The Wee Democracy

gutmania

there is a man, a certain man, who's name and face and gut is known across the land.

i'm usually not the poem or singing type, but for some reason, citizen kane pops into my head when i think of paul gutman. not that he's even remotely cold or money hungry or an empty shell of a man due to the childhood loss of his sled, or more accurately, his yarmulke.

aside from citizen kane, i also think of moms when i think of gutman, as you see, he had a nice one. a very nice one, who bought me subway one time, and forced a subway cookie on me. and at the state tournament, let me set in her little stadium seat to save my posture. it was awesome.

the first time i remember actually meeting gutman was freshman year, when i was briefly a participating member of the wrestling team. what i can say about gutman then, and now, was that he was nice. i mean, you have no idea how many people on the wrestling team became such assholes under the whole "cutting weight" subterfuge. but not gutman.

gutman was/is one of those eternally kind people. the kind you figure has just been a good guy his whole life, and around whom you can't help but feel like you're in good company. when you're 14 and pudgy but you still only weigh like a buck-oh-five, people aren't always nice to you. gutman was.

and i guess that's what makes him worth blogging about. here's a guy that wrestled, that did excellent in high school, went to an exceptional college, and an equally exceptional law school, and yet, seems to retain an empathy that people should aspire too. there is no impatience, no arrogance, no pretense. there's just gutman. and THAT'S something.

be like the gut.



feeling: as though the strength is bubbling and won't remain hidden for long
thinking of: michigan
song of the day: who needs the kwik-e-mart - apu feat. the simpsons
let's hurl a brick-e-mart!

some quotes of pure genius, in no particular order:

apu: is it me, or do all of your plans involve a horrible web of lies?
homer: it's you


marge: kids can be so cruel.
bart: we can? thanks mom!
lisa (in distance): owwww...


moe: they used to call me kid gorgeous. then it was kid presentable. then kid gruesome. and finally, kid moe.


superintendent chalmers: i'd had it with this school, skinner! low test scores! class after class of ugly, ugly children!


homer: oh fat tony. you mean the mob only did me a favor to get something in return? tsk tsk tsk. i'll say good day, sir.
fat tony: ok.


homer: i'll never drink another beer again.
beer vendor: beer here!
homer: i'll take ten.


Homer: Got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, Skittlebrau?
Apu: Such a beer does not exist, sir. I think you must have dreamed it.
Homer: Oh. Well, then just give me a six-pack and a couple of bags of Skittles.


Mr. Burns: That's preposterous, everyone knows our mutants have flippers -- oops, I've said too much. Smithers, get the amnesia ray.
Smithers: You mean the revolver, sir?


Chief Wiggum: All right, where's Sideshow Bob and that guy who uh, eats people and takes their faces?
Prisoner: I'm right here, Cheif.
Chief Wiggum: OK, then. Where's Sideshow Bob?
Prisoner: Eh, he ran off.
Chief Wiggum: Oh, great. Well, if anyone asks, I uh, beat him to death.


Homer: Wait a minute... there's something bothering me about this place. I know. This lesbian bar doesn't have a fire exit. Enjoy your death trap ladies.


Kent Brockman: All this drinking, violence, destruction of property... are these the things that we think of when we think of the Irish?


Chief Wiggum: That's some good work, Lou. You'll make sergeant for this.
Lou: I already am sergeant, Chief.
Chief Wiggum: This looks to me like the work of crazy old Sideshow Bob.
Lou: Actually, Chief, Cecil made a full confession.
Chief Wiggum: Quiet, Lou, or i'll bust you down to sergeant so fast it'll make your head spin!



feeling: giddy
thinking of: why i hate utah.
song of the day: kid A - radiohead
no discernible lyrics, bucko

to be, or not to be....an asshole

so i got an email today from jamie. i've still yet to define my relationship to her, but we've an extensive past full of assorted wheelings and dealings. i can't really call her my step sister, as our parents are most definitely divorced. and i feel 'friend' is too inadequate of a title to give her. she was a major part of my childhood, into my late teens. whatever. it's beside the point. and, in the spirit of a great man known as damon, labels are so tedious.

my real intention in bringing her up was to recount what she said in that email. she seems to be a believer in the whole nice guys finishing last thing. as cliched as it is, i must say....i agree. now i'm not saying, that's always the case. i can think of plenty of nice guys who seem to get exactly what they deserve. but at the same time, i can think of plenty of nice girls with guys who plain suck.

lori and thomas. lani and brian. charlotte and james. lauren and blair.

so why? i've heard that we need to repeat what we know, even if it's bad for us. so if we know our insecurities, and need to reinforce them, even recruiting people to unwittingly reinfoce them - is that the reason why some girls end up with complete assholes?

and, even more frighteningly, if all i know is rejection and how to pick girls who are going to devalue all the things that make me me....well that can lead to some serious messiness.

and i'm really not all that nice. yes, i try to be respectful and courteous, but i've got anger, i can be a prick, and selfish. and i could choose to play with a video game over sex (a la lani's boyfriend brian). but where's the fun in that?

do i have to be disrespectful to get respect?

fuck, this is too complicated. and then you've got marriage and that complicates things even more!

i mean, i saw one of my best friends marry the most boring man on the planet last summer.

maybe i'll just stay single.



feeling: utterly confused, almost to the point of forfeit
thinking of: buzzer beaters
song of the day: third planet - modest mouse
the universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go straight long enough, you'll end up where you were

i'm from dallas, not mars

there came a point in my junior year of college that i realized that men and women really aren't that different. oh sure, there are your macho types and your girly girls, your meatheads and your ditzes, your himbos and your bimbos. but, when you strip down to brass tacks, we're the same. or close to it.

i wrote a couple of things for a couple of creative writing classes that year, and both of them were from the first person POV of a girl. now i don't mean to toot my own horn here (or not that much, anyways, maybe just a little, for the critics), but i kept getting little pats on the backs from girls saying that i really understood what it was like to be a girl. my pal stephanie wanted to know who squealed.

well, anyone who reads this blog with any kind of regularity understands that i know nothing, not the first fucking thing about women. but i do know this. when i wrote that story, when i wrote the single page assignment that expanded into full story form, the traits, the thoughts, the insecurities, and hopes, doubts, anger, fear, whatever...all of that shit, was mine.

so, can't we all just get along?




feeling: tired as hell
thinking of: nothing in particular
song of the day: staralfur - sigur ros
the lyrics are in a foreign language....so fuck if i know what they are

p.s. anyone who wants a copy of the stories that i wrote, to see if i'm full of shit or not, can email me at mr_in_between@hotmail.com

boy girl boy girl

i've mentioned before that i don't like will and grace. well, don't like is perhaps too weak a description. fucking loathe might be more apropos. the reason being that the show completely denies the reality of homosexuality in today's world. i've known a handful of gay folk in my day, none of them make shitty puns about it and none of them demand that you laugh at their oh-so-silly gayness. it's stupid and demeaning.

the reason i remind you of my stance against shitty television is because i fancy myself a progressive individual. that being said, i sighed in disgust at the headline i read wednesday morning in the DMN. it regarded the state of the union address, which i deliberately avoided like the plague (i can't in good conscience listen to a man who can barely emit five words at a time, in addition to saying 'nucular'). anywho, the headline said that bush would "back constitutional ban on same sex marriages". and the first thought i had in my little head was "does the government really have nothing better to do than badger gays and lesbians"? i mean, the country is at war, our deficit is at a ridiculous level, i can't get a decent job with a college degree, and the thing that is occupying the mind of our government is how quickly can we discourge homosexuality?

the second thought was that in about 30 years, people will (hopefully) look upon the ridiculous nature of gay discrimination in the same way that they look now upon segregation and blatant racism.

the third thought i had was more of a mental picture of fat old white men sitting in big leather chairs counting money, hatin' them some queers, and plotting to alienate them from society.

i mean, why? why does the concept of two people expressing their love for each other despite them being either both men or both women frighten these stupid bastards to their very core? will it erode family values? look at it this way.

any two idiots can have a baby. they can be junkies or wastrels or what have you but as long as they don't abuse the baby and make sure it gets to school on time, gov't won't do shit to 'em. but you can have two loving gay parents who really want to adopt a baby and make sure it gets all the attention and caring and all the advantages in the world they can manage, but no....they can't have a baby, because it won't have a traditional family.

so if the government forbids the granting of a baby to a non-traditional family, why'd it let me stay with my mom when my folks got divorced? that's not traditional either, though its getting to be.

or will gay marriage make a mockery of their precious religious beliefs? well, i'd say the lying, stealing, cheating, drinking, coking, whoring, warmongering thing that goes in the government takes care of the pissing away of their so-called god-fearing ethics.

i can't take it. i can't take all this stupid hate for what a person does in the privacy of their bedroom. i don't care! it's not my business. it does not in one single goddamn way affect my life in the least.

so do not amend the constitution. do not make a mockery of THAT document to further the proliferation of your dumbass opinions. fuck off, bush.

josh has spoken.




feeling: considerably angry at the prospect of four more years with a man who says 'nucular'
thinking of: retiring
song of the day: transatlanticism - death cab for cutie
the distance is quite simply much too far for me to row, it seems farther than ever before...oh no

it's pronounced ricky, people

so yesterday i planned on writing a blog about riqui. i mention him enough, i felt it appropriate to write about how i met my oldest friend. the rumor goes that our grandmothers introduced us when we were both around three (he's only three months older than me). if that's true, we've known each other twenty years, but if not, only ten. either way, he's far and away my oldest and closest friend.

yes, we disagree about hank hill's status in the annuls of americana, and yes, our musical tastes run about as contrary as they possibly can without resulting in fisticuffs. actually what we first bonded over, what first made us friends was the mutual dislike for a certain teacher from our long lost middle school days.

that was just the starting point, though. our relationship runs far deeper than hating that psycho hose beast. we bonded over wrestling. we bonded over living in the cliff and being a hispanic in the WASPiest place on earth. we bonded over cici's and jack in the box.

and when he ballot-stuffed his way into the student council presidency, i used the SC office as my own personal lounge. i was like robert mcnamara. and when he graduated, and i still had a year to go (no i'm not stupid, his b-day is in august, mine's in november, so i was always a year behind), i was promptly removed from the office by the new regime...assholes. for anonymity's sake, we'll call them BA and Lensing.

riqui's one of the most level-headed, if not THE most, people i know. he's the rock my waves of nutbarness crash against and break. he's a constantly optimistic ball of good will and sometimes it sickens me. i can always count on him for a trip to cici's when we're both in town. or a trip down memory lane that i haven't visited lately. or knowing every line from the vast majority of the episodes of the simpsons. or singing random lines from mediocre rock music. or laughing at my filthy jokes even though they're not that funny. or commiserating about teachers we bet were hot back in the day, and complaining about the lack of time machines in today's world.

and you can thank him, because it was riqui that got me into this thing called blog.



feeling: tired, smelly
thinking of: bush's lame stuttering fool self preempting both '24' AND 'line of fire', irking me greatly.
song of the day: to paint you a poem - travis shaw
two roads diverged in a yellow wood. one wasn't evil but the other wasn't good.

the dirk

i'm growing a little beard. i say little because the facial hair i sport is sporadic at best in all places but my chin. so i'm taking advantage. i'll play with it a couple weeks, see how i like it. i've named it the dirk. after nowitski.

so i saw angela today. i was at work for a bit. i was supposed to work the whole day, but they were overstaffed, and i really shouldn't have been there at all, but my boss forgot to call me, so i got in four hours.

anyways, i had to close out my register, and then angie had to sign off on it. and BANG, who's disinterested now, sucka?? hmm?

it's the dirk, i'm telling you, the dirk rules.



feeling: in a tentatively good mood
thinking of: some people putting themselves in positions that drive me nuts.
song of the day: dead flowers - townes van zandt
send me dead flowers every morning, send me dead flowers by the mail. send me dead flowers to my wedding, and i won't forget to put roses on your grave

all i need to know about dating i learned from sex and the city

it's no secret. i watch, love, exalt the virtues of sex and the city. it's a great show. the thing i love about it, and about most of the shows on HBO (save Curb Your Enthusiasm) is the realism of it. granted, carrie doesn't seem to make that much money, prior to season 5 anyway, but she always has money for 400-500 dollar shoes. i'm more talking about their emotional instability. they're flawed, and they don't really change much. they learn things here and there, and change a little bit, but their core being remains the same. i love that.

let's take carrie and mr. big for instance. now if you haven't seen the show and you don't want to find out what happens because maybe you plan on seeing it in the future, read no further. they're all wrong for each other. sure they have a good time, and let's face it, mr. big is a fox, to use tesla's terminology. you want to see them work it out, but you know in your heart they won't. they're too different. carrie's got too much baggage and mr. big is too non-committal to be able to properly deal with it (see the paris/mcdonald's incident for examples of this).

or carrie and aidan. now, in their two breakups, i sided with aidan completely. breakup no. 1 - she cheated on him. he had every right to break up with her. yes, it blew, and yes i hated to see them part...the first time. but you have to ask yourself. why did carrie tell aidan in the first place? she could have gotten away with it scot free, but she felt compelled to tell him. personally, i think it was selfish. SHE couldn't deal with the guilt. aidan was doing fine, but SHE had to clear her conscience. well, if she was so goddamn conscienable, why'd she sleep with Big in the first place?? hmm? hmm?

ok, off the high horse.

breakup no. 2 - there was one scene that just about made me hate carrie. it was when she wanted to get back with aidan and she ran to his apartment in the middle of the night. she's going into this whole thing about why they should get back together and he interrupts her with "you broke my heart!!". she gets this whipped dog look on her face and runs away, like he was out of order. please...he had every right to say what he said. so boo hoo for carrie.

THEN. they get back together...things go fine...aidan proposes, and carrie says yes. ok, good. shit, I'D marry aidan if he were real and asked. so they're getting married. and she gets cold feet. SHE BREAKS OUT IN HIVES, for god's sake. she's big in female form, essentially. non-committal, "give me time" blah blah blah. bottom line. she fucked it up. she did.

now...all that being said, i still love carrie. you don't always like her, but that's what makes her a great character. like tony soprano, a character i may tackle in the coming days.

all that aside, i'm interested in seeing if the whole power shift thing that's mentioned is true. do men get to have the cards that matter when we enter our 30's? it'd be interesting....very interesting.



feeling: stagnant
thinking of: the lonely bug
song of the day: hallelujah - jeff buckley (via leonard cohen)
well, maybe there's a god above, but all i've ever learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya. and it's not a cry that you hear at night, it's not somebody who's seen the light, it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

people and places

radiohead's fake plastic trees - summer 2001, i was an RA in kinsolving, and i used to listen to that on loop to and from classes. i tried to time it so that when thom yorke starts to really get into it, i was in an elevator alone, so i could sing along with no embarassment.

sarah mclachlan's possession - nicole and romina's room, with them and damon, late on night, tossing a ball back and forth and asking soul probing questions. i think the entire album played at least twice. you learn alot about people when you just ask them.

red hot chili peppers' soul to squeeze - jester, or bryan's red rocket, driving around austin, playing a song we all liked from the 90's but no one had until i burned it. then everyone was reminded, hey yeah, that song is cool. then we spent months trying to figure out what keidis was saying before determining it was gibberish.

aimee mann's save me - damon's car. we heard it playing from somewhere in his apartment complex once, and he said "you know, that's either a girl playing it, or a gay male, because no one else would have it so loud." not that he was impugning the work, but perhaps just stating that straight guys are a little wary to admit liking a girl musician. i disagreed.

leonard cohen's suzanne - walking into the third floor classroom in jester, deciding nervously about whether or not to ask out sara, perhaps the most breathtaking girl i saw in college. i'm serious, the minute i saw her i was like, guhhh... it was hard. we went out twice.

john lennon's mother - listening to it with vince, having him explain, point out, notice the pain and anguish that john achieves in the song. it really is sad.

elliott smith's miss misery - any point in late freshman year, when damon and i were getting to be as close friends as we got. that was our best time. that was when we knew each other well.

i miss those times.



feeling: nostalgic
thinking of: i don't know
song of the day: upward over the mountain - iron and wine
mother, don't worry, i've killed the last snake that lived in the creekbed

the art of mixing

so i like making mix cd's. alot. there was that one episode of friends where ross couldn't tell mona that he loved her so he made her a mix tape. i've heard that it's a pre-relationshippy thing, but fuck that, i just like doing it. i fancy myself to be fairly good at it, so i take the opportunity as often as i can to force my tastes upon unsuspecting others.

i've made a few lately. one for my pal romina, though i haven't sent that one to her. i'm making one for my friend cady, though it's not done yet.

it's a tedious process. you make a preliminary lineup, usually 7 or 8 songs you know you want on it, usually that have a similar feel to them, i try to arrange the first and last songs of the cd, so i have a skeletal narrative to the musical tones

i just made all that vocabulary up, but you bought it, didn't you? hehe.

ok, so once i've got the first 7 or 8, i think, ok, what would fit in good between these songs? what follows 'dead flowers' best? how do you introduce brian eno's soft ambient tunes to be most effective?

and THEN it gets very difficult. you've got to weed out the songs that break the flow of the music. the ones that just don't fit. it's like that sesame street song "one of these things is not like the other." you've got a responsibility to find that thing, goddammit!!

by this time, you've got a solid 12 or 13 songs on the lineup, and usually, i want to aim for a little over an hour of playing time. so my goal is usually 15 or 16 songs and about 65 minutes running time. so there's 3 or 4 more songs you're trying to finagle in there, both to fit the tone and the stream of the lineup.

occasionally, you can toss in another song from the same artist. my sister doest his masterfully. she used like, 6 bright eyes songs on her last mix cd and they all fit in perfectly. sometimes, i toss in two from the same artist if the artist is relatively new to my repertoire. iron and wine and josh ritter are good examples.

so, let's say you've got a solid 15 songs now, and you're close to your running time. DON'T RUSH TO BURN! say you're fairly confident in your song list and order. wait. wait like a good two or three days, listen to it over a couple of times, change and tweak as you see fit.

it's a difficult process but it's sure fun.

oh, and then there's the making of the jewel case, but....you can't teach that.



feeling: hot, stressed
thinking of: ANY of the girls from the OC or bold and the beautiful.
song of the day: the wind - cat stevens
i let my music take me where my heart wants to go

i like titanic

i try to buy movies on dvd only if i can't foresee ever being embarassed to admit that i own them. that being said, i was somewhat glad when financial struggles in the late summer led me to sell a number of my dvd's for some quick cash. i rid myself of the movies i felt were below me.

even now, in my little cubby hole, i have a small box in which i keep only the best of the best (which tends to mean the movies i'm currently watching with some regularity), and the rest reside in a closed box in the corner.

but i have secrets. yes, i've got some movies that i taped of the dorm movie channel while i lived in the dorms a few years back.

bring it on. shaft. whatever it takes. yes, i must admit a weak spot for the teen movie du jour. i don't know why. perhaps it is because they belong to that genre of film which possesses that fallacious sense of justice i ranted about some time back. you know, the girl always gets her dream guy, and the guy always realizes that the dream girl is a stuck up ho, and falls for his supposedly plain secretly super hot best friend (see "whatever it takes" or "she's all that" for examples of this).

i loved freddy vs. jason. my thinking is, if a movie sets out to do something, even if its lowbrow, and it succeeds, why shouldn't i like it? there's no reason. in fact, i'm itching to buy freddy vs. jason on dvd, but i hesitate - will it taint the almost invariably 4-star caliber of my collection? in my eyes, no, but in the eyes of the smoot, perhaps.

now, now, you're saying, why should i care? i shouldn't. you're right. but i do.

like damon. he says he hates titanic. that it makes him want to shoot himself. i say, bullshit!! all they had was each other!!




feeling: lost, rather detached
thinking of: escaping
song of the day: ascent - brian eno (its instrumental, so no lyrics)

cure alls

i was talking to riqui just now, and i asked him if he ever allowed himself to think about cure-alls. you know, those things that are the answer to all your life's problems. so i got to thinking, can 40 billion dollars make me happy? i don't know, but i'm williing to think about it.

if i had forty billion dollars, i could pay for therapy. fuck, from the world's best therapist. and i could pay for medication if i needed it, and i wouldn't have to worry about insurance.

if i had forty billion dollars, i could have a personal trainer, and a personal gym. and i wouldn't have to work, so i could work out every day without thinking, jesus, i don't want to be wiped out before i go to work, or, i hope i have time to shower, or blah blah blah.

if i had forty billion dollars, i'd buy an apartment in the upper east side of manhattan. a pimp apartment, a loft probably, nice and big and ultra cool. i'd of course have to maintain a place of residence here, and probably keep a beach house on each coast (the OC in the west, NC and the hamptons on the east coast).

along those lines, if i had forty billion dollars, i'd have parties all the time. not so people would like me, but mainly for my friends, and to force my music onto others. i'd have booze and stuff, like an endless supply. they'd be so swank, my parties, celebs and shit would be trying to get in them. paris hilton would probably be jealous.

if i had forty billion dollars, i'd rent out the biltmore mansion every now and again, and throw the wildest craziest swankest three day party known to man. it'd make woodstock look like the fucking mclaughlin group.

i'd bankroll movies, i'd publish authors, i'd own galleries, and provide a venue for new and obscure musicians that i dug, and give them record deals. and i'd pay my sister to make my houses look bad-the-fuck-ass with her art.

i'd buy an NBA team, or take the cowboys back from jerry jones and sell them to mark cuban for a dollar. i'd have courtside seats for every mavericks game, and people would say, there's josh, and i'd be more of a fixture than jack nicholson at the lakers' games.

i'd have a driver and a fucking sleek badass black-as-night limo to take me wherever i needed to go. that way on dates, i can pay attention to my date rather than to driving.

fuck a cell phone, i'd own a cell phone company.

if i had forty billion dollars, i'd have my pick of the litter when it came to girls. sure i'd have to deal with my share of gold diggers, but i'd have a prenup and a nice little windfall prepared for them. that, and i don't marry easily. and besides that, i'd weed out the unsuitable, and uncool.

if i had forty billion dollars, i could do all the things i want to do, and i could try to be all the things i wanted to be.

but angela still wouldn't like me.



feeling: shit
thinking of: starting to carry a weapon
song of the day: bird stealing bread - iron and wine
Does his hand on your head feel alot like a thing you believe in? Or a bit like a bird stealing bread out from under your nose?

angela

so i got an email from a friend of mine. actually, she used to be my step sister. but then our parents got divorced. what does that make her now? who knows. ah, family in america.

anywho, she asked, nay, demanded that i fill in the details about the "enchanting" angela, as she put it. well, enchanting is a bit premature. if there's one thing i've learned in the last few years of solitude and rejection, its not to get me hopes up too fast. i still do, but to a lesser extent, but regardless of the status of my hopes, my nerves get shot to shit. i get all nervouslike, i'm like a footballer and it's the big game, and i'm all nerves -- that was spud, by the way, from trainspotting.

but i digress. so...angela. angela is about my height, maybe an inch shorter. she is very pretty, and has blonde hair and blue eyes. given my prediliction for members of the master race, that's good! (joke) she generally tends to wear black or another dark color, though the other day she wore red and looked fabulous (i've been watching sex and the city, and fabulous wore off).

when she talks, sometimes she lets things slip that exude a familiar brand of cynicism, and i'm apt to think she and i share a similar word view. i believe i've said before that she, perhaps, is a female me. in which case -- well, that's good. i think.

evidently, according to amanda (incidentally, i've always wanted to have a friend who did some leg work for me when i comes to casing the situations with girls -- is that too much to ask? am i lazy? have my friends up to this point been sorely lacking in the wingman department?) angela has a bit of a foul mouth and a dark sense of humor. this is good, because anyone who knows me knows that i can make a sailor blush with the foul streak i can spew at a moment's notice. i also have a bit of a hangman's sense of humor, and blah blah blah. we have some in common, or so it's been said.

amanda said to calm down, and treat it casually, which is what i intend to do. she seems very excited for me, and says that angela's been looking for someone, so there's that. she said that angela will say yes to lunch tomorrow, which is good, cause i figure i need to step things up if i'm to make a move before i leave melrose place. if i leave melrose place.

i'm a dead man.



feelings, thoughts, and songs remain the same as below.

foley's place

i'm hoping you guys realize that i'm making an effort to update the blog on a regular basis once again. just to recap, the decline began when i started working at foley's, because it took alot of my energy to stand for 9 or 10 hours a day, so much so that writing seemed to fall by the wayside. it was kinda sad. not that that was the only reason, but a major factor - that's for sure.

now, those of you who read me regularly, know that i'm usually one to preserve anonymity. that's generally because most of the people i talk about have a link or two to everyone else. so i've got to make sure i don't step on anyone's toes.

that being said, i feel no need to preserve anonymity tonight, because the people i'm going to talk about don't know me outside of work, they don't know any of my friends, they don't know i write, and they certainly don't know i blog....about them.

they are: amanda and angela. and they work at foley's, which i'm hoping will turn into a little melrose place (hence the title of today's blog).

so last friday, i went up to foley's to pick up my paycheck. but it wasn't ready, so i decided to do a little shoppity shopping of my own. i needed pants, so i picked up a pair. i went to amanda, a very nice older black lady who works there. i say older like she's in her 60's. she's probably in her late 30's or early 40's, but that's beside the point. anywho, she rings me up, and i ask "hey, is angela here?"

now this opened the proverbial floodgate, and amanda immediately launches into this would-be matchmaking question and answer session. me, being the shy and generally socially awkward idiot that i am, flustered and stuttered like a buffoon, leaving the situation in a state that almost resulted in disaster. amanda almost asked angela out for me.

just so there is no equivocation about it, i AM interested in angela. personally, i feel like she may be a female version of me. but we'll see.

so today, i show up, deathly afraid that amanda's set things in motion with angela that cannot be stopped. but, to my relief, she's not. but we'll see what tomorrow brings....oh yes, we'll see.

there's more to the story, and i might come back and flesh it all out a bit, but my legs hurt. so there.



feeling: strangely calm
thinking of: melrose place 2
song of the day: soul to squeeze
today love smiled on me, and took away my pain simply

Top Ten

My Top Ten films of 2003 are:

10: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - Give them credit for staying strong throughout the trilogy. And for Miranda Otto.

9: Bad Santa - "Hey Opal, c'mere!"
"Nuh uh, Willie! Last time i didn't shit right for a week!"

8: Lost in Translation - opening shot

7: American Splendor - "Where the hell are my keys?"

6: Dirty Pretty Things - "i bit!"

5: Raising Victor Vargas - i lick my lips, too

4: 28 days later... - "see, this is a really shit idea. you know why? cause it's really obviously a shit idea."

3: Lilja 4-Ever - saddest movie ever. EVER

2: Kill Bill, Vol. 1 - "NOW IF ANY OF YOU SONSABITCHES HAS ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY, NOW'S THE FUCKING TIME!"

1: Owning Mahowny - "you're charged with suspicion of theft of over two hundred dollars"


concordantly, my much shorter list of the worst films of 2003 is as follows:

4: a view from the top - i wanted to walk out
3: open range - i wanted to throw shit at the screen. actual shit.
2: how to lose a guy in ten days - i wanted to stab myself in the eyes with a straw. i tried. twice.
1: Mystic River - not so much bad as perhaps the most overrated movie...ever.



feeling: superior, and a little weak
thinking of: corinna, who totally hoodwinked me
song of the day: all mixed up - red house painters

she's always out taking pictures. she's always out making scenes. she's always out the window when it comes to making dreams.

i'm fighting illness

i usually don't admit i'm getting sick until i'm actually sick. i like to think of myself as strong in mind when it comes to my body's susceptibility to viral and bacterial assault. i'm proud that last fall, i successfully fought off a cold with three solid quarts of orange juice over three days.

as for the hiatus. i don't know if it's over for sure. the last time i hiated it was more of a self imposed thing, cause i was in a really bad mood, and i didn't want to vent everything here. surprising, considering my almost tourettes-like readiness to discuss my body hair.

this time though, i'm still in a crappy mood, but i just haven't felt like writing. the bug has left me, and i fear it may be some time before it returns to it's former glory. to the good old days when some friends insisted that i publish the rantings of this democracy in book form. i wish i could.

the job at foley's is going well. i've been there for about a month now. got me a little workplace crushing that i'm nursing, like an old man in a home, spending hours with jello. she's cute. a bit like me, which may be worrisome and weird, to say the least. but like i said, cute, and that outweighs the potential for serious neuroses as a deal breaker.

christmas came and went with little fanfare. i got several new dvd's to add to the collection that has grown in fame to near bowie porportions. several seasons of sex and the city. then owning mahowny from the mom, and i bought 28 days later, the conversation and raising victor vargas all on my owns.

riqui came. we did all that we planned to do, and more. evidently, if you give a man enough whiskey, even grass is comfortable enough to sleep on. saw some old friends i hadn't seen in years - one that i hadn't seen since we graduated. saw coach o, which is always a surreal experience.

it's the day after new year's and i've already wanted to run away and have contracted some illness. 2004 may blow.



feeling: sketchy, at best.
thinking of: a nurse - my own personal one, in tight white dress, with a name tag that says "angela".....yeah
song of the day - mozart - la nozze de figaro - sull'aria