What's been goin' on, G? Been a while since I seen ya! Been a while since I updated, numsayin'? Kick back, dogg, and read on. Got some truf I wanna lay down. For real.
I'm gonna be perfectly honest. As an underclassman, I'd look at graduating seniors with a certain degree of judgement. If, when they left Skidmore, they went straight on to the working world and got a good jump-start on their careers, I admired them. If, instead, they went on to loaf around with a few stupid, degrading jobs...well, I kind of turned up my nose and went "Well, look at Mr. Utter-Lack-of-Motivation! Why don't you make somethin' of yourself you no-account good-for-nuthin'!" Now it's about three months from my graduation, and well...I'm starting to think that maybe "loafing" isn't so much the right term as much as "journey of self-discovery."
I've mentioned this before, small internet community, but I know what I want to do. I have a passion. It's story-telling, in any capacity, be it acting, writing or directing. The issue, of course, is that getting paid for artistic pursuits is a pretty big long-shot. I heard one actor describe being successful in Hollywood as "winning and inter-planetary lottery." I believe him one-hundred per cent. What I write are small, moderately funny but overall deeply miserable dramas about the shallowness of modern friendship, the finality of death, and the insignificance of humanity in the face of an incomprehensibly vast universe. This is not what Hollywood is looking for. They're looking for CGI talking puppies and Vin Diesel with a sub-machine gun in each hand. In the past two days I've heard two different stories about deeply personal visions being butchered and sanitized by Hollywood studios. Obviously there's more than two people...likely there are hundreds of thousands over the years who tried to produce something meaningful, only to have it butchered in the name of corporate thinking. And those were the lucky ones who got something produced.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed. We'll see what I do.
Thursday, 29 November 2007
Friday, 2 November 2007
Opinions on People Pt. II
This is a public blog. It means that I publish things that I think would be of interest to other people. Sometimes my life is pretty interesting. Other times it is desperately, inconceivably dull. The past two weeks, it has been the latter. I've been going from class, to Ad-Libs, to girlfriend and back, and very little in between. None of this is particularly interesting to the casual observer. So I'm gonna write up a few little paragraphs on my personal heroes.
Thom Yorke. This man is legend. Most of the time, when you really delve into the personal history of an artist, you get these awful glimpses of their very real, very obnoxious personality. Thom Yorke, I imagine, is just a pretty decent guy. Yeah, he's probably a bit prickly. Not the most fun guy to hang out with at a party, I imagine. I'm betting a fun evening for him is spending four hours on moveon.org and then writing a song about his feelings. But I'll be damned if the guy isn't the most uncompromising, virtually ego-less talent around. He's anti-establishment, but without all the Bob Dylan cruelty or the Kurt Cobain self-absorption. He's political without having a Bono-ish, self-aggrandizing messiah complex. He's got no unfortunate past, no illigitemate children to speak of, no addictions: he's just kind of a sad guy from Oxfordshire who really likes making music. And has no other ambitions than to make his music, and to let other people enjoy his music. That's what I love about his. He has no cares but making good, revolutionary art. And no one is quite like him.
Patton Oswalt I would imagine that if Thom Yorke were American and capable of laughing, he'd be Patton Oswalt. Oswalt has the career that I want. He's doing a lot of really great comedy, he stars in sitcoms, is a working screen-writer, and has gotten moderately more famous for being a cartoon rat in a Pixar movie. He's also the funniest comedian around, in my humble opinion. And unlike Will "Kicking and Screaming" Ferrel, or Mike "Cat in the Hat" Myers, he's doing what he wants on his terms, not going for stardom or big paydays. If he wouldn't mind handing his life to me, I'd appreciate it a great deal.
Chris Onstad Who's this guy? Go to www.achewood.com and find out. Here's why I admire him: he's a particularly funny computer programmer from the silicon valley. He makes an ugly-ass website with an ugly-ass cartoon. He sells a few tee-shirts and stickers on the side just to make the site profitable. Slowly but surely, through the STRENGTH OF HIS WRITING ALONE, he develops enough of a fan-base that the comic turns into a full-time job. He's supporting himself and his wife and child in Silicon Valley, which is probably the most expensive place to live that is not on a cloud made of diamonds that were spun in a cotton-candy machine. And the comic is awesome. It's ass-ugly, to be sure, but the characters are so vivid that it doesn't even really matter. At least not to me.
The through-line in all this? I guess it's artists who do subversive, strange work, yet, through the strength of that work alone, manage to support themselves, to varying degrees (really, descending degrees: Thom's a rock star, Patton's a somewhat-well-known stand-up and script-writer, and Chris is making ends meet in a California suburb off a cult-y website). Sound like anything anyone wants to be?
Thom Yorke. This man is legend. Most of the time, when you really delve into the personal history of an artist, you get these awful glimpses of their very real, very obnoxious personality. Thom Yorke, I imagine, is just a pretty decent guy. Yeah, he's probably a bit prickly. Not the most fun guy to hang out with at a party, I imagine. I'm betting a fun evening for him is spending four hours on moveon.org and then writing a song about his feelings. But I'll be damned if the guy isn't the most uncompromising, virtually ego-less talent around. He's anti-establishment, but without all the Bob Dylan cruelty or the Kurt Cobain self-absorption. He's political without having a Bono-ish, self-aggrandizing messiah complex. He's got no unfortunate past, no illigitemate children to speak of, no addictions: he's just kind of a sad guy from Oxfordshire who really likes making music. And has no other ambitions than to make his music, and to let other people enjoy his music. That's what I love about his. He has no cares but making good, revolutionary art. And no one is quite like him.
Patton Oswalt I would imagine that if Thom Yorke were American and capable of laughing, he'd be Patton Oswalt. Oswalt has the career that I want. He's doing a lot of really great comedy, he stars in sitcoms, is a working screen-writer, and has gotten moderately more famous for being a cartoon rat in a Pixar movie. He's also the funniest comedian around, in my humble opinion. And unlike Will "Kicking and Screaming" Ferrel, or Mike "Cat in the Hat" Myers, he's doing what he wants on his terms, not going for stardom or big paydays. If he wouldn't mind handing his life to me, I'd appreciate it a great deal.
Chris Onstad Who's this guy? Go to www.achewood.com and find out. Here's why I admire him: he's a particularly funny computer programmer from the silicon valley. He makes an ugly-ass website with an ugly-ass cartoon. He sells a few tee-shirts and stickers on the side just to make the site profitable. Slowly but surely, through the STRENGTH OF HIS WRITING ALONE, he develops enough of a fan-base that the comic turns into a full-time job. He's supporting himself and his wife and child in Silicon Valley, which is probably the most expensive place to live that is not on a cloud made of diamonds that were spun in a cotton-candy machine. And the comic is awesome. It's ass-ugly, to be sure, but the characters are so vivid that it doesn't even really matter. At least not to me.
The through-line in all this? I guess it's artists who do subversive, strange work, yet, through the strength of that work alone, manage to support themselves, to varying degrees (really, descending degrees: Thom's a rock star, Patton's a somewhat-well-known stand-up and script-writer, and Chris is making ends meet in a California suburb off a cult-y website). Sound like anything anyone wants to be?
Wednesday, 17 October 2007
College Thoughts
It is Senior year for me. This is my last few months in college, and I can see already how quickly they're going to whip by. In a few months I'll have my own share of responsibilities and needs. Have I made the most of my time here? Have I grabbed every precious youthful moment by the balls, twisted vigorously, and sucked the sweet juices from its darkest chambers? Have I successfully carpe'd the diem?
The answer, some might argue, is no. In terms of the drug pool, I didn't venture particularly deep. In terms of the sex pool, I didn't wade particularly far, and certainly not with very many partners. I have not tried anything that could be chemically addicting, and I have not gotten my "pimp on" as some may say.
What have I accomplished? I wrote two fucking plays, and both were awesome. I've grown as an artist in every respect, be it my writing, my acting, and I've developed an entirely new skill as a director. I've grown intellectually, from someone who dipped a finger in a thousand different pots to a person with a genuine intellectual curiosity. I can relate to people now in an unfamiliar social situation, whereas before I found myself muttering and mumbling with an extreme degree of awkwardness. I have grown more comfortable in my skin. And in doing so, I discovered something: I don't really value the "experience" that people usually equate with college. This is not a judgemental call. This is not me saying that I disapprove of people who experiment. I disapprove of people who get addicted to anything, but that's a different story. I simply believe that, for me...I could do without 'em. I could. I'd like to try some again, before I have a family and everything, but I could not just as easily. That's not where my mojo is. Just ain't me.
So do I regret not smoking more, not snorting more, not fucking more (or at least more people)? No. That's not who I am.
Here's what I do regret: my mawkishness and my depression makes me introverted. It's manifested itself in a number of ways, but the way that I find I most regret is not reaching out to people. Allowing people to stay at an arm's length, never contacting people who I consider my friends, never fostering my friendships in any meaningful way. That's just not cool. I'm very sorry I've done that, not been a better friend to more people. I feel I'm not close with so many people I could very easily have been close with. This year I'm going to try and do better, but...we'll see how it works out.
What next now? What the fuck do I do? The world calls, and I feel as though I have something to give, but it's all in arena's that are fraught with competition and despair. Acting? Fuckin' A, can I get by being six foot two, slouchy and slim? Writing? Yeah, me and about eighty thousand other Jewish college graduates who can type kind of fast. Journalism? With what experience or credentials, exactly? It's not that I don't feel like I'm ready to do something. It's that everything I chose is just so hard to do.
Give me some love, professional America. I'm an okay writer, I'm pretty personable. I'd just like some kind of assurance that I could maybe at some point live above the poverty line. Can you give me that without me going to law school? I hope you can, professional America. I hope you can.
The answer, some might argue, is no. In terms of the drug pool, I didn't venture particularly deep. In terms of the sex pool, I didn't wade particularly far, and certainly not with very many partners. I have not tried anything that could be chemically addicting, and I have not gotten my "pimp on" as some may say.
What have I accomplished? I wrote two fucking plays, and both were awesome. I've grown as an artist in every respect, be it my writing, my acting, and I've developed an entirely new skill as a director. I've grown intellectually, from someone who dipped a finger in a thousand different pots to a person with a genuine intellectual curiosity. I can relate to people now in an unfamiliar social situation, whereas before I found myself muttering and mumbling with an extreme degree of awkwardness. I have grown more comfortable in my skin. And in doing so, I discovered something: I don't really value the "experience" that people usually equate with college. This is not a judgemental call. This is not me saying that I disapprove of people who experiment. I disapprove of people who get addicted to anything, but that's a different story. I simply believe that, for me...I could do without 'em. I could. I'd like to try some again, before I have a family and everything, but I could not just as easily. That's not where my mojo is. Just ain't me.
So do I regret not smoking more, not snorting more, not fucking more (or at least more people)? No. That's not who I am.
Here's what I do regret: my mawkishness and my depression makes me introverted. It's manifested itself in a number of ways, but the way that I find I most regret is not reaching out to people. Allowing people to stay at an arm's length, never contacting people who I consider my friends, never fostering my friendships in any meaningful way. That's just not cool. I'm very sorry I've done that, not been a better friend to more people. I feel I'm not close with so many people I could very easily have been close with. This year I'm going to try and do better, but...we'll see how it works out.
What next now? What the fuck do I do? The world calls, and I feel as though I have something to give, but it's all in arena's that are fraught with competition and despair. Acting? Fuckin' A, can I get by being six foot two, slouchy and slim? Writing? Yeah, me and about eighty thousand other Jewish college graduates who can type kind of fast. Journalism? With what experience or credentials, exactly? It's not that I don't feel like I'm ready to do something. It's that everything I chose is just so hard to do.
Give me some love, professional America. I'm an okay writer, I'm pretty personable. I'd just like some kind of assurance that I could maybe at some point live above the poverty line. Can you give me that without me going to law school? I hope you can, professional America. I hope you can.
Tuesday, 9 October 2007
My show
My show is a good show. I don't often say this. I don't often admit to myself that I've accomplished something. Even when I do a good job, it is often tempered by a feeling that I could have somehow done better. All my performances, with the possible exception of my role in Proof senior year of high school, have felt like this. Rufio, despite people enjoying it a great deal, felt this way. But I've worked on this damn script for a good three years, and after so much re-structuring and revising, I think I've finally made something that I am happy with. This is saying a lot for me.
To everyone who is important to me and couldn't come see this play, I hope to God this play doesn't end here at Skidmore College. I hope to show this to everyone I come in contact with on my long, dark journey towards artistic success. God willing, someone will take it, and they will treat it well. When this happens, I hope you can make it to whatever converted church basement in Greenwich Village is willing to take this thing. I think you'd really like it.
This is not a funny post. I am sorry about this.
To everyone who is important to me and couldn't come see this play, I hope to God this play doesn't end here at Skidmore College. I hope to show this to everyone I come in contact with on my long, dark journey towards artistic success. God willing, someone will take it, and they will treat it well. When this happens, I hope you can make it to whatever converted church basement in Greenwich Village is willing to take this thing. I think you'd really like it.
This is not a funny post. I am sorry about this.
Friday, 28 September 2007
OH MY GOD!
THIS SEMESTER IS BUSY! IT IS TOO BUSY TO EVEN FATHOM! TODAY WAS THE FIRST DAY WHERE I FELT LIKE I DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING EXTRAORDINARILY PRESSING I NEEDED TO DO! OH MY GOD!
I'm the Ad-Libs president, I'm directing a show, I'm taking regular classes, I had a job until I took a brief three-week reprieve...etc. This shit is just too damn busy.
My birthday is the day after tomorrow. I turn 21. I'll be looking forward to the prospect of taking my liquor to the check-out counter of the liquor store/supermarket teller, presenting a legal form of ID that has my real date of birth and, after brief glance, perhaps a confused furrowed brow as he subtracts 1986 from 2007, he hands me back the ID and asks for a method of payment.
What I'm, not really looking forward to is the bar scene here in Saratoga. From what I understand, it's not the most home-y atmosphere. There were a lot of great pubs in Oxford where you could sit down at a table, drink and just talk. Maybe even roast a marshmallow. But here...I have a feeling the scene is a little less "Tolkien and Lewis" and a little more "Asshole and Shit-Spewing, Hyper-Agressive Cock-Mongering Fuck-Head". Not looking forward to the constant peer-pressuring from my more agressively "YOU MUST DO SO MANY THINGS YOU DON'T WANT TO DO BECAUSE I THINK IT IS FUN!!!!" friends (you know who you are), using the term "DT" over and over again and asking me to go there. Call me a crank, but I always thought the great thing about being a senior was knowing what you do and don't enjoy and not feeling the need to do something just to impress someone else. Just saying.
Senior year...almost the end of things...truly, extraordinarily frightening. That is all.
I'm the Ad-Libs president, I'm directing a show, I'm taking regular classes, I had a job until I took a brief three-week reprieve...etc. This shit is just too damn busy.
My birthday is the day after tomorrow. I turn 21. I'll be looking forward to the prospect of taking my liquor to the check-out counter of the liquor store/supermarket teller, presenting a legal form of ID that has my real date of birth and, after brief glance, perhaps a confused furrowed brow as he subtracts 1986 from 2007, he hands me back the ID and asks for a method of payment.
What I'm, not really looking forward to is the bar scene here in Saratoga. From what I understand, it's not the most home-y atmosphere. There were a lot of great pubs in Oxford where you could sit down at a table, drink and just talk. Maybe even roast a marshmallow. But here...I have a feeling the scene is a little less "Tolkien and Lewis" and a little more "Asshole and Shit-Spewing, Hyper-Agressive Cock-Mongering Fuck-Head". Not looking forward to the constant peer-pressuring from my more agressively "YOU MUST DO SO MANY THINGS YOU DON'T WANT TO DO BECAUSE I THINK IT IS FUN!!!!" friends (you know who you are), using the term "DT" over and over again and asking me to go there. Call me a crank, but I always thought the great thing about being a senior was knowing what you do and don't enjoy and not feeling the need to do something just to impress someone else. Just saying.
Senior year...almost the end of things...truly, extraordinarily frightening. That is all.
Sunday, 26 August 2007
Say Goodbye to Sleeping in Trees
My blog informs me that the last time I posted was on July 17th. Dear me, that was a while ago. Please, accept my apologies. Here they are. My apologies.
Here's a little summer round-up. Let me introduce pro's and con's.
Pro's
Friends
I think everybody can pretty much agree that friendship is awesome. And friendship is equally awesome when you're surrounded by it, immersed deeply in its velvet folds, for a little under three months. It was great being on my own for a few months, away from my parents with a paying job. It was fun, to say the least.
Living Space
Really huge apartment. Really nice people living in the apartment. $475 a month, plus utilities...steep for my shallow-ass pockets, but about an average rent, I'd say, considering the location. ISLAND KITCHEN. That was a great island.
Performing in the City
My first experience with non-paying fringe theater. Almost certainly not my last. A great time, for realsies. Despite a few snags in the rehearsal process, we really managed to get our shit together for the performances. We even got a few positive reviews in some really off-beat theater publications...I was hoping to come out of the experience with a good quote that I could show to casting agents in future times, but the best mention I got was "Matt Chester is amusing". Not exactly a sterling write-up there. But these are the pros. Let us focus on the positive
Netflix Subscription and Oodles of Free Time
What a fine cinema binge it's been. Since Netflix has such extraordinary variety, I always feel compelled to get the most obscure shit that no upstate NY rental store with any sense of self-preservation would dare to carry. A few of the obscurest titles? How about Werckmeister Harmonies, an extremely slow-moving, black-and-white Romanian film about a small village that gets thrown into chaos after a circus comes to visit. Or Wizards, Ralph Bakshi's WTF-inducing animated fantasy about a post-apocalyptic future where magic re-emerges and evil wizards use Nazi propaganda to motivate their goblin army. Et cetera. Not to mention a few spare titles I got at the library. Did I mention I had friends? 'Cause I manage to keep up with a few when I'm not in a dark room reading subtitles on a TV screen.
Employment
My first job was a pretty warm, inviting environment that payed a very generous $14/h. My second job was in an even warmer, even more inviting environment with people my age that payed an average of a still-okay-for-a-college-student $10/h. Being a Barista is a pretty good deal.
Now for the cons (Boo!)
Money Troubles
The first three weeks in Saratoga were a bad, bad time. I had to pay my first months rent, had to at least begin to pay back Ben for the security deposit he very generously forwarded for me (Ben, if you're reading this, Thank you so very, very much), and had to start buying my own food. My bank account was dwindling fast, and I was having a hard time finding a job. Finally, I found one at Uncommon, but I've still been scrambling for pennies whenever I can. But being an aspiring actor/writer, I guess I've got a whole lot more of this to look forward to.
Girlfriend bein' all Far Away and Shit
It's better than being an ocean away from each other like we were last semester, but a five hour drive is still pretty long. I've seen her a total of six times since I got back from England, each a roughly two-day stretch. I'm extremely looking forward to her being back at school and having sex on a regular basis. Hurray!
No more Oxford Pals
I managed to visit Shari a few weeks after I got back, but none others. And now that school is starting, we're about to blow to the four winds of the earth, with a big new work-load ahead of us. I was hoping to see everyone again at least once before school started, but it seems like that won't happen. Le sigh. Maybe one day *Looks out at the starry sky and begins to sing a song. Song ends.*
Overall, though, a very, very good summer. I will hold it's flame tightly in the palm of my memory...until one day it starts to burn the skin and I will drop it to the ground. That was an alzheimers/senility/death metaphor for y'alls. Enjoy it.
Here's a little summer round-up. Let me introduce pro's and con's.
Pro's
Friends
I think everybody can pretty much agree that friendship is awesome. And friendship is equally awesome when you're surrounded by it, immersed deeply in its velvet folds, for a little under three months. It was great being on my own for a few months, away from my parents with a paying job. It was fun, to say the least.
Living Space
Really huge apartment. Really nice people living in the apartment. $475 a month, plus utilities...steep for my shallow-ass pockets, but about an average rent, I'd say, considering the location. ISLAND KITCHEN. That was a great island.
Performing in the City
My first experience with non-paying fringe theater. Almost certainly not my last. A great time, for realsies. Despite a few snags in the rehearsal process, we really managed to get our shit together for the performances. We even got a few positive reviews in some really off-beat theater publications...I was hoping to come out of the experience with a good quote that I could show to casting agents in future times, but the best mention I got was "Matt Chester is amusing". Not exactly a sterling write-up there. But these are the pros. Let us focus on the positive
Netflix Subscription and Oodles of Free Time
What a fine cinema binge it's been. Since Netflix has such extraordinary variety, I always feel compelled to get the most obscure shit that no upstate NY rental store with any sense of self-preservation would dare to carry. A few of the obscurest titles? How about Werckmeister Harmonies, an extremely slow-moving, black-and-white Romanian film about a small village that gets thrown into chaos after a circus comes to visit. Or Wizards, Ralph Bakshi's WTF-inducing animated fantasy about a post-apocalyptic future where magic re-emerges and evil wizards use Nazi propaganda to motivate their goblin army. Et cetera. Not to mention a few spare titles I got at the library. Did I mention I had friends? 'Cause I manage to keep up with a few when I'm not in a dark room reading subtitles on a TV screen.
Employment
My first job was a pretty warm, inviting environment that payed a very generous $14/h. My second job was in an even warmer, even more inviting environment with people my age that payed an average of a still-okay-for-a-college-student $10/h. Being a Barista is a pretty good deal.
Now for the cons (Boo!)
Money Troubles
The first three weeks in Saratoga were a bad, bad time. I had to pay my first months rent, had to at least begin to pay back Ben for the security deposit he very generously forwarded for me (Ben, if you're reading this, Thank you so very, very much), and had to start buying my own food. My bank account was dwindling fast, and I was having a hard time finding a job. Finally, I found one at Uncommon, but I've still been scrambling for pennies whenever I can. But being an aspiring actor/writer, I guess I've got a whole lot more of this to look forward to.
Girlfriend bein' all Far Away and Shit
It's better than being an ocean away from each other like we were last semester, but a five hour drive is still pretty long. I've seen her a total of six times since I got back from England, each a roughly two-day stretch. I'm extremely looking forward to her being back at school and having sex on a regular basis. Hurray!
No more Oxford Pals
I managed to visit Shari a few weeks after I got back, but none others. And now that school is starting, we're about to blow to the four winds of the earth, with a big new work-load ahead of us. I was hoping to see everyone again at least once before school started, but it seems like that won't happen. Le sigh. Maybe one day *Looks out at the starry sky and begins to sing a song. Song ends.*
Overall, though, a very, very good summer. I will hold it's flame tightly in the palm of my memory...until one day it starts to burn the skin and I will drop it to the ground. That was an alzheimers/senility/death metaphor for y'alls. Enjoy it.
Thursday, 12 July 2007
Opinions on People: A continuing series
Michael Bay
I saw Transformers a few nights ago, and I figured out why I dislike Michael Bay, other than simple sheep-like "Dude fucking sucks" movie snobbery.
Saying that Bay is an overtly commercial filmmaker who caters to a lowest-common-denominator is not enough to decry him. There several directors who make brash, populist films and yet are unreservedly adored by most critics: Steven Spielberg, to name a big one. Then Robert Zemeckis, Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas (for the most part). Going deeper into "Golden Age" Hollywood you have even more: Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder...these were not artists who were trying to stake their claim by creating obtuse, intellectually challenging films. They were very good filmmakers whose only interest was to entertain and, if there was time enough, enlighten. So the fact that Michael Bay's stated interest in filmmaking is to entertain a simple crowd, we can't really begrudge him on that reasoning alone.
Another big complaint levelled against him is the way his slash-and-sputter action sequences have no real sense of distance, depth, or really anything except a series of haphazardly filmed cars, guns and explosions. Now, call me tasteless, but I tend to like Bay's action sequences. They're a bit too wildly edited, yes, but on the whole they tend to thrill. The little red-blooded American male in me can't help but like the kind of tasteless action Bay loves to assault his audiences with. It's trashy, but cinema lovers have to like trashy: trash culture is essentially the ethos movies were founded upon.
No, I have a bigger problem with Bay: the moments that surround his action sequences. The awkward, tone-deaf dialogue, the cardboard-cut-out characterization, the ludicrous orchestral soundtracks attempting to beef any moments of pathos or drama. Bay is a fine filmmaker when he stays the fuck away from humanity and sticks to cars, rockets and greased-up hot chicks. But when he takes a jab at, say, humor, or perhaps the notions of patriotism or sacrifice, he fails on virtually every level.
Take the "dramatic moments" of the two Michael Bay films that I can easily recall: Armageddon, and Transformers.
Armageddon: Bruce Willis is about to kill himself to save the world. Ben Affleck rises up in a little glass tube shouting and spitting, telling him "No! No, please! I love you Larry! (or whatever the fuck Willis' name was in that movie)" The violins swell and Liv Tyler cries gorgeous, crystal tears against her perfect complexion. Willis steels his eyes and pushes the button. BOOOOOM!
Transformers: Shia Labeouf and Megan Fox, whose romance has until this moment been sputtery and awkward in the worst ersatz John-Hughes kind of way, are being kicked and jolted by an apocalyptic battle between the autobots and decepticons. Just as the fall together in unison, a brief shot of their two hands clutching one another is seen. They lock eyes. The violins swell.
These moments are ridiculous. If Bay had any eye for his own talents, he'd know his strengths lie in action and action alone. He'd be a great genre huckster, and he may actually be resepcted instead of just absurdly wealthy. But instead he injects his films with these kinds of lugubrious attempts at characterization. Fuck this guy. Fuck him in his ass.
I saw Transformers a few nights ago, and I figured out why I dislike Michael Bay, other than simple sheep-like "Dude fucking sucks" movie snobbery.
Saying that Bay is an overtly commercial filmmaker who caters to a lowest-common-denominator is not enough to decry him. There several directors who make brash, populist films and yet are unreservedly adored by most critics: Steven Spielberg, to name a big one. Then Robert Zemeckis, Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and George Lucas (for the most part). Going deeper into "Golden Age" Hollywood you have even more: Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Charlie Chaplin, Frank Capra, Billy Wilder...these were not artists who were trying to stake their claim by creating obtuse, intellectually challenging films. They were very good filmmakers whose only interest was to entertain and, if there was time enough, enlighten. So the fact that Michael Bay's stated interest in filmmaking is to entertain a simple crowd, we can't really begrudge him on that reasoning alone.
Another big complaint levelled against him is the way his slash-and-sputter action sequences have no real sense of distance, depth, or really anything except a series of haphazardly filmed cars, guns and explosions. Now, call me tasteless, but I tend to like Bay's action sequences. They're a bit too wildly edited, yes, but on the whole they tend to thrill. The little red-blooded American male in me can't help but like the kind of tasteless action Bay loves to assault his audiences with. It's trashy, but cinema lovers have to like trashy: trash culture is essentially the ethos movies were founded upon.
No, I have a bigger problem with Bay: the moments that surround his action sequences. The awkward, tone-deaf dialogue, the cardboard-cut-out characterization, the ludicrous orchestral soundtracks attempting to beef any moments of pathos or drama. Bay is a fine filmmaker when he stays the fuck away from humanity and sticks to cars, rockets and greased-up hot chicks. But when he takes a jab at, say, humor, or perhaps the notions of patriotism or sacrifice, he fails on virtually every level.
Take the "dramatic moments" of the two Michael Bay films that I can easily recall: Armageddon, and Transformers.
Armageddon: Bruce Willis is about to kill himself to save the world. Ben Affleck rises up in a little glass tube shouting and spitting, telling him "No! No, please! I love you Larry! (or whatever the fuck Willis' name was in that movie)" The violins swell and Liv Tyler cries gorgeous, crystal tears against her perfect complexion. Willis steels his eyes and pushes the button. BOOOOOM!
Transformers: Shia Labeouf and Megan Fox, whose romance has until this moment been sputtery and awkward in the worst ersatz John-Hughes kind of way, are being kicked and jolted by an apocalyptic battle between the autobots and decepticons. Just as the fall together in unison, a brief shot of their two hands clutching one another is seen. They lock eyes. The violins swell.
These moments are ridiculous. If Bay had any eye for his own talents, he'd know his strengths lie in action and action alone. He'd be a great genre huckster, and he may actually be resepcted instead of just absurdly wealthy. But instead he injects his films with these kinds of lugubrious attempts at characterization. Fuck this guy. Fuck him in his ass.
Thursday, 5 July 2007
Yeah, what the hell, another one.
I like writing these, so I'll give it another shot:
Senior year of high school was strange new terrain. Junior year I had finally shifted from boney-skin-thin-tall-kid to slightly-thicker-but-still-relatively-thin-tall-kid. Essentially, from Third-World corpse to Iggy Pop. I had started doing theater, met new people, and began to build a delicate film of confidence where none had existed before. Also, John Mayer had recently released his new hit single "Your Body is a Wonderland", and as his image circulated the media, brown-haired sensitive kids with really intense eyebrows were finally considered "cute". Essentially, where girls had showed little to no interest in me before, there were now some slight blips on the periphery.
The problem with that was, junior year I had just ended my first real relationship and had no idea how to read "signals". Signals were cryptic, impossible to decipher. What kinds of compliments or gestures of affection were considered "friendly" and which were considered...well, more than friendly? Not to mention the fact that certain girls were flirtier than others, and that their gestures should be taken with little to no degree of seriousness. How could I possibly ever understand it all?
This was junior year. By senior year, things were getting less perplexing, but by no means did I ever do anything about it. Somehow or another, girls were taking notice of me, but I never had the balls to really do anything about it.
(Interpolation: In my last post where I told a personal story, I used a pseudonym because no one reading this blog would ever really know who I was talking about unless it was the parties involved. Now, anyone who glances at this thing who happened to go to high school with me will know who I'm talking about. So let's drop pseudonyms and say what's real here. I haven't spoken to this girl in almost three years, so why bother covering this up.)
Enter one Alana Zonan. Alana was funny, sarcastic, pretty, and a damn good actress. We'd been in a bunch of shows together. I was fucking smitten. But there were two problems:
1) Alana was really open about the fact that she was sexually experienced. I, on the other hand, was still pretty much a quivering bitch when it came to sexual experience. Intimidation ran through my blood like salmon filling a mountain stream.
2) Alana was part of the more "in" crowd at high school. I was not. I sat around on friday nights with my friends and played boggle. She'd go to parties and drink. What else she did I don't know, because I was never invited to these high school parties. My experience with them is precisely nill.
So, not only was I more intimidated than she, but we actually had a social barrier between us. None of my friends were her friends. She'd drank, had sex, smoked weed, who knows what else. I had done none of these things.
Junior year Matt would have stayed on the peripheries and kept this little crush to himself. But senior year Matt had that wonderful little film-thin layer of confidence. He might, just might, try to pursue something. But unfortunately, he'd do it in the lamest way possible: he'd write her a note.
I wrote her a fucking love-letter. I cringe right now just thinking about it. It was really intense, too, filled with similes and really involved metaphors...God, I just hate thinking about it, it was such a miscalculated move. I was going to woo her with my gift for the pen? Fuck that shit. This was the era of Li'l John's "Get Low", and I thought I was going to be Cyrano fucking de Bergerac.
After a rehearsal, I asked if she could give me a ride home. The whole car ride was spent talking about bullshit, avoiding the subject at hand. When she finally pulled into my driveway I kissed her on the cheek. She scrunched up her eyebrows and pursed her lips in the way people do when they know they're going to have to do something unkind to someone simple and nice. I don't remember the conversation very well, but I remember things going around in circles and I remember Outkast playing on the stereo. She'd convince me that it was ridiculous for us to get together because her friends would just shun me, and then I'd say "yeah, it was a stupid move on my part", and then she'd get really confusing and told me it wasn't stupid. I still to this day don't know why she said that, whether she was actually interested but didn't want to get involved because she knew her friends, or because she was just trying to let me down easy. Either way, I left the car hung my head especially low, and listened to Radiohead for an hour or two.
A few weeks later, a joke was made about me having a crush on Alana. I realized very quickly that everyone fucking knew about this note. She'd probably told one or two people, only to have it spread throughout the whole theater-kid system (which was pretty extensive at my school). Everyone knew about my embarrassing level of sincerity toward this girl, and God did I hate myself because of it.
It was a crushing blow, to be certain, but everyone needs one of these things early on. It just happened to be particularly public for me. But I assure you, I've moved on, and there's no hard feelings whatsoever. Especially since Alana and I haven't spoken in about three years.
Senior year of high school was strange new terrain. Junior year I had finally shifted from boney-skin-thin-tall-kid to slightly-thicker-but-still-relatively-thin-tall-kid. Essentially, from Third-World corpse to Iggy Pop. I had started doing theater, met new people, and began to build a delicate film of confidence where none had existed before. Also, John Mayer had recently released his new hit single "Your Body is a Wonderland", and as his image circulated the media, brown-haired sensitive kids with really intense eyebrows were finally considered "cute". Essentially, where girls had showed little to no interest in me before, there were now some slight blips on the periphery.
The problem with that was, junior year I had just ended my first real relationship and had no idea how to read "signals". Signals were cryptic, impossible to decipher. What kinds of compliments or gestures of affection were considered "friendly" and which were considered...well, more than friendly? Not to mention the fact that certain girls were flirtier than others, and that their gestures should be taken with little to no degree of seriousness. How could I possibly ever understand it all?
This was junior year. By senior year, things were getting less perplexing, but by no means did I ever do anything about it. Somehow or another, girls were taking notice of me, but I never had the balls to really do anything about it.
(Interpolation: In my last post where I told a personal story, I used a pseudonym because no one reading this blog would ever really know who I was talking about unless it was the parties involved. Now, anyone who glances at this thing who happened to go to high school with me will know who I'm talking about. So let's drop pseudonyms and say what's real here. I haven't spoken to this girl in almost three years, so why bother covering this up.)
Enter one Alana Zonan. Alana was funny, sarcastic, pretty, and a damn good actress. We'd been in a bunch of shows together. I was fucking smitten. But there were two problems:
1) Alana was really open about the fact that she was sexually experienced. I, on the other hand, was still pretty much a quivering bitch when it came to sexual experience. Intimidation ran through my blood like salmon filling a mountain stream.
2) Alana was part of the more "in" crowd at high school. I was not. I sat around on friday nights with my friends and played boggle. She'd go to parties and drink. What else she did I don't know, because I was never invited to these high school parties. My experience with them is precisely nill.
So, not only was I more intimidated than she, but we actually had a social barrier between us. None of my friends were her friends. She'd drank, had sex, smoked weed, who knows what else. I had done none of these things.
Junior year Matt would have stayed on the peripheries and kept this little crush to himself. But senior year Matt had that wonderful little film-thin layer of confidence. He might, just might, try to pursue something. But unfortunately, he'd do it in the lamest way possible: he'd write her a note.
I wrote her a fucking love-letter. I cringe right now just thinking about it. It was really intense, too, filled with similes and really involved metaphors...God, I just hate thinking about it, it was such a miscalculated move. I was going to woo her with my gift for the pen? Fuck that shit. This was the era of Li'l John's "Get Low", and I thought I was going to be Cyrano fucking de Bergerac.
After a rehearsal, I asked if she could give me a ride home. The whole car ride was spent talking about bullshit, avoiding the subject at hand. When she finally pulled into my driveway I kissed her on the cheek. She scrunched up her eyebrows and pursed her lips in the way people do when they know they're going to have to do something unkind to someone simple and nice. I don't remember the conversation very well, but I remember things going around in circles and I remember Outkast playing on the stereo. She'd convince me that it was ridiculous for us to get together because her friends would just shun me, and then I'd say "yeah, it was a stupid move on my part", and then she'd get really confusing and told me it wasn't stupid. I still to this day don't know why she said that, whether she was actually interested but didn't want to get involved because she knew her friends, or because she was just trying to let me down easy. Either way, I left the car hung my head especially low, and listened to Radiohead for an hour or two.
A few weeks later, a joke was made about me having a crush on Alana. I realized very quickly that everyone fucking knew about this note. She'd probably told one or two people, only to have it spread throughout the whole theater-kid system (which was pretty extensive at my school). Everyone knew about my embarrassing level of sincerity toward this girl, and God did I hate myself because of it.
It was a crushing blow, to be certain, but everyone needs one of these things early on. It just happened to be particularly public for me. But I assure you, I've moved on, and there's no hard feelings whatsoever. Especially since Alana and I haven't spoken in about three years.
New and Pretty Unexciting News
I'm a barista now. Lord, how I hate that term. "Barista". There were words before that for people who made things at a counter and gave them to you: either a clerk, or a cashier, or a waiter or waitress. But no, a new term had to be given to the unique and ineffable duties of a clerk at a coffee bar. And it needed to sound extraordinarily European. Fuck "Barista". I make coffee and give it to you. Sometimes I'll make you a bagel. Don't saddle me with some ludicrous pseudo-Italian terminology, especially when I'm making $7.50 an hour.
Thursday, 28 June 2007
More news in case you care
Good news: I have a job, and it's starting on monday.
Good news: Becky's coming to visit this weekend, and David is coming to live here.
Good news: Ratatouille comes out this weekend.
Things are looking up, generally. Until my first paycheck, I'll still have to live off my housemate's day-old offerings from their job at a bakery (Mrs. London's...faaaaaancy!), but after that, it'll be sunshine and lollipops, I think. Or I hope. God, I hope.
I feel like a tirade. If you have interest in the minutiae of my life but have no interest about things that aren't related to me, please leave. Really. Go. Now. I told you now!
If you've seen Amadeus, perused the special features section of the Citizen Kane DVD, or read even the slightest shred of a fact about Kurt Cobain, you'll have a passing familiarity with a very sad fact: really talented artists can also be horrid, miserable people. Everyone's been through it. You come to love the artist, feel an almost personal connection with him/her, and decide to gently dip into their biography. What do you come up with? Megalomania, pig-headedness, cruelty and shame. It happened to me with John Lennon, who, judging by interviews with the press and his incredible body of work, seemed to me to be the coolest guy that ever was or will be. Then I learned about his heroin addiction, his total abandonment of his first wife and son for Yoko "Fucking Pretentious Little Bitch When Will She Learn To Just STOP" Ono, his capacity for being just a total prick. It made him more interesting in a way, but before I learned these things, John Lennon was my #1 famous guy I'd want to be friends when I meet him in a non-denominational afterlife-type setting. Now I'd like to meet him, talk to him, but I'll be damned if I'd want to get close to him. Now a similar thing has happened with another artist: Mr. James Stewart.
I was watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the other day, which I love and if you haven't seen it please do, and I felt an urge to look up Jimmy on the ol' Wikipedia. Every movie I'd seen Jimmy Stewart in, especially his Hitchcock movies, I'd pretty much loved. And it seemed like he was just the sweetest, nicest guy you'd want to meet. Then, the facts start slamming. Jimmy Stewart did the following things, ranging from kind of unfortunate to just plain awful:
1) Supported America's continuing involvement in the Vietnam war.
2) Was an informant for J. Edgar Hoover during the HUAC hearings.
3) Refused to share the screen with any black actor.
This guy? The guy that read the constitution on the fake Senate floor? The guy who's the richest man in that fake town? The guy who loved that fake, invisible bunny so very, very much? I guess that's what happens when you grow up in Indiana.
Good news: Becky's coming to visit this weekend, and David is coming to live here.
Good news: Ratatouille comes out this weekend.
Things are looking up, generally. Until my first paycheck, I'll still have to live off my housemate's day-old offerings from their job at a bakery (Mrs. London's...faaaaaancy!), but after that, it'll be sunshine and lollipops, I think. Or I hope. God, I hope.
I feel like a tirade. If you have interest in the minutiae of my life but have no interest about things that aren't related to me, please leave. Really. Go. Now. I told you now!
If you've seen Amadeus, perused the special features section of the Citizen Kane DVD, or read even the slightest shred of a fact about Kurt Cobain, you'll have a passing familiarity with a very sad fact: really talented artists can also be horrid, miserable people. Everyone's been through it. You come to love the artist, feel an almost personal connection with him/her, and decide to gently dip into their biography. What do you come up with? Megalomania, pig-headedness, cruelty and shame. It happened to me with John Lennon, who, judging by interviews with the press and his incredible body of work, seemed to me to be the coolest guy that ever was or will be. Then I learned about his heroin addiction, his total abandonment of his first wife and son for Yoko "Fucking Pretentious Little Bitch When Will She Learn To Just STOP" Ono, his capacity for being just a total prick. It made him more interesting in a way, but before I learned these things, John Lennon was my #1 famous guy I'd want to be friends when I meet him in a non-denominational afterlife-type setting. Now I'd like to meet him, talk to him, but I'll be damned if I'd want to get close to him. Now a similar thing has happened with another artist: Mr. James Stewart.
I was watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington the other day, which I love and if you haven't seen it please do, and I felt an urge to look up Jimmy on the ol' Wikipedia. Every movie I'd seen Jimmy Stewart in, especially his Hitchcock movies, I'd pretty much loved. And it seemed like he was just the sweetest, nicest guy you'd want to meet. Then, the facts start slamming. Jimmy Stewart did the following things, ranging from kind of unfortunate to just plain awful:
1) Supported America's continuing involvement in the Vietnam war.
2) Was an informant for J. Edgar Hoover during the HUAC hearings.
3) Refused to share the screen with any black actor.
This guy? The guy that read the constitution on the fake Senate floor? The guy who's the richest man in that fake town? The guy who loved that fake, invisible bunny so very, very much? I guess that's what happens when you grow up in Indiana.
Thursday, 21 June 2007
The slow descent into madness
Here's why I hate the job-search process, especially at my age:
When you're a twenty-year-old college student looking for a really basic summer position, you're applying to very simple, slightly-higher-than-minimum wage jobs in the service and retail industry, most like. In my case, I have little to no experience doing these kinds of things. My summer jobs have been at summer camps, theaters and office buildings. Here in Saratoga, I'm looking for your average service industry job. Unfortunately, the town seems to be glutted with students, high school and college, who want a summer position, and it seems like few people are hiring a really average little guy like me who has no previous experience.
What does that mean for me? It means I spend my days twittling my thumbs, calling places I've applied to and applying to new places, hearing my very simple first name getting mangled in all kinds of ways (So far: Max, Michael, and Arthur. Yes, Arthur.) When you're an unskilled kind of guy looking for a few hundred bucks in your pocket, people treat you like offal floating down the great river of humanity. I get referred to managers who aren't there, owners who come in when they feel like it, and on-line applications that I know never get looked at.
What makes this whole process worse is that I just learned what the Radio Play schedule is going to look like: 10 am to 5pm, Danny tells me. Which is essentially when most jobs will ask me to work. I can try and talk to Danny and Adam. If I find a night job, that'd be great, and if I found a job in the evening that worked from, say, 6 to eleven or so, that'd be great too. But I'm at a place right now where I can't be very picky. If it really comes down to it and I can only find jobs that will hire in the afternoon...well, something's gonna give, I'm not sure what. I have a paltry seven-hundred fifty in my bank account right now, which is about two hundred short of paying for the next two months rent...plus I have to pay Ben back for the money he forwarded for the security deposit, which is about two hundred fifty. And I also have to eat. I've managed to stick to the housing-project diet of pasta and tomato sauce, with the occasional gift from Margaret's Mrs. London's job. But at some point I'm going to need some vitamins in my system. Lord knows I ain't getting any of those right now.
The shitty thing is that this is my first glimpse into my life for the five years, maybe more. I'm gonna be an actor/writer, god dammit, and that means making extremely little money for long periods of time. Now, hopefully it won't be this bad all; after all, I could probably find temp jobs to keep me afloat, wherever I'll be, so I won't be scrounging for pennies and sighing wistfully at the Barnes and Noble "new music" shelf (White Stripes, your album calls to me). But it won't be too far off from this. And boy, does that ever depress me.
When you're a twenty-year-old college student looking for a really basic summer position, you're applying to very simple, slightly-higher-than-minimum wage jobs in the service and retail industry, most like. In my case, I have little to no experience doing these kinds of things. My summer jobs have been at summer camps, theaters and office buildings. Here in Saratoga, I'm looking for your average service industry job. Unfortunately, the town seems to be glutted with students, high school and college, who want a summer position, and it seems like few people are hiring a really average little guy like me who has no previous experience.
What does that mean for me? It means I spend my days twittling my thumbs, calling places I've applied to and applying to new places, hearing my very simple first name getting mangled in all kinds of ways (So far: Max, Michael, and Arthur. Yes, Arthur.) When you're an unskilled kind of guy looking for a few hundred bucks in your pocket, people treat you like offal floating down the great river of humanity. I get referred to managers who aren't there, owners who come in when they feel like it, and on-line applications that I know never get looked at.
What makes this whole process worse is that I just learned what the Radio Play schedule is going to look like: 10 am to 5pm, Danny tells me. Which is essentially when most jobs will ask me to work. I can try and talk to Danny and Adam. If I find a night job, that'd be great, and if I found a job in the evening that worked from, say, 6 to eleven or so, that'd be great too. But I'm at a place right now where I can't be very picky. If it really comes down to it and I can only find jobs that will hire in the afternoon...well, something's gonna give, I'm not sure what. I have a paltry seven-hundred fifty in my bank account right now, which is about two hundred short of paying for the next two months rent...plus I have to pay Ben back for the money he forwarded for the security deposit, which is about two hundred fifty. And I also have to eat. I've managed to stick to the housing-project diet of pasta and tomato sauce, with the occasional gift from Margaret's Mrs. London's job. But at some point I'm going to need some vitamins in my system. Lord knows I ain't getting any of those right now.
The shitty thing is that this is my first glimpse into my life for the five years, maybe more. I'm gonna be an actor/writer, god dammit, and that means making extremely little money for long periods of time. Now, hopefully it won't be this bad all; after all, I could probably find temp jobs to keep me afloat, wherever I'll be, so I won't be scrounging for pennies and sighing wistfully at the Barnes and Noble "new music" shelf (White Stripes, your album calls to me). But it won't be too far off from this. And boy, does that ever depress me.
Sunday, 17 June 2007
Here comes another one!
Let me explain the situation behind my possible upcoming flirtation with professional theater:
A man named Gary with an extremely Italian-sounding last name owns a company that essentially flips towns the way antique automobile dealers flip cars. They take a large portion of real estate that's fallen on hard times and they gentrifying it, encouraging retail, restaurants, malls and (most importantly for me) theaters. This man Gary has been working on Asbury Park, a very extraordinarily run-down old town on the Jersey Shore. Bruce Springsteen got his start there; think of the kind of people who'd intimately relate to the lyrics in "Born in the USA" and you've got the general vibe of the place. Gary hired Chris Barker, another young theater artist like us, to start a new theater company in the giant space they have on the boardwalk. Chris heard Matt Schwartz's CD of Rufio, and decided that a good original project for next season would be a flashy Peter Pan musical, and so contacted Matt and Danny and spoke to them about getting it produced.
Nothing is official right now. Until the season is over and the ticket sales are accounted for, Chris can't sign off on a contract saying "I will produce this play for x amount of dollars". I'd like to think it's more likely than not that we'll be produced, but the nagging pessimist in me keeps telling me to prepare for disappointment. In the meantime, this fellow Gary with the extremely Italian sounding last name heard some woman write a song about Frankenstein and bells suddenly started sounding in his head and he asked Chris if he could produce some kind of Frankenstein musical for Halloween. Chris subsequently asked Matt and Danny if they would write some songs for it.
Now we have no idea who this "woman with a Frankenstein song" is, and I personally don't understand why, if she wrote one song already, she wouldn't be interested in writing all of them. Also, my name apparently did not come up in this Frankenstein conversation, so it's not yet certain whether I'd be invovled in this show at all. She could just provide a story outline with a few song ideas, then give it to all of us for a good flesh-out, or she might want to write the whole script around the songs Danny and Matt will write over the course of the summer, etc. So, at the moment, there are two projects way up in the air, one so much so that it needs oxygen supplements to survive on a regular basis. I guess this is the life I'm going to lead.
A man named Gary with an extremely Italian-sounding last name owns a company that essentially flips towns the way antique automobile dealers flip cars. They take a large portion of real estate that's fallen on hard times and they gentrifying it, encouraging retail, restaurants, malls and (most importantly for me) theaters. This man Gary has been working on Asbury Park, a very extraordinarily run-down old town on the Jersey Shore. Bruce Springsteen got his start there; think of the kind of people who'd intimately relate to the lyrics in "Born in the USA" and you've got the general vibe of the place. Gary hired Chris Barker, another young theater artist like us, to start a new theater company in the giant space they have on the boardwalk. Chris heard Matt Schwartz's CD of Rufio, and decided that a good original project for next season would be a flashy Peter Pan musical, and so contacted Matt and Danny and spoke to them about getting it produced.
Nothing is official right now. Until the season is over and the ticket sales are accounted for, Chris can't sign off on a contract saying "I will produce this play for x amount of dollars". I'd like to think it's more likely than not that we'll be produced, but the nagging pessimist in me keeps telling me to prepare for disappointment. In the meantime, this fellow Gary with the extremely Italian sounding last name heard some woman write a song about Frankenstein and bells suddenly started sounding in his head and he asked Chris if he could produce some kind of Frankenstein musical for Halloween. Chris subsequently asked Matt and Danny if they would write some songs for it.
Now we have no idea who this "woman with a Frankenstein song" is, and I personally don't understand why, if she wrote one song already, she wouldn't be interested in writing all of them. Also, my name apparently did not come up in this Frankenstein conversation, so it's not yet certain whether I'd be invovled in this show at all. She could just provide a story outline with a few song ideas, then give it to all of us for a good flesh-out, or she might want to write the whole script around the songs Danny and Matt will write over the course of the summer, etc. So, at the moment, there are two projects way up in the air, one so much so that it needs oxygen supplements to survive on a regular basis. I guess this is the life I'm going to lead.
Thursday, 14 June 2007
Aw shucks!
Well I'll be dang-blammed if it isn't hard to actually come up with a solid job in a week's time, or at least for a fellow like me. The last one, the hospital typing job, came pretty damn easy after only four days of waiting by the phone for the temp agency to call. This time I got to make phone calls to people who sound like they're extremely busy, who then refer me to people that sound really disinterested in talking to anyone period. I've been calling restaurants this whole week, and they usually tell me to call back in two or three days, which means today is follow-up day. I want to check restaurants first because that has waitering potential, which in this town would probably give me a good three-hundred a week pay or so, which isn't substantially less than I was making back at home. And anyway, all I'm looking for right now is two hundred a month for food (I eat a lot of spaghetti, like the man said), and the rest is to put in the ol' savings account for future "Oh my God I am an actor/writer and I have absolutely no source of income right now" kinds of situations.
Speaking of acting, I'm in Erin Daley's show "A Fine Piano", which is kind of like an hour-long composition on Chekhov's "Three Sisters", where it's all a dream that Irina is having and such theater-type concepts. If you're in the area, come and see it. If not, I understand gas is expensive and that sometimes a nice night at home can be just the thing after a long week.
Speaking of acting, I'm in Erin Daley's show "A Fine Piano", which is kind of like an hour-long composition on Chekhov's "Three Sisters", where it's all a dream that Irina is having and such theater-type concepts. If you're in the area, come and see it. If not, I understand gas is expensive and that sometimes a nice night at home can be just the thing after a long week.
Monday, 21 May 2007
Early stages of experience
I feel like telling a few personal stories. The problem is, this is an open-access blog, and most of the people I write about would have full access to the blog. And just when I think I'm screaming loud into the internet vacuum, someone with whom I have virtually no relationship will come along and tell me how they read my blog one night when they were bored. Seems people will peek into every corner of the internet available to them, no matter how inane and uninteresting. So I can only hope that, if the people I talk about in the following post do, by some weird chance, happen upon my blog, they won't really care because it won't matter all that much to them.
My first kiss came on the later side of normal: 15 years old specifically. The circumstances were, as per my personality, and the common nature of these kinds of things, horribly and terrifically awkward. Let me dole out the specifics: I was with my friend Brian (fake name, sorry), who was the same age as me, and was not, previously stated nomenclature aside, a particularly good friend. By some weird paradox, my parents seemed to think that because I was friends with Brian, they should feign some strained facsimile of a friendship with Brian's very very irritating parents; and in the same vein, because my parents were invited so often to their Superbowl parties and New Year's bashes, I found myself being forced to hang around Brian far more often than I would have liked under any ordinary circumstances. My family went chasing its tale like this for years until my parent's divorce was finalized, Brian's parents moved to the city, and the whole charade just evaporated. But Freshman year of high school, just a year or two before my always-tenuous relationship with Brian completely vanished, he invited me to the city to meet a few friends of his. Friends that were girls. My ears pricked up, and naturally, I went along with it.
Brian, though I never liked him, always liked me. Why, I don't know; he was a cheery, optimistic kid who loved dancing and hip-hop, and I was a moody little prick, nose-deep in my own sticky depression and my well-worn copy of Less Than Zero. We had absolutely nothing in common. Yet he invited me everywhere, and I usually declined. This time, as it usually does, the prospect of girls made it slightly more interesting, and I accepted vigorously. We met them at a diner somewhere in New York, where I have no idea. I remember things going surprisingly well considering my usual ineptitude with flirtation. These girls were actually laughing and seemed to enjoy our company. I don't think it hindered at all that we were older than them, by how much I don't remember. A year? Two? Regardless, there were three of them. Brian was friends with one of them, and had kissed her previously, even. I remember her, Brian's friend, being the most attractive. She also happened to be the most sexually aggressive. She laughed the hardest, made the most tactless innuendo, seemed to stare at me the most. Things were going well.
I responded, naturally, by freezing up and acting stand-offish. After the diner, we went to a movie theater. I don't think I said a word the whole walk there. I don't remember the context, but I remember being outside the theater and being fussy and obstinate about...God, something, I don't even know what. But I knew it would lead to making out, and naturally, being the frightened little wuss I was, I was trying to back out. I recall the aggressive friend going so far as to say that, in fact, the two of us were virtually guaranteed to kiss someone in this movie theater. I remember, after her saying this, I said (and this I remember verbatim) "That's not really my style". The fates (and these girls) were banging me over the head with a sledge-hammer trying to get me to take that plunge, and I was actively trying not to kiss someone. The girls tried to organize the seating for optimal make-outs, but I just sat there, watching John Q (really) as my friend Brian swooped in and started kissing the second-prettiest (the one not his friend [sorry about all the parenthesis]).
We came back to Brian's friend's apartment. The five of us all went promptly into her bedroom. We all talked, and soon enough, Brian and his new make-out pal locked lips and kissed deeply in front of all of us for an extended period of time. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't carry on a regular conversation with two people making out in the middle of the room. I went to the opposite side of the room, where neither of the two available girls were sitting, and searched for something to keep my hands busy. I picked up a book of Far Side cartoons and started reading furtively, really desperate to avoid sexual contact of any kind. After a time, the aggressive one, the pretty one, the one I'd hoped to kiss to start with, actually sat down on my lap, wrapped her arms around me, and said, probably with more nymphettish lust than had ever been said before "You like those comics".
I remember saying "Yes", to which she responded by giving a brief, satisfied "Hmm". Then she moved in, lipsed pursed, and kissed me.
I got really extremely introspective at this point. I was trying to catalogue every feeling and sensation, realizing, oddly enough, that I would probably write about this moment later in some journal or autobiography. Of course it was no sensation other than your average, ordinary kiss, or at least so I thought. I remember being really curious about the sensation of feeling someone else's tongue. It felt oddly soothing, the little papillae rubbing against the inside of my mouth. I remember acknowledging that the rest of the world felt far away, and that my only thought was her lips, or some such thing. I enjoyed it. I relished in my first kiss.
She pulled away and said she was getting worried about her father, who was watching television in the nearby living room. She went out, and after a few brief words, told us that we had to introduce ourselves to him. I, of course, was still at full-mast. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me up from the couch, whereupon I doubled over at the waist and walked like a crazy old blind man. When she introduced me, I peeked my head out from behind a wall, my lower half still hidden behind the partition. She brought us all back into her room, we talked for a little while longer, and that was that.
A week afterward, I'd met Brian in the cafeteria, and he told me with a sympathetic frown that Aggressive Girl told him I was an awful, awful kisser. The worst she'd ever had, in fact. I apparently grabbed onto her like a bear and shoved my tongue down her throat until she could hardly breathe. No doubt it was just simple writerly curiosity, but nonetheless, I almost frightened the girl. It occurred to my paranoid fantasy (and maybe it was true, who knows), that the "introduction" was some kind of weird retribution for having almost choked her to death. My ego wasn't terribly damaged, though. I realized I was new at this, and was confident that I'd get better as I got older. From what I understand, I have.
I saw her only once more after this, about two years after the incident occurred, at the final Superbowl party before the family friendship was completely vaporized. I remember thinking she was noticeably less attractive than I'd made her out to be in my mind. As you could probably tell, I've totally forgotten her name, and remember nothing about her other than she had light-brown hair. A romantic I am not.
My first kiss came on the later side of normal: 15 years old specifically. The circumstances were, as per my personality, and the common nature of these kinds of things, horribly and terrifically awkward. Let me dole out the specifics: I was with my friend Brian (fake name, sorry), who was the same age as me, and was not, previously stated nomenclature aside, a particularly good friend. By some weird paradox, my parents seemed to think that because I was friends with Brian, they should feign some strained facsimile of a friendship with Brian's very very irritating parents; and in the same vein, because my parents were invited so often to their Superbowl parties and New Year's bashes, I found myself being forced to hang around Brian far more often than I would have liked under any ordinary circumstances. My family went chasing its tale like this for years until my parent's divorce was finalized, Brian's parents moved to the city, and the whole charade just evaporated. But Freshman year of high school, just a year or two before my always-tenuous relationship with Brian completely vanished, he invited me to the city to meet a few friends of his. Friends that were girls. My ears pricked up, and naturally, I went along with it.
Brian, though I never liked him, always liked me. Why, I don't know; he was a cheery, optimistic kid who loved dancing and hip-hop, and I was a moody little prick, nose-deep in my own sticky depression and my well-worn copy of Less Than Zero. We had absolutely nothing in common. Yet he invited me everywhere, and I usually declined. This time, as it usually does, the prospect of girls made it slightly more interesting, and I accepted vigorously. We met them at a diner somewhere in New York, where I have no idea. I remember things going surprisingly well considering my usual ineptitude with flirtation. These girls were actually laughing and seemed to enjoy our company. I don't think it hindered at all that we were older than them, by how much I don't remember. A year? Two? Regardless, there were three of them. Brian was friends with one of them, and had kissed her previously, even. I remember her, Brian's friend, being the most attractive. She also happened to be the most sexually aggressive. She laughed the hardest, made the most tactless innuendo, seemed to stare at me the most. Things were going well.
I responded, naturally, by freezing up and acting stand-offish. After the diner, we went to a movie theater. I don't think I said a word the whole walk there. I don't remember the context, but I remember being outside the theater and being fussy and obstinate about...God, something, I don't even know what. But I knew it would lead to making out, and naturally, being the frightened little wuss I was, I was trying to back out. I recall the aggressive friend going so far as to say that, in fact, the two of us were virtually guaranteed to kiss someone in this movie theater. I remember, after her saying this, I said (and this I remember verbatim) "That's not really my style". The fates (and these girls) were banging me over the head with a sledge-hammer trying to get me to take that plunge, and I was actively trying not to kiss someone. The girls tried to organize the seating for optimal make-outs, but I just sat there, watching John Q (really) as my friend Brian swooped in and started kissing the second-prettiest (the one not his friend [sorry about all the parenthesis]).
We came back to Brian's friend's apartment. The five of us all went promptly into her bedroom. We all talked, and soon enough, Brian and his new make-out pal locked lips and kissed deeply in front of all of us for an extended period of time. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't carry on a regular conversation with two people making out in the middle of the room. I went to the opposite side of the room, where neither of the two available girls were sitting, and searched for something to keep my hands busy. I picked up a book of Far Side cartoons and started reading furtively, really desperate to avoid sexual contact of any kind. After a time, the aggressive one, the pretty one, the one I'd hoped to kiss to start with, actually sat down on my lap, wrapped her arms around me, and said, probably with more nymphettish lust than had ever been said before "You like those comics".
I remember saying "Yes", to which she responded by giving a brief, satisfied "Hmm". Then she moved in, lipsed pursed, and kissed me.
I got really extremely introspective at this point. I was trying to catalogue every feeling and sensation, realizing, oddly enough, that I would probably write about this moment later in some journal or autobiography. Of course it was no sensation other than your average, ordinary kiss, or at least so I thought. I remember being really curious about the sensation of feeling someone else's tongue. It felt oddly soothing, the little papillae rubbing against the inside of my mouth. I remember acknowledging that the rest of the world felt far away, and that my only thought was her lips, or some such thing. I enjoyed it. I relished in my first kiss.
She pulled away and said she was getting worried about her father, who was watching television in the nearby living room. She went out, and after a few brief words, told us that we had to introduce ourselves to him. I, of course, was still at full-mast. She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me up from the couch, whereupon I doubled over at the waist and walked like a crazy old blind man. When she introduced me, I peeked my head out from behind a wall, my lower half still hidden behind the partition. She brought us all back into her room, we talked for a little while longer, and that was that.
A week afterward, I'd met Brian in the cafeteria, and he told me with a sympathetic frown that Aggressive Girl told him I was an awful, awful kisser. The worst she'd ever had, in fact. I apparently grabbed onto her like a bear and shoved my tongue down her throat until she could hardly breathe. No doubt it was just simple writerly curiosity, but nonetheless, I almost frightened the girl. It occurred to my paranoid fantasy (and maybe it was true, who knows), that the "introduction" was some kind of weird retribution for having almost choked her to death. My ego wasn't terribly damaged, though. I realized I was new at this, and was confident that I'd get better as I got older. From what I understand, I have.
I saw her only once more after this, about two years after the incident occurred, at the final Superbowl party before the family friendship was completely vaporized. I remember thinking she was noticeably less attractive than I'd made her out to be in my mind. As you could probably tell, I've totally forgotten her name, and remember nothing about her other than she had light-brown hair. A romantic I am not.
Saturday, 19 May 2007
Good-news/Bad-news
Good news (somewhat): My first paycheck from the temp job came today. A decent-sized three hundred and forty. Next week's should yield even more, since I only worked about thirty hours two weeks ago (the week I'm being payed for), and worked a full forty last week. So I'm officially out of the hole. How long I'll stay there remains to be seen. I still don't have any official work for when I come up to Saratoga. I want to get a job, and am willing to do whatever to get one, so hopefully that'll be enough.
Bad news (sort of): I am all kinds of bored, and all kinds of jealous of other people who have the time and money to either remain in foreign countries (looking at you, everyone I know in Oxford) or the oppurtunity to dress up like pirates and drink themselves to a god-dammed stupor simply because they want to (looking at you, everyone else). I know I'm doing the responsible thing by staying in Chappaqua and making some money for myself, but the attraction of going on an adult-sized slip-n-slide made out of trash bags would be tempting for anybody...well, maybe not everybody, but certainly for me. And the desire to be back in Oxford, punting and drinking legally and whanot is also great, but a five-hundred-dollar round trip ticket and a very likely five-hundred in expenses is keeping me glued to my plastic little American chair (and away from the great wooden one once used by Ethelred the Unready in doodle-dee-two A.D).
Good news (unabashedly good): (wait, get ready, 'cause it's really good news): Rufio, King of the Lost Boys is being professionally produced. With a decent-sized budget in a huge space. In a few months I will be a professionally produced playwright.
Bad news (only moderately bad): The whole thing needs to be re-worked and re-imagined. We may want to shy away from the whole Rufio thing to begin with, what with it being a copyrighted name and all, and that would obviously change, among other things, the first-act closer where the word "Rufio" is chanted over and over again. But aside from that, the whole thing is just too short, with too much plot and too many songs brushed by indiscriminately in the second act. So even though the first act is strong, it'll have to be changed drastically to accomodate the re-worked second. How will that be done, exactly? I'm not sure. Danny, Matt, David and I will certainly be talking quite a whole lot in the next few months, and we'll probably argue a lot on a number of points.
However, in the end we'll have written a professionally produced musical at age 21, which I think is pretty impressive, regardless of what Mozart may have done (he was an asshole anyway, as can be seen in the film and stage play Amadeus). Not to mention the fact that we'll get paid for it. Paid! For writing a musical! Who thought it could be done? Certainly not me. Paid for writing a few terrible episodes of Boston Legal, that I could imagine. But not a musical. That'd just be too outlandish.
Bad news (sort of): I am all kinds of bored, and all kinds of jealous of other people who have the time and money to either remain in foreign countries (looking at you, everyone I know in Oxford) or the oppurtunity to dress up like pirates and drink themselves to a god-dammed stupor simply because they want to (looking at you, everyone else). I know I'm doing the responsible thing by staying in Chappaqua and making some money for myself, but the attraction of going on an adult-sized slip-n-slide made out of trash bags would be tempting for anybody...well, maybe not everybody, but certainly for me. And the desire to be back in Oxford, punting and drinking legally and whanot is also great, but a five-hundred-dollar round trip ticket and a very likely five-hundred in expenses is keeping me glued to my plastic little American chair (and away from the great wooden one once used by Ethelred the Unready in doodle-dee-two A.D).
Good news (unabashedly good): (wait, get ready, 'cause it's really good news): Rufio, King of the Lost Boys is being professionally produced. With a decent-sized budget in a huge space. In a few months I will be a professionally produced playwright.
Bad news (only moderately bad): The whole thing needs to be re-worked and re-imagined. We may want to shy away from the whole Rufio thing to begin with, what with it being a copyrighted name and all, and that would obviously change, among other things, the first-act closer where the word "Rufio" is chanted over and over again. But aside from that, the whole thing is just too short, with too much plot and too many songs brushed by indiscriminately in the second act. So even though the first act is strong, it'll have to be changed drastically to accomodate the re-worked second. How will that be done, exactly? I'm not sure. Danny, Matt, David and I will certainly be talking quite a whole lot in the next few months, and we'll probably argue a lot on a number of points.
However, in the end we'll have written a professionally produced musical at age 21, which I think is pretty impressive, regardless of what Mozart may have done (he was an asshole anyway, as can be seen in the film and stage play Amadeus). Not to mention the fact that we'll get paid for it. Paid! For writing a musical! Who thought it could be done? Certainly not me. Paid for writing a few terrible episodes of Boston Legal, that I could imagine. But not a musical. That'd just be too outlandish.
Sunday, 13 May 2007
Is anyone paying attention?
Am I screaming into the internet abyss? Does anyone care about this thing anymore? Maybe the occasional internet wanderer will come into this lonely blog-type corner and see something interesting. I'm gonna keep up the blog, then, and catalogue my life and thoughts, both of which have become drastically less exciting ever since coming back from Europe.
The most exciting bit of news: I am officially the president-elect of the Ad-Liberal Artists. Now this isn't the first time that's happened: when Jamie was suspended first semester Sophomore year I was the makeshift president of the group, in that I got all the e-mails and attended all the meetings. However, thrown into the thing as I was, I didn't really take the reigns as a leader. Now that I'm older and have some experience actually being the president, I'm really excited about it. It's gonna be challenging, certainly. I'd like the group to get a much wider audience than it has now; right now we're kind of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" in that everyone has seen us at least once, but only a devoted few come back again and again. I'd like us to be a little more "Star Wars" in that you see us once in a giant, crowded theater, then see us again seven times after that, then buy the action figures, the comic book adaptations, the video games, and then buy the ludicrously priced special-edition DVD package so you can watch us again and again and again. Not to mention the fact that the group is about two thousand dollars in debt after comedy fest, due to a lot of unfortunate mis-management and one big unlucky snow storm. Next year's gonna take a lot of pimpin' and hustlin' to get the group back out of the hole. But I have faith that it's going to happen, and that we'll get out of debt fast, or at least fast enough.
I have a temp job for the in-between period from right now to when I have to go back to Saratoga. I work as a medical transcriptionist for a hospital in even-northerner-westchester. Here's the breakdown: the Laboratory in the hospital gets biopsies and tissue samples from the operating rooms upstairs. The doctors and technicians examine those samples for various infections, inflammations and cancers. Since these doctors have better things to do than type out their own reports (that's not an ironic statement, they're really quite busy doing far more important things), they have hired me, at a very generous $14/hr, to listen to their recorded, spoken diagnoses, and try to figure out how to spell "Helicobacter" when it sounds like "hello batter". I'm learning a lot of really interesting words in the process. My favorite so far has been blastocyst. It sounds like a word that should be spliced into Batman's fight sequences as he punches out the bad guys. OOF! POW! BLASTOCYST!
The unfortunate part of learning funny-sounding medical terminology is that once you look up these words, you realize the terrible implications each one has. Look up blastocyst, for example, and imagine why one would be swilling around in alcohol to be examined by a lab technician. Sadness ensues.
The most exciting bit of news: I am officially the president-elect of the Ad-Liberal Artists. Now this isn't the first time that's happened: when Jamie was suspended first semester Sophomore year I was the makeshift president of the group, in that I got all the e-mails and attended all the meetings. However, thrown into the thing as I was, I didn't really take the reigns as a leader. Now that I'm older and have some experience actually being the president, I'm really excited about it. It's gonna be challenging, certainly. I'd like the group to get a much wider audience than it has now; right now we're kind of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" in that everyone has seen us at least once, but only a devoted few come back again and again. I'd like us to be a little more "Star Wars" in that you see us once in a giant, crowded theater, then see us again seven times after that, then buy the action figures, the comic book adaptations, the video games, and then buy the ludicrously priced special-edition DVD package so you can watch us again and again and again. Not to mention the fact that the group is about two thousand dollars in debt after comedy fest, due to a lot of unfortunate mis-management and one big unlucky snow storm. Next year's gonna take a lot of pimpin' and hustlin' to get the group back out of the hole. But I have faith that it's going to happen, and that we'll get out of debt fast, or at least fast enough.
I have a temp job for the in-between period from right now to when I have to go back to Saratoga. I work as a medical transcriptionist for a hospital in even-northerner-westchester. Here's the breakdown: the Laboratory in the hospital gets biopsies and tissue samples from the operating rooms upstairs. The doctors and technicians examine those samples for various infections, inflammations and cancers. Since these doctors have better things to do than type out their own reports (that's not an ironic statement, they're really quite busy doing far more important things), they have hired me, at a very generous $14/hr, to listen to their recorded, spoken diagnoses, and try to figure out how to spell "Helicobacter" when it sounds like "hello batter". I'm learning a lot of really interesting words in the process. My favorite so far has been blastocyst. It sounds like a word that should be spliced into Batman's fight sequences as he punches out the bad guys. OOF! POW! BLASTOCYST!
The unfortunate part of learning funny-sounding medical terminology is that once you look up these words, you realize the terrible implications each one has. Look up blastocyst, for example, and imagine why one would be swilling around in alcohol to be examined by a lab technician. Sadness ensues.
Monday, 23 April 2007
So...I'm back
It was surprisingly difficult to get to a computer for any extended period of time for the last week or so of my travels. Unfortunately, I don't really feel like going into extended detail about all the cities I've been to at the moment, so I'll just say that Europe is great. In a lot of respects its a lot better than America. But America is home. And home is where I must stay.
Speaking of which, after living the restless jet-setting Euro-American lifestyle for about four months, I have to say that my little home town of Chappaqua NY seems all the more an unfortunate fleck on the North American continent. There's one main street with low-slung pizza shops and ever-opening, ever-closing knick-knackeries, and outside of that are several characterless McMansions. There's a good high school, a few decent franchise places within driving distance, and (thank fucking GOD) a very good art-house movie theater within a five-minute drive. Your average upper-middle-class American suburb, essentially. But God dammit, the place is so boring I feel like tearing my eyes out of their sockets, and I've only been here two days. It's probably reverse culture shock, and I may get over it in a matter of time...but there's still something in my little suburb that smells of lifelessness and death. I hope to come to Skidmore very, very soon, because all the middle-aged women barking nasally into their cell phones is slowly driving me mad. How you gonna keep 'em back in the gated housing development after they seen Par-ee? (I didn't see Par-ee, but you get the idea)
Speaking of which, after living the restless jet-setting Euro-American lifestyle for about four months, I have to say that my little home town of Chappaqua NY seems all the more an unfortunate fleck on the North American continent. There's one main street with low-slung pizza shops and ever-opening, ever-closing knick-knackeries, and outside of that are several characterless McMansions. There's a good high school, a few decent franchise places within driving distance, and (thank fucking GOD) a very good art-house movie theater within a five-minute drive. Your average upper-middle-class American suburb, essentially. But God dammit, the place is so boring I feel like tearing my eyes out of their sockets, and I've only been here two days. It's probably reverse culture shock, and I may get over it in a matter of time...but there's still something in my little suburb that smells of lifelessness and death. I hope to come to Skidmore very, very soon, because all the middle-aged women barking nasally into their cell phones is slowly driving me mad. How you gonna keep 'em back in the gated housing development after they seen Par-ee? (I didn't see Par-ee, but you get the idea)
Thursday, 5 April 2007
Back-track, then front-track
My girlfriend got upset that I didn´t mention her trip in my blog. Since she´s probably the only one that checks it on a regular basis, I should mention it: Becky came over. We went to London and saw a bunch of museums that had all their key exhibits closed. We saw a Kylie Minogue exhibit, and it was very gay. Then we spent a day or two in Oxford again, and she left.
ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW?!?!?!
Seriously, though, it was nice having her. Thank you very much, Becky, for spending the extraordinary amount of money to come see me in England. It was very much appreciated. So was the sex. That was also appreciated.
Anyway, back to now. Barcelona: it is a huge city. David, Morgan, and David´s sister Rachel all took a tour of the place together. We were only staying a total of four nights and three days, so the prospect of doing everything there was to do was virtually impossible. Unfortunately, since it´s such a huge city we were also kind of overwhelmed as to what would be a cool thing to do. We were trying to see a little too much in a small period of time, I think. So we ended up kind of exhausted after the first few days. Then it started to rain. Since Barcelona is a big coastal town, and therefore most of the fun activities require sun, our options were severely limited. We went to a number of museums, saw an orchestra play at a really ornate but very cool music hall, saw a few Antoni Gaudi buildings. (If you don´t know who that is, Google image search him. He is an insane architect. INSANE.) It was far from the "Oh my God, it was so amaaaaziiiiing" experience that everyone describes. Then again, I don´t really like the whole nightlife scene that everyone says is so great there. Maybe I should go again when it´s sunny. And when I´m more willing to hit up da cluuub. Which will be never.
Now to Valencia. It is really nice here. Our hostel in Barcelona was filled with obnoxious douches. The staff was cold and unfriendly. Here, there´s funky art on the walls, a nice common area, a kitchen, and even really good music in the lounge. The city itself is really nice, too. We took the whole place at a lot more relaxed pace then we did Barcelona, and that really helped. The town is really beautiful, in that old, crumbling Spanish kind of way. We´ve been just wandering into museums and cool looking buildings, having security guards speak something to us in Spanish, and then moseying on in, totally unaware of what we´re doing, which is actually a really great way of touring around. Everything is a surprise. Like a museum in a church. And an art gallery that houses seventeenth-century Spanish floats. And paella is delicious. It was invented here, for those of you who don´t know.
Anyway, I´m off to Madrid. Bye de bye.
ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY NOW?!?!?!
Seriously, though, it was nice having her. Thank you very much, Becky, for spending the extraordinary amount of money to come see me in England. It was very much appreciated. So was the sex. That was also appreciated.
Anyway, back to now. Barcelona: it is a huge city. David, Morgan, and David´s sister Rachel all took a tour of the place together. We were only staying a total of four nights and three days, so the prospect of doing everything there was to do was virtually impossible. Unfortunately, since it´s such a huge city we were also kind of overwhelmed as to what would be a cool thing to do. We were trying to see a little too much in a small period of time, I think. So we ended up kind of exhausted after the first few days. Then it started to rain. Since Barcelona is a big coastal town, and therefore most of the fun activities require sun, our options were severely limited. We went to a number of museums, saw an orchestra play at a really ornate but very cool music hall, saw a few Antoni Gaudi buildings. (If you don´t know who that is, Google image search him. He is an insane architect. INSANE.) It was far from the "Oh my God, it was so amaaaaziiiiing" experience that everyone describes. Then again, I don´t really like the whole nightlife scene that everyone says is so great there. Maybe I should go again when it´s sunny. And when I´m more willing to hit up da cluuub. Which will be never.
Now to Valencia. It is really nice here. Our hostel in Barcelona was filled with obnoxious douches. The staff was cold and unfriendly. Here, there´s funky art on the walls, a nice common area, a kitchen, and even really good music in the lounge. The city itself is really nice, too. We took the whole place at a lot more relaxed pace then we did Barcelona, and that really helped. The town is really beautiful, in that old, crumbling Spanish kind of way. We´ve been just wandering into museums and cool looking buildings, having security guards speak something to us in Spanish, and then moseying on in, totally unaware of what we´re doing, which is actually a really great way of touring around. Everything is a surprise. Like a museum in a church. And an art gallery that houses seventeenth-century Spanish floats. And paella is delicious. It was invented here, for those of you who don´t know.
Anyway, I´m off to Madrid. Bye de bye.
Wednesday, 4 April 2007
Travel Blog
No longer is this a regular old Oxford blog. This is now a travel blog. If you want to learn about the ins and outs of travelling about Spain, Prague, Rome, and Amsterdam for a very short while, then read on motherfucker.
I left Oxford for Bath, and stayed there about a week. That was nice. It gave me a chance to get all my affairs in order in a very small town. And it is a very small town. The only thing you can really do there is see the baths and maybe look at some nice, old architecture. I met all of David´s abroad friends, and many of them were quite nice. Then there was David himself, and he was quite nice. I watched a lot of British television and ate delicious home-cooked meals. Not much to report there.
Then I went to London for a last few days. I saw all the traditional "London" things, Westminster, Parliament, Buckingham palace. It was all whatever. I really didn´t learn anything new by seeing them in person, especially considering it was quite shitty and rainy out. I did, however, see an interesting final London show called "Attempts on her Life". It was a series of monologues about a woman named Ann, and the whole thing was staged with a lot of audio/video elements: a large screen was lowered at the beginning of the play, and most of it was recorded as a kind of film, made on stage, in addition to being a play. They even simulated cars going by, beaches, and doctors´offices on stage using a few small set-pieces, but on the screen it looked very realistic. It was interesting, but nothing mind-blowing. Worth the 10 pounds paid for the show.
I will come back later to describe Barcelona and Valencia. Let me tell you two things right off the bat: Valencia is surprisingly great, and Barcelona was surprisingly disappointing.
I left Oxford for Bath, and stayed there about a week. That was nice. It gave me a chance to get all my affairs in order in a very small town. And it is a very small town. The only thing you can really do there is see the baths and maybe look at some nice, old architecture. I met all of David´s abroad friends, and many of them were quite nice. Then there was David himself, and he was quite nice. I watched a lot of British television and ate delicious home-cooked meals. Not much to report there.
Then I went to London for a last few days. I saw all the traditional "London" things, Westminster, Parliament, Buckingham palace. It was all whatever. I really didn´t learn anything new by seeing them in person, especially considering it was quite shitty and rainy out. I did, however, see an interesting final London show called "Attempts on her Life". It was a series of monologues about a woman named Ann, and the whole thing was staged with a lot of audio/video elements: a large screen was lowered at the beginning of the play, and most of it was recorded as a kind of film, made on stage, in addition to being a play. They even simulated cars going by, beaches, and doctors´offices on stage using a few small set-pieces, but on the screen it looked very realistic. It was interesting, but nothing mind-blowing. Worth the 10 pounds paid for the show.
I will come back later to describe Barcelona and Valencia. Let me tell you two things right off the bat: Valencia is surprisingly great, and Barcelona was surprisingly disappointing.
Friday, 23 March 2007
Leaving Oxford
Well, I'm leaving Oxford today, and I want to leave with a little story.
Open-access internet community be dammed, I'm gonna come out and state the very, very obvious: my first few weeks here were miserable. I was convinced I'd never meet anyone I'd like, that I'd just be drowning myself in work and play rehearsals and generally have an awful time. I'd met a few nice people, but keeping in touch proved difficult. I was depressed, and I was crying on a number of shoulders (my girlfriend, Matt, David, my Dad, anyone who would listen, really). But then, after about two and a half weeks of living in Britain, J.T Erbaugh (bless his soul) invited me to the Oxford Union for the first-week debate, on whether the Muslim Veil is a barrier to cultural integration. There were a lot of Muslim students there, and there was a lot of blood boiling, a good deal of shouting, and a lot of people delicately extending their hands and saying "point of information!" It was a fascinating in the way that watching Parliament on C-SPAN 2 is fascinating; you're amazed at the intelligence and passion on the floor, all the people so invested emotionally and yet arguing so intelligently. But, more importantly, up in the balcony of the debating hall I met Shari Levine, Ryan Doody and Claire Rann. Or maybe Ryan wasn't there. I can't remember. Anyway: they invited me to their house for some tea. We sipped and had a fantastic time. It was without doubt the best night I'd spent in Oxford up until that point. Things were finally getting better.
I'd kept in contact with all of them over the next couple of days, getting up early, doing my work during the day and then heading over to their house at night. It was great to have a good place to go, to not just sit in my room alone and wipe the tears from my copy of Troilus and Criseyde. But pretty soon my housemates (or should I say "mate") and I were getting more and more frustrated with one another. There was one last flare-up, and one of my housemates threatened to speak to the program director about "my behavior", maybe about kicking me out of the house. Then I though, "Wait...would that really be so terrible? I could move into 26 Binsey! They have a spare room...I could stay with them and avoid all the day-time misery I've incurred while I'm here."And so I did. I talked to Deepak, sent my housemates a short, curt e-mail, and traded in my 123 Botley keys for a set to 26 Binsey. I was greeted with a big "welcome home!" from all three housemates, and from that moment I knew my time in Oxford would improve.
And it did. The next two months were probably some of the best fun I'd had in my life. To all the people at 26 Binsey, both the housemates themselves and those who were practically housemates anyway: you guys are absolutely fantastic, each and every one of you. Thank you so much for taking me in. I was the cold, homeless orphan on Christmas Eve, and you were the charitable family who let me in, treating me to a warm fire, good cheer, and a hearty portion of mince pie (I have been in England for too long). I hope to see you guys in back in America. Please, please, please.
Now off to Bath, and then to a rousing trip around Europe. Bye, bye Oxford. I hope this won't be the last time I see you. I still haven't punted. I still haven't been to the Botanical Gardens, or a great deal of the colleges. I still want to see all the secret hidden bits of the Bodelian I never got to see. Maybe one day, Oxford. Maybe I'll come back, armed with a fine Bachelor of Arts degree, and finally be admitted into all your secret little nooks and crannies, not as a mere visitor, but as a full-fledged student.
*sigh*
Wait, what the fuck am I saying? Fuck you up your tight, elitist ass Oxford! I don't need you! I give you two middle fingers! Two of them! Ha!
Open-access internet community be dammed, I'm gonna come out and state the very, very obvious: my first few weeks here were miserable. I was convinced I'd never meet anyone I'd like, that I'd just be drowning myself in work and play rehearsals and generally have an awful time. I'd met a few nice people, but keeping in touch proved difficult. I was depressed, and I was crying on a number of shoulders (my girlfriend, Matt, David, my Dad, anyone who would listen, really). But then, after about two and a half weeks of living in Britain, J.T Erbaugh (bless his soul) invited me to the Oxford Union for the first-week debate, on whether the Muslim Veil is a barrier to cultural integration. There were a lot of Muslim students there, and there was a lot of blood boiling, a good deal of shouting, and a lot of people delicately extending their hands and saying "point of information!" It was a fascinating in the way that watching Parliament on C-SPAN 2 is fascinating; you're amazed at the intelligence and passion on the floor, all the people so invested emotionally and yet arguing so intelligently. But, more importantly, up in the balcony of the debating hall I met Shari Levine, Ryan Doody and Claire Rann. Or maybe Ryan wasn't there. I can't remember. Anyway: they invited me to their house for some tea. We sipped and had a fantastic time. It was without doubt the best night I'd spent in Oxford up until that point. Things were finally getting better.
I'd kept in contact with all of them over the next couple of days, getting up early, doing my work during the day and then heading over to their house at night. It was great to have a good place to go, to not just sit in my room alone and wipe the tears from my copy of Troilus and Criseyde. But pretty soon my housemates (or should I say "mate") and I were getting more and more frustrated with one another. There was one last flare-up, and one of my housemates threatened to speak to the program director about "my behavior", maybe about kicking me out of the house. Then I though, "Wait...would that really be so terrible? I could move into 26 Binsey! They have a spare room...I could stay with them and avoid all the day-time misery I've incurred while I'm here."And so I did. I talked to Deepak, sent my housemates a short, curt e-mail, and traded in my 123 Botley keys for a set to 26 Binsey. I was greeted with a big "welcome home!" from all three housemates, and from that moment I knew my time in Oxford would improve.
And it did. The next two months were probably some of the best fun I'd had in my life. To all the people at 26 Binsey, both the housemates themselves and those who were practically housemates anyway: you guys are absolutely fantastic, each and every one of you. Thank you so much for taking me in. I was the cold, homeless orphan on Christmas Eve, and you were the charitable family who let me in, treating me to a warm fire, good cheer, and a hearty portion of mince pie (I have been in England for too long). I hope to see you guys in back in America. Please, please, please.
Now off to Bath, and then to a rousing trip around Europe. Bye, bye Oxford. I hope this won't be the last time I see you. I still haven't punted. I still haven't been to the Botanical Gardens, or a great deal of the colleges. I still want to see all the secret hidden bits of the Bodelian I never got to see. Maybe one day, Oxford. Maybe I'll come back, armed with a fine Bachelor of Arts degree, and finally be admitted into all your secret little nooks and crannies, not as a mere visitor, but as a full-fledged student.
*sigh*
Wait, what the fuck am I saying? Fuck you up your tight, elitist ass Oxford! I don't need you! I give you two middle fingers! Two of them! Ha!
Sunday, 18 March 2007
It's been a long, long, long time
I haven't updated my blog in a while, so I'm going to try and remember everything that's happened in the past few weeks and write it down.
David and I went to Nice a few weeks ago. For those of you who don't know, Nice is a kind of resort town in the south of France, right next to Italy, and in fact, it has shifted from Italian to French rule several times until 1860, when Napoleon III and struck a deal with Camillo Benso di Cavour to exchange the Nice and Savoy region in exchange for military aid (Thank you Wikipedia!). Nice has since become a big resort town, what with the weather being very nice and the beach being right there. The place is clearly thriving, but it still has this Belle-Epoque-Pleasure-Palace-That-Is-Rotting-From-The-Inside kind of quality, even though it isn't really. The whole town was under construction at the time (I think they're trying to build tramways on the streets), but because the older part of town has been around for a few thousand years, all the excavation has unearthed these old stone structures. You walk past all this metal fencing and concrete dividers, and suddenly there's a giant hole in the ground with the bleached stone foundation for some ancient Greek hovel (The Nice region was not originally Gallic, but Greek. Thanks again!).
David and I went for Carnival, so there were parades all weekend, with huge fuck-off floats that were both whimsical and disturbing. Take, for instance, the "togetherness" float: it was one of those mixers, I don't know what they're called, it has two whisks and a bowl and you turn on the machine to mix the contents of the bowl...anyway, on top of the mixer was part of a globe with all the peoples of the world holding hands, and in the bowl itself were babies with different colored body parts, like a black head against a white torso, or an Asian head against a black torso. Really weird shit like that. In addition to that, there are all these street vendors who sell confetti and silly string, and your average French child (and even the occassional rascally adult) will spray strangers with the string and toss the confetti in your face, much to the dismay of the humorless elderly and American tourists who aren't used to that kind of thing.
All in all it was a good time, but as soon as I got back I started vomitting. A lot. I hadn't been sleeping well before I left, and when then when I got to France I started eating a lot of shellfish and nutella, so God knows what it actually was. Fortunately, I didn't have any more work to do. I will write another post about other Oxford times, because there is far too much information to put into a single, readable post.
David and I went to Nice a few weeks ago. For those of you who don't know, Nice is a kind of resort town in the south of France, right next to Italy, and in fact, it has shifted from Italian to French rule several times until 1860, when Napoleon III and struck a deal with Camillo Benso di Cavour to exchange the Nice and Savoy region in exchange for military aid (Thank you Wikipedia!). Nice has since become a big resort town, what with the weather being very nice and the beach being right there. The place is clearly thriving, but it still has this Belle-Epoque-Pleasure-Palace-That-Is-Rotting-From-The-Inside kind of quality, even though it isn't really. The whole town was under construction at the time (I think they're trying to build tramways on the streets), but because the older part of town has been around for a few thousand years, all the excavation has unearthed these old stone structures. You walk past all this metal fencing and concrete dividers, and suddenly there's a giant hole in the ground with the bleached stone foundation for some ancient Greek hovel (The Nice region was not originally Gallic, but Greek. Thanks again!).
David and I went for Carnival, so there were parades all weekend, with huge fuck-off floats that were both whimsical and disturbing. Take, for instance, the "togetherness" float: it was one of those mixers, I don't know what they're called, it has two whisks and a bowl and you turn on the machine to mix the contents of the bowl...anyway, on top of the mixer was part of a globe with all the peoples of the world holding hands, and in the bowl itself were babies with different colored body parts, like a black head against a white torso, or an Asian head against a black torso. Really weird shit like that. In addition to that, there are all these street vendors who sell confetti and silly string, and your average French child (and even the occassional rascally adult) will spray strangers with the string and toss the confetti in your face, much to the dismay of the humorless elderly and American tourists who aren't used to that kind of thing.
All in all it was a good time, but as soon as I got back I started vomitting. A lot. I hadn't been sleeping well before I left, and when then when I got to France I started eating a lot of shellfish and nutella, so God knows what it actually was. Fortunately, I didn't have any more work to do. I will write another post about other Oxford times, because there is far too much information to put into a single, readable post.
Tuesday, 27 February 2007
Be like the squirrel, girl
A few thoughts:
I'm not in a sketch comedy group, but I think up of sketch ideas very easily, probably because a startling amount of my free time is spent watching them on the internet. Unfortunately (and I think this is a big problem with me) they're seldom very good, or when they are, they're not really sketches so much as they are either a funny phrase or voice, or it's not so much a sketch as a midly amusing short story. Take this one for example: I'd watched The Last Picture Show just before I left Skidmore, and in it there's this one scene where Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepherd (sp?) play a high school couple (old movie) trying to have sex for the first time. They go to this motel room, get everything ready, but there's some kind of "problem" and they can't do it. Two of Cybil Shepherd's friends are waiting outside to hear about what it was like, and as soon as Jeff Bridges leaves, they run into the motel room. The sketch idea was sort of like that, only instead of it being a girl, it's a teenage boy who's about to have sex with some preternaturally hot older woman. She opens the door and leaves, and two of his buddies storm the room and find him on the bed half-catatonic and on the verge of tears. They ask him what happened and he goes on to tell them the terrible things they just did. The whole impetus of this was me thinking it'd be funny if a man, half-way to tears, shouted out "She made me make pickles on her!"
But once again, how do you structure that as a sketch? It's not, really. It's more of like a really sad short film that I wouldn't know how to wrap up. So go ahead and steal this idea, internet. See if you can do something with it. I sure can't.
I'm not in a sketch comedy group, but I think up of sketch ideas very easily, probably because a startling amount of my free time is spent watching them on the internet. Unfortunately (and I think this is a big problem with me) they're seldom very good, or when they are, they're not really sketches so much as they are either a funny phrase or voice, or it's not so much a sketch as a midly amusing short story. Take this one for example: I'd watched The Last Picture Show just before I left Skidmore, and in it there's this one scene where Jeff Bridges and Cybil Shepherd (sp?) play a high school couple (old movie) trying to have sex for the first time. They go to this motel room, get everything ready, but there's some kind of "problem" and they can't do it. Two of Cybil Shepherd's friends are waiting outside to hear about what it was like, and as soon as Jeff Bridges leaves, they run into the motel room. The sketch idea was sort of like that, only instead of it being a girl, it's a teenage boy who's about to have sex with some preternaturally hot older woman. She opens the door and leaves, and two of his buddies storm the room and find him on the bed half-catatonic and on the verge of tears. They ask him what happened and he goes on to tell them the terrible things they just did. The whole impetus of this was me thinking it'd be funny if a man, half-way to tears, shouted out "She made me make pickles on her!"
But once again, how do you structure that as a sketch? It's not, really. It's more of like a really sad short film that I wouldn't know how to wrap up. So go ahead and steal this idea, internet. See if you can do something with it. I sure can't.
Sunday, 25 February 2007
A startling revelation
This is something that I never thought would happen in my lifetime: I felt comfortable enough at a pseudo-club-type social situation that I actually danced. And enjoyed myself.
Let me explain: At St. Catherine's there are these things called Entzes. Why they're called this I have no idea. But they're essentially these giant parties that the college throws for all the students about four times a term. There's a bar, a few swriling colored lights, a decent sound system and a laptop with an extensive music collection. I was drunk at this thing, admittedly, but that usually doesn't stop me from being uncomfortable in my body.
A few things that might have made this situation more comforting than most: people around me dancing like assholes. This usually happens, but usually it's a lot of women pulling out the sexy hip-giration thing, which I've never known how to deal with. Here, at this party, there was none of that, or at least not among my friends. People were just being ridiculous, and being totally okay with it. No pretensions to sexyness or anything: just people acting like morons and knowing it. Another thing: people just as cynical as myself dancing and still enjoying it. At Skidmore, the people who dance are usually really into dancing, or at the very least don't have that rock-hard ice-layer of cynicism and self-deprecation that I do. I think I realized that I might as well dance when Seth, a kid who's even more acerbic than me, started doing it anyway. This made me feel a little bit better about myself. Finally: Rock music. People in England dance to Rock music. This was something I've never been exposed to. In every dance party type situation the music involved has been almost exclusively hip-hop. I'm sorry, but I like Rock music better. America, we can learn a thing or two from this. Obviously Speed Metal isn't going to get people moving (at least not in any pleasant kind of way), but there are plenty of rock songs that people can dance to: Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes, The Killers, to name the more popular examples. Maybe some of the more jangly Rolling Stones songs (like Street Fighting Man). They even played an old Beatles song (I think it was "I feel fine") and I loved it. It's less overtly "Somebody's getting fucked tonight, and it will probably be by me!" and more "I'm just gonna mess around with people I enjoy and get a good night's sleep alone in my bed later." I like that kind of atomsphere.
So, please, stop playing that Chamillionaire song for the umpteenth time. It makes you think you're sexy, and you're really not. You're in a crowded room that smells like stale beer and old socks. Hey you, fella! Stop knocking your cock up against that woman. You're sweating through your brightly-colored Banana Republic dress-shirt, yet your hair still looks like it was sculpted by Frank Ghery. Here's some Iggy Pop. Get over yourself. You, miss...you really shouldn't dance like that with that dress on. I'm getting an eyeful of your pussy on every downbeat. I can tell who's danced with you, because there's three or four men here with body glitter on their pants. Or maybe that's something else. Either way, you should probably be keep an eye on that Mojito of yours sitting at the bar. Here, this song is called "Sympathy for the Devil." Wipe off that purple eyeshadow and enjoy yourself.
Let me explain: At St. Catherine's there are these things called Entzes. Why they're called this I have no idea. But they're essentially these giant parties that the college throws for all the students about four times a term. There's a bar, a few swriling colored lights, a decent sound system and a laptop with an extensive music collection. I was drunk at this thing, admittedly, but that usually doesn't stop me from being uncomfortable in my body.
A few things that might have made this situation more comforting than most: people around me dancing like assholes. This usually happens, but usually it's a lot of women pulling out the sexy hip-giration thing, which I've never known how to deal with. Here, at this party, there was none of that, or at least not among my friends. People were just being ridiculous, and being totally okay with it. No pretensions to sexyness or anything: just people acting like morons and knowing it. Another thing: people just as cynical as myself dancing and still enjoying it. At Skidmore, the people who dance are usually really into dancing, or at the very least don't have that rock-hard ice-layer of cynicism and self-deprecation that I do. I think I realized that I might as well dance when Seth, a kid who's even more acerbic than me, started doing it anyway. This made me feel a little bit better about myself. Finally: Rock music. People in England dance to Rock music. This was something I've never been exposed to. In every dance party type situation the music involved has been almost exclusively hip-hop. I'm sorry, but I like Rock music better. America, we can learn a thing or two from this. Obviously Speed Metal isn't going to get people moving (at least not in any pleasant kind of way), but there are plenty of rock songs that people can dance to: Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes, The Killers, to name the more popular examples. Maybe some of the more jangly Rolling Stones songs (like Street Fighting Man). They even played an old Beatles song (I think it was "I feel fine") and I loved it. It's less overtly "Somebody's getting fucked tonight, and it will probably be by me!" and more "I'm just gonna mess around with people I enjoy and get a good night's sleep alone in my bed later." I like that kind of atomsphere.
So, please, stop playing that Chamillionaire song for the umpteenth time. It makes you think you're sexy, and you're really not. You're in a crowded room that smells like stale beer and old socks. Hey you, fella! Stop knocking your cock up against that woman. You're sweating through your brightly-colored Banana Republic dress-shirt, yet your hair still looks like it was sculpted by Frank Ghery. Here's some Iggy Pop. Get over yourself. You, miss...you really shouldn't dance like that with that dress on. I'm getting an eyeful of your pussy on every downbeat. I can tell who's danced with you, because there's three or four men here with body glitter on their pants. Or maybe that's something else. Either way, you should probably be keep an eye on that Mojito of yours sitting at the bar. Here, this song is called "Sympathy for the Devil." Wipe off that purple eyeshadow and enjoy yourself.
Thursday, 22 February 2007
These are some lists
Things I've seen a lot of in Oxford:
-Buildings over two two hundred years old (duh)
-Black pea-coats and tightly knotted scarves.
-Bicycles (fuck, there are a lot of bicycles)
-Skirts that reveal 80 percent of thigh (conditional: after 10 pm Thursday through Saturday)
-Men who wear Dolce and Gabbana (sp?) and then talk about how they're wearing Dolce and Gabbana
-Little children in prep-school blazers who call people "slag" really loudly.
-Girls who look like a lot like Emily Spalding (four in one day)
-Crazy people. I don't mean, like "Oh, man, you crazy!" I mean like "That person is shouting something unintelligble at me and he looks like homeless Santa Claus"
-Food from sidewalk vendors that I feel comfortable eating for some reason.
-Hard-working, intelligent people with just a leeeeeeetle bit of a stick up their ass.
Things that I like about Oxford:
-New friends
-Nice town
-Decent theater (Faust, huh? Yeah! Yeah, sure!)
-Books read (i.e Lady Chatterly's Lover, oldest book I've read (1928) that says fuck, shit, cunt, piss and penis written not just once, but several times)
-A surprising percentage of English food.
-Streets at night after it's rained (It's like I'm about to get stabbed in a Fritz Lang movie! Cool!)
-Mayonnaise on French Fries (who knew?)
-Buying alcohol, but not to get to get totally hammered, just to relax a little after a long day, or after a meal.
-Everything cool in Western Civilization is just £30 and an easyjet flight away.
Things I don't like about Oxford:
-The occasional snobby, preening twat (you know who you are)
-English baked beans (I used to like baked beans. What the fuck do you do to them, England?)
-Club scene (I can't...I'm sorry, I can't...I SAID I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!)
-Visiting student status (I can only use the library from 4-10 pm, and I can't go into other colleges aside from my own. Thanks, Oxford Elitism!)
-The pound (Spending ten dollars at Burger King used to mean you had a big family or a terrible problem)
-Lack of girlfriend. (Yes, you can hit me now. Thank you.)
Maybe other lists to come. That is, if something interesting doesn't happen. Which it may not.
-Buildings over two two hundred years old (duh)
-Black pea-coats and tightly knotted scarves.
-Bicycles (fuck, there are a lot of bicycles)
-Skirts that reveal 80 percent of thigh (conditional: after 10 pm Thursday through Saturday)
-Men who wear Dolce and Gabbana (sp?) and then talk about how they're wearing Dolce and Gabbana
-Little children in prep-school blazers who call people "slag" really loudly.
-Girls who look like a lot like Emily Spalding (four in one day)
-Crazy people. I don't mean, like "Oh, man, you crazy!" I mean like "That person is shouting something unintelligble at me and he looks like homeless Santa Claus"
-Food from sidewalk vendors that I feel comfortable eating for some reason.
-Hard-working, intelligent people with just a leeeeeeetle bit of a stick up their ass.
Things that I like about Oxford:
-New friends
-Nice town
-Decent theater (Faust, huh? Yeah! Yeah, sure!)
-Books read (i.e Lady Chatterly's Lover, oldest book I've read (1928) that says fuck, shit, cunt, piss and penis written not just once, but several times)
-A surprising percentage of English food.
-Streets at night after it's rained (It's like I'm about to get stabbed in a Fritz Lang movie! Cool!)
-Mayonnaise on French Fries (who knew?)
-Buying alcohol, but not to get to get totally hammered, just to relax a little after a long day, or after a meal.
-Everything cool in Western Civilization is just £30 and an easyjet flight away.
Things I don't like about Oxford:
-The occasional snobby, preening twat (you know who you are)
-English baked beans (I used to like baked beans. What the fuck do you do to them, England?)
-Club scene (I can't...I'm sorry, I can't...I SAID I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!)
-Visiting student status (I can only use the library from 4-10 pm, and I can't go into other colleges aside from my own. Thanks, Oxford Elitism!)
-The pound (Spending ten dollars at Burger King used to mean you had a big family or a terrible problem)
-Lack of girlfriend. (Yes, you can hit me now. Thank you.)
Maybe other lists to come. That is, if something interesting doesn't happen. Which it may not.
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
Yes! YES!
A few weeks ago, I ordered tickets to a Regina Spektor concert. I didn't have any friends in England just yet, so I only ordered one. I admit I considered selling the ticket for a little while. I foresaw myself sitting alone in a big auditorium, with my eyes to the floor, listening to a softly played rendition of "Samson" as all the fancy Oxford couples, slim of pant leg and long of hair, made out furiously to the left and right of me. Well, all that happened, but my eyes certainly weren't on the ground. They were watching her, in all her crooning, semitic glory. I will now describe the concert in extreme detail, not really for any of you, but because I forgot my camera and I want some record of this while my memory's still fresh.
The venue itself was gorgeous, in traditional Oxford style. A large pipe organ at the front (unused unfortunately), Grecian-style statuary carved into the walls and balcony, coats-of-arms engraved and painted against the balcony, and a big ol' rotunda above the stage with its own patterns and little stained windows (not stained glass, really, but still intricately designed) behind it. The last time I'd been to a real concert, not just a rock show in a tiny club but an honest-to-goodness rock concert, was about five years ago. Because of this I forgot about the terrible burden of the virtually-unknown opening act. This guy I had never heard of, and probably never will. Though it was just him up there, the boy decided to give himself a band name: Only Son. I guess this is a trend right now, solo artists giving themselves band names, kind of like Bright Eyes or...I dunno, someone else probably did that too but I can't think of anyone right now. He sported a big red afro, wore a brown v-neck sweater about two sizes two big, and had the posture of an osteoporotic turtle. His songs might as well have been him screaming "INDIE!!!" into the microphone for two minutes at a time. It was just him up there, like I said, performing with an acoustic guitar. But about three songs into his set this guy (who said virtually nothing, by the way, just introduced himself and would give a clipped little "thanks" every time the audience applauded) had the audacity, the sheer cojones, to whip out his iPod, stick it into the stereo system, and use that as his accompaniment. Excuse me, sir, you may not realize this, but this is a LIVE SHOW. If you wanted to play us the EP you recorded in your closet, perhaps you could have just given the guy at the sound board your CD and he would play them over the speakers for you. I know it's hard for you to make friends, but a back-up band really is crucial in these kinds of situations, I'm sorry. It's not all that hard to get a few musicians together when you're playing for a relatively established artist. Just put up some fliers at a few coffee-shops in Williamsburg saying "Drummer, bassist and Guitarist needed to open for Regina Spektor tour. Inquire at ImaBohemianGottaLoveMe@aol.com" Your phone would be ringing off the hook, I assure you.
Anyway, after that, Regina came on. She started with this song, I'd never heard it before, but it was kind of blues-y and was just her singing while she gently tapped the microphone for percussion. Then she went to the piano. One of the coolest things I've ever seen at a concert: a pianist playing the drums to her own song. I think the name of the song is Ode to Divorce: she had two drum sticks and she smacked them into a wooden chair as she played piano with her other hand. And it was pretty good. She's not Def Leppard in terms of her one-handed drumming abilities, but I'll be dammed if it wasn't cool to watch. Then she brought out her guitar, which I didn't know she played herself, and played this one song that I'd never heard before called "bobbing for apples." Best lyric of 2007 award: "The light fixtures are shaking/and someone's fucking to one of my songs." Okay, maybe not the best lyric, but certainly most-ironically-delivered-and-funny-while-also-being-very-sweet-and-endearing lyric award. A little more cumbersome title, but a more accurate one, I suppose.
She is the most adorable performer. When a PA came up to her and whispered something she said "Sorry, it's a secret." She tried a British accent and then said "Sorry, I always sound like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins." She's just adorable. It's not even a sexual attraction. She's just someone I'd like to be good friends with, maybe hear her play a few songs or something.
Anyway, I have to write about Joyce now. Yes. Him.
The venue itself was gorgeous, in traditional Oxford style. A large pipe organ at the front (unused unfortunately), Grecian-style statuary carved into the walls and balcony, coats-of-arms engraved and painted against the balcony, and a big ol' rotunda above the stage with its own patterns and little stained windows (not stained glass, really, but still intricately designed) behind it. The last time I'd been to a real concert, not just a rock show in a tiny club but an honest-to-goodness rock concert, was about five years ago. Because of this I forgot about the terrible burden of the virtually-unknown opening act. This guy I had never heard of, and probably never will. Though it was just him up there, the boy decided to give himself a band name: Only Son. I guess this is a trend right now, solo artists giving themselves band names, kind of like Bright Eyes or...I dunno, someone else probably did that too but I can't think of anyone right now. He sported a big red afro, wore a brown v-neck sweater about two sizes two big, and had the posture of an osteoporotic turtle. His songs might as well have been him screaming "INDIE!!!" into the microphone for two minutes at a time. It was just him up there, like I said, performing with an acoustic guitar. But about three songs into his set this guy (who said virtually nothing, by the way, just introduced himself and would give a clipped little "thanks" every time the audience applauded) had the audacity, the sheer cojones, to whip out his iPod, stick it into the stereo system, and use that as his accompaniment. Excuse me, sir, you may not realize this, but this is a LIVE SHOW. If you wanted to play us the EP you recorded in your closet, perhaps you could have just given the guy at the sound board your CD and he would play them over the speakers for you. I know it's hard for you to make friends, but a back-up band really is crucial in these kinds of situations, I'm sorry. It's not all that hard to get a few musicians together when you're playing for a relatively established artist. Just put up some fliers at a few coffee-shops in Williamsburg saying "Drummer, bassist and Guitarist needed to open for Regina Spektor tour. Inquire at ImaBohemianGottaLoveMe@aol.com" Your phone would be ringing off the hook, I assure you.
Anyway, after that, Regina came on. She started with this song, I'd never heard it before, but it was kind of blues-y and was just her singing while she gently tapped the microphone for percussion. Then she went to the piano. One of the coolest things I've ever seen at a concert: a pianist playing the drums to her own song. I think the name of the song is Ode to Divorce: she had two drum sticks and she smacked them into a wooden chair as she played piano with her other hand. And it was pretty good. She's not Def Leppard in terms of her one-handed drumming abilities, but I'll be dammed if it wasn't cool to watch. Then she brought out her guitar, which I didn't know she played herself, and played this one song that I'd never heard before called "bobbing for apples." Best lyric of 2007 award: "The light fixtures are shaking/and someone's fucking to one of my songs." Okay, maybe not the best lyric, but certainly most-ironically-delivered-and-funny-while-also-being-very-sweet-and-endearing lyric award. A little more cumbersome title, but a more accurate one, I suppose.
She is the most adorable performer. When a PA came up to her and whispered something she said "Sorry, it's a secret." She tried a British accent and then said "Sorry, I always sound like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins." She's just adorable. It's not even a sexual attraction. She's just someone I'd like to be good friends with, maybe hear her play a few songs or something.
Anyway, I have to write about Joyce now. Yes. Him.
Sunday, 11 February 2007
Reviews
Today was my first liaison with critical reception. It was confusing, disturbing and it hurt a little. Seriously, though, it's kind of indicative of what I think every actor goes through. There are two major Oxford newspapers, one is called the Cherwell and the other is the Oxford Student. The Cherwell is, I think, the bigger deal, because it's got a nicer website and it's been around for longer. The Cherwell's review of the play was generally favorable, but they thought my performance was a bit wooden. The OxStu (yay for abbreviation!) was a little less enthusiastic about the play as a whole, but thought my performance was "chilling and compelling." If this proves anything it proves that critical opinion means virtually nothing unless you spread it around a little. There was a tiny pang of hurt when I read the Cherwell review, but nothing serious, which is good. The only person's approval I'm really looking for is a particular audience member. The director mentioned to me that Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek and X-Men fame, might be attending. If I get a pat on the back and something like a "good stuff, man, good stuff," then I can die happy.
Monday, 5 February 2007
A question-blog
I've seen this kinds of blogs where there's a big messageboard at the bottom and if the blogs are popular then there are scores of people chiming in on a question the aforementioned main-blogger has asked. Well, I know this blog isn't all that popular, but I have a question that I think only my peers can genuinely answer. I'm planning on travelling with Schwartz for about two weeks, from April 8th to whenever two weeks after that is. However, I have to leave my flat in Oxford on March 22nd, two weeks prior to start of the planned trip. I asked David if he'd be willing to travel with me, but he seemed a little reluctant, and even if he did he'd only join me for one week out of the two. So here's my question, people-who-read-my-blog:
What should I do for the interim? Should I travel Europe alone? Should I stay put in England, where I know the langauge and have a few contacts in case of emergency? Moreoever, should I stay relatively put in London, where there's lots of interesting things to see and do and don't have to worry about booking lots of different hostels? Tell me, internet. Tell me what to do. If you can't post on the site because you don't have a google account, I'd appreciate it if you took the time to go back to my facebook page and post on my wall. I really want other people's opinion, especially people who might have travelled. Go! Now! Excelsior!
What should I do for the interim? Should I travel Europe alone? Should I stay put in England, where I know the langauge and have a few contacts in case of emergency? Moreoever, should I stay relatively put in London, where there's lots of interesting things to see and do and don't have to worry about booking lots of different hostels? Tell me, internet. Tell me what to do. If you can't post on the site because you don't have a google account, I'd appreciate it if you took the time to go back to my facebook page and post on my wall. I really want other people's opinion, especially people who might have travelled. Go! Now! Excelsior!
Weekend!
Matt and David came to Oxford for a short while. I, unfortunately, had rehearsals while they were here, so I went off and made theater while they stayed at my flat and drank Strongbow for hours. They didn't see very much of Oxford, and a few things they chose to see on their own were, apparently, very lame (like Oxford Story, which is kind of like a bad Epcot ride about Oxford). A good time was still had, however. We went to Pizza Hut, which was surprisingly good, and extremely cheap, even by American standards. Not exactly English, of course, but we all needed a short wallet-reprieve, I think.
I might be moving into another house soon. I've become good friends with the kids on Binsey lane, which down the road a few hundred yards from my house. They have a spare room, so I think I might move in with them. Nothing's definite right now, though, and since this is a blog that anyone in the world can read, I don't really want to go into the specifics. Just figured I'd give that little update for anyone who's interested.
This has nothing to do with England, but: I read recently about the next Quentin Tarantino/ Robert Rodriguez movie Grindhouse. For those of you that don't know, these two made a movie together previously, one that Tarantino wrote and Rodriguez directed called From Dusk Till Dawn. It can be described in three beautiful words: Mexican...Stripper...Vampires. George Clooney (when he was just a bright shining TV star trying to break into film) and Tarantino himself play two bandits who've kidnapped a family of three (Harvey Keitel plays the father) and bring them to a Mexican strip-club. Selma Hayek, before she was moderately famous, plays a stripper named, according to imdb, Satanico Pandemonium. If memory serves, she has snake wrapped around her at all times, and at one point during her little sex-dance dance she pours whiskey down her leg while Tarantino sucks it from her toes. Then the vampires come. And now it becomes this ultra-violent vampire movie. And I mean really fucking violent. People getting ripped the fuck in half. That kind of thing.
So now they're making this other movie called grindhouse. It's supposed to be this simulation of going to a grind-house feature in the sixties and seventies. This means a double-feature, trailers, and even the accompanying techincal issues (apparently the sound crackles and pops, and the film skips whole sections, with just a title card saying "reel missing"). I watched the trailer, and there's one segment with a stripper with a gun for a leg. The whole thing is apparently going to be three hours long.
Here's the thing: I want to see this movie really badly, not because I think I'll enjoy it, but because I want to see how much a train wreck it'll be. These two seem to bring out the worst in each other with regards to their filmmaking, and making a three-hour exploitation flick seems to straddle a weird line, where you're making something that panders to an audience, but doing it in a very esoteric way. I'm sure it will be the most self-indulgent thing possible, like mildly talented internet fan-boy being given millions of dollars to make his fan-fiction into something presentable. But I'll be god-dammed if I'm not gonna be there watching it.
I might be moving into another house soon. I've become good friends with the kids on Binsey lane, which down the road a few hundred yards from my house. They have a spare room, so I think I might move in with them. Nothing's definite right now, though, and since this is a blog that anyone in the world can read, I don't really want to go into the specifics. Just figured I'd give that little update for anyone who's interested.
This has nothing to do with England, but: I read recently about the next Quentin Tarantino/ Robert Rodriguez movie Grindhouse. For those of you that don't know, these two made a movie together previously, one that Tarantino wrote and Rodriguez directed called From Dusk Till Dawn. It can be described in three beautiful words: Mexican...Stripper...Vampires. George Clooney (when he was just a bright shining TV star trying to break into film) and Tarantino himself play two bandits who've kidnapped a family of three (Harvey Keitel plays the father) and bring them to a Mexican strip-club. Selma Hayek, before she was moderately famous, plays a stripper named, according to imdb, Satanico Pandemonium. If memory serves, she has snake wrapped around her at all times, and at one point during her little sex-dance dance she pours whiskey down her leg while Tarantino sucks it from her toes. Then the vampires come. And now it becomes this ultra-violent vampire movie. And I mean really fucking violent. People getting ripped the fuck in half. That kind of thing.
So now they're making this other movie called grindhouse. It's supposed to be this simulation of going to a grind-house feature in the sixties and seventies. This means a double-feature, trailers, and even the accompanying techincal issues (apparently the sound crackles and pops, and the film skips whole sections, with just a title card saying "reel missing"). I watched the trailer, and there's one segment with a stripper with a gun for a leg. The whole thing is apparently going to be three hours long.
Here's the thing: I want to see this movie really badly, not because I think I'll enjoy it, but because I want to see how much a train wreck it'll be. These two seem to bring out the worst in each other with regards to their filmmaking, and making a three-hour exploitation flick seems to straddle a weird line, where you're making something that panders to an audience, but doing it in a very esoteric way. I'm sure it will be the most self-indulgent thing possible, like mildly talented internet fan-boy being given millions of dollars to make his fan-fiction into something presentable. But I'll be god-dammed if I'm not gonna be there watching it.
Thursday, 1 February 2007
Parallels between Oxford and Full Metal Jacket
Oxford is a bit like an intellectual boot camp. Eight weeks of intense work, with a month's reprieve for you to drink yourself to a sloshy mush on the floor of some bar in Dover or some shit. Moreover, one-on-one tutorials have to be the most embarrassing, invasive way to get an education imaginable. You have to read your essays aloud, meaning that every flaw and ridiculous cliche you employ has to cross your timid, quivering lips. Then the teacher points out the flaws and spelling errors you yourself can see before you. "Excuse me, but I had to write this in two days. It's not gonna be the Bhavita fucking Ghita." Hopefully I'll become a better writer and not have to endure the jibes and japes of my tutors. But I have five more weeks here, and I don't know how much I can improve until then. Plus, one of my tutors keeps calling me faggot all the time. I think that's just uncalled for.
Wednesday, 31 January 2007
So, I'm not gonna be in Assassins. From what I've heard the whole thing is turning into a fiasco, and the show was supposedly going to be put up in three weeks. How were they planning on doing that, I wonder, if they didn't have a lead? In addition to that, I have a great deal of work both for this show and for my classes. So, although I would have loved loved loved being in that show, I will not be doing it. I was listening to the sound track on my iPod recently, the one from the broadway show, and I was getting a little wistful. "That could have been me! I could have sang that! I could have---No, no, you made a decision and you have to stick with it and it will be---aw, man I could have done something so cool with that! Think of what I could have done with that I---no! No. You can't, you have to...eeeeeehhh!!!"
I thought when I got here that I would integrate myself so well. That since everybody speaks the same language I could just make friends. However, I forgot two things: one, I'm kind of shy, and can't make friends too easily. I can make them, but just not very easily. Two, England is different from America. Surprisingly so. Being thrown into a different culture, and, moreover, coming from a country that is the object of more ire and hatred than potentially any other in the world, makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I know this is just a "me" thing and that I could probably meet some more people if I wanted to. Hopefully I will before all this is over. Anyway, that's just "me" all over: I'm in a foreign country, having what will probably be a once-in-a-lifetime exprience, and I'm stil fretting and wringing my hands like a douche. Damn.
I thought when I got here that I would integrate myself so well. That since everybody speaks the same language I could just make friends. However, I forgot two things: one, I'm kind of shy, and can't make friends too easily. I can make them, but just not very easily. Two, England is different from America. Surprisingly so. Being thrown into a different culture, and, moreover, coming from a country that is the object of more ire and hatred than potentially any other in the world, makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I know this is just a "me" thing and that I could probably meet some more people if I wanted to. Hopefully I will before all this is over. Anyway, that's just "me" all over: I'm in a foreign country, having what will probably be a once-in-a-lifetime exprience, and I'm stil fretting and wringing my hands like a douche. Damn.
Sunday, 28 January 2007
Okay, this is ridiculous
When I got here I auditioned for two shows. One, the Infernal Machine, which I got into and am now performing as the lead. The other was Assassins. I don't usually sing, but I love the show a whole lot, and since it's a more acting-based show, I thought I could give it a shot. Now, I tried my damndest, but after a week I never got a response from the director. I took that as a rather rude "no" and went on my merry English way.
However, a few days ago I got a facebook message from the director of Assassins saying that my e-mail address didn't work, that she'd been trying to contact me for ages. I gave her my regular e-mail (she got the spelling wrong) and she sent me a message asking if I'd like to play Booth. Booth is, once again, the lead. In a musical. And I DON'T SING.
What the fuck is up, Oxford? For the past two years I've been getting either decent roles in ensemble casts, or bit parts in regular shows. Now I get two huge leads in a row? And one in a MUSICAL? I figure one of three things is going on: one, I've finally emerged from my chrysallis and become a flaming, golden butterfly of an actor; two, the talent here at Oxford is slim-to-nil; three, I'm auditioning for the less competitive roles in smaller plays. I think three is probably the best bet. From what I understand, all the big-daddy pseudo-professional plays get put up in the Oxford Playhouse, while these two are being performed at the St. Catz theater (or theatre). But still. Why'd you spring this on me, England? Why couldn't you have told me you needed me earlier?
However, a few days ago I got a facebook message from the director of Assassins saying that my e-mail address didn't work, that she'd been trying to contact me for ages. I gave her my regular e-mail (she got the spelling wrong) and she sent me a message asking if I'd like to play Booth. Booth is, once again, the lead. In a musical. And I DON'T SING.
What the fuck is up, Oxford? For the past two years I've been getting either decent roles in ensemble casts, or bit parts in regular shows. Now I get two huge leads in a row? And one in a MUSICAL? I figure one of three things is going on: one, I've finally emerged from my chrysallis and become a flaming, golden butterfly of an actor; two, the talent here at Oxford is slim-to-nil; three, I'm auditioning for the less competitive roles in smaller plays. I think three is probably the best bet. From what I understand, all the big-daddy pseudo-professional plays get put up in the Oxford Playhouse, while these two are being performed at the St. Catz theater (or theatre). But still. Why'd you spring this on me, England? Why couldn't you have told me you needed me earlier?
Saturday, 27 January 2007
Sweet tasty jesus-cakes...
I know I just posted an entry today, but something just happened that may force me to re-define who I am. I was on wikipedia (ignoring my work), and for shits and giggles I looked up Chester. Now, Chester is not my ancestral name. I think it was something more like Shuster, but my great-grandfather changed it because he was an electrician and thought the business was anti-semiti. Wikipedia tells me Chester is the county town of Cheshire, England, and has a great deal of history and that those who are true descendants of the Chester name are actually British nobility. There are a number of towns called Chester, and it seems, based on the names of Chesters-of-note, that its far more common as a first name than a last name. But I also learned (and here's the kicker) that it's prison slang for child molesters.
Now, I'd been called "Chester the child molester" before, back in those mud-slinging middle school days. But I didn't think that it was actually a term of common usage. Now, suddenly, I see a bleak and sordid future laid out before me. Better get myself indoctrinated, so I can start the process now.
Now, I'd been called "Chester the child molester" before, back in those mud-slinging middle school days. But I didn't think that it was actually a term of common usage. Now, suddenly, I see a bleak and sordid future laid out before me. Better get myself indoctrinated, so I can start the process now.
It's a little bit depressing...this feeling inside...it's not something I can easily hide...
Oxford has a little bit of a homeless problem. I don't know if they consider it a "problem" or not, since there is a shelter nearby, but whenever you get asked for change a near-consistent three times a night, I consider it a problem. During the day they're usually asking if you want a copy of "The Big Issue," which, from what I understand, is a tabloid magazine that the homeless are encouraged to hawk on the street so they feel like they're "contributing to society." Of course, once the sun starts setting they'll circumvent the whole big issue thing and point-blank ask you if you've got any change.
My thing about the homeless is that I really don't like the "just walk by them and don't say anything" deal. I know I seem pretty cynical, but every cynic is a wounded romantic as they say, and the homeless is a weird soft spot I have. It used to be (say, from ages six to ten) that whenever I saw a homeless person I would spend the next ten minutes either crying or trying very hard not to cry. It's still hard for me to ignore them, and I still end up spending what would probably amount to a poundand a half a week on the occassional attack of conscience.
I know you're not supposed to give money to panhandlers. It's not even an issue really: even people who run the shelters say not to give money out to homeless people on the street. But it's hard for me, and it's especially hard when there's so fucking many of them. Even New York has somewhat curbed its homeless problem (how they did it I don't know, and maybe I don't really want to) to the point where, if you walk a good distance in the daytime, you may not get asked for change once. Sure, you might see the occassional guy with a shopping cart filled with cans, but the point is he's not bothering you (sorry for the levity at the expense of people who are truly suffering). Here, they're very aggressive. Sometimes threateningly so. One time an American (of all the people) touched my shoulder as I was walking and asked, in an oddly articulate but still very unctuous and creepy way, "I'm very sorry young sir, but would you mind lending me a pound?" He had this shit-eating grin on his face, and was very well-dressed for someone asking for change. It looked like he might have been some lawyer who got fired from his job and was kicked out of his house, and he'd burned so many bridges that he just had no where to go and nothing to protect him from the cold except this really nice pea-coat he'd gotten from the Gap.
I write all this because I saw today what was the apex of sadness. There was a homeless man walking with a few copies of the Big Issue in his hand, and only a few feet behind him, following him dutifully, was a German shephard in a torn-up little doggie sweater. I noticed almost immediately that the dog had only three legs, and that one of the sweater sleeves was entirely empty. How do you just walk by something like that?
My thing about the homeless is that I really don't like the "just walk by them and don't say anything" deal. I know I seem pretty cynical, but every cynic is a wounded romantic as they say, and the homeless is a weird soft spot I have. It used to be (say, from ages six to ten) that whenever I saw a homeless person I would spend the next ten minutes either crying or trying very hard not to cry. It's still hard for me to ignore them, and I still end up spending what would probably amount to a poundand a half a week on the occassional attack of conscience.
I know you're not supposed to give money to panhandlers. It's not even an issue really: even people who run the shelters say not to give money out to homeless people on the street. But it's hard for me, and it's especially hard when there's so fucking many of them. Even New York has somewhat curbed its homeless problem (how they did it I don't know, and maybe I don't really want to) to the point where, if you walk a good distance in the daytime, you may not get asked for change once. Sure, you might see the occassional guy with a shopping cart filled with cans, but the point is he's not bothering you (sorry for the levity at the expense of people who are truly suffering). Here, they're very aggressive. Sometimes threateningly so. One time an American (of all the people) touched my shoulder as I was walking and asked, in an oddly articulate but still very unctuous and creepy way, "I'm very sorry young sir, but would you mind lending me a pound?" He had this shit-eating grin on his face, and was very well-dressed for someone asking for change. It looked like he might have been some lawyer who got fired from his job and was kicked out of his house, and he'd burned so many bridges that he just had no where to go and nothing to protect him from the cold except this really nice pea-coat he'd gotten from the Gap.
I write all this because I saw today what was the apex of sadness. There was a homeless man walking with a few copies of the Big Issue in his hand, and only a few feet behind him, following him dutifully, was a German shephard in a torn-up little doggie sweater. I noticed almost immediately that the dog had only three legs, and that one of the sweater sleeves was entirely empty. How do you just walk by something like that?
Thursday, 25 January 2007
Create-A-Title!
I'm reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles right now, and it's a book about a peasant woman who's raped by a gentleman. Not a gentleman as we know it today, but a man with the title of gentleman. I'm pretty sure that rape is the most ungentlemanly activity possible. There's public flatulation, insulting someone's mother, and then rape. Those are the three things that gentlemen must never do.
A few other developments in candy-tasting. I've tried Crunchies. They're described as chocolate-covered honey-combs or some such thing, so I was expecting something kind of cruncy, chewey and chocolatey. Imagine my surprise when I bit into a rock-hard bar of what looked like chocolate-covered foam-rubber and tasted like a s'more where the marshmallow is burnt to a crisp. It was unpleasant. But not all British candy is bad. Cadbury eggs are available year-round here. I eat one almost every day, which has to be terrible for my health.
This weekend I think I'm going on a school-sponsored trip to some very nice castle and manor in the English countryside. Apparently, if you've seen a film with British gentry and fantastic country homes, some part of this manor was filmed in it. Whether or not I will find that impressive remains to be seen.
A few other developments in candy-tasting. I've tried Crunchies. They're described as chocolate-covered honey-combs or some such thing, so I was expecting something kind of cruncy, chewey and chocolatey. Imagine my surprise when I bit into a rock-hard bar of what looked like chocolate-covered foam-rubber and tasted like a s'more where the marshmallow is burnt to a crisp. It was unpleasant. But not all British candy is bad. Cadbury eggs are available year-round here. I eat one almost every day, which has to be terrible for my health.
This weekend I think I'm going on a school-sponsored trip to some very nice castle and manor in the English countryside. Apparently, if you've seen a film with British gentry and fantastic country homes, some part of this manor was filmed in it. Whether or not I will find that impressive remains to be seen.
Tuesday, 23 January 2007
Hi! I've started a blog
I've decided to start a blog. It'll be a journal of the feelings that I have, observations that I make, and experiences I've experienced. I feel this is particularly important since I'm in a foreign country, and my experiences will be new and different from anything I've previously experienced. I hope you're looking forward to the journey as much as I am. Or should I say experience.
Oxford is an extraordinarily old place, and I think if I were to choose anywhere in the world that's different in virtually every respect from my country, yet still speaks my language, it's here. Other than the fact that they all watch 24 and drink Coke, there's really not many similarities. I have sat in chairs that are older than my country. I have seen people walking down Broad street in flowing black robes on a windy day, looking for all the world like big, black flying squirells. I have been in buildings where the buttresses not only buttress, but fly, in addition to their buttressing. It's weird.
One interesting surprise has been the candy. I'm consistently surprised by it. The other day I tried a Twirl bar, which is a bar of flakey, dry chocolate, almost like little wittled chocolate shavings rolled up and smushed together. This all then covered with another layer of regular milk chocolate. The only real way of describing this is like a big, violent chocolate explosion inside your unsuspecting mouth. And I don't mean that in a positive, fun kind of way, like how an "ice-breaker" is a burst of cool freshness or something like that. Imagine the actual mechanics of chocolate exploding in your mouth. Imagine your jaw hanging by a single hinge. Imagine feeling some hot, gooey substance running down your neck, thinking its blood, only to discover its gobs and gobs of rich, hot, liquidy milk chocolate. Imagine it flowing into your sinuses and coming out your nose. Imagine crying chocolate. That's what eating a Twirl bar is like.
The classes here are structured in an odd way. At Skidmore (and, I think, at most American colleges), you have about four to six subjects that you take each term, meeting two to three times a week, for an hour to an hour and a half, in a discussion/lecture style period with twenty or so other students. Here you have two subjects, each meeting for an hour once a week, where you're expected to read anywhere from five (me) to ten (other Oxford students) books per subject. For each tutorial you're expected to write an essay anywhere from 2000 to 3000 words (about seven to ten pages double-spaced).
It's very work intensive, very self-motivating, and also very isolating. Without living with the other students, and kind of being dropped into things at the middle of the year, I'm having trouble getting to know British kids. I've started trying to integrate myself, though. I'm in a play called "Infernal Machine" by Jean Cocteau, which is a re-imagining of Oedipus Rex. I'm Oedipus. Yeah, crazy, right? This is gonna be my first lead in college, and it's gonna be in a foreign country where none of my friends or family can see it.
I think I might have been miscast, though. I got a direction the other day that disconcerted me. The director asked me if I'd ever seen the movie Gladiator. I told her yes. She said "Think of Oedipus like Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Try and do it like that." Now when I look in the mirror I see many things, but none of them even remotely resemble Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Gawky teenager, perhaps. Sensitive intellectual. Indie-rock star, on my better days. But a muscle-bound Epic Hero I am not and, unless I hit the gym with extraordinary frequency, will never be. I'll do my best, but somehow I think this production isn't going to exactly work.
Oxford is an extraordinarily old place, and I think if I were to choose anywhere in the world that's different in virtually every respect from my country, yet still speaks my language, it's here. Other than the fact that they all watch 24 and drink Coke, there's really not many similarities. I have sat in chairs that are older than my country. I have seen people walking down Broad street in flowing black robes on a windy day, looking for all the world like big, black flying squirells. I have been in buildings where the buttresses not only buttress, but fly, in addition to their buttressing. It's weird.
One interesting surprise has been the candy. I'm consistently surprised by it. The other day I tried a Twirl bar, which is a bar of flakey, dry chocolate, almost like little wittled chocolate shavings rolled up and smushed together. This all then covered with another layer of regular milk chocolate. The only real way of describing this is like a big, violent chocolate explosion inside your unsuspecting mouth. And I don't mean that in a positive, fun kind of way, like how an "ice-breaker" is a burst of cool freshness or something like that. Imagine the actual mechanics of chocolate exploding in your mouth. Imagine your jaw hanging by a single hinge. Imagine feeling some hot, gooey substance running down your neck, thinking its blood, only to discover its gobs and gobs of rich, hot, liquidy milk chocolate. Imagine it flowing into your sinuses and coming out your nose. Imagine crying chocolate. That's what eating a Twirl bar is like.
The classes here are structured in an odd way. At Skidmore (and, I think, at most American colleges), you have about four to six subjects that you take each term, meeting two to three times a week, for an hour to an hour and a half, in a discussion/lecture style period with twenty or so other students. Here you have two subjects, each meeting for an hour once a week, where you're expected to read anywhere from five (me) to ten (other Oxford students) books per subject. For each tutorial you're expected to write an essay anywhere from 2000 to 3000 words (about seven to ten pages double-spaced).
It's very work intensive, very self-motivating, and also very isolating. Without living with the other students, and kind of being dropped into things at the middle of the year, I'm having trouble getting to know British kids. I've started trying to integrate myself, though. I'm in a play called "Infernal Machine" by Jean Cocteau, which is a re-imagining of Oedipus Rex. I'm Oedipus. Yeah, crazy, right? This is gonna be my first lead in college, and it's gonna be in a foreign country where none of my friends or family can see it.
I think I might have been miscast, though. I got a direction the other day that disconcerted me. The director asked me if I'd ever seen the movie Gladiator. I told her yes. She said "Think of Oedipus like Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Try and do it like that." Now when I look in the mirror I see many things, but none of them even remotely resemble Russell Crowe in Gladiator. Gawky teenager, perhaps. Sensitive intellectual. Indie-rock star, on my better days. But a muscle-bound Epic Hero I am not and, unless I hit the gym with extraordinary frequency, will never be. I'll do my best, but somehow I think this production isn't going to exactly work.
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