlord to do it, which probably won't happen unless maybe we can convince the whole building to participate. a bunch of people already have sattelite dishes i can see from outside, so i guess that doesn't bode well. fuck that.
none of this is that bad. things would be better if it wasn't so hot, or i had enough money to pay my bills without asking my parents, or i'd gotten more of my to do list done today. actually i would have gotten more done if it wasn't so hot.
last night our power went out. it was just the circuit breaker. it was probably because we have two air conditioners going. which sucks. our power situation is totally out of hand. even without the amps and stuff just plugging in the tv and computer and microwave is like too much.
sooo my computer is very sick. and one of the problems (though maybe it's not part of the sickness) is that the text is blurry. i think it's ruining my already terribly ineffective eyes. maybe it's why i can't drive at night anymore, i don't know. i can drive but i can barely see. but anyway, i tried to fix the problem of the blurry text and all i endedup doing was changing the font. and now i can't figure out how to change it back. i'm really not a computer moron. it's just that some things i don't know. like why it's blurry. grrr.
so, yeah, it's hot.
-al
6.20.2002
soooo, i've been saving up lots to write, but i haven't had any time to write it. and i still don't. and i'm going to ohio (to the underground publishing conference) for the weekend. and i'm trying to figure out how to put comments on the page. anyway, i just felt like posting something since it's been so long.
rock.
-al
6.15.2002
revisiting simpsons theory4:25
the show also works a lot like people do these days. not that the show has no meaning of it's own, but it is mainly made up of references to other cultural/media items. not that any show exists in a vacuum of it's own existence, but the simpsons has created its world vis a vis our world. Ok, i'm not being articulate, but maybe someone out there understands.
my friends in baltimore just found a space to open their community center! i'm so excited for them! congratulations!
-al
sleep tight 3pm
so we finally got our new mattress. it was great. yesterday, we set it up, put a new allergy cover on, put the stuffed animals back. the exterminator gave us a 30 day guarantee that the bed bugs wouldn't come back. i was almost feeling normal again. and what happens? my roommate comes in to ask me 'is this a bed bug?' the insect in her hand had been crawling up her sweatshirt and she smushed it. i really just wanted to say 'no' but i couldn't. it looked like a bed bug. shiver. i really wish i was in the shower and os had been out here to field the question. maybe he wouldn't have told me about it. i went into a total freak out when we discovered the bugs the first time. i realy don't know if i can handle it if they're still here even after the exterminator came. someone told me their friend works for an exterminator out on long island. the friend said he sprays water 90 percent of the time. how fucked up is that? makes you want to kick some exterminator butt doesn't it?
-al
tokens i just saw a preview for a movie called something somthing altar boys. so far as I can tell, there is one girl in it. at least she's not forefront on the poster. i saw smoke signals the other day and they made the 30 something woman who plays a relatively small role in the film look as if she were about 18 and the star of the film. however, the girl in altar boys isn't even a token, she is a lust object. at least so far as the advertising goes. what i'm thinking is, while this movie totally appeals to me, how absolutely amazing a movie would it be if the main characters were girls? maybe you have to know what the movie is about to understand. i'll find the imdb link. i know, if i'm gonna complain about movies, why don't i just make my own? after all i have a film degree. of course i have no talent at it. and no drive. i find it hard to believe that no one of the millions of people making movies can make movies where someone might want to identify with the girl.
up until recently, i pretty much never did. identify with the girls I mean. which was probably, thinking about it, a healthy reaction to most media images of women. because let me tell you, now that i tend to identify with the women (as well as the men, and of course the boys and girls) it's downright unnerving.
ok, i guess the movie is based on a book (or comic book). it's called the dangerous lives of altar boys. the girl in it was in bitch online about abercrombie and fitch's new underpants for girls but i couldn't find them on their site. has anyone seen them? not that I think bitch made it up or anything. it's just kind of fantastical to me.
-al
the simpsons generation 7:25
i'm going to put in to officially change the title of my generation (whichever title it is that is supposed to apply to me) to the simpsons generation. it seems more appropriate to me. everyone i know is or at some point was into the simpsons. at least a little. maybe that's too broad. am i generation x? or the mtv generation? i don't know. but neither seems to really apply. I can't believe the simpsons has been on so long. i remember watching it while I did my math homework in 6th grade. people must like it. it plays twice a weekday here and has for years. someone told me 'd'oh' is in webster's now. what about 'yoink'? shouldn't be too long.
due to limited internet access, i've been writing this stuff offline, so i've put my own times in. i have a feeling these two posts i've written won't even make in online before tomorrow's date. so here you go, today is 6.14.02. I think that people with cell phones definitely think of the dial up connection differently than those of us who don't (but maybe it's just me and my roommates' difference). like, i have to make a phone call. or i'm expecting a call. what can i do? tell them they can't go online all day? I love how everyone else wants to be online all the time and i'm the one who has to call the cable company. (ps. i'm exxagerating).
-al
...that is all i am taking with me... 5:33
talking to my best friend is always sort of bittersweet. to be fair, i have two best friends but one is my 'partner' (oh, i am so progressive), so for clarity, my friend from highschool who moved to new orleans (and i mentioned in that dream i wrote about) is my 'best friend.' she just called. she's coming into town tuesday. "are you going to leave really fast?" "maybe." she told her sister (who is also my friend) that she wanted to make new memories with us. i think this may be more of a nostalgia thing than a genuine desire on her part. she's so afraid of coming back here. i don't really blame her. nyc sucks. and she's got her ghosts here. but it's so hard to pretend it doesn't bother me that she's gone. i know that real life is more important than media. but my best friend started writing her zine just as she was stepping out into a life that didn't include me. the only issue of her zine i really appear in is the one about the past. the one that left her at the doorstep of her new life. her new life I'm afraid she considers her 'real life'. I'm afraid sometimes that my closeness with her is maintained only through my knack for self delusion. maybe hers too. or maybe she doesn't care. i wonder if in 40 years, she'll look back at her life through her zine. knowing her, this isn't so ridiculous. she's a writer. she once told me it doesn't matter how it really happened, it matters how she remembers it. so what if she doesn't remember me?
-al
6.14.2002
curious kids beat clowns
just when i was starting to get excited about the power puff girls, they let me down. I'd never seen the show before, but I caught it today. little girls who fight crime? that's pretty cool. everything's cutesy, but that's ok with me. the episode i saw had two stories. one, it was raining, so instead of fighting crime, they were pretending to at home. the best part was when they were fighting about who would have to play bubbles, and the dad (? or, um, some older dude in a lab coat, i thought for a moment they were in a mental institution) came in to see what was wrong. in order to solve their problem, the dad had to be bubbles, which was pretty funny. he was just wearing boxers and then the little girl's shirt and they put his hair in little pigtails. the second story, a clown gets hit by a bleach truck, which turns him black and white and evil, and gives him the power to turn other things/people black and white (and silent, though they didn't talk about that directly). The girls (actually, bubbles) saves the day by playing music. so of course i'm like, awesome, they're a band too? that's pretty cool. blossom solos on the guitar even. they use what seems to be the sheer power of positivity to turn the clown back to color (his name is rainbow the clown) and he sings a thank you song on stage to them. i thought that was all fun and stuff. but then they beat up the clown and send him to 'sing sing'. first of all, i don't know that mentioning 'sing sing' is really something anyone should be doing in a relatively fluffy children's show. but i guess the name has just come to mean serious prison time. and since the name of the prison is no longer sing sing, people think the prison doesn't exist or something. anyway, what I found really disturbing was that they punished him even though he was obviously no longer evil. that his 'rehabilitation' meant nothing to the power puff girls makes them a bit less benevolent to me. it was so abrupt. if they had left him as the evil black and white clown, the scene would probably not have jarred me. but that he turned nice again and was thanking them for turning him back to normal and they just beat him down. whoa. what are the writers trying to say? we don't deserve second chances? it doesn't matter what social influence caused us to turn to crime, we should be punished as if it was entirely in our control anyway? as i think more about it i think either i'm just way to pc(which i bet people think anyway) or that plot twist was totally fucked up. yeah, yeah, it's just a cartoon.
i can't believe it is already thursday. i have wasted this whole week. which is not uncommon. but i thought i was getting better. i had more dreams about stuffed animals and parasites last night. this one had a stuffed animal parasite, who was itself a stuffed animal. having bed bugs a few weeks ago has really done a number on my psyche. i had other dreams i can't remember the details of, only that they were nightmares. i was gonna write them down when i 'got up' but i ended up lying around in bed and forgot them. oops.
I made more cookie bars last night (i make them alot because they're relatively simple) but they were a bit too moist and/or undercooked. we still ate them of course. but it really made me want to make cobbler. mmmcobbler. i have some peaches in a jar, i was gonna make pie (someday) but now i think i'll make cobbler instead.
i really wish the cable people would call me back already. my roommate goes online for hours at a time. the problem being of course that so do i, as well as my other two roommates. the chances of getting an answer when you call here are pretty slim.
-al
6.12.2002
most reliable source of information: your dreams
-rob brezsny, pisces horoscope, june 6, 2002
i hate dreaming. it sucks all my energy out. if i wake up from a dream i feel like i haven't slept because i've been doing whatever i was doing in the dream. last night i had an anxiety-obsession dream. that's my interpretation. in the dream, i was boarding at my highschool (which was of course nothing like any school i've ever attended and more like an office building in white plains) because everyone in my class had to take the SAT again. even though we really took the test about 8 years ago. the school was also populated by people i knew in highschool as well as people from college (but not after). and we had to take the test in this rickety old building. there was a lot of climbing in the dream. i kept trying to find my best friend and i kept running into her but then i'd lose her again. this is my best friend from highschool as well as my current best friend, but our relationship isn't what it used to be because she lives in new orleans and I don't. however, she's visiting starting next week, and now it's all up in the air as to whether she's staying as long as she's planned, and I imagine the dream had something to do with that. Then I ran into chrissy and tiana, who i was in steel magnolias with in 10th grade, and chrissy had become a professional piano player. I was trying to give her my contact information but first i couldn't tear the pieces of paper and then I couldn't make sense of what I was writing. i was writing words but not the words i was supposed to be writing. i was writing someone else's address, and then my best friend's address (though i'm sure it wasn't her actual address) and then i tried again on a piece of wood and it wasn't working there either. at one point, the nickname i had (which wasn't really a nickname, it was one of those names you say is your nickname because it works amusingly with your last name) appeared on the paper and i hadn't written it. then i tried to tell chrissy what to write, but that didn't work either. it all just made me feel insane, which is how i feel when i'm awake, though for different reasons.
so that doesn't sound like a nightmare to you, i'm sure, but it felt like a nightmare. not all of it, but the anxiety parts. i also had dream recently, which also felt like a nightmare, where there was a war going on between good and evil and i had to protect my teddy bear. But then i had to set him aside somewhere while I was fighting.
i have some indication of what these mean. i mean, it's all got something to do with my anxieties and i'm reworking real life in my dreams. but it's just so annoying. i just want to stop dreaming. or at least start forgetting the dreams. and ever since that horoscope, i've been wondering if there is a specific dream i'm supposed to be paying attention to (and then, which one?) or if it's all my dreams. the dream i had the morning i read the horoscope was about finding bed bugs in my hat.
-al
6.11.2002
two days and I'm already thinking of titling an entry 'blah blah'
they are watching executive decision. for those who don't know, it's an action film about, surprise surprise, arab terrorists. They hijack a plane on which they have stored some kind of horrible biological weapon and say, release so an so blah blah. Kurt Russel says, "I think they intend to use the nerve gas and the plane together as a sort of homemade nuclear weapon." I'm remembering in a class last fall someone saying, "who would ever think of using planes as weapons?" I don't know. it seems like people are amazed because they a- don't pay alot of attention and b- forget history. What did this guy (who was a marine) think kamikaze pilots did?
we need a cable modem soooo bad. But they don't service our area!! everyone i know says dsl sucks. But basically we've got 4 people here who want to be online all the time. Not to mention use the phone. Actually, everyone else has cell phones. real punk rock. actually i have little against cell phones. I just called the cable company and they were like, erm, i don't know. The website says they will be 'servicing my area' (oh yeah) this summer, but I don't know when. And if it's a long time from now, it may not be worth it. With any luck, we'll only be here till may. maybe?
last night I cut meg's hair and made vegan cookie bars. mmmcookie bars. I really want to make cinnamon roles but I'm afraid that might take too much effort on my part (the dough has to rise twice!). so maybe i will make cinnamon raisin bread. Oh yeah.
i need a new message board to hang out on. mine has gotten pretty stale. not that I'm not part of the reason.
I am going to see bartleby with my brother tomorrow. whenever I talk to him on im he talks to me in catch phrases. is this because he's at work? me - are you driving into the city? him - no, mta is going my way.
-al
confusion
i know you like my lame titles. So I just read an interpretation of Mullholland Drive and i'm not really sure how I feel about it. I liked the movie, no doubt. and i wanted to 'know' what it was 'about'. but this explanation makes me like it a little less. maybe. I haven't decided yet. I think first and foremost they should have said, 'it was supposed to be a tv series' becuase that would make it make much more 'sense' to me. you have to use a lot of quotation marks when talking about david lynch. I really wish it had been a series. Tv needs that stuff. no more survivor or, like what was that other one? Temptation island. there isn't enough (intentionally) creepy stuff on tv regularly. I miss twin peaks. oh well. What lynch should do is a movie series. Like lord of the rings. Or he could do a straight to video series. I don' tknow why he didn' tmake it a cable series.
-al
done
it tears my heart when I know something so surely but I cannot explain it. When I get confused as to whether it is me or them that is so stubborn. There is a discussion going on on a message board somewhere. But I can't explain myself so I can't respond. It's soo frustrating. grrr. I should just not read it, but then I read it. then I write out half a response, realise i'm not getting anywhere and stop. read more. repeat. grrr.
-al
6.10.2002
pipe dreams are the 'eternal life in heaven' for those of us without souls
so this is about my third or fourth attempt at starting this weblog. I keep fucking up. oops. i really liked the last entry I wrote, but then I had to resize the window and i lost it. oops. it's been a really long time since i've written anything on a regular basis, especially personal type writing (as opposed to school type writing, which I haven't done much of either). so i'm hoping this set up will get me back into the swing of things. plus i've been planning on making a 'personal' web site for about 6 years and well, maybe this'll be a good way to start. Or not. we'll see.
about the title - instead of actually doing things like most people do, i tend to sit around and think about doing things. recently this has meant that instead of setting up the furniture and stuff in my room and dealing with the crumbling cement walls and wood beams (i don't sleep in my room. i've lived here for 2 years) i've been falling into the ikea catalog, dreaming about how neat and organized my room (life) could be. So one of my more lofty pipe dreams, which means it is less probably going to happen, is to open a bookstore/library/infoshop somewhere and I'll probably call it curious kids start fires. I saw a psa in the local paper about kids actually starting fires, but I thought it just sounded like an infoshop or collective. maybe it's lame? so the title is partially to try it out, see if it's a good name for something, and also so I can lay some sort of claim to it, though i'd bet someone already has.
about me - since this is going to be my stand in for a personal website, I guess I'll start off with a bit about me. I'm al. I'm "about 24". I just put in a 'leave of absence' from graduate school because really i'm quitting. I am currently unemployed, like many young college educated new yorkers with the luxury of parental financial help. I live in brooklyn, ny. Right now, i spend a lot of time day dreaming. I spend a whole lot of time worried and freaked out. I cook vegan stuff (though I've been not doing that lately). I watch Frasier a lot and get pretty excited about it. And I play bass in a band that I'm not going to mention right now since I'm not sure I want people who know me to read this.
obviously, there is much about me not in that paragraph. But I don't want to write my life story just yet. I guess that's all I'll say for now. Hopefully I'll get motivation to post something new sometime soon.
-al
