Matt Writes Stories

Sales Pitch; Part 1

2012-01-29T00:14:00.002-06:00

If there was one thing that could besaid for Louis Sutton-Murphy it would be that he was a good salesman.If there were two things that could be said for Louis Sutton-Murphythey would be that he was a good salesman and a terrible dancer.

Louis Sutton-Murphy's particular brandof sales took him to a variety of places most people try to avoid ifthey can help it. Today he was in the old commercial district of asmall town somewhere north of Chicago and south of the North Pole.Louis drove around block after block of abandoned warehouses andfactories until he found what he was looking for; at the end of astreet with no signs to advertise its name, that was completelydevoid of anything but natural light, which was mostly obscured bythe abandoned factories that towered on either side of the street,there was small, one story, brick building with a sheet metal roofand a sign in front proclaiming "Future Home of Lakeview DentalPartnership".

Louis parked in front of the buildingand got out of his car. He buttoned the top button of his sky bluejacket, checking his reflection in the car to make sure hisappearance was as immaculate as it was when he left the hotel thatmorning (it was). Louis always dressed in pastels. He found it lenthim a jovial and friendly air. It made people think they could trusthim (they could). Louis walked to his trunk and pulled out the metalbriefcase he used to carry his samples. Louis was a good salesman,but armed with that briefcase, Louis was unstoppable. He had neverlost a sale with that briefcase.

The interior of the Future Home ofLakeview Dental Partnership was sparse, to say the least. There was asingle card table, with a single metal folding chair, with asingularly bored looking girl in her early twenties sitting in it. Onthe table was a phone and note pad. There was a door on one side ofthe room that, Louis hoped, for that girl's sake, led to a bathroom.

"Hello there. I'm LouisSutton-Murphy with Industrial Dynamic Industries. I was hoping totalk to Dr. Meurtrier."

"Dr. Meurtrier isn't here,"said the girl.

"Well, he's not in this room,obviously, but I don't think he's too far away. Just let him know I'mhere. I'll wait."

The girl looked at Louis Sutton-Murphylike a five year old looks at spinach, a mixture of skepticism,disgust and curiosity. Louis smiled politely and remained standingresolutely in front of the girls card table. It was a tense fewseconds; unflinching tenacity versus vague indifference. In the endLouis won out and the girl picked up the phone.

"There's a guy here.... I toldhim. He won't leave. I don't know remember his name."

No sooner had the word remember leftthe girl's mouth than a business card appeared in Louis hands withthe smooth and stylish flair of a practiced magician, directly in thegirl's eyeline. The girl, annoyed, took the card.

"Louis Sutton-Murphy, IndustrialDynamic Industries. It looks like he's alone. Alright. I'll tellhim."

The girl hung up the phone and begandoodling on the notepad. She started writing her name in curly cueletters. It was Ellen, apparently. After she finished writing hername once, she began again, this time in a more elaborate and girlystyle. She continued this for several variations. Until Louis coughedthe cough of a person who's passive agressively trying to get theattention of someone who is doing something other than pay attentionto them.

"Will Dr. Meurtrier be seeing methen?"

"I guess," said Ellen.

"Do you like your job Ellen?"Louis asked.

Ellen glared at him with a look thatsaid, "Hey, man, I hate you. If you could do me the kindness ofdying, I would be most appreciative. Furthermore, this conversationthat we just had, might be the worst thing that is happened in thehistory of human events."

"Through the door," Ellenpointed to the door that Louis assumed led to a bathroom.

"Thanks sweet-heart. You have aterrific day." Louis walked to the door, opened it and steppedinside. Behind the door was a closet, more or less, although itlacked anything that would make it function as a closet. No rods orhangers or shelves. No light. He closed the door behind him. It wascompletely dark. This was not unusual. After a moment or two standingin the darkness, the floor beneath Louis began to move in adownwardly direction. This took Louis by surprise, but only for amoment. He was that good of a salesman.

The floor of the closet descended intoanother, massive, room. It was a far cry from the spartan brickbuilding above. This was a room made of large metallic panels, someof which were incandescent. The room stretched out for what seemedlike miles, and there were dozens, possibly hundreds of doors of allshapes and sizes that lined the walls as far as Louis could see. Whenthe closet-floor elevator reached the end of its descent, Louisstepped off and walked to what appeared to be another reception desk,this one much nicer than the card-table affair upstairs. It wasmetal, and modern and could've very well been sentient. Sittingbehind the desk was a woman of imposing beauty wearing the kind ofdress that dared you to look anywhere but her eyes, but promised allkinds of delights if you managed to.

Louis was all too familiar with thiskind of technique. She was designed to distract, to confuse, tofluster. She was designed keep people out. She wouldn't besuccessful.

"Hi, I'm Louis Sutton-Murphy, fromIndustrial Dynamic Industries. I'm here to see Dr. Meurtrier."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"You and I both know the answer tothat question, and as much as I would like spending the next severalminutes persuading you to take me to see the good Dr, you and I bothknow that's exactly what's going to happen. So let's take that partas read shall we, and why don't you slink out from behind that deskand take me to Dr. Meurtrier's office."

The secretary gave Louis a look thatsaid, "You are direct and forthright, and unintimidated by myincredible beauty. I find this attractive. Unfortunately, you areasking me to do the one thing I'm explicitly not supposed to do in myposition, which I find annoying. My feelings toward you are mixed,but they lean toward dislike. We will never be lovers."

"This way," said thesecretary, standing up. She motioned to a door about 100 yards away.The secretary led Louis along the expansive corridor with anunnecessary amount of jiggling, considering she'd already lost thatparticular battle.

"So what's your name?"

"Andrea Nightshade."

"And how long have you workedhere, Ms. Nightshade?"

"Three years in June."

Louis nodded. "It pay well?"

"Not bad. The benefits are good."

"I imagine so. Any hobbies?"
"Icollect chess sets and play croquet on a semi-professional level."

"Good for you."
"Thankyou."

They reached the door. Ms. AndreaNightshade, semi-professional croquetier, pressed her hand againstthe blank security pad next to the door. The door opened and Louiswalked inside.

The Time Traveler Introduction and A Regular Introduction

2012-01-21T12:04:00.001-06:00

Welcome to my new format. No longer am I going to use this space to not write blogs. This is now a place where I will write and post short stories. One story a week. Every week, or else (the else in this situation is me not writing a story that week). I was inspired to undertake this kind of project by my friend Andrew, who's 365 photo project last year, was a year-long source of enjoyment for me, as a viewer, and a year-long pain in the ass for him, since he had to take, edit and post a photo every day. I'm not nearly as ambitious as Andrew, nor am I photographer, so my project will be a lot less visual and updated with 1/7 of the frequency. I can't promise there stories will be good, but they will be short. And hopefully, by the end of the year, we'll have all learned something about writing short fiction and ourselves. So, without further ado, here's me talking about the story you haven't read yet:

Have you ever gotten a collection of short stories and the stories all have introductions by the author that reveal information about the story and the introduction is on the page before the story, so you haven't read the story yet, but you feel compelled to read the introduction first, because it is first, chronologically? That's what this is. I recommend reading the story before you read this.

Have you read it? Ok. This is the first time I've written non-master scene prose in a long, long time. It was not a smooth transition for me.

When I was in writing classes, specifically short fiction classes, I read a lot of bad short fiction. I also wrote a lot of bad short fiction. One thing that was discussed frequently in these classes was having a good hook; having a good lead that would get the readers attention and want to make them read more of the story. Some people wrote really good hooks and really terrible stories. I think their process was to come up with the most lurid, crazy thing they could think of, write that first, and then try to make a story around it. That's what I did with this story, and let me tell you, writing the hook first, then writing your story is not the way to go. I didn't know where this was going until about 3/4 of the way through it, at which point the story just became world-building and exposition, then I got tired of that, so I switched perspective and changed tone completely just so I could get this story somewhere close to an ending.

Anyway, I learned from Andrew's project to set the bar low early on so you're not having to come up with a masterpiece every week just to stay consistent. So there it is. Week 1. The Time Traveler.

The Time Traveler

2012-01-21T11:15:00.000-06:00

Deven Devenport put two shells into thebarrel of a shotgun and snapped it shut. "I swear to God, thisis the last time I'm ever going to kill myself." He tucked thebarrel under his chin and pulled the trigger.

Twenty minutes later and three hundredmiles away, Deven Devenport woke up, coughing, in the walk-in freezerof an upscale Japanese restaurant in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He looked alittle tired, but other than that, no worse for wear. He was naked ofcourse, but that wasn't unexpected. He surveyed his surroundings anddecided he would have to venture out of the freezer in order to findsomething to hide his shame. He walked to the door and pushed itopen, slipping slightly on the freshly frozen patch of ice on theground by the door.

Deven's peculiar situation has grantedhim a rather eclectic skill set that included, among other things,the ability to turn almost anything into a loincloth. He scanned thekitchen; dishtowel: too small, potato sack: too itchy, chef hat:interesting, apron: just right.

Deven was lucky that it was afterhours, the kitchen was empty. He fashioned his apron loincloth andwandered around the kitchen looking for some clues as to where he hadrematerialized. He pulled open a drawer on the preparation table andfound a phonebook for the Greater Tulsa Metropolitan Area ("TheMost Livable City in America").

"Oklahoma... who do I know inOklahoma?" Deven asked. He didn't answer. He kept the phonebookand walked out of the kitchen into the bar.

Shogun Castle has a very strict policy against fraternizing with co-workers, andalthough both Julie and Paul were aware of this policy, they weremore interested in putting body parts inside of each other then therules of Tulsa's foremost, if only, upscale Japanese restaurant. Theyalso didn't care much for Shogun Castle'sno sex on the bar policy.

It was while Julieand Paul were demonstrating their disdain for those two rules, thatDeven Devenport emerged from the kitchen. This was not the first timeDeven had walked in on two people having sex after rematerializing.It wasn't even the first time it had happened in a restaurant and, itmight not have even been the first time it had happened in thisrestaurant. In situations like these the best course of action wasexit the room as quickly as possible hoping that the two (usually)people involved in the intercoursing would keep each othersufficiently distracted to make a stealthy escape. Unfortunately,that rarely ever happened. He was almost always discovered, andinstead of being welcomed and embraced as a fellow semi-nude humanbeing, just trying to make his way through the world, the reaction tohis unexplained and sudden appearance was always a dramatic one.

"OH MY GOD!" Julie cried.Paul screamed. Julie pushed Paul off the bar.

"What the fuck?" asked Paul,in a way that implied he wasn't really looking for an answer.

Julie quickly slid off the bar herselfand began scrounging for something to cover her naked torso,ultimately settling on a bar towel that didn't quite do the job.

"Amateur." Deven thought tohimself.

Paul stood up and saw Deven hurryingtoward the exit.

"What the fuck?" Paul askedagain, this time it was understood that Paul did indeed want to knowwhat the situation with the fuck was, and to further punctuate hisquery, Paul pulled out the compact shotgun that was kept under thebar for security reasons.

"Hold it right there cocksucker."Paul normally didn't use words like "cocksucker" in politeconversation, or any conversation really, but he thought it mightmake him seem more intimidating to the man with the apron wrappedaround his mid-section, failing that, he thought it might make Juliethink he was a tough guy, he had screamed in a pretty girly way whenhe saw Deven. He was wrong on both accounts.

Deven stopped moving. He had alreadybeen killed by a shotgun once, and although it didn't take the firsttime, but he wasn't particularly interested in giving it another go.

"Ok. I'm going to ask you a seriesof questions, and I want you to answer them," Paul commanded.

"Sure," Deven replied.

"Alright, question one: Who areyou and why are you here?"

"That's two questions," Devenpointed out.

"Don't get cute, motherfucker,just answer the question," reprimanded Paul with a pointed jabof the gun in Deven's direction. Paul was quickly growing into hisrole of "man with the gun". He was beginning to wonder whyhe didn't point guns at people more often.

"My name is Deven Devenport andI'm here because this is where I rematerialized." Deven knew thelatter half of that sentence would raise more questions than itanswered. It always did. But Deven had given this little speech manytimes before, and this was the best place to start.

"What do you mean rematerialized?"Julie asked, finally joining the conversation.

"You know how when people die theynormally just sort of stop moving and breathing and stuff?"

"Yes." said Julie.

"That doesn't happen to me. When Idie, I just sort of disappear and reappear somewhere else, sometimelater."
"Bullshit." said Paul.

"I know that's what it soundslike, but I assure you, I can't die, at least, when I do, I don'tstay dead."

"Why?" asked Julie.

"Because I don't really exist,"said Paul, as if saying that would clear anything up.

"What?" asked Julie.

"If I say it out loud it soundsridiculous..." Deven looked at Paul and Julie, hoping they wouldtake his word that it was ridiculous and move on. They didn't. "I'mfrom the future."

Deven waited to let what he just saidsink in.

"Fuck you," said Julie.

"It's true. I will be born 800years from now, or at least I would've been had my traveling back intime not permanently altered the course of humanity's future."

"What does that mean?" askedPaul.

"Haven't you ever seen a timetravel movie? Anything you alter in the past effects the future, andpretty much anyone who goes back in time permanently fucks up thetime they came from in ways so severe that it usually means thattheir present never happens. That's why rule number one of timetravel is never go back before you were born. If you go back beforeyou're born there's like a 95% chance that when you try to your present,you will have never been born," Deven explained.

"So why does that mean you can'tdie?" Paul asked.

"Good question. I don't reallyknow, myself. I've met other people like me since I've been backhere. No one seems to know. Nearest I can figure is we're like somesort of glitch in the space-time continuum. We're corrupted data andwe can't be deleted no matter how hard anyone tries." Deven saton a barstool.

Julie sat on the adjacent seat. "I'mnot saying I believe you, but why would you come back so far if youknew you'd get stuck?" she asked.

"Well, I didn't mean to. I wasonly trying to go back 9 seconds. See, there's this girl I work with,her name is Fen, and we're like this close to dating," Devenheld his thumb and index finger a quarter inch apart, "and Isaid something really stupid, so I was going back in time to say theright thing, but instead of going back 9 seconds, I went back 900years, and I ended up naked in the middle of a soccer game."

"Why were you naked?" AskedJulie, who was clearly more interested in this mostly naked man thanthe one she was, until a few minutes ago, doing.

"Clothes can't travel throughtime, and since pretty much everyone from when I'm from is timetraveling all the time, nobody wears clothes in the future."

"Wow." said Julie.

"Enough of this bullshit. Do youthink we're stupid? You're not from the future. You're some pervertthat likes hanging out in restaurants while you're naked. You're asick fuck, and I'm done listening to you," Paul said, finallyreentering the conversation.

"I told you it was silly, but it'sabsolutely true," Deven said.

"Prove it," said Paul.

Deven sighed deeply. "I'd rathernot."

"Do it or I call the cops."said Paul.

Deven didn't like cops. Deven's stateof technical non-existence made legal matters tricky, and worsestill, lengthy. Deven tried to avoid contact with the justice systemat all cost.

"Alright," Deven said,dejectedly. "What's your phone number?"

"112-3213," said Paul.

Deven slid off the barstool and walkedover to Paul. He took the gun out of his hand. "I swear to God,this is the last time I'm ever going to kill myself." Deven putthe gun under his chin and pulled the trigger.

"Holy fucking, fuck!" Juliescreamed.

Deven's body lifted a few inches offthe ground with the force of the shot, and crumpled down to the floorin an unnatural way, like a discarded ragdoll.

Julie screamed. It was loud.

The police were called anyway when aneighbor heard a gunshot from outside the restaurant. Since thegunshot wound was clearly self inflicted, Paul and Julie were onlyquestioned briefly. They both gave statements to the police. Neitherone mentioned time travel. They were both fired from Shogun Castlethe next day when the Landon, the general manager found a pair ofJulie's panties behind the bar. Paul and Julie grew apart, and withthe illicit nature of their relationship removed by the losses oftheir jobs, the attraction faded. They broke up two weeks after thenight they watched Deven Devenport shoot himself in the head with ashotgun.

Paulgot a job as a bartender at a chain restaurant near the airport.Julie moved back in with her parents. She never quite recovered fromthat night.

Paulbegan drinking a lot more than was entirely healthy for him. He spentmore time drunk than sober. He got fired from his bartending job.Desperate for money, he started working for his cousin Marcus,installing after-market car stereos and selling drugs. He wasn't verygood at either and as bad as being a bad car stereo technician is,being a bad drug dealer is worse and much more dangerous. One night,while getting chased by a couple of undercover police officers, Paulhad to dump his stash in the river. He didn't have the money to payMarcus for the product he lost, and Marcus was tired of covering forPaul. Paul knew he was in some real deep shit. Paul consideredkilling himself, but he knew he didn't have it in him. He thoughtabout running away, but with no money and no friends, he didn'treally think that was a viable option. Aimless and hopeless Paulstarted wandering around Downtown Tulsa, contemplating what to dowith the rest of his, probably short, existence. He found himselfstanding in front of Shogun Castle.It was after hours and the lights were all off except a Coors Lightsign that hung above the bar. Paul looked at the bar through thewindow and thought of Julie. A tear started to form in his eye.Paul's phone began to ring. It was probably Marcus. Paul did not wantto talk to Marcus, but he looked at the phone anyway. He didn'trecognize the number. He took the call.

"Hello,"said Paul.

"Hi.Is this... wait a second... he never told me his name. Shit. Ok, didyou recently encounter a half naked man in a bar in Oklahoma?"said Deven Devenport.

"Yes,"said Paul.

"Ok,well that was me. I'm still alive. I told you I would be," saidDeven Devenport.

"Ok,"said Paul.

"Ok,"said Deven.

"CanI ask you something?" asked Paul.

"Sure,but I don't know any lottery numbers or anything like that,"said Deven.

"No,it's not like that. Do you ever think about what would've happened ifyou would've just said that stupid thing to that girl and not goneback in time to try to change it?" asked Paul.

Devenwaited several moments before answering.

"Icame from a place where no one ever made mistakes. Well, people mademistakes all the time, but they would then just go back in time andfix the mistake before it happened. A world where everyone goteverything right the first time sounds like a good idea on paper, butit was actually kind of a drag. I mean, except for the nudity, Ithink I'd rather live in a world where everything isn't perfect;where there are surprises and changes of plan. It's a lot more fun, Iwill say that." There was another moment of silence. "Thatbeing said, being an immortal time glitch isn't that great either.Really what it boils down to you can't beat yourself up for everylittle mistake you make. Live your life, what happens, happens."

"Ok,"said Paul.

"Alright.Anything else?" said Deven.

"No.I guess not," said Paul.

"Well,have a good life," Deven said, then he ended the call.

Paulput his phone away and slunked down to sidewalk in front of ShogunCastle. Paul's phone began toring. He pulled it out. It was Marcus. Paul held the phone and staredat the animated receiver shake on his phone's screen until it stoppedringing. The phone immediately started to ring again. It was stillMarcus. Paul set the phone down on the sidewalk next to him, stoodup, and started walking.

Harry Potter Fanfic

2010-11-20T23:27:00.002-06:00

A few summers ago (apparently 6 summers ago to be exact), I had stumbled upon something called the internet, and on that internet there were things called Fanfics. For those of you that are unaware, a fanfic is basically a story about characters that are someone else's intellectual property, usually written by someone who is a fan of said characters and is frequently not a good writer. Fanfics can be pretty entertaining in their earnest terribleness, which is why I decided that my friends and I should have a weekly fanfiction writing competition. A topic would be decided on by the previous week's winner (who would also judge that week's competition), and all participants would have to write a 150 word (or more) short story about the topic and then read their story at the weekly reading. I think my friend Matthew and I were the only one's that enjoyed it, and to be honest, I was the only one that really enjoyed it, but we kept it going sporadically for several months.

The subject that sparked the fanfic competition was Harry Potter and because of that and my latent Potterphelia, several of the competitions were for Harry Potter Fanfics. So to celebrate the release of the second to last Harry Potter movie of all time (hopefully), I would like to share with you one of my many (MANY) Harry Potter Fanfics.

A little background; this was probably written around 2006, which was before Deathly Hallows had come out, so I had was mostly guessing at some of the events that would happen in the final book (and I think for the most part, a lot of my guesses were pretty spot on), and it takes place between books 6 and 7. It also contains one of my favorite jokes I've ever written. Also the formatting is a little rough, so be warned.

Harry Potter was sitting on his bed in his Uncle's house on Privet Drive. He was, once again, thinking about how unfair life was to him and how he was the greatest wizard ever, and how no one in the Order of the Phoenix ever gave him anything to do. Little did he know, at that exact moment several key members of the Order, were plotting something that required the talents of young Mr. Potter.

The phone rang at the Dursley house and Harry's cousin Dudley answered it.

"Dursley Residence, this is Dudley speaking"

"Hello, is Harry Potter there?" responded the voice on the other end.

"Yup" replied Dudley and then he hung up the phone.

The phone rang again, and again Dudley answered it.

"Dursley Residence this is Dudley speaking."

"Can I speak to Harry Potter?" said voice.

"No." retorted Dudley and he again hung up the phone.

The phone rang again and once more Dudley picked it up.

"Dursley Residence this is Dudley speaking"

"Avada Kedavra."

Dudley died.

Suddenly 4 wizards apparated in the Dursley kitchen. It was the third most interesting thing to happen in that kitchen since the Dursley's lived in the House on Privet Drive. (The second most interesting thing happened in 1994 when one of the floor tiles became sentient, the most interesting thing that happened in that kitchen occured two days later when that same tile tried lead a floor covering revolution and overthrow the shag carpet in the sitting room) Harry heard the sound of apparating wizards and ran down to see what was up. He was suprised and for some reason angry to see four of the Weasley brothers in his Uncle's kitchen.

"Charlie, Fred, George, Ron, why are you in my Uncle's kitchen?"

"We're on a special Mission and we need your help,” said George.

“It requires the utmost secrecy,” added Fred.

“Is Voldemort up to something evil? Are we going to fight some death-eaters?” inquired Harry.

“No,” said Ron, “something much more pressing. Bill’s bachelor party. We’re in charge of getting

decorations.”

A few minutes later at The Card and Party Outlet….

Harry: Look Fred, it sounds wonderful, but it also sounds just like a muggle blow job.

Fred: You’ll just have to trust me Harry. Wizard blow-jobs are the best.

Charlie: What do you know about wizard blow jobs?

Fred: Loads, my brother, loads.

George: Hitting yourself with the Infellatia curse is not the same thing as a real BJ.

Ron: Infellatia curse! Does it do what it sounds like it should do?

Fred: All that and more. It’s not really much of a curse. It’s more like a miracle.

Ron: When do we learn it?

Fred: It’s usually covered in the 7^th year so… tough luck little brother.

Ron: You have to teach it to me!

Charlie: No one is teaching anyone the Infellatia curse. Now let’s just get the decorations and get out of here.

In the Streamer Aisle of that same Card and Party Outlet…

Voldemort: Should we get the green ones or the gold ones, Severus?

Snape: Don’t they have grey? To match his eyes?

Voldemort: No. No one sells grey streamers. That is ridiculous. Why would anyone want grey streamers. The point of streamers is to make things look festive. Grey is not a festive color.

Snape: Gold then.

Voldemort: I agree, then we can use the gold place settings. Oh this is going to be the best breaking Lucious out of Azkaban party ever! Can’t you feel it?

Snape: (sarcastically) Yes. It is quite an overwhelming feeling.

Voldemort: Don’t get all sarky on me. It’s going to be fun- Oh my god, look who it is over in the “adult” section. It’s Harry Potter and those Weasley kids. Wow, that Ron. He’s shot up like a weed.

Snape: Shooting up weed more like it.

Voldemort: What does that even mean?

Snape: (markedly silent)

Voldemort: Should we go over then and say high?

Snape: I really don’t want to talk to Potter. It’s been really awkward ever since I killed Dumbledore. Did you know he tried to murder me?

Voldemort: (shocked) No!

Snape: It’s true. Right on the front lawn at school. I mean obviously he was just acting out because I just murdered his mentor right in front of his invisible eyes, but still. Let’s just get out of here quickly before they see us.

Voldemort: Ok. Oh shit. Oh shit they saw me. I think they’re coming over here. Sorry.

Harry: VOLDEMORT!!! (Drawing his wand)

Voldemort: Hey there Harry. How’s your summer going?

Harry: YOU KILLED MY PARENTS!!! (everything is more intense with 3 exclamation marks)

Snape: (sheepishly) Hello Harry. Ready for school to start?

Harry: (turning on Snape) YOU KILLED DUMBLEDORE!!!!

Snape: I just finished grading papers from last term and already the next term is about to start. Where does the time go? Ha ha.

Harry: THIS ENDS NOW!

Voldemort: Well, we need to be going. See you later Harry. Bye Weasleys.

Weasley Brothers: Bye.

Snape and Voldemort walk to the cash register, pay for their streamers and leave.

Outside the store…

Voldemort: Wow. You’re right that was really awkward.

Snape: Yikes.

Pete and Kaylen's Wedding The Blogpost Part 2: The Hazy Recollections of a Groomsmen/Bullfighter

2010-08-02T22:22:00.008-05:00

I think this post might have the longest title of anything I've ever posted. What does that mean for you? Nothing. What does it mean to me? Slightly less than nothing. It's just a bit of trivia. You're welcome.

I think that I should apologize before we get started. Firstly, I'm going to apologize for taking so long to write the follow-up to what is easily my most popular post about Pete and Kaylen's wedding to date. I'm sure many of you were in suspense this entire time waiting to see whether or not Pete and Kaylen would ever get married and whether or not I'd have any more self and other people-deprecating comments and observations to make about said marriage. Sorry about that, and so you don't have to wait any longer, the answers to those questions are yes and yes, respectively. Secondly I'm going to preemptively apologize for how bad this post is going to look. It is my intention to include some of the pictures I took of the events which I took with my i-phone. However, I 'm really terrible at formatting and laying out these blog posts, so the pictures and text might not line up or make sense or it might just look so bad that I scrap the picture idea entirely, either way, again, I apologize. So without further ado: The Wedding!
Saturday Morning...

I was told to meet at Steve's house at noon, so I pretty much had the morning to do with whatever I wanted. I went for a run and then went to a mall to look at boardgames. This was followed by some Lion's Choice, the best roast beef restaurant in the world. Pretty boring stuff really. Cut to-

Saturday Noon...
I got to Steve's house at noon, but when I got there all the other men were tuxed and I was not. I got tuxed then drove myself and Steve to the church. This is still pretty boring. Let's skip to something interesting.
Saturday 12:30ish...

We hung out in the basement of the church before the wedding. Steve and Tim had to help all the men put their boutonnieres on. Steve put Pete's boutonniere on for him. It was adorable. At some point Pete left to go see Kaylen all brided up. He probably cried a bit when that happened because he's kind of a pansy. While he was gone the men continued to not socialize with the bridesmaids.
Saturday 1:00 - 1:45

Pete and Kaylen got married. I stood around and did some walking. There was a reading after the vows that was kind of interesting, but not interesting enough to go into detail about.

Saturday 1:50- like a million hours later...
We took pictures. Boy did we take pictures. There was something that was referred to as a "party bus" that the wedding "party" boarded. It had interesting seating and unorthodox lighting. It was driven by a man named Ace. Ace drove us to places, we would disembark and be photographed. One of the photographers rode the bus with us. I don't remember her name, but it was probably a girl's name (because she was a girl). Anyway, I kind of felt bad for her, because a certain member of the wedding party who I won't name (Pete) kept hitting on her. Anyway, we drove around, got photographed, drove some more, got photographed some more, etc. It really wasn't that bad, I just hate having my picture taken. (The pictures did turn out really well though, due largely in part to me not being in most of them) We got some free frozen custard out of it from Ted Drewes and it gave me occasion to take the following pictures:

Saturday 4:00 or maybe a little later. I don't really remember at this point because it was, like, a month ago...
We got to the reception hall none to soon because, after all those pictures being taken, I was ready to get my drink on. In this case my drink was Coke and Grenadine and, during the reception, I had at least four of them. I was so wasted.

I think everyone who was at Steve's wedding and witnessed Pete's best man "toast" has given him crap for it. It was one of those "from the heart" deals that lasted all of about 30 seconds. So after Pete's toast, the bar for Wissinger Wedding toasts was set pretty low for Steve. Steve could've just spat in the happy couple's faces and it would've been better than Pete's toast. Fortunately (I guess) he decided to go a different route and actually wrote an outline for a toast and delivered it with gusto and glass of hard liquor. After the toast was food and after the food was dancing, I enjoyed the food, but had no part of the dancing, though there was some really good music at the reception (this isn't surprising as Pete and Kaylen have excellent taste in music). Anyway, it all wrapped up around 10pm, after which I went back to Steve and Mary's and had some lovely conversations about whatever it is we talked about, this was followed by some me going to my uncle Kevin's house and some sleeping.

Conclusion... (I'm both showing and telling you that this is the thesis to this post. Take that English classes!)

I'm not a big fan of weddings. I've been to a lot of them, and I can honestly say they are not something I typically enjoy. However, I would say that the two best weddings I've been to have been those of the brothers Wissinger. The fact that these are two of the only non-Southeast Missouri weddings I've been to might be related to how much I enjoyed them, anyway, this wedding was a lot of fun.

Epilogue; Observations...

1. There were so many Arrested Development quotes happening over the course of the weekend, it was unbelievable. The best instance of this was when Steve recited this particular gem (0:52-1:01) while waiting around in the church during the rehearsal

2. After the rehearsal dinner a party kind of broke out at Steve and Mary's. Somehow a jam session started and one of the songs played during the jam was a little number called "Under the Sea", from the Walt Disney film The Little Mermaid. This was vaguely unsettling to me.

3. Steve Wissinger was a benevolent yet firm best man. We learned early on in the weekend that there was a reason that out of all of us men, he was the best.

4. Other than the Cape/Cairo posse, I talked to Frank more than anyone else, often whilst standing in front of large, wedding reception volume speakers. These conversations were both challenging (from a technical standpoint) and fascinating.

5. Lady Gaga music seems to have some sort of power over girls/gay men. I don't entirely understand why, but I don't think I'm supposed to.

6. This is the second post in a row in which I haven't discussed Scott Pilgrim (although you can bet your ass there's going to be one/some coming in the near future).

7. Formatting those pictures was a huge pain in the ass. There's got to be a better way to do that than how I did it.

8. Pete and Kaylen are the bomb.

What is Sure to be a Completely Epic Post About Pete and Kaylen's Wedding: Part 1

2010-07-12T23:16:00.008-05:00

My friends Pete and Kaylen got married last weekend. It was pretty awesome, both because the union of Pete and Kaylen is a fantastic happening in and of itself, but also because the event was pretty spectacular. I had the privilege of being one of Pete's groomsmen for the proceedings, which is really one of the easiest jobs a person in a wedding can have, and was a job for which I was well suited as it really only required me to walk, stand and sit with a group of similarly dressed men. But I'm getting ahead of myself (I really don't like how this sentence is going so far; that kind of "cute/functional" self aware writing that is the first 6 words of this sentence is so freshmen in college, as opposed to this kind of self-aware meta deconstruction, which is so second semester junior in college), none of that happened till Saturday. My Pete and Kaylen Weddingstravaganza (has anyone ever noticed how often I add the suffix "stravaganza" to words for alleged comedic purposes. I think I'm the only who thinks it's funny, but to be fair, I think it's really funny. I will never stop doing it. Just saying.) started on Friday.

Dissolve to:
Friday, July 9th 11:30am - 2:00pm: The Drive

It was raining when I left Cape. This fact isn't important, but it is true, much like that fact that the capital of Ethiopia is Nairobi (Note: this fact is neither important nor true). My trip to St. Louis wasn't eventful. I stopped at the same Jack in the Box in Herculaneum I always stop at and got the same Ultimate Bacon Cheeseburger and Chicken sandwich I always get. I will say that the staff at this Jack in the Box was of noteworthy incompetence. They acted like they had never had a lunch rush before, and that a lunch rush consists of 5 people. The soundtrack of my drive up was the four tracks on Emotionalism by the Avett Brothers that I always listen to, the two tracks of Grand by Matt and Kim that I always listen to, and probably some Wings.

Friday, July 9th 2:00 - 3:30pm: The Fitting

After making it to Steve's (on my first attempt!), I hung out with Steve and Mary briefly before being joined by David "Kibbles" Kiblinger and BaBrendan McMeel at which point we journeyed to "the loop" to get our tuxes from the rental place.

Int. Rental Place - Day

STEVE, B, DAVID and MATT are all in separate dressing compartments. Matt wins, because he was the first person to make the "follow someone into the dressing room joke". (This joke consists of walking into the same stall as another person when you're going into a dressing room and then acting surprised when that person calls you out on it, usually by saying "What?". This joke does not work well on strangers).

Matt: (opening the bag that contains his tux) Hey do you guys have shirts in your bags?

Steve, B and David: Yup.

Matt: Bullshit.

Steve: Seriously. Do you not have a shirt?

Matt: No.

Steve: You should go get a shirt.

Matt: Are you sure you have a shirt?

Steve: Yes. Go get one from the Guy.

Matt leaves, momentarily, then returns to his stall and puts on his tuxedo pants. Shortly the Guy pops his head into Matt's stall and hands him a shirt. Matt puts it on quickly and then steps out of the stall to see the other men already well tuxed.

Steve: We look like robots.

Matt: Why is my collar different from your collars?

Brendan: You have a different collar.

Steve: Go tell the Guy.

Matt leaves to tell the Guy about the collar situation. The Guy is a lot more apologetic about it than he needs to be, and brings Matt a new shirt with great haste.

Matt: Does your guys top button button?

Steve: Don't worry about it. Put your tie over it and no one will notice.

And nobody did!

Friday, July 9th 3:30- 4:45pm; Intermission

I bought some shoes at Target, and Brendan and David revealed the story of a Cape Girardean that had recently died of dehydration while hiking in Mongolia. This tragic event would become the punchline to many (although, to be honest, not quite enough for my taste) sick, sick jokes for the remainder of the weekend. Also at some point we played spades, but that wasn't till we got to Steve and Mary's.

Friday July 9th 5:00- 8:00pm; Rehearsaling

It was at this point Tim, Frank and Jason joined our party. Tim was the only "late in life" friend that was a groomsmen (Pete was the person who used the phrase "late in life" to describe Tim. I think Pete thinks he's an old man or he knows something about his mortality that the rest of us do not).

Tim and Frank (who ushered) went to college with Pete and Steve, and when I would go on trips with Pete and Kaylen and Steve and Mary, Frank or Tim and I would be the fifth and six wheels respectively. We usually resisted the urge to hold hands while walking around whatever city (usually Chicago) we were in, waiting to do whatever we were waiting to do (usually going to a concert), but that's not to say we lacked chemistry. Anyway, it was good to see those guys.

Jason is a camp friend of Pete and Steve's. Pete and Steve's "camp friends" are a unique breed of genuinely nice people that never quite seemed to gel completely with Pete and Steve's non-camp friends. I may be speaking out of turn, but that was always my experience. That being said, Jason was a really cool, really fun guy and one of the two male members of the wedding party that danced at the reception (unless you count Pete as part of the wedding party, which for some reason, I didn't when writing that last sentence, so technically 3 male members of the wedding party danced. And to be completely honest, I couldn't with complete certainty say that Tim didn't dance at the reception, so it was possible that at least 4 male members of the wedding party danced, but I'm 80% sure that Frank didn't dance, and nearly 100% sure that me, B and kibbles didn't dance, so let's just that that Jason was part of the simple majority of the male contingent of the wedding party that danced). So yeah, Jason was an usher.

Anyway, the rehearsal was at St. Margaret of Scotland Church (I think), which was, incidentally the same church where the wedding was held the following day. I don't think this was a coincidence. The rehearsal consisted of some walking and standing. There was also some sitting. I should mention that Pete and Kaylen were both there at the church too. I know you probably assumed that they were there, but since I had failed to officially introduce them into the narrative, I figured I would do so now. So yeah, from this point on, Pete and Kaylen are in the story, unless I say they're not.

Also there were some bridesmaids there too. I don't remember most of their names because when I meet people I'm probably never going to meet again, I don't remember their names. I know one was named Emme because she's the one who I had to walk with (she also was, and as far as I know, still is Kaylen's sister), and one was named Marci. I remember her name because her head was green and pink (at least the part of her head that was her hair was those colors). I think one of the other ones was named Sarah, but I think that's just a really common name for girls and the odds of one of a group of five girls being named Sarah is pretty good.

Right so the rehearsal was pretty simple. The rehearsal dinner followed. It was at a vegetarian diner. This lead to a discussion about what the differences between vegans and vegetarians are. This discussion seemed a bit unnecessary since everyone involved agreed as to what the differences were, so it wasn't as much as a discussion as an opportunity for four men to revel in their mutual know-it-allness. The highlight of the dinner was dessert: Imagine a hostess cupcake. Are you envisioning it? Can you see it's moist cakey base, topped off with a layer of hard chocolate icing, with the curly cue white icing on top? Can you see the creamy white filling? You can? Do you have imaginary x-ray vision or did you already take a bite out of it? Oh. Well wait till I'm done painting this word picture before you start eating it. You know what, never mind, go ahead and imaginary eat the imaginary hostess cupcake, I was pretty much done anyway.

Anyway, the diner make it's own hostess cupcakes, only they are much bigger than the ones you get at the store and that's what we had for dessert. I pretended to like them a lot more than I actually did. They were ok cupcakes, but the ones at the Cupcakery are much better. Jason, however, seemed to like them more than anyone has ever liked anything before. He was really open about his admiration for the cupcakes. Jason was a really interesting guy.

Later...

After the rehearsal dinner we went back to Steve and Mary's. It kind of turned into a party pretty quickly, and as such, I tried to get out there as soon as I could. At one point a jam session broke out. I ended up staying a lot later than I had intended due to several interesting conversations I became involved in, the contents of which I can't quite remember. I'm pretty sure both dying in Mongolia and vuvuzelas were probably involved. At some point I left and went to my uncle Kevin's house to sleep. There was some pizza eaten and some attempts at card writing that happened too, but certainly not at blogworthy levels, so I won't go into detail about them.

End Part 1.

NEXT TIME ON PETE AND KAYLEN'S WEDDING BLOG:

Matt: Steve, do you have the rings?

Steve: You mean these rings? (Steve punches Matt in the face)

Matt: Oh God! Not my face, that's my third least favorite place to get punched!

--------------------------------

Brendan: Hey guys, I have something I need to tell you about...

Everyone: *stunned silence*

-------------------------------

David: Oh God, it's so hot out here.

Steve: You mean these rings!?!!!?? (Steve punches David in the face)

------------------------------

Pete: This is my favorite Lady Gaga song, but just barely because I have so many beloved songs by Lady Gaga, it is hard for me to chose!

-----------------------------

Kev McMeel: Let me show you how non-tenured Semo Professors drink scotch.

TUNE IN NEXT TIME!

POST!

2010-06-17T22:29:00.002-05:00

It's been a while blog! Sorry I've been busy... doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! That's not entirely true. I've worked a lot. I went to St. Louis a couple of weeks ago. But other than that nothing worth mentioning. No new books. No good movies (or bad ones for that matter). No new music. I think my life is becoming more boring the longer I live it, which seems to be the case for most people. I need some adventure. Maybe I should become a pirate... not like Droib, though. An actual pirate.

LIST TIME!

Here's a list of things you will probably never here me say without irony:

1. You know what this pizza needs? More olives!

2. Wow Justin Spaeth, that was so witty. You are so clever.

3. I'm so tired of Halloween.

4. I need more crocs.

5. Let's go see that new staging of (insert any Shakespeare play).

6. The Beatles are so overrated.

7. Looks like I'll be staying in tonight; there's a Glee marathon on.

8. No, I don't think I would like a Twizzler.

9. Let's go people-watch!

10. Man, that (insert Athlete) really got (hosed, robbed, lucky, etc...) in that (sport jargon), am I right?

So there, I posted. You're welcome.

Hey look! Matt's writing about Scott Pilgrim again!

2010-06-01T23:43:00.002-05:00

I'm sure by now you've seen the new Scott Pilgrim trailer. If not, stop what you're doing right now and watch it. Here I'll link it for you.

So obviously, the trailer looks awesome. I'm super excited about the movie, it looks really good, blah blah blah, insert some generic hyperbolic statement where I equate severe head/facial trauma to goodness, etc, etc, etc.

Despite making me want to see the movie muchly, the trailer has made me do a lot of thinking about Ramona V. Flowers as a person. For the record Ramona Flowers is not a real person, but as I make little distinction between real people and fictional people (I classify both groups of people into the category of "people who are not me") I have no problems spending ridiculous amounts of time trying to figure her out. More specifically, whether or not Ramona is a good girlfriend.

I'm going to start with my conclusion and work my way backwards from their. I will warn you, Pete, who, let's face it, is probably the only person still reading this at this point, I haven't read the books in a little over a year, so I don't have a lot of specific references to make, and the ones I do have will most certainly be wrong.

So simply, No. Ramona is not a good girlfriend. At least not for Scott Pilgrim. Ramona is Scott Pilgrim's dream girl (literally and metaphorically). She represents Scott Pilgrim's ideal woman; She's cooler than him, but doesn't mind, smarter than him but only because she's lived a more "storied" life, she's attractive, a good fighter, and an American Citizen (which I assume is what all Canadians look for in a potential mate). She is pretty much better than Scott in every way except for her baggage, which in this case is 7 evil exes. She likes Scott because he's adorable and he likes her, loves her even, despite her baggage, but she still pushes him away at times. I'm not really sure why she does this, probably because Scott can be clingy at times and she likes the fact that she has parts of her life that Scott isn't a part of and resents the fact that he's insinuating himself into her life, regardless of what she wants, but I might just be reading something that isn't there in that regard. I get the feeling that when the conflict is gone, when there is no one to fight for Ramona's attention, Scott will feel a lot less compelled to be with Ramona, although at that point, the comic will be over, so it doesn't really matter. For some reason the idea of Scott and Ramona getting together at the end and living happily ever after just seems like kind of a letdown as well as being unrealistic (I may be taken to task for trying to look for realism in a story where people fight each other with flaming swords and giant Anime Mallets, but the emotional content in the Scott Pilgrim series has always been incredibly authentic). So I guess what I'm saying is, Scott should dump Ramona and marry Kim Pines. The End.

The End of the Season

2010-05-22T00:27:00.002-05:00

Thursday night was the end of an era, that era being the 2009-2010 television season. Although there are other shows with new episodes left this season, since I only watch TV on Thursday nights and only watch four shows on that night, this was the last night of the season for me.

Thursdays on NBC have been the most consistent two hours of programming I've ever had the pleasure to enjoy. The Community/Parks and Rec/The Office/30 Rock comedy powerhouse has been a joy to behold since September.

This season saw the beginning of Community, a show I really enjoy and hopefully will continue to enjoy for seasons to come (but realize it will probably hit a slump about halfway through next season, kind of like it did this season). The paintball episode is one of the finest half hours of television I've ever seen.

Parks and Rec went from being a show I kind of hated for being a lazy rehash of The Office, from the people who made The Office, to being a show I genuinely like more than I like the Office, which I do like, deep down inside, if only because I hate it so much.

The Office didn't entirely suck this season. In fact, I liked a lot of the episodes. This season also featured two of the worst episodes in The Office history; the wedding episode and the episode where Pam and Jim have a baby. Are people over The Office? Do people still like it? I think I might have started liking it again, which due to my anitpopulist nature, probably means it's becoming unpopular. Next season seriously needs to be the last season.

And finally 30 Rock. Oh 30 Rock, what can I say? 30 Rock was once the next Arrested Development. It's first season is probably the second best first season of any television show I've seen ("Tracy Does Conan" being in my top five best episodes of a television ever), then the writers strike happened and there was that epsiode that ended with the musical number. The beginning of the third season was pretty weak, but the back half brought it hard and salvaged a lackluster year. The then the fourth season happened. 30 Rock stopped being a show about people making a TV show. It became a show about a ruthless executive, his lovable protege and their pet, an annoying toeheaded creepster named Kenneth. It lost its grounding as an ensemble show with two bright stars, and around that time the jokes just started falling flat. There are still some good episodes in the fourth season, but compared to it's peak, 30 Rock was pound for pound the weakest link on the Thursday night chain of comedy awesomeness (which is what NBC should start calling their Thursday night lineup. It's much catchier than Must See TV).

Character Development

2010-05-13T23:22:00.002-05:00

I've recently discovered something about myself... well not really discovered but more of found a way to describe something that I've known about myself for years. I have a tendency to like people I shouldn't like, and when I say "like" I mean enjoy on a purely superficial level. I've always had an affinity for curmudgeony people, people who are by their very nature unlikeable, people who are rude to me, or are arrogant jackasses, or are pretentious douchebags. Generally speaking, I like people.

This might be surprising considering I like to call myself a misanthrope, but hypocrisy has always been one of my most defining characteristics (in addition to my remarkable candor, my almost constant self-deprecation and incredible sense of direction). But as I stated earlier, I've figured out why I like people I shouldn't like (and dislike people I shouldn't, to some extent). I view other people a lot like I view characters in TV shows and movies. I don't judge them based on how I feel about them personally or how they relate to me, I judge them based on what they add to the world around them.

So here's a for instance; My boss and I don't really get along. We aren't adversarial to each other, I think we both like each other well enough, but we have nothing in common. We are completely different types of people. If we are alone in a room together we don't talk. We have nothing to talk about. Very little in common except for the fact that we both work in the same 50' by 10' box. However, if Jackson Wal-mart Pharmacy was a TV show, Keith, my boss, would be my favorite character. He has great rapport with pretty much every other person that comes into the pharmacy. He's funny and engaging and very three dimensional. He's a great character.

I've pretty much always viewed my life as a movie, and I've never considered myself to be the hero, which might sound kind of like a passive aggressive attempt for sympathy, but it isn't. The hero is rarely, if ever, the best part of a movie; Han Solo is way cooler than Luke Skywalker, Frodo is the worst part of Lord of the Rings, Sonny and Vito are both cooler than Michael (especially if we're counting all three Godfather movies, which I am) and Chaucer steals every scene form William Thatcher (Knight's Tale reference bitches!) (DOUBLE ASIDE!: RDJ might be the exception to this rule, Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes and that dude he plays in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang are all pretty much the best parts of their respective movies, also Harrison Ford is pretty good as Indiana Jones... but other than that... and Joe Go Lev, but of the four movies I've seen with him as the lead, he only carried two of them...no, I stand by my original statement. RDJ is the only exception.).

So I guess my big revelation is that I like real people for much the same reason I like fake people, which is why sometimes I like people who are complete douche-bags, and dislike people who are completely fine people (I can't think of anyone like this at the moment but I'm sure there are plenty of people like this that I've met). Not too surprising I guess.

In other news, I still can not figure out how to get songs from my computer onto my I-pod. Fuck you apple, and your proprietary software.

Oh! I just thought of someone I hate that I hate for no reason! Anyone who owns an i-pad. I-pad owners are all douche-bags beyond salvation. That is all.

Gentlemen Broncos: Perhaps the Worst Movie I've ever Seen

2010-05-10T22:56:00.003-05:00

I've seen a lot of bad movies; Pirate Radio, For Your Consideration, Cloverfield, The Order, Angels and Demons... and those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I'm not the kind of person that watches bad movies on purpose (usually), and I'm usually kinder on movies that are bad movies by their very nature. I don't go into movies like "Megasnake" or "From Paris With Love" thinking I'm about to see something outstanding. But when movies that have a certain pedigree turn out to be awful, I am ruthless to them. Such is the case for a film called Gentlemen Broncos.

Gentlemen Broncos is the third feature from the auteur Jared Hess. His previous outings, Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, were both competent if not outstanding films. Gentlemen Broncos, however, is a pointless, ambling mess of a film. It is a tedious, grueling display of some of the most unpleasant characters to ever be put on film. There is no redeeming part of this film. I watched it because I like Sam Rockwell and Jermaine Clement. It is not worth it. Their additions to the film are too fleeting and too weird to be entertaining, and really, their presences aren't that fleeting, they just don't have anything to work with, and as such, when they're onscreen, I just wanted them to get off, because the movie was so terrible. . There is no humor in this movie. There is nothing pleasant about this film at all. Please, whatever you do, do not see this movie.

Iron Man 2 is pretty good though. Not as good as the first one, but still very good.

Maybe it's not completely unjustified...

2010-05-07T10:22:00.002-05:00

A few years ago, I was introduced to a television show called "Firefly". I loved it wholesale. It was a space western, with an incredible cast and a great story and it was more or less my introduction to Joss Whedon. In edition to creating Firefly, Buffy, Angel and Dollhouse, Joss Whedon also wrote a run of Astonishing X-men that came out around the time I was getting into Firefly. I picked up the first two trades and kind of hated them. I hated them so much that I thought that my love for "Firefly" might have been undeserved, that "Firefly" might actually suck and I was just remembering it to be good (like most things I liked when I was a child and Kevin Smith movies). So I spent a year or so thinking that I might not actually like "Firefly", but when I watched it all again last summer I realized it was legitimately good. This led me to think that I might've been too hard on Whedon's X-men run, so I gave it another try and borrowed the two books of his run I hadn't read from Mason. They were still terrible.

Whedon's X-men is terrible for a lot of reason, but the thing that bothered me the most about it was how he would end scenes. Almost every scene in the book was ended right before some sort of big reveal or a character getting shot or something that is supposed to be suspenseful, but really just comes off as annoying (Dan Brown employs this technique, or at least he did in the first 45 or so pages of Angels and Demons, which is about as far as I got in the book when I realized that it was not going to get better). Also I didn't like how he wrote Kitty Pryde. Which is weird because I've never read any X-men books with Kitty Pryde, ever. I have no affinity for the character whatsoever, and yet, I felt that the words coming out of her mouth were an insult to her character. So those things and the almost Pirates of the Caribbean levels of backstabbing and deal making were a little much.

So I think Firefly might be the only Whedon property that doesn't annoy me, which is a shame because he's doing the Avenger's movie, and I really like the Avengers and I think he's going to screw them up.

I hope they aren't becoming a thing

2010-05-04T00:34:00.002-05:00

There is a band called Avi Buffalo. They are sort of unpleasant to listen to. I think they might be becoming indie music darlings. I do not dig them.

As much as I hate to admit it, I am a hispter... sort of. I certainly love irony and "indie" music enough, but there are certain things that hispters are supposed to like that I don't much care for. Musically, the list would include Radiohead (which I think non-hipsters are supposed to like too), Bon Iver, Phoenix, and all "good rap". I think my taste in movies might exclude me from hipster status, (although I think the hipster do's and don'ts of film are a bit more nebulous than their musical requirements) and if that doesn't my dislike of coffee, tea and alcohol of any kind certainly would. My most telling quality that might qualify me for hipsterdom is my hatred of hipsters. That is probably a hipster's most defining characteristic. Hipsters can not stand other hipsters. They hate their pretentiousness and their smugness and their aloofness. I might be safe from hipsterdom though, because I think I might just be a misanthrope, and just have a special place in my heart for hating people who think they're better than everyone else.

Whatever label other people ascribe to me, one thing's for sure. I really do not like Avi Buffalo.

Summer Pre-Season Spectacular!

2010-04-29T22:16:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow is the last day of April, which means Saturday is the first day of May which means summer is pretty much almost here, which means it's time for a list. Here's a list of things I'm really looking forward to this summer and some (hopefully) humorous remarks about them. (in chronological order, when appropriate).
1. Iron Man 2

I mean, look at this guy. For some reason, I always liked War Machine more than Iron Man. I think it was probably because War Machine is a lot cooler name than Iron man, also the color scheme is a lot cooler, also, he's black. I love Don Cheadle (I mean, LOVE him, love him). Scarlett Johannson is also in this movie and is also awesome (of course by awesome I mean hot,ex: "Careful, I just took that pizza out of the oven, it's very awesome."). And let's not forget about RDJ. So much has been said about the man the little else can be said to describe him other than this; he is the Johnny Depp of the years 2008 thru 2012, and maybe longer depending on A: how much the next Pirates movie sucks and 2: How many Avengers movies they make.

2. The 48 Hour Film Festival: Year 2.
Ok, so Brian Trainmayer and I's web series idea never happened. We made a go of it, but it just didn't happen, and probably never will. But we are going to work together on something called the 48 hour film festival. We were on a team last year and the results of that teams effort was mixed at best (it was mostly a mixture of sucking and terribleness). Fortunately this year, we have group of more like-minded people. We'll see how well it works out.
3. Musica!
There are some new albums from bands I like coming out this summer. The only ones I can think of right now are The Black Keys and The Arcade Fire. I like both of these bands with muchness, and hopefully their new albums will worthy additions to the respective bands' already quite auspicious legacies. Also if they tour near here, I would like to see both of these bands live. Speaking of concerts (which I was) Jeff Tweedy and She and Him are both going to be playing in St. Louis this summer!

4. Family
Most of my family lives within 120 miles of my house, so I get to see them with some regularity, but there are a select few who live outside that tri-state bubble, and when they make it back to Cape it is always a joyous occasion that involves more than a little amount of boardgame nights and ice cream parties. Joe is coming home for a week in May and Katie will be home this weekend (I haven't heard whether or not Joshua will be making an appearance this summer, but it's sadly, unlikely), so that will be exciting.

5. Pete and Kaylen's Wedding!
In addition to being one of the cutest couples I know, (although, to be fair there's not a lot of competition, assuming that I'm only counting couples that are my age and are friends of mine, which I am, so really they're one of the cutest of about 10 couples, which is still something, I suppose)

Pete and Kaylen and just about the swellest people I know. So I'm about as happy as I can be for them as I can be for people that are not me. I think it's pretty well known that empathy isn't one of my strong suits, so I yeah, I think that says something. By the way, the above picture is one of their engagement pictures. It's not part of some sort of creepy stash of photographs I have of Pete and Kaylen just lying around on my computer (although I do have some of those, but they're mostly of Pete, dressed as famous dead painters and are for my eyes only).

6. Scott Pilgrim Book 6/Scott Pilgrim vs the World
There really is nothing else in this world that I am more excited about the the Scott Pilgrim movie. I think I've mentioned before that I enjoy the work of Edgar Wright. He is my hero. And the Scott Pilgrim comic book series is pretty much a pitch perfect love story for hipster nerds like myself. The marriage of these two properties is something beyond perfect. Plus after seeing Chris Evans movie stealing performance in The Losers last week, I became even more excited about the prospect of him being involved in this film. In short, this movie will rock and there's nothing you can do about it.

Ok that's all I can think of now. It's entirely likely that I will blog about this things more when they happen, but I think it's entirely more likely that I won't, so there you have it.

The Old F***ing West

2010-04-22T23:30:00.002-05:00

Over the past two weeks I watched the Television program Deadwood in it's entirety. Being a show with an all too brief 36 episode run, this was not an incredibly difficult task, but it was also an not easy one (How's that for a thesis statement!). Due to the intricacy of the plot and the engrossingness (Spellcheck doesn't believe that "engrossingness" is a word. It also doesn't think "spellcheck" is a word. There's probably some sort of joke in there...) of the show it was hard for me to do anything else while watching, which means I spent approximately 30 hours doing nothing but watching television over the course of two weeks (although I actually finished it last Sunday, which means I watched 30 hours over the course of 10 days). That is almost as much time as I spent working during the same period of time. I'll let the loserishness implied by that previous statement sink in a moment.

NEXT PARAGRAPH!

The first two seasons of Deadwood are some of the best television I've ever seen (although to be fair, since it was on HBO, it's not technically television (it's HBO)). The show builds, literally and deliberately. The first two seasons tell the story of a group of people that all happen to be in the same place at the same time and how that group becomes a community that becomes a town on the cusp on legality in a territory that doesn't really belong to them that becomes a bonafide town recognized by the United States Government. The pacing of this growth and it's affect on the central characters of the program is incredible to watch, this is do in large part to one of the most talented ensemble casts ever assembled (we're talking Star Trek TNG levels of talent here), but also due to the sheer fascinating nature of the story, which is mostly based on real people and events. The third season is about how the community bonds when threatened by an outside force in a storyline that, unfortunately, vastly overstays its welcome. The third season is also the last season of the show, but it seems like this came as a surprise to the creators, as it doesn't really finish as much as it stops. There's not a lot of closure at Deadwood's conclusion, and that's a shame.

The vulgarity is Deadwood is something that gets talked about a lot, and well it should be. The profanity bandied about in Deadwood is outstanding, both in its prevalence and it's eloquence. I have no problem with profanity. I think the idea that some words are assigned some sort of negative significance or infamy is an incredibly ludicrous concept. The idea that we as a society agree to find some words offensive based purely on tradition is comical. There are things that are unpleasant by their very nature, and to bring them up in certain situations can be inappropriate. I don't think talking about feces is every really appropriate, but if and when I do, the idea that poo, poop, doo doo, etc. are acceptable words to describe it around some people, whereas "crap" and "shit" would not be around the same people, is ridiculous. You can't say "asshole" on broadcast television. Everyone who has every lived has one of those, but you can't call it by that particular name on television because it's offensive. You can say murder on television, which is something that is far less common and a lot more offensive. Now don't get me wrong, I love profanity, and wouldn't want to speak a language that didn't have swear words, I just don't think people should act scandalized when they hear it, because that is exactly what they are doing; acting. People are conditioned to respond negatively to those words, and to be "offended" by their use isn't a rational reaction, it's a conditioned response. So I guess what I'm saying, is that if you have a problem with swear words, scrote up, and watch Deadwood anyway, and you will learn how much vulgarity can elevate conversation when used deftly.

So yeah, Deadwood. It's good.

Some possible titles for future blogposts if my life suddenly became a lot more awesome...

2010-04-09T10:54:00.004-05:00

1. Me and Edgar Wright; The Graveyard Adventure!

2. My New Robotic Exo-suit is pretty cool

3. What should I name my Tiger?

4. Lycanthropy isn't all it's cracked up to be (It's Better!)

5. So I guess I'll be posting a lot more about being a ninja now...

6. Good News: Stevie Spielberg asked me to write Indiana Jones 5. Better News: The Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch is back.

7. Is it just me or have I developed magical powers?

8. I just met Jack White, and despite numerous dreams to the contrary, he doesn't hate me!

Clash of the Titans Sucks; or Pete Wissinger is an Idiot

2010-04-05T21:26:00.002-05:00

So my very good friend Pete recently wrote a post defending Clash of the Titans. He agrees that it's not a good movie, but he says that it is exactly the kind of movie the preview led us to believe it would be. I suppose this is sort of true in as much as the preview was a series of out of context scenes and lines thrown together without any sort of coherence that looked really cool, but had no depth or characters to speak of or a plot that made sense, so in that respect the trailer was exactly like the movie in every way. Although I think, generally, we assume that the lines of dialogue and scenes shown in trailers will add up to something more when seen in the context of the entire film, but that wasn't the case with Clash of the Titans, what you see in the preview is pretty much exactly how you see it in the film. The film is a series of plot and dialogue non-sequitors strung together by Sam Worthington's horrible acting.

Everything about Clash of the Titans was bad (except for the special effects, most of the time), the acting wasn't good, the plot is inconsistent, the characters are unlikable, the screenplay seems like it was written by a committee of people who like cliches and who think that Transformers 2 is the greatest movie ever made. Nothing anyone does in the movie makes sense.

Hades: You know Zeus, since you are powered by people loving you, and I'm powered by people fearing me, it would probably be a good idea if I released a giant scary sea monster on a city of people that hate you, which would probably make them fear me more and make them love you even less.
Zeus: I can't see how that could go wrong.

Argosian Commander: We as a city have declared war on "the gods", who are fueled by us praying to them or something.
Sam Worthington: Yeah, the gods suck.
Argosian Commander: Totally. You know who is awesome and I wish was my best friend?
Sam Worthington: Zeus?
Argosian Commander: Yes. He is so awesome. Let's pray to him.
Sam Worthington: I'm already there, man.

Io: Ok, so here's what you need to know about Medusa. She turns you to stone if you look at her eyes, she's super fast, an incredible archer and she can't hurt women.
Sam Worthington: Oh, well this won't be too bad then, you can just go in there in take her out, no problem.
Io: Right, but I won't be joining you.
Sam Worthington: What?
Io: I won't be going in Medusa's cave.
Sam Worthington: Why not?
Io: Some sort of curse or something. It's not really explained all that well.
Sam Worthington: So wait, she can't hurt you?
Io: Not even if she tried.
Sam Worthington: And you won't be coming with us?
Io: Nope. And it's a double shame because not only am I immune to her powers, I'm a pretty good fighter as well, so... yeah. Your men are probably all going to die, really pointlessly too.
Sam Worthington: That's retarded.
Io: Yup.

I think it should be mentioned again that Sam Worthington is especially terrible in this film. Nothing he does in the movie is good. I don't understand why people keep putting him in their movies. He's not a particularly charismatic presence nor is he a particularly good actor. Also his accent is all over the place in the film. I know what he's doing is incredibly hard. Acting is not easy. Not everyone can do it, and I think Sam Worthington might just be one of those people.

Pete claims that it's acceptable for Clash of the Titans to be unabashedly terrible because it's a big dumb action movie, and big dumb action movies don't have to be good, but I think there have been enough big dumb action movies recently that have also been good (Pirates 1, Iron Man, GI Joe {yeah, I said it}, the last 2 Harry Potter movies, Sherlock Holmes, Batman Begins and Dark Knight) that we can start expecting more from our big dumb action movies.

So to put it in the immortal words of Tracey Jordan, "Yeah, suck it Pete."

Easter and What Not.

2010-04-04T01:55:00.002-05:00

Today is Easter. Today is the day I end my Lenten resolution of not consuming sweets (technically I ended it after Easter Vigil Mass when I went to the BeeK and got a Dr. Pepper with my Tendercrisp). This is the second time I've given up sweets for Lent in addition to my normal giving up of soda and I would say that it was just as successful as my previous attempt. I didn't break my resolution, though I wanted to on many occasions, and I ate an s-load of apples. I pretty much increased my fruit and nut consumption by approximately 1000% this Lent, as I decided that they are not technically sweets.

Ok two things unrelated to Lent/Easter:

I'm listening to an album that Jimmy K gave me by a band called Chairlift. There is only one Chairlift song I'd ever heard before; it's called "Bruises". I first heard it when I went to Las Vegas (which I don't think I ever blogged about, sorry blog), it was kind of the unofficial theme song of my trip to Vegas. Not because it was particularly relevant to what I experienced on the trip, but just because of its ubiquity. It was featured in an I-pod commercial that was played repeatedly on an outdoor TV billboard outside of a mall that I walked by at least 5 times a day. It's the only song on the album that is worth listening to so far.

I've been reading some of the things I've written, short stories, blog posts, etc. and I've discovered, or more accurately rediscovered, that I really enjoy my writing. It really makes me laugh. Unfortunately, I don't think I can write like that anymore. I haven't written anything significant since I graduated, and all the incidental writing I do (like what I'm writing right now) is pretty dry and boring. This leads me to the conclusion that I am becoming less talented. I think that talent might be like a muscle, and it's been so long since I've used mine, it's atrophying.

I find it difficult to be productive when I have no real reason to be. I'm not hard enough on myself to make myself do anything I don't want to do. And it's not that I don't want to write, there's just other things I'd rather do. I think part of my problem is that I have too many distractions, too many things that I use as an excuse not to write. Perhaps, in order to become more productive I should remove some of those distractions. So I guess what I'm saying is that I should murder Justin Spaeth so I have more time to write.

Just kidding. Or am I? Who's to say really? I am. I am to say, and I'm saying; Your days are numbered Justin Blair Spaeth!

A brief discussion about what might be the most important moment in human history...

2010-04-01T01:00:00.001-05:00

Last week (or maybe two weeks ago, I don't remember at this point), a movie trailer was released upon the webternet. The trailer fortells of a film that will come out in mid August that will, most likely, forever change the course of human history. The movie in question is called Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, and with it's release, it has the very real potential of succeeding in a way no other film before ever has. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World will very likely win the art of filmmaking.

If you haven't seen it, take a moment to now. I'll wait.

There have been many great films in the history of the artform, and very few that are perfect (there are five perfect films: The Godfather, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars: Episode IV, A Knight's Tale, and Shaun of the Dead), but Scott Pilgrim will very probably be the first and only film that will achieve a status that is beyond perfection. New adjectives will have to be invented in order to accurately capture the amount of goodness that exists within the film.

One might say that I'm setting the bar a little high, that my expectations are a bit too lofty, but to them I say this: If this world is a world wherein Edgar Wright can make a movie based on one of my favorite Comics, that stars Michael Cera and Jason Schwartzman and that movie is not the greatest film ever made, then this world is not worth living in. I can't even imagine a scenario in which I would not love this movie more than life itself. Normally when people say things like what I said in the previous sentence, they are being hyperbolic. Let me assure you, I am not. Trying to imagine Scott Pilgrim not being the greatest single work achieved by humanity is like trying to imagine a world where math doesn't work or where Zooey Deschanel isn't completely adorable.

Also I got a new computer.

2010-03-22T23:05:00.003-05:00

I haven't blogged much lately mostly because I haven't had anything interesting to say. Here's a summary of the last three weeks of my life:

Work, Sleep, X-box.

That's mostly it. One weekend I went up to the Lou and hung out with Pete and Kaylen and learned how to play Munchkin (which is pretty fun) and tried to watch District 9 (which is significantly less fun). I've started running again, although I haven't been for the last couple of days do to weather and laziness.

I was actually off of work the last four days, which was sort of weird. It's the longest stretch I've gone without work for as long as I can remember. I can't say that I missed working, but I did miss being occupied. Today was sort of the culmination of my lack of productivity. I hung out with Matthew and the lads for close to 10 hours. I like hanging out with my friends, but I feel like I have to do something pretty spectacular to warrant that much leisure time.

Also today, I watched a lot of Archer, which is an incredibly funny show. I tried to imagine if it would be as funny if it were live action (since most of the voice actors play characters that are physically similar to the characters they voice, except for H. Jon), I determined that it probably wouldn't be, although I'm not really sure why.

Video

2010-03-07T21:40:00.003-06:00

I finally figured out a way to edit the videos that I shoot with my little digital video camera. Unfortunately it's fairly time consuming as I have to first convert the files with a video converter then edit them using Window's Movie Maker (which is only has a slightly worse interface than Final Cut, but is a lot less powerful). It's not ideal, and I'm still figuring the system out, but here's something I made using it.

Also, they published an interview I did for Spinner.com. You can check that out too.

Let's take a moment to talk about Neil Diamond.

2010-02-16T01:19:00.003-06:00

Take a moment and listen to this.

That song was written by Neil Diamond in 1966, and was probably the best non-Beatles pop song in existence until Abba recorded "Take a Chance on Me" in 1977.

I was first introduced to Neil Diamond by a film called "Saving Silverman". If you haven't seen Saving Silverman, or if you've only seen it on television, do yourself a favor and go rent it, but make sure you get the R-rated version. This movie features pre-School of Rock Jack Black, when he was funny and used F-bombs. In the film, the main character and his buddies have a Neil Diamond tribute band and Mr. Diamond plays a semi-integral part to the plot of the movie. I was a big fan of the movie and the soundtrack in particular so I ended up downloading a sizeable chunk of it (probably using Napster, back when every "funny" song on Napster was attributed to Weird Al).

Most of Neil's other songs lack the nearly effervescent joy of Cherry Cherry (except for Thank The Lord for the Night Time, which is pretty much the exact same song, which is to say, is completely awesome), but over the course of the 2 minutes and 40 some odd seconds that is Cherry Cherry, Neil Diamond crafted the quintessential pop song. It's got everything; a catchy, rhythmic guitar riff, clap along percussion, the hooky piano breakdown in the middle of the song, and most important of all, Neil's smokey, soulful voice.

I don't listen to contemporary pop radio. I've heard what "the kids" are listening to these days, and it doesn't interest me. There is something contrived about the music that gets played on the radio. It is music manufactured to sell records, to sell itunes, to sell Now That's What I Call Music. Granted, most artists would like to be able to make money performing their art, but a lot of contemporary music seems more like a product (or a production) than art. My cousin Katie once told me about the best concert she's ever been to. It was a Kylie Minogue concert in New York City. It was attended by mostly gay men and Australians (what's the difference, really?) and, by her account, was great because of the production value of the costumes, lights etc. Now, it is entirely possible that this was the best concert she's ever been to, (the only other concert I can say with certainty she attended was when Nickelback came to Cape) but in her retelling of the concert, the music didn't really even come up.

I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with liking musicians and music based on their aesthetic appeal (although I do think it's wrong with every part of my being... but I'm trying to be less judgmental), but all of the Lady Gagas, Taylor Swifts and Black Eyed Peas of the world can't compete with the three chord brilliance of Cherry Cherry because it has something that none of them will ever have the; unabashed talent and incandescence of The Jewish Elvis.

The Deplorable State of Werewolf Cinema

2010-02-13T11:06:00.002-06:00

For pretty much my entire life, I've wanted to be a werewolf. Of the monster pantheon, werewolves have always been the most bad-ass of the bunch. For the most part they live normal lives, but once a month they become superheroes (or villains, depending on where they chose to be when they change). Unfortunately, werewolves aren't real (or are they? No they are not), so I am forced to live my lycanthropic lifestyle vicariously through movies and videogames. Sadly, both of these mediums rarely do werewolves justice. Case in point: The Wolfman.

The Wolfman had a lot of things going for it; Benecio Del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, this trailer, the director of Honey I Shrunk The Kids... the title of best werewolf movie was ripe for the taking. But, instead of being 90+ minutes of lupine awesomeness, The Wolfman was a plodding, joyless, boring mess of inconsistent accents, stilted, cliche ridden dialogue, a complete lack of suspense and as much characterization as is shown in the aforementioned trailer. People have backstories and histories, but there previous lives do very little to inform their choices in the film. Lawrence, the main character, is an actor for some reason. This bit of information is never relevant. It doesn't have anything to do with what the character does or says, it's just an interesting bit of trivia (I suppose it's possible that it's a nod to the original wolfman movie, but I've never seen it, so I wouldn't know). Hugo Weaving is supposedly playing Inspector Aberline, the detective in charge of the Jack the Ripper murders. This too is mentioned in nothing more than a throw away line. In fact, most of the lines in this movie are just unresponsive bits of pronouncement. Benicio will walk into a room and, apropos of nothing, will say something like "I wish things were different" and that will be an entire scene.

This movie suffers from what a lot of werewolf movies suffer from (At this point I should probably mention that I have not seen that many werewolf movies. I've only seen one of the Howling movies, Silver Bullet, Van Helsing, all of the Underworld Movies, Both American Werewolf Movies, Trick r' Treat... that might be it), and that is having the plot of a werewolf movie. The plot goes something like this; Main character doesn't believe in werewolves, gets attacked by a werewolf, becomes a werewolf, kills people, feels guilty, becomes a werewolf again, dies. The exception to this rule are movies about werewolves that also involve other monsters, especially vampires (and maybe the Ginger Snaps movies, I've never seen those). The problems with this kind of plot are: 1. you know the main character is going to die, so it's difficult to have any sort of emotional investment in them, 2. because of the werewolf mythology (ie; the Full Moon) the movie has to take place over a long period of time (usually over 2 to 3 months, which will give you 3-4 transformations), and these movies aren't very good with dealing with that much time compression, so there's a lot of montages of being in a coma or walking around instead of building containment rooms or saferooms or driving to unpopulated areas. The movies just tread water until it's time for another transformation.

One of my life goals is to add something significant to the Werewolf movie Genre, which won't be too hard, since most werewolf movies blow.

The Opposite of Clutch

2010-02-11T22:40:00.003-06:00

If I was a DnD character (or a character from any pencil and paper RPG that uses a similar system of traits) I would have some sort of trait that allowed me to be slightly better than most people at most things initially, (so for instance, if the normal number for an untrained skill is 10, I would be an 11), but the downside would be that I improve at a much slower rate. The reason I would have this trait as a DnD character is because it is a trait that I have in real life (how's that for a segue).

I'm not lamenting this fact, nor am I complaining about it. That ability has it's uses, but it is also frustrating at times. It's especially frustrating at my new job. Learning to be a pharmacy tech is like learning a different language. There are so many different rules and tricks that one has to know and there really is no easy way to learn them other than doing them (or in my case, doing them wrong). I am constantly making mistakes at my new job. They are not big mistakes or life threatening ones, but they are mistakes that slow me and the pharmacy down. It is frustrating to feel more like a liability than an asset. I know that, with time, I'll figure out what I'm doing, and be better at things, but part of me isn't interested in learning all of these things.

I have been thinking a lot lately about knowledge of things. I am of the opinion that there is no inherent goodness in most kinds of knowledge. Knowing the capital of India (Mumbai... or is it Dehli... Crap. I just looked it up. It's New Delhi) isn't inherently better than knowing the name of the ship that Captain Ahab took to go after Moby Dick (the Pequod). Knowing one might be more useful, but usefulness isn't the same as goodness. Knowing either one of those things doesn't effect how I live my life. Although I could make the case that practical knowledge could lead to goodness or happiness. Knowing how to tie one's shoes is practical. Having your shoes tied makes it easier to get around. Being able to get around makes me happy. Epistemology was always my least favorite part of philosophy, but is also the part that has done the most lasting damage to my thought process.

A post about the Office

2010-01-24T00:27:00.002-06:00

I am probably the most vocal critic of the American Office in the world (Proove me wrong, I dare you). I love nothing more (not even breathing) than to pick apart each episode to find every possible flaw and logical and emotional disconnect that I can find in order to fuel my argument that the American Office is the most overrated show of all time, ever (except for MASH). It is a show that has forsaken its simple, but compelling premise of making insightful, subtle comedy about the tedium of working in an office into something that is about a laugh track away of being a Two and a Half Men lead in. The Office has become a bad show.

Or at least that's what I thought.

Then I saw an episode entitled "The Banker". This episode might be the single greatest work of comedy writing ever shown on television. Before the Christmas break, the gang at the Office were in a bit of trouble. Dunder Mifflin, which is a company traded on the New York Stock Exchange (Maybe you've heard of it?), but doesn't have a functional web site, was in for a big shake up. The corporate big-wigs were all getting fired and the future looked uncertain for our favorite Scranton workaholics. Office fans were full of questions heading into this weeks episode and the Office addressed all those questions with two simple, but powerful words: Clip. Show.

Were you wondering who was going to take David Wallace's position as the new CFO? Well, let me answer that question by showing clips of people saying "That's what she said".

Were you concerned about how Pam and Jim's baby is doing? Perhaps some footage of Jim playing basketball from the first season will allay your fears.

Is the Office going to continue to be better than the last two seasons, but nowhere near as good as the first three seasons? I think you'll find what you're looking for in these scenes of Michael hitting shelves with a fork lift.

I thought that we, as a society, were done with clip shows, especially in our sitcoms, especially in our sitcoms that are supposed to be one of the best shows on television (I don't know anyone who actually thinks this. I think The Office is becoming like the Simpsons; something that is beyond critical scorn, a television institution that is just watched and admired unquestioningly, despite how ridiculously bad it gets. Although, fortunately, The Office hasn't yet approached the level of mediocrity that the Simpsons has sunk to). I don't know why, but for some reason the idea of The Office doing a clip so is especially ludicrous to me. I think this is because in essence, the show is kind of clip show anyway. It's a highlight real of all the funny stuff that happens that day in the office. They don't need the excuse of an episode devoted to showing the "best of" every episode before it to make reference to previous episodes. When Michael says, "that reminds me of the time I wrecked my car", they cut to him wrecking his car. This kind of thing happens in every episode. Usually it's footage specific to that episode, but still, the concept is nothing new. However, because they rarely make references to things that happen in previous episodes (except for plot relevant stuff) and even rarer do they actually show footage from earlier episodes, the act of having an episode where they do nothing but show footage from old episodes is not only a break in the shows normal format, but incredibly lame.

In summation, clip shows are lazy and stupid and I'm glad the Office is starting to suck again, because it justifies my completely irrational hatred of it (which I think is just a reaction to it's popularity versus the popularity of the British version, which is far superior in almost every way, and I'm not just saying that because I'm an Anglophile, and also my general dislike of everything that is nearly universally liked).

Next time I'll talk about a book I just read called "The Time Traveler's Wife". Here's an excerpt:

"I thought that"

See you next time.

Chuck vs. Me hating him

2010-01-19T08:49:00.006-06:00

Sometime last year I developed an appreciation for the NBC series Chuck.
This appreciation had a lot to do with the sort of nerdy references that the show frequently made and also because of the interesting will-they won't they chemistry between the shows two leads, Chuck, played by Zach Levi, the one on the right, and Sarah, played by Yvonne Strahovski, the one on the left (and I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge the fact that Sarah's choice of attire, or lack there of, in some episodes is also a slight draw to the show, but totally not in a creepy way if you're reading this Yvonne... ok, maybe it's a little creepy, but still, if you wanted to go out or something I totally wouldn't be creepy at all. We could just go Panera or something, get some soup, maybe go catch a movie, talk for a bit then maybe go for a walk down by the river and then we'd both go our separate ways. Then maybe a couple days later I'd text you something like, "I had fun the other night" and you could text back something like "me 2 :)", and I'd be like "That's cool, we should get married. LOL" and you'd be like "that sounds awesome! LOL" then I'd be like, "No. I'm serious" and you'd be like "Me 2."). But recently I have fallen out of favor with Chuck.

The show is more or less a spy procedural, and as such, there aren't a lot that changes from week to week. The problem with this is that it's not a particularly good spy procedural. It seems like it was written back in the 90's before the general population had seen Jason Bourne movies or Munich; when the world believed, for the most part, that spying and counter-intelligence worked pretty much like it did in the Roger Moore James Bond movies (It's all about gadgets and witty comebacks and terrorists wanting to blow up the world unless they got paid a million dollars). Living in a post 9-11 (I hate using that phrase) world, Americans are (or should be) too smart to fall for this kind of nonsense. It's not that all TV should depict the world as it really is, but Chuck seems to take a remarkably juvenile approach to how the world works, and in a completely earnest way. There is nothing ironic about the depiction of the world in the Chuckverse (or the Chucktinuum as I sometimes call it). The struggle between the good guys and bad guys in Chuck is so painfully black and white that it approaches Disney levels of naivety. There are a couple of instances where the show veers off into slightly greyish moral areas (When Sarah shoots a guy in cold blood to protect Chuck) and, for me these are some of the shows high points.

Chuck (the show)'s inability to have any sort of significant changes to the main characters from episode to episode is also a bit frustrating to me. I don't know who along the line made the decision, but at some point, someone decided that at the end of every episode, the status quo should be immediately restored (unless it's the end of the season). Sarah gets fired? She comes back to save the day at the end of the episode. A new Intersect is made rendering Chuck (the character) unnecessary? The new intersect is actually a bomb and blows up the whole project so they have to start from scratch. The gang of bad guys from the first two seasons is defeated? It turns out they were just a puppet organization of the real enemies, The Ring. The lengths this show goes to not change absolutely anything about their formula for episodes is beyond ridiculous. It undermines any of the drama that could possibly be created because the audience knows at the end of the episode, all will be returned to normal. It punishing the fans of the show by essentially making them watch the same episode over and over again, which goes a little something like this:

Bad Guy: I'm going to steal something/kill somebody... In Los Angeles!
Meanwhile....

Sarah: So this bad guy and this thing the bad guy wants are in Los Angeles.
Chuck: I know where they are. I can stop them.
Sarah: Ok, let's go.

Chuck tries to stop them but fails, comically (usually because the bad guy isn't where he's supposed to be).

Chuck: I couldn't stop them.
Sarah: I don't believe the bad guy is really here anymore. Blah Blah Blah, boy who cried wolf.
Chuck: Well if you don't believe me, I'll just stop them myself.

Chuck runs away, gets into trouble, Sarah and Casey save him.

Chuck: Thanks guys, I guess I shouldn't have gone after them by myself.
Sarah: No, it's our fault for some reason.
Casey: Chuck, you know Sarah is in love with you.
Chuck: What!?

Chuck and Sarah have a moment, but it's cut short by some ridiculous bullshit. The end.

So to sum up, I don't like Chuck because it completely refuses to be postmodern. It his an extremely conventional TV show that has, somehow, amassed massive critical goodwill by mentioning Arcade Fire a couple times in its first season and occasionally playing Spoon songs. That being said, I will continue to watch it, because it's still funny frequently, it occasionally has awesome guest stars (Chevy Chase, Scott Bakula, Vinnie Jones, Brandon Routh...) and because Sarah walks around in her bra and panties every three episodes or so.

Late Night

2010-01-16T04:43:00.003-06:00

This past week I worked an overnight shift at Walmart. I had never worked an overnight shift before. I'm experiencing the hardest part of working that shift right now, as it is 4:44 and I'm not asleep and have to get up at 9 tomorrow. I adapted pretty quickly to staying up late, and I'm not really sure how to unadapt. I fell asleep at 10 last night, but woke up at midnight and have been awake since. I'm going to be hella tired tomorrow, but that's alright. I'll catch up eventually. On the plus side, this experience has gotten me blogging about something that has been noticeably missing since I restarted this blog, sleeping. Riveting.

In other Walmart news that is also news about me Sunday will be my last day as a Lawn and Garden Associate (sad face), and Monday will be my first day as a pharmacy tech (conflicted face?). Wednesday night, whilst working the overnight shift, the pharmacy manager came up to me and asked if I was ready for an interview. Thursday night management was filling out my transfer paperwork (which doesn't really involve much paper). I had put Pharmacy as an option for career preferences because it pays better than my current position, but I thought I would be somewhere else before I actually got a chance to be in the pharmacy. As it turns out, I'm not somewhere else, so I guess I'll be going to Pharmacy.

Here's why I'm conflicted. Pharmacy is a full time job, which means I'll be making more money, but it is also a much bigger commitment than I had previously signed up for at Walmart. But more than that, I didn't really want to start working a full time job until I got a job in my field. Getting a full time job doing something that isn't video production or whatever feels like I'm giving up on doing what I want to do. I know this is a ridiculous thing to think, but it's difficult for me to see the short term benefits of taking a semi-serious job in a completely unrelated field when it feels like I'm giving up on my long term goal. I see a lot of people who take jobs they don't particularly like because of the short term benefits, then they get stuck doing that job for the rest of their life. A lot of them work at Wal-mart. The longer they do it, the easier it is to justify doing it.

This scenario is completely unacceptable to me. Mostly because work, for these people, becomes the means to their ends, and that's not what I want. They work to support their wives or husbands or children (or to buy more booze or guns or shoes or whatever, but it's usually the former). They work so they can live the rest of their life during the two days of the week they don't work and the one week of vacation they get a year, and what they have on those days is supposed makes it all worth it. There is no thing nor anyone that could make me spend 300 days a year something I don't want to do. I want work to be an end in an of itself, and although I do enjoy working at Wal-mart, it's not what I want to do. It's not an end.

I know this is a sentiment that most people have. No one is doing exactly what they want to do, and that's how life works. Giving up the dream is part of growing up. It's a concept captured nearly perfectly in a film I love to hate called Up, and maybe that's why I hate the movie. It's essentially about giving up on your dreams and then trying to recapture them later in life and realizing that your dreams were kind of crappy in the first place (and the talking dog says "Squirrel!" Hilarious!!! Dogs chase squirrels!). It's a reminder that part of growing up is realizing that you're not going to get to do everything you want to do and maybe that's not something I'm ready to concede just yet.

But for now, I'll be working 5 days a week in the Jackson Wal-mart Pharmacy and trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with my life.

Damian Kulash (spelling?) does a pretty good Prince impression on the first track of OK Go's new album.

A Conversation

2010-01-11T14:32:00.002-06:00

This is a conversation I usually have a couple of times a year. It happens when I meet someone new. I had this conversation last night at work (this isn't exactly how it when, but it was close).

Me: So, what kind of music do you like?
Them: Pretty much anything. I like all music.
Me: Do you like opera?
Them: I don't know.
Me: You probably don't. Opera is pretty terrible.
Them: Maybe I don't.
Me: What about Jazz?
Them: I don't really listen to Jazz.
Me: Hmm. What kind of music do you listen to?
Them: Pretty much everything else. Shinedown, Sugarland, Taylor Swift, Nickelback, Johnny Cash... you know, everything else.
Me: How do you feel about Rascal Flatts?
Them: I love Rascal Flatts.
Me: Of course you do.

I'm am such an asshole.

I find that, most of the time, when people say they like all music, they mean that they like all the music that gets played on the three radio stations they like to listen to. It took me a long time to start listening to music that doesn't get played on the radio, and it was a gradual process. I think most people just don't care enough to find other music to listen to, and really, they don't need to. It's entirely possible that they enjoy their music as much or more than as much as I enjoy mine. I like a lot of music that I know that most other people have never heard of before, and I don't like to admit it, but some of my enjoyment comes from the fact that a lot of people have never heard of it. I think its entirely possible that the converse is true for some people, they like music because almost every other person they know likes it. Some people like music that's universally (as far as they're concerned) loved and appreciated by all those around them because it let's them feel like part of a group, I like music that doesn't get played on the radio, that's hard to listen to sometimes and most people have never heard of because it let's me feel like part of a better, more exclusive group.

I'm such an asshole.

Job Searchin'

2010-01-09T00:40:00.002-06:00

I've been applying to a lot of jobs online recently. I don't actually believe I'm going to get any of the jobs I apply for because for the most part, I don't think these jobs actually exist. I don't know anyone who's gotten a job based on an application they filled out online or because of a resume they posted online. I really don't think the internet works like that. I'm pretty sure internet job applications are for people who are on unemployment and have to prove that they are looking for jobs.

Another reason I don't think I'm going to get any internet jobs I apply for is because I don't think my resume is very impressive, nor are my cover letters really. My problem is that I don't really like talking about myself. Well, that's not entirely true. What I don't like talking about are positive things about myself. It sort of goes against my self-deprecating style of writing.

Two unrelated music thoughts:
1. I have recently become aware of the fact that Akon Family and The Avett Brothers are not the same band.

2. I don't think there is anyway The Go! Team could ever duplicate the dynamism of their studio sound live, in concert. Proove me wrong, The Go! Team, I dare you.

Meanwhile, on the internet...

2010-01-07T14:41:00.004-06:00

Yesterday Matthew told me about a website called passiveaggressivenotes.com. It is just as amazing as one would expect a website with that name to be. Specifically, this note:

A short story

2010-01-05T01:07:00.002-06:00

Phillip was sitting in a library. A library was not an uncommon place for Phillip to be sitting. Phillip liked to read, he liked quiet places, and he liked touching things that have been handled by countless strangers. Phillip loved libraries. This library, however, was unlike any Phillip had ever been in. For one thing, this library had no tables or big comfy chairs with inconveniently located, but color coordinated foot stools. It had no card catalog or computer that told where particular books were located.

What it did have was books. Lots and lots and lots of books. Books about every subject imaginable, and some subjects that were completely unimaginable; books about horseback riding, archery, lollipop boxing, fish squandering, presidential birthdays, and Jupiter's least impressive moon by one of it's former rulers ("Memories of Metis" by Julius Pennington. This book is widely regarded as one of the least complimentary pieces of literature ever written. One chapter in particular is cited as the most vulgar collection of words ever assembled. The chapter has no title, but because of it's memorable first line is often referred to the "Fuck all y'all" chapter.
"Metia Singulus is shit, everyone who lives there is shit, especially all those bitches in the Dome of Conncurrent Wisdom; Fuck all y'all".)

Phillip wasn't entirely sure how he got into this library, or why he knew it was a library, but he did know that his fiancee wasn't going to be pleased that he wasn't at L'Ocho with her, this was date night after all. Phillip decided that he didn't really care that his fiancee was going to be mad at him. She was always mad at him. She'd get over it. Phillip walked over to a shelf that towered higher up than Phillip could see. He picked up a book at random ("How to Poison a Prince: Even more New and Exciting ways to Commit Regicide" by Gertrude Whipple), sat down, propped his back against the shelf, and began reading.

Trivia Writing for Dummies

2010-01-03T23:49:00.002-06:00

I started writing Trivia Night questions today. I picked the easiest category to do first and got 10 questions done in about an hour and some change. The most important thing about writing Trivia Questions is that they have to be written in a way in which there is only one possible answer. This seems like it would be a pretty obvious rule for trivia writing, but I've been to some trivia nights where that wasn't always the case (Every one I went to at SEMO). I feel like my symbolic logic background has prepared me quite well for writing trivia questions. It has also prepared me for a life of crippling indecision. Thanks philosophy! Thanks for making me question even the most basic intellectual constructs so that even simple tasks, like counting, take on a whole new dimension of complexity! It's not entirely the fault of my brief foray into philosophy, I'm a pretty indecisive person anyway (mostly because of my extreme pragmatism), but still, I've never been the same since I pretended to be a philosophy major.

In other news, I'm unstoppable at Board Games this year. I've gone 7 for 8 in board games in 2010. I've won 2 games of Risk, 2 games of Race for the Galaxy, 2 games of X-box Scene-it (which although not technically on a board, it's pretty much a board game) and one game of Last Night On Earth (I should've won another game of that, but I made a couple of play mistakes and had a kind of unlucky draw). Point being, if you want your ass handed to you in sort of board game, I know a guy that can help you out: Me. I'm awesome.

Up in the Air is a good movie and other things I'm thinking about

2010-01-02T00:13:00.003-06:00

Don't believe the trailers, Up in the Air does have a plot, just not much of one. Don't let it's lack of plot deter you though, Up in the Air is a really good film. It's similar to Away We Go, but not as cheerful or funny and for some reason, I think I liked it more. I just IMDBed the younger girl from Up in the Air and she's apparently playing Stacey Pilgrim in the forthcoming Scott Pilgrim movie. Huzzah.

Speaking of upcoming movies, I saw some trailers for movies lately. Specifically this trailer. I'm guessing this film is some kind of joke. The original film was an occasionally funny, but nonetheless entertaining farce , but I don't see any need to remake it, especially not a mere 3 years after the original was released. There is a precedent for American studios to remake popular foreign films for American audiences, but this was a Frank Oz movie with a mostly British cast playing British people (with the exception of Alan Tudyk, who is an American actor who played a British man and Peter Dinklage, an American actor playing an American). As ridiculous as this concept is I will probably still see this movie because I like a lot of the cast, especially Mr. Peter Dinklage who has bravely chosen to play the exact same role that he played in the original film.

2010: Options, options options.

2010-01-01T01:39:00.002-06:00

The title of this post is a reference to something my friend Matthew mutters to himself when he becomes aware of how long he is taking to make a decision while playing a game. We frequently mock him for this particular mannerism of his. I wasn't entirely sure how to punctuate the phrase.

So in case you haven't noticed, it's 2010. I've decided that I'm going to have a lot of New Year's Resolutions this year because I need to resolve to do a lot of things and I'm going to publish a list of them here to better catalog my failures for future depressive ramblings. So in no particular order here are some things I'm going to try to do during the next 365 days.

1. Finish writing and shoot and edit Drawing Bored
2. Find a real job preferably somewhere not in Cape so I can justifiably...
3. Move away from Cape
4. Write more in general, specifically screenplays and blogposts
5. Become kind of an adult, but not so much of an adult that I suck

One is going to be the easiest and most fun. Two and three have a lot of corollaries and are going to be really hard to do. Four is really more about me not wasting time as much as I currently do and Five is kind of a byproduct of 2-4, so it kind of goes without saying except for the last part, although I don't think I'll ever become that much of an adult.

Anyway, I'll try to keep you updated on my relative progress on these and other goals I have.

List

2009-08-27T22:48:00.003-05:00

Ok, so the summer is pretty much over, although because I'm not in school anymore, the changing of the seasons seems considerably less significant than it once did. Even so, I'm going to take this opportunity to enumerate my favorites things I did, saw, experienced this summer. I'm going to pick ten things, but as I write this sentence I really have no idea how many things I'm going to come up with, that number is subject to change. Also, these things may or may not be in some sort of qualitative order, because, as I said, I'm just coming up with this things as I go. So, without further ado, a list by me.

10. Race for the Galaxy

Matthew bought this game on a whim, and it quickly became our favorite game of the summer. Well it was my favorite game of the summer. It's super complicated when you're first learning to play, but tons of fun and with loads of replayability, it's a great little game.

9. The 48 Hour Film Festival
Although I haven't spoken about it much on here, I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project with some of my classmates from the film department. The movie we made sucked a lot, but it was a lot of fun to make, and it lead to me reconnecting with Brian Mayer, who graduated last year and was my greatest ally in the filmmaking process. I also worked with him briefly on his project Chester's Tales.

8. Reading. Lots.
I read more this summer than I probably did in the totality of my college career. Sadly, that is not much of an exaggeration. I read the last 3 Harry Potter Books (which I may have mentioned once or twice on this blog), 2 Chuck Klosterman Books, 2 Lev Grossman Books (more on this guy later), American Gods and a whole bunch of Trade Paperbacks (This isn't a pretentious way of saying comic book, by the way. A comic book would be a single issue, a trade paper is a collection of a run of issues in a single volume). Reading. It's not for breakfast any more.

7. Night Riding.
This is one of the few other things I've mentioned on this site before, but in case you missed it, usually Matt Buchheit and I take a leisurely bike ride around Cape Girardeau in the dead of night (which in case you didn't know, is between 8-10pm). There's just something about riding during the night that is more fun than riding during the daylight. Also riding with a friend is much more fun than riding solo. I recommend it.

6. Writing with Bobby Dianora.
Rob D and I wrote a spec script of the Office for a writing competition. It was fun writing with someone who is almost as competent a writer as I am (just kidding... not really though. But seriously, Rob's a good writer. But seriously, I'm better). It was also nice to know that I actually can write an entire episode of a TV show (with help), since that's kind of what I want to do for a living.

5. Buying an Electric Guitar.
I have an electric guitar. His name is Claude Teschreddes. Pete and Kaylen are his godparents. He is currently a very a quiet lad, because I have yet to buy an amp for him. One day he will find his voice and on that day, the world will be rocked.

4. Return of Food Night.
Toward the end of the summer, Food Night came back with a vengeance. We've been batting 1000 since we started cooking again, and by only having a food night every couple of weeks or so, we're not getting tired of them. Hopefully this trend continues.

3. The Magicians.
I read this book called the Magicians. It was amazing. It was like Harry Potter if Harry Potter wasn't for kids. Actually, I don't think that's really a fair assessment. Lev Grossman, the author of the Magicians, wrote a book about what would happen if magic existed in the real world. The world we live in. JK Rowling wrote books about what would happen if magic existed in a world where fantasy novels didn't exist. JK Rowling didn't have a lot of rules for her world, and those that she had, she usually ignored when convenient. Lev Grossman had rules in his world. He had real people in his world. People that had to face the burden and ethical implications of near omnipotence. It's an amazing book. Anyone who's a fan of fantasy or good books in general should read this book.

2. Movies.
I saw a lot of good movies this summer. To name a few; The Brother's Bloom, 500 Days of Summer, Away We Go, GI Joe (Yes, it was good. Deal with it) and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Every time I see a movie like this, it makes me realize how much I love making movies, and how much I miss that process.

1. St. Louis.
I spent a lot of time in St. Louis this summer. I am, by my own choosing, underemployed. For the majority of the summer I was working twice a week and since I had so much free time, I spent significant amounts of time hanging out with my friends and family in St. Louis. Specifically, hanging out with Pete, Kaylen, Steve, Mary and their friends was hella fun. St. Louis is a fun city to visit and has many restaurants that I would eat at all the time if I lived there. The City Museum is an incredible place to visit, as is the Zoo and the Brewery. Yup. St. Louis roolz.

So yeah. That's my list. If I forgot anything that was awesome that I did this summer, let me know.

5 Movies

2009-08-11T23:00:00.003-05:00

I've seen 5 movies in the last 7 days. Not quite as impressive a feat as what my good friend Pete is trying to accomplish, but Pete is a far more ambitious, and let's face it, better, man than I.

Tuesday, August 4: "Five Hundred Days of Summer"

I was super excited to see this movie, mostly because of the leads; Mr. Jo Go Lev and Zooey "the Face Crusher" Deschanel. Ever since my first viewing of Brick (which was followed by what can only be described as the most epic running through an alleyway I've ever participated in), I've been securely nestled in the Joseph Gordon-Levitt camp. He is an incredibly gifted actor and can elevate the credibilty of a movie just by being in it (more on this later). Zooey Deschanel is pretty amazing too for the obvious reasons. Anyway, the movie... yeah. It was good. I imagine a lot of reviewers use the word quirky when describing this film, they would not be wrong. Long story short, I liked this movie, but not as much as I thought I would. It made me like Zooey Deschanel less, because her character is such a... I really don't know how to describe her. She's not evil. She's just sort of mean, but not on purpose, or not really maliciously. Anyway. Good flick.

Wednesday August 5: "Knocked Up"

People kept telling me to see this movie. They said it was Judd Apatow's best movie. That it was really good. After seeing it, I've decided that I don't really like Judd Apatow much. I really like Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd, so I enjoyed the movie, but I felt it was a case of putting funny people in front of a camera and hitting record.

Thursday August 6: "Funny People"

I was not bored during this movie because, again, Seth Rogen is a funny man, but this was a bloated, long, self-indulgent film that seemed more about name-dropping and showcasing the "dramatic range" of Adam Sandler than having a particularly interesting or entertaining story.

Sunday August 9: "GI JOE"

This movie was much better than it had any right to be. It was a really decent action movie. Do not believe the trailer. It is not about robot suits. It is about Jospeh Fucking-Gordon-Fucking-Levitt (-Fucking). That's right. Jo Go Lev is in GI Joe. You know who else is? Jonathan Price (that actually used to mean something at some point I'm sure, but now having J-Price in your movie is almost like having Jon Voight in your movie, but slightly better). Anyway, this movie is all about the bad guys. Sienna Miller is totally hot the entire time. Storm Shadow is totally a bad-ass the entire time and Christopher Eccleston is totally Scottish the entire time. They kind of steal this movie away from that Stockard Channing dude (who isn't that bad, even though he is totally a dude).

Tuesday August 11: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

This movie is still good. I've seen it three times. I really like watching this cast work. It is just a ridiculously talented group of people, and I'm super excited to see what Bill Nighy brings to the table in the next installment (Prediction: A whole heaping helping of kicking your ass in the face).

Potterwatch 2009

2009-08-04T01:13:00.002-05:00

I finished book 7 last night. It was the second time I had read the book and there were a lot of things that I had forgotten from my initial read, which happened 2 years ago, in about 14 hours.

I was pretty hard on Deathly Hallows after I first read it. I was pretty angry at the ending, and the way Mrs. Rowling handled a lot of the exposition. I'm still not thrilled by either, but I didn't hate the book as much the second time. One thing that bothered me greatly was how passively the plot moves for the first half of the book. Until about halfway through the book, we are subjected to a plodding, slow moving slog of a plot. Everything that happens to Harry and co. is because of something they happened to overhear, or something they guessed about and got lucky enough to get right. It sort of feels like they are treading water until they are, inexplicably, tossed a bone by the writer, at which point the plot sort of ambles forward, then halts again. This kind of writing bothers me. I dont' think it's necessarily bad, I just don't care for it. I like my protagonists to know what's going on, and if they don't know, then they at least should have the good sense to be entertainingly flustered. That being said, there are a lot of really cool scenes in Deathly Hallows. I just wish they were as tautly paced at the beginning of the book as at the end.

I understand why it has to move slow, mind you. Voldemort's regime change, to have any sense of legitimacy, has to move slowly. So that's why they spend weeks in Grimmauld Place and months in the tent. This gives some crediblity to a secret coup that happens within the magical world.

The info dump at the end of the book is going to be somewhat problematic when it comes to adapting this book into a movie. There are pretty much three straight chapters of exposition at the end of the book, all fairly interesting exposition, some of which we've been waiting for since Sorceror's Stone, but yeah... that's going to be tough. Also, Harry's speech to Voldemort at the end is pretty much bull shit. The revelation that Draco Malfoy was the true "owner" of the Deathstick, pretty much completely diffuses the tension of the scene by making it a Scooby Doo moment. Really all of the wand nonsense in Book 7 is a bit troublesome. I suppose that wandlore is a fairly niche branch of magic and it probably wouldn't be covered much in Harry's previous magical education, but still, for a concept that is so important to the events of book 7, and is apparently a somewhat basic concept of wands, it seems like poor planning to have never mentioned it until this book.

I've said it before, and I shall probably continue to say it every time I talk about this book, but the fact that Aberforth is first introduced in book 7, even though he's apparently been in Hogsmeade for the duration of Harry's education is beyond ridiculous. Surely someone would've known of Aberforth's connection to Dumbledore and at least mentioned it at some point during Harry's 6 previous years at Hogwarts.

Anyway, I liked Deathly Hallows much more this time than my first time, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what Steve Kloves does with the source material.

Scenes I'm most looking forward to:

1. Graveyard in Godric's Hallow (They better not be polyjuiced during this sequence. This could be a real tearjerker of a scene if we get to see the kids, and not some actors we have no connection to).

2. Xeno's House (The desperation and sadness in Xeno's betrayal of Harry could be another extremely potent scene if handled with the kind of subtlety and emotion that these filmmakers demonstrated so ably in HBP).

3. Gringotts Break-in (Goblins! Dragons! Action! Burning Treasure!)

4. Battle of Hogwarts (No explanation necessary)

5. Dobby's death (Probably the most heartless killing in an entire book or heartless killing).

Things they need to change from the book for the movie not to suck:

1. The fact that Harry and Co. are either polyjuiced or under the invisibility cloak in every scene.

2. Ron and Hermione's kiss. ( I am of the opinion that Ron should sack up, and put the snog on Hermione and not the other way round).

3. Wand nonsense.

4. Harry's ridiculous speech to Voldemort.

Anyway, I'll try to go easy on the Potter posts for a while. I'm pretty sure when Deathly Hallows part 2 comes out, I'll re-read the whole series and have all kinds of new insights (but more likely, I'll just make the same observations I've made previously and act like they're new).

Night Riding

2009-07-30T13:29:00.002-05:00

Bucket and I have been doing some night time bike riding lately. It's been fun. It kind of makes me want to do the moonlight ramble this year. I probably won't, but it would be fun.

I'm currently watching/listening to Kevin Smith's panel from Comic-Con. I may not enjoy his movies as much as I used to, but the man can work a crowd. He is a funny, funny man.

Ok, enough about things that aren't Harry Potter.

I'm reading Book 7 and am about halfway through it. I think the thing that I find so frustrating about this book is that there are a lot of good things in this book. There are a lot of really cool, really poignant scenes. Unfortunately, they are linked together by a lot of filler. One thing that occurred to me while reading is that the storyline of this book is the kind of thing that is usually covered in an entire series. The collection and destruction of four magical objects would usually take a multipart story cycle to accomplish. Anyway, I'm sure I'll have more to say about this when I'm done with the book.

Ending another post with again, again.

2009-07-28T01:25:00.003-05:00

It's 1:25 in the morning and Albus Dumbledore is still dead.

I finished book 6 a few minutes ago and here are some things I noticed:

Book six IS mostly fluff. There isn't a lot happening. It's a book about treading water. So all you bitches who is like "The movie skips all the cool parts of book 6," need to shut the s up. They hit all the high points of the book (and hit them with more skill and subtlety than the book does), and then some. Ok, the Death Eaters fighting the Order as they run out of Hogwarts would've been pretty cool to see, but we got a lot of that in the last movie, and we're going to get a lot of that in the next two movies, so if David Yates wants to have a movie end without a big wizard throwdown, than I'll allow it.

The thing that struck me the most while reading this, is how much I like Dumbledore as a character. He is a little too lenient with Harry, but he does hush him up occasionally, and anyone who puts a hush on Harry Potter is ok in my book (that book being "Harry Potter Needs to Shut his Fucking Mouth: The Sass-Enders). Dumbledore is a great character with so much depth and nuance. I was sort of sad when he died again. I don't like his line about feeling safe around Harry Potter, who is, let's face it, a pretty horrible Wizard. I think the end of the book seems a little rushed, but really the whole book is fairly quick; about halfway through the book they're in March. The funeral lasts about 4 pages, and is fairly lame and even though it would be entirely appropriate to mention it, no one mentions that Dumbledore's brother is the owner of the Hogs Head (the two things that bother me most about the Harry Potter Books are the fact that Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of the whatever whatever has a little brother that runs a bar next to the school that Albus is headmaster of, and no one mentions this until book 7, and the fact that Harry has no grandparents. This lack of grandparents thing might seem trivial and nitpicky, but when you do the math on how old everyone was when Harry's parents croaked, something doesn't add up. I'll probably do this math again when I reread book 7 and share it with you then, I'm sure you can't wait).

I'm really not looking forward to reading Book 7. Mostly because I remember it being a terribly unsatisfying book, but also because it means saying goodbye to this world, as poorly written as it sometimes is, all over again. I still don't know why I love these books so much. I think the English Boarding school aspect might have something to do with it. I could take or leave the magic, as it seems sort of trivial and inconsistent, as well as not really that important to the plot. Anyway, I'll let you know when I finish book 7.

Harry Potter, again.

2009-07-23T01:04:00.002-05:00

About 2 years ago, I read Harry Potter books 1,2,3,4,6 and 7. I read 7 because it had just came out and I read 6 so I would remember what happened right before book 7, then I read books 1-4 because I hadn't read them in a while. Now, because the 6th movie just came out and because it's summer (which is the season during which I read Harry Potter books, since I pretty much just keep living the same year of my life over and over again), I'm rereading books 5-7. I hadn't read 5 in a while, and for good reason. It is by far her worst book. For some reason, the first 200 or so pages seem incredibly familiar to me, as if I had read then dozens of times before. I'm not sure why this is, because I've probably only read book 5 four or five times. Anyway, book five is a slog until you get to about page 400 or something. Then it becomes interesting, sort of.

Most of the events of the book worth mentioning are handled much better in the film adaptation. I think this is because Steve Kloves realized that if he actually put the majority of the words JK Rowling put in the mouths of her teenagers on screen, the only people who would like these movies are the kinds of people who watch reruns of Full House and think they are watching the height of comedic writing. That being said, Rowling is capable of writing some transcendently funny bits of dialogue, but most of the time, her characters speak in mid 90's sitcom cliches (or chant and sing in large groups, which, as we all know, is typical teenager behavior).

Things I noticed upon rereading Book 5 (which I hadn't read since before Deathly Hallows came out mind you):

1. It is hinted at ever so slightly that Dumbledore's brother lives in Hogsmeade (the reference is made in passing and seems almost like a non sequiter).

2. Also hinted at: Harry's inexplicable love for Ginny Weasley. This is another reference that is buried under pages and pages of unrelated information, then all of a sudden Harry notices something about Ginny. Then completely ignores her for the rest of the book. (I seem to recall finding Ginny and Harry's relationship a bit forced, maybe when I reread book 6 it will seem more natural, but I doubt it).

3. Harry is still a complete jackass when it comes to Snape. After seeing his father torment Snape, and after Snape alerted the Order of the Phoenix to the trouble at the ministry, Harry still hates him, for no reason. At some point Harry even says (well the narrator tells us what Harry is thinking) that he will never ever forgive Snape for getting Sirius killed.

4. RETCON: Harry rides on the "horseless carraiges" at the end of book 4. He would've seen the thestrals then, as he had seen Cedric kick off a few days prior. Yet, when he sees them in book 5 he's totally like "What the shit is this shit? Dragon Horses? Cock that!".

5. Harry keeps talking about how Voldemort killed Cedric. The entire book he's like "Voldemort killed Cedric!" or "That reminds me of that one time when I was in a graveyard and VOLDEMORT KILLED CEDRIC!", but Voldemort didn't actually kill Cedric. Peter Pettigrew did. Granted he killed Cedric on Voldy's orders, but still, I think a disctinction should've been made.

6. Harry never blames himself enough for his Godfather's death. The reapprence of the two way mirror at the end of the book acts as a reminder of A. Harry Potter's need to act like a Hero at all times and B. JK Rowling inventing objects and plot devices and then forgetting about them until it's too late for characters to use them properly, then covering the slip up by having the character comment on the fact that they really could've used that item if only they would've remembered about it earlier, Oh well, how about those wands?

7. The lack of Slytherins in Dumbledore's Amry, and really the lack of any Slytherins with any redeeming qualities whatsoever just reinforce the important lesson that, some people are just evil and it's ok to judge people based on who they associate with. First impressions are almost always the most accurate.

8. The one character who actually calls Harry out on his douchebagginess is the portrait of Sirius's Great, Great, Grandfather. Of course we can't believe anything he says because he's a Slytherin, and they are all pig rapists and cow stabbers. So because he says Harry shouldn't be acting like such a douche, it means that Harry tottally should act like a douche. Fucking Slytherins. They should all be drowned in a sack. Every one of them.

So all and all, book five is probably the most frustrating read of all the Harry Potter books. It's long, tedious at times, and Harry is at his most angsty. Next stop, book six.

Watching Firefly Again

2009-07-04T22:40:00.002-05:00

Joss Whedon makes me angry. I don't know when this started, but for some reason whenever I watch/read something that Joss Whedon wrote, I'm just irritated beyond words. I think my problem is, and I'm just guessing, is that it seems like he writes scenes that look cool or are funny, but don't really make a lot of sense in the context of the reality of the show. For example, in the first episode of Firefly, there's a scene where The Prostitute is giving herself a sponge bath, which is sort of hot, I guess, then Shepherd Book knocks on her door, and though still half naked, The Prostitute tells whoever is knocking on the door to come on in. Why would she do this? Because it's cool to have half naked women in your TV show and it's funny and awkward to have religious figures exposed to half naked women. Of course this doesn't really make sense from a character standpoint, but it makes sense from a "I want people to think this show is awesome" standpoint. He does this kind of thing constantly. The entire episode of Jaynestown is like this. Also, he thinks he can write good music, but he can't, at least not in the context of the songs in Firefly.

Also, happy Fourth of July. Make sure you looks at some fireworks or Uncle Same won't come to your house at midnight and leave you some freedom in your favorite pair of pants.

Let's not make this awkward.

2009-06-26T23:34:00.002-05:00

Ok. I know it's been like three months since I posted anything, but you know what? I was busy. I'm not going to apologize for it, because frankly, I think I was spending a little too much time with you anyway. I think we needed the break. But I'm back, for now, so let's just move on and get with the blogging.

I did absolutely nothing useful this week (oh look it's Matt being hyperbolic again, how original {Oh look it's Matt being self-aware again, how new and refreshing}). I feel like if this week of my life never happened, the world would be exactly the same as it is as a result of this week happening. I didn't even get any good naps in this week. I did do some serious coughing, and a little bit of writing, but other than that, I was an entirely useless human being. I usually come to these sorts of revelations on Friday nights, when I need to go to bed early, but can't because I'm not tired because I know I haven't done anything to earn tiredness, which is what is happening right now.

Suggestions to make future weeks more productive:

1. Go to the rec center more
2. Eat at home more
3. Write more
4. Read more
5. Work more hours
6. Spend less time on the computer

Though these things might not seem to be productive in and of themselves, they will certainly make me feel better, which will in turn help me sleep better on Friday nights.

Cape Public Library is awesome, but there are a lot of very uncomfortable chairs there. Just so you know.

Hazardous

2009-03-20T02:30:00.003-05:00

After several failed attempts at making it the whole way through the past two days, I finally listened to Hazards of Love in its entirety today. You know how you feel when you read a really good book for the first time? There's a sense of accomplishment and finality coupled with the slight feeling of sadness that you'll never be able to experience that story for the first time ever again. That's how I felt after listening to Hazards of Love. Hazards will probably be remembered as the least accessible album in the Decemberists catalog (at least until they start doing noise rock covers of Motley Crue songs), but it is without a doubt their greatest sonical achievement to date. I'll admit, I have a tendency to fall in love with every new Decemberists album after I hear it once, then, after a month or two realize that Picaresque is still their best album, but there is something special about Hazards of Love.

The narrative of the record (that's right, this album has a narrative thread) is probably the most melodramtic tale ever featured in a Decemberists album. It's fairly complicated and, frankly, I'm not entirely sure what happens, but I do know this, everybody dies (well, maybe not the Queen, but I could've missed something).

The music is incredibly moving. Since it is a rock opera, there are really only about 10 distinct musical themes that are repeated and reprised over the course of the 17 tracks on the album, but the way they work together is extraordinary. There are no stand out singles on this album. Really there are no songs that would work outside the context of the album (The Rake song is probably the most likely candidate, but it's a tough sell). This is an album that demands to be heard in its entirety. This is an album that demands your attention.

Steve and Mary's Wedding; or Pete Wissinger Almost Ruins Everything

2009-03-14T23:26:00.005-05:00

Steve and Mary got married yesterday. The ceremony was small, intimate and very nice. The reception was tasteful and fun. All and all, it was almost a perfect wedding... except for one thing: Pete Wissinger. Whether or not it was a conscious decision, I will never know, but for some reason, Pete Wissinger seemed determined to ruin the magic of Steve and Mary's special day.

It all started with his suit, the coat of which, conspicuously did not match his vest. If that wasn't enough, Pete's coat continued to distract with the all buttons vs. one button fiasco, that raged up until the beginning of the ceremony. During the ceremony, Pete didn't cause too much of a problem, but not for want of trying. His constant standing next to Steve and beard having, was a desperate if not effective plea for attention, the audacity of which was matched only by his loud and vulgar slamming of the ring box during the presentation of the rings.

Having nearly ruined the magic of the wedding ceremony, one would think that Pete would be satisfied, but they would be thinking incorrectly. Pete's campaign to spoil what would otherwise be the happiest day of Steve and Mary's young life together was taken to the next level once the reception began. His "toast" was neither lengthy nor in verse form (unless you count blank, which I can safely say, I don't). Then, for the happy couple's first dance, Pete "couldn't get the sound system to work properly". Of course, Pete's selfish, petty behavior was topped off by his flagrant vest flaunting. Not only was his vest quite dapper, but it also had more buttons on it than Steve's entire ensemble for the evening, breaking the cardinal room of best man attire (that rule being: The best man should have fewer buttons on his person than the groom at all times {not just at the ceremony, but for the rest of their lives}). Of course, Steve took all of Pete's chicanery in stride, as he has for most of their lives together, and by the time I left the reception last night, the brothers were still on speaking terms.

In all seriousness though, it was a really great wedding. Also, in all seriousness, Pete Wissinger is kind of a dick.

Spaced and other things

2009-03-12T23:29:00.002-05:00

So I'm watching the second series of Spaced right now, and I've come to a some conclusions.

Conclusion one: It is no where nearly as good as the first series. This is mostly do to the fact that is slightly more derivative than the first series. It relies heavily on first season callbacks and movie parodies (really just in the first and third episodes).

Conclusion two: At the age of 27, Edgar Wright had more talent as a director than most other directors do after an entire career in "the biz".

Conclusion three: Nick Frost is an incredibly gifted actor. Not that the rest of the cast isn't, but Spaced is the first thing he acted in, and he's brilliant.

Conclusion four: Although it isn't as good as the first series, Episode 5, the "Gunfight" episode is one of the best half hours of television ever produced (probably in the top ten).

Enough about Spaced. What did I do this week? I can't really remember, but there was a lot of editing involved. I spent a lot of time in Grauel this week. Next week is Spring Break. Woot? I guess. More importantly, next week is both Pancake Day and St. Patrick's Day. Word.

STEVE WISSINGER IS GETTING MARRIED TOMORROW! This blows my mind. Well not really. I think Steve is going to be good at being married.

Pain

2009-03-09T10:16:00.002-05:00

Over the past week or so, I have collected a set of injuries that, for some reason, are localized to the left side of my body. My left arm hurts when I move it. My left leg hurts when I'm not standing, and my lower back, on the left side, hurts pretty much all the time. This makes sleeping and sitting pretty uncomfortable, but while walking around, running, carrying things (basically doing things work-related) I feel just fine.

I was inspired to start listening to Beulah again recently. I'd pretty much only heard their album "The Coast is Never Clear", until this Beulah kick started. After listening to their other stuff though, I'm pretty sure "The Coast is Never Clear" is their best album.

Watchmen was kind of boring. I don't think it was the movie's fault. The book is kind of boring. And now I'm going to take some Ibuprofen, then go to class then edit for a few hours. Yay(ish).

Sleep and other things (but mostly sleep)

2009-02-27T10:43:00.002-06:00

I went to sleep around 10:30 last night. I didn't really want to, but I had nothing else to do. I woke up inexplicably and completely at 2:30 am and could not go back to sleep. So, I spent the next 3ish hours reading and working on a script. I finally fell asleep again at about 5:30, and woke up about five hours later. Why am I telling you all this? Because I'm boring, and have nothing to say. But also as a warning. Don't go to sleep before 11pm. Ever.

Have I mentioned how much I hate my classes this semester? Because I do hate them. Very much. And if I don't pass all of them, I don't graduate. Yay!

Bands that I like that have or will be putting out an album this year:

Franz Ferdinand (It's ok, no where near as good as their two previous efforts)
Neko Case (I listened to some of it streaming from NPR. Nothing jumped out at me, but that's not surprising.)
The Decemberists
Bishop Allen
Wilco
Boy Least Likely To
Arcade Fire (I think they're putting out something. It might just be a soundtrack to a movie or something)
Guster (Guster kind of counts as a band I like)
Cake

That's all I can think of. I'm a gonna go get ready for that class I hate going to. This is officially my worst post ever. You're welcome.

Lessons.

2009-02-24T22:42:00.002-06:00

Ok, so let's say you've had a long, bad day. Let's say more went wrong than right with your day, and the stuff that went wrong went really wrong and you've decided to you've earned yourself a consolatory vanilla milkshake. So you go to Burger King and you notice that their large milk shake, which is a whopping 32 ounces of frozen dairy and milk product, is a mere $2.39. A pittance, a trifle, pocket change. So you decided to order the milkshake and you begin drinking it. When you first begin, you are really enjoying this milkshake. It's smooth and creamy, tastes like vanilla ice cream and smiles. Then as the drinking continues, you realize, that although the milkshake is good it doesn't seem to end. No matter how much you drink, there just seems to be more milkshake waiting for you in the cup. Sure, this seems like a wonderful thing, but after about 16 ounces of milkshake, you begin to think, maybe this is more milkshake than you can handle, but then you think of what happens if you can't finish it. You can't save a milkshake. Once it's shaken, it can't be reshook. If you try to freeze it, it just becomes a frozen block of vanilla flavored ice milk. If you throw it away you'll have essentially wasted $2.39. Two hundred and thirty-nine American cents! Why for that kind of money you could buy all kinds of things. Like two packs of gum, or 10 really crappy pens or 1 pretty decent one, or a large vanilla milk shake from Burger King. Not finishing this milk shake is not an option. There is only one course of action. You must drink this milk shake. So you down another few gulps, and another few, and some more until there is only one swallow left. When that final swallow goes down, it does not feel good. As it slides down your esophagus (high fiving all the bits of milk shake still making their way to your stomach along the way) you begin to feel sluggish and kind of nauseous. This feeling will not pass. Get used to it. So long story short, don't do what I just did.

Jai Ho!

2009-02-23T10:38:00.002-06:00

Remember what I said last semester when I signed up for advanced video production about how I was afraid it would take up all my time and I wouldn't have time to get practicum stuff done? You probably don't remember that, because I didn't actually tell you, but I told myself, and some other people. Then Jones was like "You should totally take the class" and then I was like "You said the same thing about After Effects" and he was like "Yes I did. Mu ha ha ha ha ha." So on Jones's advice and some decision making based on my recent lameness, I signed up for the class, and it is completely taking up a lot of my time.

I'm supposed to be the tech crew for a one woman show that's being performed at SEMO on Tuesday. I will be doing the work of three people, and doing it pretty badly. My plan is to spend as much of the next 30 hours or so in the theater practicing cues and becoming some sort of lighting ninja. Fortunately, Droid is coming up to school tonight to help me do some focusing and programming of light boards, so maybe I'll just steal all of his magical gaffer powers. Wish me luck. Seriously (actually, if you are granted some wishes, and you didn't wish for me to be lucky while running lights and sound for this performance, I would totally not hold it against you).

The soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire is my favorite album of the year so far (even though, it probably came out last year). Now I have to figure out what pants I'm going to wear today (probably the toughest decision I'll make all day).

Free Time.

2009-02-19T21:06:00.002-06:00

It really only takes about 3 days in a row of me being really busy to get used to the idea of not having free time. So far, this is the only night this week I haven't been up at school till 9pm or later. I'm a little unsure of what to do with myself. I would go up to the REC center, but I can't find my ID so that's out. I could play video games, but that seems kind of lame. The part of me that thinks everything happens for a reason is telling me that I'm supposed to stay home and study, but that part of me is a total chump. I suppose I could read Scott Pilgrim again.

Scott Pilgrim Volume 3 later...

Ok. That's done. I guess I'll work on some scripts.

The Return of Captain Drowsy

2009-02-18T09:48:00.003-06:00

I don't know if I mentioned this last week (nope, I didn't) I got a tremendous amount of sleep almost every day last week. We're talking like 9+ hours everyday. Due to various factors beyond my control, this week is not shaping out to be much like that. But, I'm more or less ok with that.

Uh-oh. Here comes a list.

Things I need to to do this week:
1. Edit River Tales piece
2. Study for test that is on Friday that I will completely fail if I don't study for
3. Meet with Jones
4. Meet with Brother David
5. Nap

To celebrate my reading of Scott Pilgrim 5, here's my bit about Scott Pilgrim (spoiler free!):

I hate Scott Pilgrim. I hate Scott Pilgrim because I am not Scott Pilgrim. I want to be Scott Pilgrim. If I knew Scott Pilgrim, I would want to punch him in his stupid face because he would be so much cooler than me. Not only would be cooler than me, he would in no way rub his coolness in my face or think he was better than me, because he would have no idea how cool he is. Also, I heart Kim Pines.

Announcements and Pronouncements

2009-02-16T02:12:00.002-06:00

For those of you just getting here, I've been sort of a whiny, emo douchebag for the past couple of months. Probably not in any perceptible way, at least I hope not, but it's definitely informed a lot of my decisions and some of my writing. Anyway, after a lengthy discussion with my life coach/cheif comic book adviser, Pete Wissinger, I've decided to stop being such an idiot. Now I know you've heard this kind of thing before, but I'm for realsies this time. After laying it all out for another human being, I've been granted all kinds of perspective that I didn't have before. Well maybe I did have it, but I was choosing to ignore it. Either way, I see the situation with much more clarity than I once did, and as such my new, anti-douchebag position is stronger and more unasailable than ever before. As such, I'm lifting the veil (somewhat) as to what I was being all 13 year old girl about for the last few months (although I still feel completely lamepants for ever letting it get to this point).

Ladies and gentlemen (but, unless I'm greatly misinformed about the demographics of my readership, really just gentlemen), for the past few months I've been nursing a rather hopeless crush (except, I didn't really think it was that hopeless at the time, which is why it has lingered so). So there you have it folks. Sorry to dissapoint those of you that thought it was some sort of terminal disease. It was a girl the whole time. How incredibly dissapointing.

In other, equally lame, but a lot more normal news; I'm tired and am going to sleep.

Mr. Excitement.

2009-02-14T22:24:00.002-06:00

Here are some things I'm pretty excited about.

1. Making my movie (which will start happening in the next couple of weeks or so, I swear).
2. The new Decemberists Album/Tour
3. The new Neko Case Album (I mean, look at the cover art!)
4. The new Bishop Allen Album (they're playing in Memphis in a couple of weeks, I probably won't go, but I'll think about going)
5. The new Scott Pilgrim Book (Hurry Matthew! Read quickly!)
6. The Watchmen Movie (I think it might not suck).
7. Going to Las Vegas (sort of... not really... although I am excited about seeing Joe out there)
8. Working on Notre Dame's promotional video

Here are some things that I'm not very excited about.

1. My Remedial Writing For English Majors Class (which is still not what the class is called, but it's still what it feels like)
2. Graduating (I know, I know, you're tired of hearing about this, but I already started the list, and totally fits on it, so deal)
3. Working on Notre Dame's promotional video ("But wait! You just said you were excited about it!? You are such a hypocrite!" Well, yes. I am a hypocrite, but the reason I'm not looking forward to it, is the massive amount of post production that is going to have to go into it. I like shooting. I like interviewing and lugging equipment around. I do not like editing so much. Well I like some editing, but not the kind of editing that's going to have to go into this piece. It's going to be monumental.)

That is all!

I believe in a thing called love, or at least I believe that The Darkness believes in a thing called love.

2009-02-09T23:03:00.002-06:00

Why is The Darkness not represented in the game Rock Band? How did this horrible oversight happen? Rock Band is a game that consists of people pretending to be rock stars. The Darkness made a career (well really more of a summer job) of pretending to be rock stars (of course they eventually became rock stars in the process, but still). It seems like a perfect fit.

Notre Dame's trivia night went ok. I think they'll continue to let me write questions for it, which is good, I suppose.

School is school. Matthew and I are in the same writing group for Remedial Writing for Writing Majors and Minors, which is cool (Matthew being in my group, not the class. The class in kind of lame so far, and it's not really called remedial writing, but that's what it feels like sometimes). I like his stuff, and I don't really get to read a lot of it (although generally speaking, I prefer his fiction to his essays, and since this is an essay class that's mostly what I'll be reading, but whatevs, I'm not picky). Advanced video is going to be weird, for a number of reasons, and American Cultural Landscapes is really boring, but at the same time kind of interesting. It's just hard to pay attention in that class. So there you have it. My summary of my classes. A full four weeks late. Enjoy.

For those of you that are Pete Wissinger, where the hell is the new Decemberists album?

Blerg.

2009-02-06T00:35:00.002-06:00

Do you ever get the feeling that you suck at everything and will be a complete failure for the rest of your life, and you will never do anything significant and no one really likes you, but just puts up with your inane ramblings because it's easier than telling you to just shut the hell up? Yeah... me neither. But wouldn't it suck if you did feel that way and you felt like you weren't creative or funny, and couldn't be if you tried, and the more you did try to be creative and funny the more you realized that you're just an uncreative, uninteresting bore that's just rehashing other people's good ideas in ways that are far less interesting than the original versions. That would totally suck and be totally cliche to feel like that. Especially around this time of year, which I seem to recall, is a time of year when pretty much every human is depressed. Maybe someday I'll blog about why I've been so emo lately. But frankly, I don't think the internet is ready for something so lame.

In other news (or newsb, as I would call it if I ended every word with a "B") I finally got trivia night done for the most part. Questions, Answer Sheets, Rules, everything. Everything but the answer keys, and I can do those on saturday. Yay for me. It is my opinion that having one person write an entire trvia night by his or herself is a bad idea (at least if that person is me). It is true that I know a lot of things about a lot of things, but I think if other people were involved in the writing of the questions there would be much greater variety of things that would be triviaed about. Granted, I didn't write all of these questions by myself. Ben wrote four or five of them and was a valuable sounding board for my ideas, but for the most part it's all me and I'm just not sure if there is enough variety to keep people entertained. I guess we'll find out Saturday.

I'm going to sleep now because that is what I do.

Update Go!

2009-02-04T23:36:00.002-06:00

School started 2 weeks ago. I have accomplished very little and feel like I'm 3 weeks behind. I mostly blame the snow that we had last week that completely s'ed everything up. I haven't done anything with my practicum yet. Yikes.

The clutch on the Toyota has more or less ceased to work. I'm trying to decide whether or not it would be worth putting money into fixing that car. My gut says no, but my gut is also very hungry. We'll watch this one closely. So far, I've been able to get by without a car for my exclusive use pretty well.

I finished writing trivia night 2009 tonight, about 10 minutes ago. woo. All I have left is about 2 hours of formatting the questions correctly and making up answer sheets! Yippee.

I have recently purchased the following movies: The Godfather, The Godfather Part 2, the Godfather Part 3, The Untouchables.

I have watched all the Godfather movies (again) and they conveniently came out in order from best to worst, so not much thought has to go into ranking them. The first is decidedly the best one (I will entertain dissenters, but I feel like they would have to bring a pretty substantial argument to the table, to convince me that The Godfather isn't the best movie ever made). The second one is very good and the third one is bad. It's not as much bad as it is incredibly boring, which the first two are markedly not. Also, I don't really want to beat a dead horse here, but Sofia Coppola's performance brings everyone else down in Godfather 3.

What else... what else... Assassin's Creed = Yay!

Second Thoughts

2009-01-22T22:10:00.002-06:00

So I was bored today (how tired are you of hearing me say this?). I spent most of the day at home, which is something I don't really like doing, if I can avoid it. It's not that I don't like my house, but usually, if I'm here, it means I'm not being productive and apparently, productive is something I don't like not being. Anyway, to alleviate my boredom I went to participate in some good old fashioned capitalism (which is what I usually do in these sorts of situations), but instead of buying something ridiculous (like an X-box 360), I bought a couple of movies that I have enjoyed for a very long time, but have never owned. I bought The 13th Warrior and Grosse Point Blank, the latter of which I'm currently watching. Watching Grosse Point Blank has made me realize a couple of things: 1. Grosse Point Blank is probably my number 5 favorite movie of all time. It is such a great movie. 2. The script I was going to use for my practicum project is eerily similar to Grosse Point Blank. Not so much storywise (although, it kind of is that too), but as far as structure. It has me a bit concerned. I don't want to just make an inferior version of Grosse Point Blank. I'm thinking about writing something new. I have no idea what I'd write.

Small Reviews

2009-01-18T22:05:00.002-06:00

Bioshock: Fun without being particularly hard

Star Wars TFU: Hard without being particularly fun (did you see what I did there, I'm so clever!)

Newest Episode of 30 Rock: Why isn't 30 Rock funny this season? Someone explain what's happening?

Newest Episode of The Office: The best parts of this season are the parts where Jim, Dwight and Michael are all in a room by themselves. Everything else is sort of the suck.

Ghost Town: Hilarious. Charming. Ricky Gervais for the win.

My New Pants: Delightful.

My cat: Sleepy.

My dog: Rambunctious.

Roger Moore's Autobiography: Incredibly interesting (and he isn't even James Bond yet!).

Me: More tired than I have any right to be, but other than that an ok human being every once in a while.

Me and DnD

2009-01-12T12:38:00.002-06:00

So here's the thing. I think DnD is ok. It's a fairly well constructed game, and if I were to play a PnP RPG it would be DnD (acronyms, LOL!), but the thing is, I don't think I really like PnP RPG's. They're kind of like video games, but they're more time consuming and less satisfying, plus they're just so much to remeber. That being said, I enjoy playing DnD with my friends, but I would never play it outside of that group of people. We have fun playing DnD because we have fun playing games and we don't take it too seriously.

In other news, I'm working my first Monday at Wal-mart since the remodel. I'll let you know how that goes.

In Matt get's stuff done news I e-mailed all of the people I needed to e-mail concerning classes for next week, so I think that counts as something. Still need to apply for graduation.

Untitled 2

2009-01-10T20:51:00.002-06:00

It's about 9 pm on Saturday night and I'm already in my jammies. You can pretend you are not jealous, but you would only be lying to yourself.

This week I've been BORED OUT OF MY MIND. Being bored is pretty much all I've been doing since last Sunday. Hopefully this week will be more interesting (note: It won't), but at least school starts a week from Tuesday. In case you haven't picked up on it, I can't wait for school to start again.

I've been playing a lot of Bioshock. It's very very good. Almost Half-Life 2 good, but not quite.

I would like to point out that the reason this post is so boring is because I've been up since 6 am and didn't get a lot of sleep last night so my brain isn't working too well. It's all like "Hey Matt, let's go to sleep", and I'm all like "Buttons". So... yeah.

I thought the major was a lady suffragette. JET!

2009-01-04T22:55:00.004-06:00

How long have I been saying, "I should really listen to some Wings."? A really long time. I finally got a hold of The album Band on the Run, the first two tracks of which are a pretty potent combination (the title track and Jet!). The bad news is that version I downloaded is a vinyl rip and consists of one 41 minute track. Quel Dommage! Even though I think he's probably kind of a jerk, Paul is still my favorite Beatle.

Do not read the following paragraph, unless you want to be annoyed at Matt Essner's cloying for attention...

So you know that thing I alluded to in my first couple of posts back from my hiatus? The thing that I was being "really stupid" about? Well I'm still more or less being really stupid about it, but I've decided that I'm done with it for a while, so no longer will you have to suffer through vague description of vague concepts that may or may not be the cause of certain vague feelings. I know this whole paragraph seems like a ploy to illicit some curiosity or attention or something like that, but I assure you it's not. It's mostly a reminder for myself. In fact, let me go ahead and put a disclaimer before this paragraph to keep people that aren't me away (of course, it'll look like I typed that first because it'll come before this paragraph sequentially, but still). I don't know why I'm even bothering to be so mysterious about this. I know what I'm talking about, and the people that read this blog that aren't me, probably know me well enough to know that I'm talking (or, more accurately, not talking) about the one subject that I'm ever reticent to discuss with people that aren't myself. Anyway, the point is I've decided there's nothing I can do about it and thinking about it all the time certainly isn't helping. So yeah. No more thinking about it.

End of self-indulgence.

I have an X-Box 360 now. I got it about a week ago. I'm sorry I didn't bring it up earlier, but I haven't really played it much. Before tonight, if I didn't count New Years, I've probably spent about 2 hours on the console. Including New Years and today, probably 6 hours. As with most toys, before I got an X-Box, I thought I would use it all the time, but now that I have one, I'm glad I have it, but there's other stuff I'd rather do than play X-Box. I'm sure all of this will change when I get my hands on a copy of Dynasty Warriors 6 or some other such mindless hack and slash.

DnD tomorrow! Huzzah!

Expectations.

2009-01-01T00:43:00.002-06:00

This post may or may not be improved by listening to the Belle and Sebastian song that shares a title with the title of this post.

It's 2009, in case you hadn't noticed. The next 5 months might be the busiest/most important of my life to date, and here is a list, conveniently itemized and number for ease of reading, of all the things I have to do before May 18, 2009.

1. Finish writing Notre Dame's trivia night.
2. Apply for a practicum.
3. Apply for graduation.
4. Sign up for CL004.
(actually these first four need to be done before Jan 20)
5. Cast, shoot and edit my practicum short film (this one needs to be done by April 26 and it's without a doubt the most ambitious project I've ever done).
6. Pass all of my classes this semester with a C or better.
7. Look for and find some sort of job for after graduation.
8. Attend Steve and Mary's wedding (this one should be pretty fun, but I do need to request off work for it though).
9. Figure out what I'm going to do with the rest of my life.
10. Finish my screenplay(this one is for extra credit).
11. Work on one of two secret mystery projects that have to be done before graduation.

I've toyed around with the idea of quitting my job for the semester so I'll have more time to get stuff done, but I think we all know I would probably just squander said free time by playing x-box or hanging around on facebook. But I'll probably only be able to work 2 days a week anyway because of how jacked up my class schedule is.

In other movie related news, I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button today. If you're planning on watching it, save yourself some time and just watch Big Fish. You'll have a much better time, and you won't have to stare at Cate Blanchett for 3 hours (am I only one that finds her somewhat off-putting?).

Anyway, I'm going to pretend to go to bed, but I'm really just going to waste time on facebook.

T-Shirts and Broomsticks

2008-12-28T10:11:00.002-06:00

I have approximately 50 or so t-shirts. I only wear about 15 on a regular basis, this means I have a surplus of about 35 t-shirts. I want to get rid of the extras, but I kind of feel like there are more than enough T-shirts in circulation, so I don't really think I could give them away. For some reason I have this incredible compulsion to burn them. Is this an acceptable method of disposing of unwanted t-shirts? I think it is, but I'm willing to debate the matter.

I've been stuck on the same boss in Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia for approximately 2 months. It is the hardest boss in the game (so far) and I just don't feel like grinding up a couple of levels is going to give me the edge I need to beat it (also, grinding in Castlevania is fairly tedious, as far as grinding goes). So I suppose I'm done playing that game. Wait, an idea just came to me. I bet Jonathan could beat that boss. He's kind of a ninja. Maybe I'll let him try it. Good talk.

Cultist Behavior (or Behaviour, if you prefer)

2008-12-26T13:43:00.002-06:00

So this morning, at about 9:45, I joined Facebook. I've resisted joining any social network for as long as I could (except for that one time I joined Myspace to talk to Marcus Legrand), but I realized with my impending graduation and graduation of some my friends this semester, I needed some means of keeping in contact with people I won't ever see again. So there you have it. I've sold out.

In other news, Christmas is over. Who knew? I got Mermaid Avenue volumes 1 and 2. I've become completely enamored with the song Hoodoo Voodoo by Wilco.

Twas the night before the night before a week before New Year's Day...

2008-12-23T20:48:00.002-06:00

So I'm still in my end of the semester funk (not that that really means anything. Me depressed is really just like regular me, only a little more sleepy and slightly more introverted). I think I've figured out why this pseudo depression has lingered as much as it has, but I'm not going to go into it, because it's pretty stupid. If the cause is what I think it is (which it is, obviously) than it's probably not going to go away for a while. Anyway it's not really that big of a deal.

I'm finally done Christmas shopping! I finished at like 3pm this afternoon, and it feels good to be done. I spent a lot more money this year than I have in the past and I'm afraid to look at my bank account, so I probably won't until I get another paycheck or two in there.

In music I'm not really that impressed by news, I listened to that Fleet Foxes album everyone has been ranting and raving about and frankly, I'm not that impressed. It's the kind of music I would put on to have in the background while I'm cleaning my room (which happens to be exactly how I finally ended up listening to the album). The lead singer still sounds exactly like Jim James from My Morning Jacket. Also, I'm listening to Wolf Parade's newest album at the moment. It's not that good either. The best album I've heard all year is Vampire Weekend. I don't care what anyone says, that album is gold.

End of the Semester Blues

2008-12-21T00:29:00.002-06:00

Today was the last day of the busiest and best semester of my college life. I worked harder and better, on more things than I have ever done in my entire life. I started the semester with two jobs and fifteen hours worth of classes. I ended it with one job and still fifteen hours, but it was probably the best fifteen hours of classes I've ever taken.

This semester I wrote three really good short stories, three fairly good three minute short films, one really good (if I do say so myself) fifteen minute short, 37 pages of a feature film screenplay, twelve boring, but well written essays about my musical taste. I made two documentaries that I'm really proud of, and one that I'm sort of proud of even though it is terrible, one short film that is the best thing I've ever shot/directed/edited, I acted decently in a really good short film, I learned how to use After Effects (sort of), I submitted a screenplay to a writing competition, a short story to a literary magazine and I read that same short story at a public literary reading (albeit to a crowd of about 12 people, but still, a big step for me). Most importantly, this semester I made some friends.

The end of this semester means the end of what was, without a doubt, the most productive four months of my life. It also means the end of my film classes, and the end of my classes with Jones, who is the best teacher I've ever had on a lot of levels. It's the end of working with Jim, Katie, David and Brandon (who graduated), with Nate and Joe (unless they're taking Adv Video, which I think they are not) and it's probably the last time I'll see my friend Hao (who graduated and is moving back home to China). Hao's been in every film class I've ever taken and she was always a joy to be in class with. She was fun to work with, she was a really good filmmaker and she was a genuinely really sweet person. She was in my first real movie. She had to lay on ground for an hour or so, pretending to be asleep in the middle of November. She never complained. She was very patient and always kept her sense of humor. I'm sad to see her go.

Of course the biggest reason I'm sad to see the end of this semester is because it means in five months, I'll (hopefully) be done with college. In five months I'll be saying goodbye to even more friends. I'll be looking for (or going to) a real job, where I don't have Matt Shead or Jeanie around to talk to or fix my problems. I won't have the convienent excuse of class to see my friends all the time. I'll have to become a grown-up (or partially a grown-up, at least). The next five months are probably going to be just as busy as the previous four and a lot scarier, and I'm not sure I'm up for it.

At least there's Christmas coming up to take my mind of those kind of things. Anyway, I need some sleep.

Hiatus

2008-11-01T23:25:00.002-05:00

So did October happen already? Where have I been? What have I been doing?
I'll tell you.

Not much really. I've been functioning at about 65% of normal awesomeness levels since the middle of September, and I'm not really sure why. I have a lot of shit to get done before the end of the semester and I just don't feel like doing it. I have to finish the screenplay for my short film (the second draft anyway), I need to do my multimodal project for advanced comp, I need to work on my writing journal for Advanced Creative Writing, as well as the revisions for the end of semester portfolio. I need to be keeping up to date with my after effects lessons, I need to figure out what I'm doing my discover Cape project on. I really don't know where my time goes. I certainly don't have anything to show for it.

So starting this tomorrow, I'm going to buckle down and spend at least an hour every night working on one of my many ridiculously huge projects that is due by the end of the semester.
Also, at least one day this week I vow not to go out to eat at all.

In other news, the last two episodes of the Office haven't pissed me off that much. Ok, that's not entirely true. I was pissed off a couple of times with Thursday night's episode. My newest thing to hate about the Office is the cold open, which for those of you who don't listen to DVD commentaries is the two minute or so segment before the title of a show. The cold open is usually a bit not related to the rest of the episode, it's usually a stand alone piece.

Anyway the reason I hate the cold open on the office is because it accentuates the jokes before plot strategy of the American Office. The show is 22 minutes long (21 after the theme song), and they spend 2 or more minutes setting up and executing a joke (or a series of jokes) that serve no purpose to the narrative thread of the episode. I don't know why this bothers me, because the "drama" of the show has been pretty lame this season (except the Dwight v. Andy stuff that's been going on). One of the reaons I liked the original series, and the first couple of seasons of the American show, is because it was a comedy, but it was a comedy with realistic characters with realistic problems. It sounds cliche, but I liked it because it had heart.

The conflicts this season (the multi-episode, seasonal conflicts) have been pretty lame. Pam moved to another city and has fun with her new friends, while Jim stays at work. Is that a realistic conflict? Yes. Is it being presented in an overly dramatic way? Yes.

I'm getting off topic. Why I am pissed about Thursday night's episode: Their cold open was Halloween. Their Halloween episode was a two minute bit about three people in the office dressing up as the joker. It was a great joke. A great premise for an episode, and they spent two minutes on it. I'm mostly irritated by this because I love Halloween and I wish more shows would devote entire episodes to it. Every show has a Christmas episode every year. But Halloween always gets the shaft. Also, if that really is the end of the Michael/Holly story arch I will be much angried.

God, I talk about the Office a lot.

30 Rock is the bes show on television. Why aren't you watching it?

A few weeks later...

2008-09-17T00:26:00.002-05:00

I'm watching Jimmy Kimmel Live right now. I don't know why. So there's this band on there called Buck Cherry. They are incredibly terrible. That is all.

I'm in a creative writing class this semester, it's essentially a short story writing class and I got my first short story back from being work shopped this week. Most people were fairly complimentary with their comments. Although one person wrote "Not really sure what the point was... Okay I guess". They also didn't sign their name. It was incredible. Someone had the exact same opinion of my short story as I did, and they didn't sign their name.

In other news I'm tired, what else is new. I'll try to blog more later.

End of Summer Postravaganza!

2008-08-24T22:34:00.002-05:00

Well folks, here it is: the Sunday night before the first day of school. I think it's going to be a good semester, but before we talk about the future, let's talk about the past, ie what I did this summer. And since this is the internet, my reminiscing will take the form of lists!

Ok list 1:

You may remember this from my post from May 11 (probably not though). It's my list of things I wanted to accomplish this sumer. For those who don't remember I'll recap.

Goals for the summer:
1. Get another job (we've seen this one before)
2. Save money to pay for school in the fall (this one is more a corollary part 1)
3. Get a DVD player
4. Become a better guitar player (we've seen this one too!)
5. Run or Bike everyday or almost everyday
6. Eat better.
7. Sleep more.
8. Read books.
9. Punctuate more consistently

Ok, let's see how I did.
1. Check
2. Check (we'll see about this one)
3. Check (Yay birthday!)
4. Not really
5. Sort of. I did pretty well until I got the pesky second job. But I still went at least once a week.
6. No. Not at all. Lots of fast food. Bad Matt.
7. Nope. 2 jobs = less sleep.
8. I did read a few books. Two of the Otori books, Michael Ian Black's "My Custom Van", and one of Bruce Alexander's Sir John Fielding mysteries.
9. Yes... and no,

So not too bad on the goals. I'm satisfied. Ok, next list.

Favorite Things of this summer (in no particular order);

1. Starting and continuing Food Night at Droid's (Pizza night 1 was a flop but it's been great since then)
2. Writing a screenplay (sort of)
3. Riding part of The Tunnel Hill Trail with my dad
4. Spaced DVD's
5. Stella DVD's
6. Watching all of Wes Anderson's movies in successive weeks.
7. Getting a better job

Least Favorite things of the summer:

Obviously losing Buster was the worst thing that happened to me this summer. He was my first dog, and I miss him. That being said here's some other stuff that wasn't nearly as unpleasant as the death of my dog.

1. Summer Comedies. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was the best comedy I've seen all year in theaters. Every other comedy was just not that funny.
2. No concerts. There was once concert I wanted to see this summer, (Raconteurs) but I ended up not going.

That's all I can think of really. So I was going to quite Kohl's today, but I didn't really. I told them I couldn't do adset anymore, and I told them I could only work three days a week. I told them if they could use me those three days then I'll work those three days. The ball's in their court. There were several reasons that I didn't outright quit Kohl's the most important being that I like having money. I'll be working about 20 hours a week at Wal-mart and it would be nice to have a bit more money floating my way.

So that's all for now. I'll probably post about how much I hate/love my classes sometime later this week.

Better than Wall-E.

2008-08-15T22:51:00.002-05:00

That's my review of Clone Wars, which is not a bad movie at all. Wall-E on the other hand... don't get me started on that piece of excrement (I have never, nor will I ever see Wall-E). Clone Wars wasn't perfect, the dialogue wasn't great, but the action was good and the plot wasn't terrible. Anakin is a completely different character than he is in either of the movies, which is ok with me, because I'll sacrifice continuity for not having a terrible, terrible performance any day of the week. My biggest problem with the movie was the overabundance with nicknames. I noticed that nicknames are a device used by writers to demonstrate characters familiarity with one another. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't work in Clone Wars. The little girl jedi appears onscreen and within 2 minutes she's already assigning people nicknames. Bad, unoriginal nicknames (Anakin, her Jedi master, whom she is supposed to obey implicitly and respect totally, becomes "Sky Guy").

On the plus side there are some actually funny moments in the movie, not a lot, but I did laugh out loud a couple of times. Also on the plus side is a character named Ziro the Hutt. I don't really want to say too much about him, but he's pretty awesome. Here's how I imagine the genesis of his character came about:

Clone Wars Writer1: I bet you can't make a character gayer then C-3PO.
Clone Wars Writer 2: Watch me.

Anyway... it's a decent film and it gives me hope that the TV show will be tolerable... they should let me write it.

In other news: There is no other news. All I do is sleep, eat and work. I'm going to do one of those things right now (hint: it's something I do with my eyes closed and not while I'm awake).

The Geekiest thing I've ever said

2008-08-03T22:48:00.002-05:00

Brad Bohannon called me Friday afternoon. He had an extra ticket to the Cardinal's game and wanted to know if I wanted to go with him. I told him that I couldn't because I was DMing a session of Dungeons and Dragons that night. If Joe knew about this and was dead, he would be rolling around in his grave.

Speaking of DND *here begins the DnD rant, you've been warned*

It went pretty well I think. It took a little less than three hours, and we covered everything I had planned, storywise at least. The combat didn't really go as well as I would have liked. Especially the second encounter, when Jonathan destroyed pretty much all of the opponents in one attack. But I determined that I don't really like running combat. It's a lot to remember and a lot to coordinate. I do very much like the non-combat aspects of DMing though.

I think the biggest difference between me and Matthew when it comes to DMing is that I tend to see the role as more of a narrator, moving the plot forward and directing the action, and Matthew sees the role as more as a fascilitator ( I don't think that's how that word is spelled), he sort of allows us to do whatever we want and gives us hints every once in a while. Maybe as I get a little more experienced as a DM, I'll feel more comfortable letting the characters wander for a bit, but for this session I had a very clear idea of what needed to get accomplished and I wanted to make sure everything that needed to happen for the story happened. I'm pretty excited about what's in store for the next few sessions, it should be fun. I just need to get better at running combat.

*End DnD Rant*

News Shorts:

1. I'm thinking about re-reading book 7 (Harry Potter). I never re-read book 5 last summer when I was re-reading the whole series, I've tried to pick it up this summer, but it hasn't took. Anyway, that's something I'm considering.

2. The Bank Job is a pretty decent movie. The actual bank robbery part of the movie wasn't very good but the subsequent parts were pretty decent.

3. I read the Wanted graphic novel. I don't know what the movie was about, but I don't think it was about what the comic was about. I still kind of want to see it though.

4. Walmart is still pretty fun. I think we're going to be in the warehouse all the time from now on, which kind of blows because:
a. The warehouse isn't as fun as working at the store because
i. there are only the four of us there (as opposed to the 20 of us that work at the store)
ii. the work at the warehouse is kind of tedious
iii. the warehouse isn't airconditioned (which isn't a big deal for me because I'm a solja)
b. I don't get to hang out with Spants on my breaks
Working at the warehouse is kind of ok because
a. I can ride my bike to work (yeah right)
b. I can go home for lunch (or bring my lunch for that matter)
c. it's more convenient to go to lunch with any of my Cape friends (pretty much all of my friends)

5. I've been watching a lot of Spaced lately. It's so good, with 1.5 exceptions. (episode 2.1 and Daisy's story arch in the Battle Bots episode). Edgar Wright is kind of my hero.

THAT IS ALL.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

2008-07-26T18:53:00.002-05:00

The Good:
Dark Knight isn't as good upon the second viewing! Why is this a good thing? Because it means there's room for improvement. Don't get me wrong, Dark Knight is still an amazing movie, but it has problems and almost all of them are either Batman or logic related. The good parts of the movie are still good. The Joker continues to be the most interesting film character since Jack Sparrow, the action is still loads better than Batman Begins, etc. etc. But there are a few times where the viewers disbelief is suspended to nearly the breaking point (cell phone, bullet building/fingerprint finding computer, Batman's miraculous immunity to falling off buildings). I could go into more detail, but the chances are that if you see me in person, I'll will probably list all the flaws of the Dark Knight without you asking me to.

The Bad:
Step Brothers is bad. It was a lazy movie. There was pretty much no plot to speak of (which isn't inherently a bad thing in my book). It was pretty much a riff-fest, with a point the camera at the funny style of shooting. This film did no one any favors.

The Ugly:
They showed this preview before Step Brothers.

Pushing Daisies Update

2008-07-20T22:58:00.002-05:00

Ok, so last night I put Pushing Daisies on my list of three things that are awesome. I just watched the second episode and am a little unsure of my prior pronouncement.

Problem 1: Chi McBride. He played the tough as nails principle on Boston Common (and on an episode of Boston Legal). He played the tough as nails millionaire benefactor on the first season of House. And he's playing the tough as nails private investigator on Pushing Daisies. Anyway, it doesn't really matter who he is playing, I don't really like him. I know I'm being a little hard on him, as I've only seen him in two episodes, but I don't really see him being much different from the characters I have seen him play historically. I don't really see him doing anything interesting with the character.

Problem 2: The show appears to be a murder mystery show. But the mysteries so far have been of Monk-like caliber where you more or less have them figured out by the time they introduce the first suspect. Again, I've only seen two episodes, but I kind of have a feeling that this is going to be representative for the rest of the series because I'm kind of a genius.

I'm going to watch the third episode before I go on. Wait a second.

Ok I watched the third episode, and it's not that the mysteries themselves are dumb (the one in the second episode was though) it's that they wrap them up in sort of lame flashbacks.

Problem 3: Everything and everyone in the show is a little too adorable.

The show is like Murder She Wrote if it was directed by Tim Burton, but not Sleepy Hollow Tim Burton, Big Fish Tim Burton (which isn't really a good comparison, because Big Fish Tim Burton has only made one movie, Big Fish, whereas Sleepy Hollow Tim Burton is responsible for every other movie in Tim Burton's career). The point is I can't really figure this show out. It's quirky, but without rules to it's quirkyness. Wonderfalls was quirky, but it had rules. Pushing Daisies doesn't have a lot of hard and fast rules, except for the three that have been stated at the beginning of every episode so far (one touch brings them back, a second touch kills them again, and if something is brought back for more than a minute something else has to die). Other than that... not so much. It's a world where a body that bad been dead in the ocean for a while, suffered little to no sign of decomposition, then it goes to a mortuary and isn't preserved in any way noticeable, because when the love interest is brought back from the dead, she shows no signs of being worse for wear, she doesn't complain of having all of her organs sucked out. I mean, I understand that would sort of make it a bit more disgusting for her and the main character to have a physical relationship, but they never even address these points in the show.

All the dialogue on the show is quick and witty, but the stories for the murder mystery parts of the show seem kind of forced and dumb. Aesthetically the show seems to be geared toward women, but then every female character wears extremely low cut shirts (which, I assume, is for the male viewers). I guess it's a case of trying to be everything for everyone. Overall I like the show, but it perplexes me.

I just read that the girl who plays Chuck on the show is David Thewlis's (Professer RJ Lupin) ladyfriend. Way to go Mr. Thewlis. Anyway, I'm going to bed because I'm tired and it's past my bed time.

Three Things that Are Awesome

2008-07-19T23:29:00.002-05:00

1. The Dark Knight. Believe the hype. This is the best movie I've seen all year. It is an intense and exhausting movie, but well worth it. It isn't a perfect film, but it's not far from it. As with Batman Begins, Christian Bale's Batman is the weakest part of the film. The way he speaks as Batman is just ridiculous. His delivery makes some pretty good dialogue seem laughable. There is also some gadget nonsense that is really unnecessary (the cell phone thing, if you've seen it). The movie would've been just fine without that, I don't know why they put it in their. But yeah. The Dark Knight is what a Batman movie should be.

2. Walcott by Vampire Weekend. I've been listening to this album a lot lately. Mostly just this song actually, but the whole album is pretty good. Really.

3. Pushing Daisies. I've only seen the first episode, so I might be jumping the gun a bit by declaring it awesome. But I really like the first episode and I needed a third thing for my "three things that are awesome post". I suppose I could have included "My Custom Van" by Michael Ian Black, but I'm still not sure about that one yet.

Anyway there's your update on things that are awesome. Deal with it.

Batman ate my neighbors

2008-07-17T22:03:00.003-05:00

Dark Knight opens tomorrow. I have every reason to believe it will be as good as it should be. Bob said that it's 2 and a half hours long, which is nice. There are supposed to be trailers for Harry Potter and The Watchmen in front of it. I saw the Watchmen trailer. It concerned me, but only a little.

In other news Hellboy 2 was not a good movie. Hellboy is a good movie. Believe it.

So I'm off this weekend. I don't really know what I'm doing yet, but it's nice to have to not have plans.

Also I finished the script for the short film I'm working on, but I think I decided it will be a three part film, so... yeah. That'll be fun to write.

Anyway, I'm hella tired and partly distracted by Batman Begins, so I'm going to end this post now.

A Post about Dogs.

2008-07-13T15:42:00.002-05:00

My dog Buster died Monday at about 1 in the morning. His kidneys had been failing and he had developed a heart murmur. He had been deteriorating pretty quickly these past couple of weeks, and late Sunday night he got to the point where he was in a lot of discomfort. My mom's friend Karen, who is a veterinarian, came over and administered something to help with the pain and he died not long after.
It's been fairly well documented that I get pretty emotional about the death of pets, and Buster's passing was particularly hard for me. Buster was a very misunderstood dog, and it was pretty much all Geoff Seyer's fault. A couple of days after my mom brought Buster home from the humane society I had a few friends over, and as they were coming in the house Buster was getting pretty excited, he was barking playfully and scampering around my friends as they came in. Then Geoff came in and responding to Buster's barking by kicking at him and making his own barking kind of noises, not maliciously, he wasn't actually trying to kick Buster, regardless, ever since that day Buster treated all people that came into the house as enemy combatants (with a few exceptions).

On Thursday my mom brought a puppy from the humane society. His name is Tobias (Toby).
He's the one that's not a shoe.

My Keyboard is on the Fritz

2008-07-06T22:32:00.002-05:00

The $3 keyboard I bought with my computer 6 years ago quit working last week, so I am using the old keyboard from my mothers keyboard. It will not let me type apostrophes or quotation marks, so you will have to deal with my incorrect spellings and punctuations.

We played DnD tonight. It was fun. I rolled a Warlock and kicked major quantities of rat and zombie ass. At first I was a little worried that the guys were not going to take it serious enough, but once we started combat it was all business, the business of blowing up rat swarms.

On another note, Katy Segal almost single handedly ruins the fourth season of Futurama, by being involved in it.

Um... not much else to report.

Update!

2008-06-29T17:28:00.002-05:00

Sorry it's been a while blog, I've been busy.

Busy doing what?

Working mostly. I started working for (but not at) the Jackson Walmart 2 weeks ago. I work in a warehouse. It is a lot more fun than I thought it'd be. I get to drive a forklift occasionally, which is a lot of fun. Kohl's is not so fun. They don't schedule us much, and it takes us a lot longer than it should to get done with adset.

Other things that happened since last I posted:

I spent last weekend in St. Louis, hanging out with Pete and Steve on their birthday and going to the City Museum (which is the coolest thing ever).

Terrence is home from Iraq (which is a good place to be home from).

I bought a pair of new shoes.

Blizzard announced Diablo 3.

I watched Life Aquatic several more times.

Pretty boring actually. Hopefully I'll have some more interesting posts later this week, but I kind of doubt it. Anyway, I think I'm going down to Brad's.

Happy Birthday, Matt B, by the way.

Not Particularly Bloggy.

2008-06-10T16:06:00.002-05:00

I watched Rushmore last night. It's such an amazing movie. It has inspired me to do two things. Write down my idea for a shortfilm and make a list of some of my favorite uses of pop music in movies. The former is pretty much for my eyes only, but the latter will be today's blog post, so without further ado:

Matt Essner's Top Five Pop Music in Movie Moments:

First I feel like I must explain what I mean by "Pop Music in Movie Moments". What I mean is this, scenes in movies that are underscored by pop music instead of music composed for the movie. So although the appearence of the Executor accompanied by the Imperial March is an amazing bit of music and film, it doesn't count because it was composed for the film. This list will represent what I think to the finest marriages pop music and filmaking (at least as many as I can remember).

1. Rushmore Finale
This is what inspired me to make. Although there are some great musical moments in this movie (and pretty much all of Wes Anderson's movies) this one tops the list. It is a great ending to a great film.

2. A Knight's Tale: Golden Years
This movie is awesome and if you don't like it (like the movie or like the fact that it is an awesome movie) you deserve to go to prison. The same prison where all the people that shout "FREE BIRD" at concerts deserve to go. The kind of prison where they show reruns of Friends all day every day. Anyway this scene is great because of the way it seamlessly blends the chamber music into a David Bowie song. The best part is at about 1:46, when you hear Mr. Bowie sing "Angel". It's at that point you know that some seriously funk rock is about to be dropped on this here madrigal society.

3. Donnie Darko: Head Over Heels
I don't think this movie is as good as I remember it being when I watched the summer after my senior year of high school, but this scene still does it for me. The first shot of the school bus is still pretty cool. Also the in frame camera speed changes are pretty nifty, even though they've been done to death at this point (300, anyone?). Also Tears for Fears rocks your mom's face. My favorite part is when the girls are doing the celebration after they finish their dance and they're all trying to high five and miss and be like "this is totally normal, we are very self congratulatory people"

4. American Beauty: Baba O'Reilly
This one is kind of cheating but I'm going to allow it because I'm running out of ideas. This is technically the trailer, but it's still pretty awesome use of music. There's actually some pretty good songs elsewhere in the film, like the cover of "Because" at the end.

5. Big Fish: Let's Work Together
I couldn't find a clip of this one, but you'll just have to believe that if I had it would be pretty much just as awesome as the video I did link. It's been a while since I've seen this movie, but as I remember it Ewan MacGregor's character, Edward Bloom, is at a bank and he notices the man in front of him, Steve Buscemi playing himself, is an old friend of his. They start up a conversation then when Steve gets to the front of the line he pulls out a gun and robs the bank. Steve and Edward high tail it out of their in Ed's suped up Camero. The cops give chase and they end up evading them till dusk, at which point a full moon comes out and Steve Buscemi and all the cops turn into werewolves and fight a bloody, lupine battle all over the state of New Mexico. Ewan MacGregor enters the fray only when it looks like the cops might get the upper hand. He pulls out his silver broadsword and goes to town on the werewolf cops like a wombat (I'm not going to qualify this simile). Anyway, at some point during all that Canned Heat's "Let's Work Together" plays and it's pretty nifty.

This list is in no way exhaustive nor is it necessarily in any sort of order as far as quality goes. It seems like there should probably be something from a Scorcese movie on here (probably Goodfellas) , but there isn't. That's mostly my fault, but I think Marty is not without some blame blame. I could've also put about 10 more Wes Anderson scenes on here, but I didn't because I'm too lazy. You'll also notice a complete lack of scenes from Almost Famous. In your face Cameron Crowe. Even though I love the movie, it's a bit pretentious at times and it was trying a bit too hard at times to get on this list, especially the "Tiny Dancer" scene. The same goes for School of Rock (although I don't really love that movie).

Honorable mention goes to:
1. Shanghai Noon: The training montage that uses the Kid Rock song. (Kept off the list for obvious, Kid Rock related reason)
2. The entire movie Stranger than Fiction (Even though the soundtrack is pretty much all Spoon songs, I think some of them might have been written for the movie, or maybe not, either way no dice Stranger than Fiction)
3. Any movie before the 1998. Nice try older movies, but I couldn't remember any of you when I was making this list.

So yeah. That was fun.

Sunday and Sunburns

2008-06-08T15:56:00.002-05:00

I was outside a lot yesterday. My arms are hella sunburned. Dig it.

I finally caught up with QC. It's only taken me like 2 months to do it. I was reading the archives, I hit next comic, and then nothing happened. It took me a second to realize that there wasn't a next comic yet.

NAP UPDATE: Sunday June 8.

I have taken 2 naps today. I woke up at 7 this morning to practice for this week (I have to be at Wal-mart at 7am Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week). I went to mass at 7:30, bought some donuts, then when I came home I didn't really have anything to do. So I took a little nap. I woke up, ate some lunch. Read for a while, then took another nap. Naps= awesome.

I saw Kung Fu Panda last night. It was incredibly unspectacular. It wasn't a bad movie. There was nothing wrong with it. The fight scenes were actually pretty awesome. There just wasn't anything else particularly good about the movie. It wasn't very funny. The "five masters" that are all over the previews aren't really in the movie much (I'm pretty sure they could have just gotten all of Jackie Chan's dialogue from other movies, he had like five lines and they were pretty generic). The thing about the movie that impressed me the most was a complete lack of fart jokes, which, it seems like are mandatory for all non Disney/Pixar animated films, and which are my least favorite brand of bodily function humor (my favorite type is vomit; see Mafia and Team America).

I'm going to try to get off work on Thursday to go see the Raconteurs. We'll see how that goes. We're supposed to ask off weeks in advance at Kohls, but the way I see it is since when people take off on adset they don't schedule people to work for them, the result would be the same if I asked off tomorrow as if I had asked off a month ago. Besides we have three new people now, so if I'm off we're still up 2 compared to the last month or so. Although Crystal's probably off on Thursday too, because she doesn't work Thursdays, Wednesdays, some Saturdays, an occasional Monday, and every other Friday.

Anyway, I'm going to try to convince myself to go for a bikeride.

Bottle Rocket and other things

2008-06-04T11:01:00.003-05:00

I saw Bottle Rocket last night. It is definitely my least favorite Wes Anderson movie, and I'm going to go ahead and say it's his worst film. It is amazing how much better Rushmore is than Bottle Rocket. It's also amazing that James Caan is in Bottle Rocket, and how unsuited to a Wes Anderson movie he is.

So I called Brian to talk about the 48 hour film festival yesterday and he told me that we are on the waiting list to be in the festival. He doesn't really know what the means, but he doesn't think we're going to get in, which kind of blows.

In other sleep related news, I'm kind of tired.

Plan for today:
Go to Library
Go to interview at Target (probably not take the job if they offer me one, unless it's ridiculously good)
Eat lunch
Come home
Nap/run
Read
Eat
Work
Come home
Sleep

So.... TO THE LIBRARY!

Been a long time

2008-06-02T11:06:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted. I blame the government. Actually I blame work, cause I've been doing a lot of that lately. Sort of. Anyway, it looks like I'm going to get a job at Wal-mart (pending a drug test). It'll be about 40 hours a week, which I like, but it's not permanent, which I'm not too thrilled about, but the guy who interviewed me, this really cool guy named Tim, said that if I work hard etc, when a permanent job opens up I have a better chance of getting it as a temp employee than a non employee. So yeah. New job and new DVD player that's two things off the list.

Sorry, this is going to be a short post. I've got to got work on number 5 on the list, followed by some number 6, and maybe a little 8 later this afternoon. (7 is pretty much a given. It's going to happen at some point, whether I want it to or not).

I heart Liz Lemon

2008-05-19T23:50:00.002-05:00

Thirty Rock is the best show on television. The American Office is ok too.
The finale (of the Office) was pretty good. It wasn't a cliff hanger in any way. It made me not hate Kevin as much (i hate Kevin by the way).

Highlights from Prince Caspian:

Peter: We're back in Narnia, but everything is different.
Lucy: We've already lived at least one lifetime, but I'm still precocious and no one ever listens to me!
Susan: Look, some grownups in a boat, and one of them's holding a dwarf! Let's murder them!
Dwarf: Thanks for saving me.
Peter: No problem. That's what kings and queens of Narnia do.
Dwarf: You're not kings and queens of Narnia.
Peter: Oh yeah? Well fight my brother, then we'll see who's a king of Narnia.
Edmund: Grrr!

Centaur: Welcome Kings and Queens of Narnia. It is time for you to meet the army we have assembled, but first you must RUN THE CENTAUR GAUNTLET!!!

Aslan: So it turns out all you bad guys are all from Sicily, if you walk through this tree vagina you can go back to Italy.
*no one comes forward*
General: Well I guess I'll go.
Aslan: Cool, since you decided to go first, you'll have a good life back in Sicily. The rest of you poor bastards won't be so lucky.

I didn't like the movie, if you can't tell. It kind of sucked.

My birthday was fun. I got a DVD player, so that's one thing off my list of things to do this summer. I also got the third season of House from Josh, which is pretty awesome (even if David Morse's story arc goes on for WAY too long. It does have Patrick Fugit in it, which is nice)

Also I work 4 days this week, which is pretty cool. It's some hours. I need hours.

Let's see... what else.... Um today I was a really useful person... for about three hours. I stopped being useful about 1. Tomorrow will be better though. I think. Anyway, I'm going to go to sleep and read some Ultimates comics (probably not in that order, but we'll see).

Quick one

2008-05-16T23:27:00.001-05:00

I'm about to watch the season finale of the Office. I don't know what's going to happen but about 7 months ago I predicted that Jim was going to be leaving Dunder Mifflin by the end of the season. I still think that's a possibility. Obviously if Jim leaves, Pam is going to leave, and the last episode I watched pretty much said explicitly Pam is going to leave Dunder Mifflin. So yeah. Here I go.

Movies, The Office, Work and Summer Class? (Not necessarily in that order)

2008-05-15T23:33:00.004-05:00

I saw Iron Man again today, it's still good. Forgetting Sara Marshall is good, Speed Racer is good. I'm going to go see Prince Caspian tomorrow, I hope it is good. (this paragraph brought to you by "Good": It's not comparative. It's not superlative. It's just good.)

I got a call yesterday morning from the communication department asking me if I still wanted to take a summer section of Comm Law. I said yes, so I'm taking that this summer and by this summer, I mean for the next four weeks. I have my first test tomorrow (technically I could take the test today, but I'm not going to because I'm not prepared, I've read the first of three chapters. It's pretty dense) Anyway this class is going to be crazy. Four weeks is not a lot of time for a class (it's an online class. I think I forgot to mention that).

So last night I worked till 2:30ish, I had today off and tomorrow I have to be at work at 6am for truck. Here's the problem with that. Since I worked so late last night,I slept till 11 this morning.To not be hella tired tomorrow I need to go to sleep by 11 at the latest (this didn't happen. It never happens). Working ad-set and truck completely sucks because it is hard to get a consistent sleeping pattern. Anyway, I work till 1 tomorrow and I have to take that test before midnight tomorrow, which shouldn't be a problem, but I need to make sure I have enough time to get through chapters 2 and 3.

Commence Office Talk:
For whatever reason I got back into the American Office (because I like the American Office and the season is almost over). I hadn't seen any episodes since they've been back from the writers strike
so I decided that I would catch up. So tonight I watched episodes 10 and 11 (9 wouldn't download but I saw part of it when it aired. I lied about not seeing any episodes since the strike). 10 wasn't great, there were a couple of sort of funny moments. It featured Kevin pretty prominently, which is something I don't really like in my episodes of the Office. It introduced some other members of the Scranton Business Park. Andy had some cartoon moments. All in all a pretty mediocre episode all around (except for Dwight, who continues to be the greatest person on television right....now). So on the original Office scale of goodness (which is a system I just now devised) I rate this episode a Big Keith.
This might seem like high praise, considering how funny Keith can be, but remember, the majority of the time, he is just kind of there. Plus when you think about every other member of the original British cast (except Dawn) everyone's awesome, so he's probably somewhere in the middle as far as awesomeness goes.

Episode 11:
This episode got a lot of work done plotwise that I assume would've taken place over several episodes if this season wasn't so short, but then again taking into account the American Office's complete lack of subtlety,probably not. It turns out Ryan is a coke-head and Jim and Pam are falling out of favor with the rest of the Office folk (which will factor in next season when they both leave the show to be on that Office Spin-off we've been hearing so nothing about). Dwight is still awesome. Michael is still really lame.
This episode gets a Roland.Whatever that means.

SLEEP!

End of the semester wrap-up

2008-05-11T19:00:00.002-05:00

As of like 7:15 yesterday evening, I'm done with school for the Spring 2008 semester. This semester I made my first narrative shortfilm, my first real documentary, and my first "commercial". I'm pretty pleased with how all the projects turned out. I'm pretty sure I got all A's this semester... well I know I got A's in three of my classes, I don't know about my creative writing class yet, but I'm pretty sure I kicked its ass.

Goals for the summer:
1. Get another job (we've seen this one before)
2. Save money to pay for school in the fall (this one is more a corollary part 1)
3. Get a DVD player
4. Become a better guitar player (we've seen this one too!)
5. Run or Bike everyday or almost everyday
6. Eat better.
7. Sleep more.
8. Read books.
9. Punctuate more consistently

So Brian M called me tonight and he was like, "you want to do the 48 hour film festival?" And I was like, "Why the hell not?"
So Me, Brian, Shank, Nate and Rob D are probably going to do this film festival thing. The only problem I see with this group is that there is no defacto leader. We're all pretty much alpha dogs, lone wolves, tough as shit renegades who don't give a damn about anyone but ourselves. Not really though. I think Shank will probably end up directing. He has the most experience, we'll probably be using his camera and he fronted the money for the entry fee. Brian or I will write the script because we'll be the ones that complain the loudest if we don't get to. And everyone will probably act and be in the crew. It should be pretty exciting.

Also, in the good news category: I got a call from Pete Wiss the other day, and both he Steve have teaching jobs lined up for next fall (although Steven is still entertaining other offers), which is totally awesome. They finished college in 4 years and already have jobs, what a bunch of grown-ups. Speaking of grown-ups, Droib bought a house. It's true, I've seen it. It's pretty spiffy, except for the fact that it's in JACKSON!

Anyway, that's pretty much it for now.

Almost done with school!

2008-05-07T00:29:00.002-05:00

Finals week is upon us. I had two finals, they were both one Monday. I got a 92 on one, I'll find out about the other one when I go talk to Jones tomorrow. I got my portfolio turned in today. Now all I have left is the documentary.

Oh, the Auteur film turned out really well. I had to reshoot everything I shot last Sunday, this Sunday because the audio was no good last Sunday. But the reshoot turned out really good, and the edit is pretty good too. It took all of my Monday to do. It was my first marathon Avid session. I'm sure there will be many more to come.

Also this song has been stuck in my head for the better part of a day. The first 20 seconds or so comprises the best intro in all of pop music (the rest is pretty good too). The video is pretty much amazing. With two semesters of film production classes under my belt, I could probably make something as good. It's pretty satisfying to know that even with thirty plus years of advances in video production technology, I'm still only about as good as a music video director circa 1977.

I need new shoes.

Good News and Bad News

2008-04-26T23:34:00.002-05:00

Good News: My team won the trivia night at the UC on Thursday (it was about movies... yeah)
Bad News: My team lost the softball championship on Thursday (by the mercy rule in the 5th inning)

Good News: My documentary filming went really well today.
Bad News: My auteur project did not go well on Wednesday.

Skip this part if you don't like whining, or you just don't like my whining.

(And now I will interrupt the my "good news/bad news formula" for a little bit of rationalization/ranting/explanation {their's probably a better way to describe it but I've only had about 12 hours of sleep in the past two days, which is normal to some people, but I need at least 8 hours per night to function, usually nine though, so anyway, I'm not firing on all cylinders}

The big project for film history class this semester is a short film done in the style of an auteur. I've been looking forward to this project all semester, because my group (heavily influenced by me) picked Edgar Wright. Against my better, but well meaning, judgment I let Robert and Rob have creative control (which basically means, I let them submit ideas to me until they had one I didn't hate, I am such a dick). I let Rob write the script, I let Robert direct (again, here, my language here is demonstrating how much of a dick I am, as if in this group project, where we all have equal parts, I have the power to grant people the privilege {it took me one minute to spell that word correctly} of doing things that they want to do), I just sat back and shot down their ideas until they had one I liked.
My reasoning for letting them have creative control was that I had already the chance to write and direct a short film this semester, I got to write and direct one of the class project films in MC 352. I figured they would want the chance to do it. So anyway, I was just going to be the camera operator for the shoot and help with finding shots and maybe some blocking or something. The script Rob wrote was funny, but it wasn't an Edgar Wright script. I figured that would be ok; if we just focused on Edgar Wright's camera technique, we could still make it in his style. Long story short (and in this case, I'm not just using a cliche', we spent about 3.5 hours of our lives trying to make this movie) we shot the movie on Wednesday, it did not go well, it was by far the worst experience I've had making a movie since I started this major (an incredible 8 months ago).
I said I was going to edit it on Thursday, but I couldn't. I just couldn't make what we filmed into an Edgar Wright movie. I certainly couldn't make it into something I would be proud to show to other people (let along my fellow film majors). So Thursday I wrote a new script, a pretty good script if I do say so myself, and I told my group members that I was going to make a new auteur project movie. They were surprisingly ok with it (we're still on friendly...I think) and I was going to shoot it Friday and Sunday (since I already signed up to have a camera for shooting the documentary this weekend). I didn't get the camera till 5 on Friday (instead of 1, which is a long, obscenity-ridden story), and since my whole movie is shot out side, I had lost a lot of my daylight (also it just started raining when I got my camera).
Fortunately I was able to get some filming done on Friday, but I still have more than have of it to shoot tomorrow. Which leads me to (and you thought I'd forgotten about I)

End of Whining. Just kidding, there's more after this, but it's in small bite-size chunks.

Bad News: It's supposed to rain all afternoon tomorrow
Bad News: Spants (one of the two stars) told me that he was feeling sick tonight, and might be sick tomorrow
Bad News: Most of the people I was counting on as extras can't help tomorrow (which is all my fault, not theirs. For some reason, recently, Sundays have become the worst day for getting people to do stuff. Everyone {but me, apparently} is very busy on Sunday and can't play frisbee, or stickball, or be in my movie)

I can rewrite the scene, and film it so the extras thing isn't as much of a problem. There's nothing I can do about the Spaeth thing. He was going to bed early. A good night sleep always does wonders for me. The rain thing though. That's problematic. I was going to shoot the whole thing outside, at Grandma Essner's. If it's raining, that can't happen. So I need to find somewhere I can shoot inside. There's one place I can think of, but it's a bit of a stretch. First I don't have permission to shoot there, I could get it, but there's no reason to think that I would. Second I would have to do a lot of set dressing. Set dressing that I wouldn't have had to do at all if it didn't rain. Set dressing that I'm not prepared in any way to do. Also there would probably have to be some lighting. I don't have lights. I was supposed to film everything outside, where I don't need lights. I suppose I could get lights... but yeah... permission to film there. That's the thing. This is probably the longest post I've ever written. Even the hardest of the hardcore Matt Essner blog readers (I know you're out there somewhere {It also has the most parantheticals I've ever used too}) will have trouble getting though it all in one sitting, so I guess I should probably end it now befor

Some more Blagging

2008-04-24T00:01:00.004-05:00

I have mixed feelings on whether or not today was a good or bad day. Regardless of its goodness or badness here is some shameless self-promotion (is there any other kind?)

We had a test in MC 352 today. I pretty much kicked it's ass, at least I think I did. Normally that kind of post-test confidence is a sure sign of failure (in my case anyway, mostly because of the "Rule of Irony", which is the most powerful guiding principle in my life), but there were only two or three questions that I wasn't one hundred percent sure about the answer.

Also I played on Brian's intermural softball team again tonight (I played once before, mediocrely). I played third base, which is fortunately the easiest position in the infield (at least in slow pitch softball, as most of these guys don't pull the ball much; Shortstop on the other hand is the danger zone), the ball was hit to me twice, one time I threw the guy out at second, the second time it just sort of rolled past me into left field. So defensively, not a great night, but not bad. On offense though, I was 6 for 6. Maybe 7 for 7. I don't even remember. Either way, my batting average for tonight was 1.00. I saw 7 (or 8) pitches and I sent 6(or 7) of them right up the gap in center field. Unfortunately every one of those hits was a single, and most of the time it was with no one on.

Actually, I think I only got one RBI, but it was a pretty important one: bottom of the seventh, two men on, tie ballgame, 2 outs. I belt one right over the shortstop into center and score the man on second, we win the game. It was pretty spectacular if I say so myself. I'm supposed to play in the championship game tomorrow night (this was the semi-final game) at 10:15. I have work the next day at 6am. Yikes.

Anyway, sorry for being so self indulgent, I'm sure the next post will be more self deprecating and misanthropic.

The title of this post is a tautology.

2008-04-15T16:29:00.003-05:00

It really isn't though.

Walmart Bread is Delicious (not only was that the original title to this post, but it is an entirely true statement).

I'm getting tired of work. I don't like these long gaps between days that I work. For one thing, it means I get paid less because I work fewer days, but the lack of consistency is kind of annoying. Plus I don't really like working so late. I don't like work being the last thing I do on a day.

I read the first Hellboy trade. It's pretty super. Hellboy is a good comicbook.

Sorry this post is so boring, gang. I guess I could talk about sleep...

Here's an interesting fact. Sunday Night I was asleep by 10pm. I woke up on Monday at 8am. That's 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Way to go Matt.

Essner's Blog: Sleeping :: Matthew's Blog: KoL
(although I sleep more than I write about sleeping, I think Matthew writes about KoL more than he plays it. So it's not a perfect analogy)

Ok I'm going to eat some Mac and Cheese and read crappy poetry, then go to class then go to work!

Rudy's funeral

2008-04-10T01:38:00.003-05:00

My great great uncle Rudy's funeral was yesterday. As far as funerals go, it was pretty good. I sang in the choir with some of my aunts and uncles and their cousins. Rudy and his wife, Bernice, never had any children, but they had a lot of nieces and nephews, and were very much a part of their lives.

Bernice is my grandma's aunt (although she's only about 7 year older than my grandma), she's the youngest daughter or my great great grandma and grandpa Burger, her brother was my great grandfather.

Bernice was married to Rudy for almost 66 years, which is approximately three times as many
years as I've been born. That's pretty amazing to me.

Anyway, when I was young enough to go trick or treating on Halloween, Bob and I would go trick or treating in the Woodland Hills neighborhood, where Rudy and Bernice live. So when we finished trick or treating, that's where we would end up. Rudy would always give me a lot more candy than I needed, especially since at that point in the evening I already had a pretty full bag of the stuff. While we waited for my mom to pick us up I would talk to Rudy and Bernice, pretty much nonstop (I was much more talkative as a youngster than I am now). I would babble on incessantly, not really saying anything and Rudy and Bernice would just listen and give me more candy. They seemed to genuinely interested in what I was saying (which was odd, because few other adults did, or should've from what I remember). When I got older I stopped trick or treating, but I'd try to go visit Rudy and Bernice on Halloween. Those Halloween nights still stick out in my mind as some of the best times I've ever had, and Rudy and Bernice had a lot to do with that. I think that probably has something to do with why Halloween is my favorite holiday. Halloween pretty much represents the best things about my childhood, maybe childhood in general, which I guess why I always try to make Halloween a big deal now.

Just in case you were wondering, Catholic funerals are about a quadrillion times better than Protestant funerals.

Also, I wasn't joking when I said Carolina Drama by the Raconteurs is the best track I've heard in the past two years.

My First Untitled Post

2008-04-06T01:51:00.002-05:00

Have you heard the new Raconteurs album? It's pretty f*ing amazing. The last track is pretty much the best thing I've heard in the last year or so. They're coming to the Pageant sometime in June. June is also when the 48 hour film festival is. There is some talk of doing that. I would like to participate in both of those activities, but they both require money. I don't have money. I need another job. The Raconteurs tickets are $40. It's a bit more than most concerts I go to, but it's Jack White for Christ sake. The Wilco tickets were thirtyish. They're playing three shows in St. Louis May 15, 16 and 17. They are all sold out. Curse my slow metal body (that's supposed to be a Star Wars quote, but I don't really remember exactly what 3Po says. It's something like that, though, I assure you).

I have to go to bed now, because I need to wake up in 6 hours or so.

Night!

Posting twice in one week? What is this 2006?

2008-04-03T01:02:00.002-05:00

Thing 1:
Monk is a terrible, terrible show. I borrowed the third season of it from Jonathon (I know he legally changed his name to Jonathan, but I think he should have kept it the other way) and have watched two episodes. They were both atrocious. The writing was sub Diagnosis Murder. The acting is questionable (other than Tony Shaloub and Ted Levine, although they are beleaguered by terrible plot/dialogue) and Monk is a really inconsistent character. Monk is a man with a crippling mental illness, he has difficulty doing things for himself. He has OCD and a bunch of phobias, but these really only manifest themselves when it's comedically expedient (although occasionally amusing, but frequently not, these bits don't really play with me because of their inconsistency with the rest of the character). Also the fact that Monk has pretty much any phobia the writers care to write about is a bit too convenient. I'm going to continue to watch it because it gives me something to hate and also it apparently gets better after the annoying sidekick girl leaves.

Thing 2:
I don't know why, but I have been reading a crazy amount of webcomics lately. Currently I'm reading one called Questionable Content. It's pretty darn (and by darn I mean damn) good, especially for being updated almost daily. I'm on strip 240 something of 1100 something, so it'll probably be a while before I'm caught up. But just to clue you in to how awesome the strip is, the main character has a poster of the cover of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot on his bedroom wall.

Thing 3:
I have done nothing this week. I have a lot of stuff I need to do, but I haven't done any of it. Here are some things I need to do in the three (Three? Really?) weeks before school ends.

1. Read the 10 articles for my literature review, which hopefully won't be as boring as I thought it was going to be, and of course, write said review. (End of April sometime)
2. Film/edit my SE TV student profile (Tomorrow)
3. Figure out what I'm going to do my documentary about, film and edit my documentary (Finals Week)
4. Write, shoot and edit my Edgar Write Auteur project (End of April sometime)
5. Write research paper for Jone's class (Sunday?)
6. Write/shoot/edit/ intro video for film festival that I'm trying to start at SEMO (Two weeks from now?)
7. Script stuff for class project/edit class project (Monday)

I could keep going, but this is a pretty daunting list already.
I was going to write a thing 4, but that list took a lot out of me. Time to read some more QC.

Arkham Horror and other stuff

2008-04-01T10:12:00.002-05:00

We played Arkham Horror on Friday. The game lasted over four hours and we ended up losing because we couldn't kill the elder god. It was all kinds of suck (the elder god, not the game. The game was pretty awesome despite the 4 hours of play time). So I've been trying to come up with ways to speed Arkham Horror up. I ran a few past Matthew and the one that he thinks would be the easiest to implement is being able to move if a monster attacks you. Usually if you start your turn with a monster on you, then you can't move for that turn. I think we could do away with that nonsense.

In other more interesting news, I had a dream in which Dennis Hopper was an unstoppable, deadly vampire/zombie and he was trying to kill me.

Brazil is not a fun movie to watch, but Michael Palin is amazing in it. I love Michael Palin. I think it goes without saying that he, and every non-Terry member of Monty Python, are superheroes. Terrys Gilliam and Jones are ok too.

shower.

Old Music

2008-03-27T15:05:00.002-05:00

I'm listening to some "old music" right now. There's a lot of music on my computer that I've only listened to a couple of times, or haven't listened to for a couple of years or so. Music that I liked, but not liked enough to add to the random playlist that is the soundtrack of my life. Here's some examples of this "old music": Cake Bake Betty, The Lucksmiths, The Shins (for the most part), Page France, Boy Least Likely To, Danielson, Elliot Smith and the Pixies.

There are also a lot of songs on my computer by bands I never really got into. And when I say "never really got into" I mean haven't listened to, other than the tracks that I knew I like before acquiring the album. I have those albums on here because, someday, I intend to cultivate an appreciation of them. These albums include:"You Forget it In People", "Z", "Flying Club Cup", anything by the New Pornographers.

So on this lazy Thursday afternoon, before I go to work, I'm listening to "old music" and doing little else. This is going to be one of those days when I get home from work tonight and realize that I have done of use to anyone or myself all day. But in the interest of keeping the world abreast with the excitingness that is my life, here is a list of the things I've done today:

1. Woke up (around 9am, I went to bed about 12am)
2. Caught up on neglected webcomics (XKCD, which is amusing, if not funny most of the time, The Perry Bible Fellowship, which is clever if not amusing most of the time, and Penny Arcade, which is Penny Arcade for God's sake)
3. Read an interview with Simon Pegg on Aint it Cool.
4. Showered
5. FINALLY got to level 15 on FlyFF, which allowed me to pick a new job (Assist, apparently. You don't really get to shop around though, which I might talk about in a future post)
6. Watched Empire Strikes Back (Sort of. I was playing FlyFF and napping for parts of it. Which reminds me)
7. Nap (That happened around 1ish. The act of being awake for four hours straight is enough to wear me out)
8. At approximately 2:45 pm, I woke and decided I was hungry. So I ate the solid milk chocolate bunny I received for Easter. I covered it with peanut butter (because I can't really abide things that are chocolate and nothing else) and enjoyed a glass of milk simultaneously.
9. Now I'm blogging and listening to Guster? How did that happen.

Anyway, I need to find something to do that will justify my continued existence on this planet. Perhaps something outdoors? We'll see.

The Last Man

2008-03-21T15:24:00.002-05:00

It's Good Friday. Only two more days of Lent. Actually, I think Lent ended last Sunday, because I think Holy Week is technically a different liturgical season, but 2 more days till I can drink Dr. Pepper again. Giving up soda is too easy. I really only craved it on one occasion. I don't really drink a lot of soda anymore anyway.

But that's not what this post is about. This post is about Y the Last Man, the best thing I've read in a long time. Y the Last Man is a comic book series about the last man on earth. His name is Yorrick Brown, and I hope the rumors about Shia LaBoeuf playing him in the movie adaptation are false. The series is great because it never stops being interesting. It has a definite beginning middle and end, and it doesn't waste time with adding needless peril just to extend the story line. Occasionally the book will shift it's focus and spend some time telling the story of a minor character or two, but even then, it's relevant and interesting. It's a great book, and it's a little sad. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried when *SPOILER* Ampersand dies (peacefully, of old age mind you). There's just something about pets dying that makes me sad. I don't really mind when human characters get offed, but I just can't handle pets dying (Hedwig is the exception. I felt no sadness Hedwig was killed. Actually I don't think I was affected by any of the poorly written deaths of any of the characters in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, other then Tonks' death. I felt much joy with her passing).

I've pretty much spent all day reading Y the Last Man and listening to Wilco albums, both activities I highly recommend. I also folded clothes and dyed Easter Eggs, but I feel like I need to be more productive, so I'm going to find something useful to do (probably napping).

Rainy Day

2008-03-18T14:26:00.002-05:00

I realized at about 10:30 last night that I had nothing left to do that day, so I went to sleep, and I kept sleeping till about nine this morning. I'm pretty awesome like that.
I was going to fill out my fafsa stuff this morning, but that didn't happen. I got a call from my dad saying that my uncle Keith's basement was flooding do to the massive amounts of rain that we have received (it's been raining pretty steadily since 1 or 2 this morning) so I went over there and helped him a little. He doesn't have a lot of stuff in his basement, but we got what he did have out. Then I went over to help my aunt Jane. She lives a few houses down from Keith, and her basement was quite flooded too, unlike Keith, she has a whole lot of stuff in her basement. So we got out what we could and she and Wayne, her husband, took some stuff over to my grandma's house where they and their two daughters, my cousins Abigail and Hanna, will stay for the next night or two.

Arena park is pretty much underwater. The creek has taken over all of the baseball fields. It's almost up to the tennis courts, or at least it was when I was leaving Keith's. I wonder how this will effect Pancake day (which is tomorrow).

Speaking of food, since I've been helping people with water problems since about 10:30 this morning, I haven't eaten anything today. I'm pretty hungry, but since I have class at 6 and work immediately after, I have to wait till at least 5ish to eat anything (Because, since I go from class to work, and don't get off work till 1ish, it'll be pretty late before I have a chance to eat anything).

It's still raining.

Anyway, remind me to post about work sometime.

Some Long Overdue Blagging (Blog Bragging)

2008-03-12T15:34:00.002-05:00

Three things I've done Scholastically that I'm proud of:

1. Got a 99/100 on my MC 352 test
2. Got a 147/150 on my MC 353 test
3. My script was one of the ones chosen to produce for my 352 class project

Two things domestically I've done lately that I'm proud of:

1. I rearranged my room. It's not entirely clean yet, but it's rearranged.
2. I cleaned up the back porch, rearranged it and got rid of a bunch of stuff.

I've been on Spring break since Wednesday. It's been nice. I'm still looking for another job.
Kohl's is nice, but I really need more hours.

That's all for now, because I'm watching the Godfather.

Writing Machine

2008-03-02T23:47:00.002-06:00

I wrote two scripts today! One for the scene that I have to write for 352 and one for the newsreader in my scene that I have to write for 352. My script is 4 pages long. Two more than it's supposed to be, but it's a fast four pages.

Schedule for this week:

Monday: Craziness.Class, film, class, film/study, test, eat, finish short story, sleep
Tuesday: finish filming, edit, class, work
Wednesday: class, edit, class, work
Thursday: find job
Friday: find job, FISH FRY!!!!
Saturday: marrilacs moveables, find job, Work

I love working at the fish fry, by the way. I just like being around all those people. Not because I like being around a lot of people, but because I know so many of them, or know of them, and it's nice to be useful and it's nice to just buckle down and work.

Here's why I like working at the fish fry, but don't want to work at a restaurant, where I would be doing very similar work to what I do at the fish fry:

At the fish fry people appreciate what I do. I work hard, I don't really take breaks, I'm good finding stuff that needs to be done and doing it. People notice that at the fish fry. If I worked at a restaurant, people wouldn't notice and they wouldn't care, and it would make working at the fish fry not fun, because it would be like work.

I won a trivia night on Thursday, I had help. It wasn't just me. It was Brian from class and some of his friends. We kicked ass.

Goodnight.

Mostly about Travelouges

2008-02-26T00:07:00.003-06:00

I had a test today in MC 301. All weekend I was like, "I should study for this test. I should do the study guide. I should really devote some time going over the stuff that's going to be on this test." But I didn't do any of that. Saturday I was a disgrace to humanity. I woke up. Did nothing. Ate lunch. Watched 30 Rock. Took a nap. Went to Fazzoli's with the lads. Went to Walmart to kill time before work. Saw Thomas there. Had a nice conversation with him. Went to work. Actually the last four things weren't all that disgraceful, but the rest of the day I was a useless human being. Sunday was slightly better. I went to Mass, did some homework, helped with lunch, watched some long way down, made some cookies and played some Pharaoh, but no studying. So this morning, I woke up early to get some studying down before class. I got to class half and hour early, studied briefly, and got a 96% on the test. Boo-yeah. I guess the moral of the story is, I'm awesome.

Speaking of Long Way Down, which I did briefly last paragraph, I enjoyed Long Way Down, which is the second travel documentary made by Charlie Boorman and Ewan MacGregor. If you recall, last year I watched Long Way Round, their first documentary. It was the story of Ewan and Charlie riding around the world on Motor cycles. In Long Way Down they ride from Scotland to South Africa on motorcycles. Long Way Round is a much better documentary series then Long Way Down, but that's not because Long Way Down is bad, it's because LWR is so incredibly awesome.

Now I'm going to talk about how I came to love travel documentaries:

Two words; Michael Palin. My mom got my dad the book "Pole to Pole: With Michael Palin" for fathers day or something one year, sometime after I graduated high school. I don't really know why; dad had never seen the series, nor expressed a great love for travel documentaries, nor Michael Palin for that matter (although, I think everyone's love for Michael Palin is the kind of love that needn't be spoken). Anyway he got this book, and it just so happened that they had that series at the library. So we rented and watched the series and it was very interesting. It was the story of Michael Palin traveling with a camera crew from the North Pole to the South Pole. He goes through a big chunk of Russia and through a lot of Africa. One of the most interesting things about that series is that he travels through Russia, and gets out like 2 weeks before communism falls. It's pretty neat to see the last weeks of communism through the eyes of a traveler.
They had another of Michael's travel series called "Hemingway Adventures" at the library. I watched that one too and loved it. Then I discovered that both of these series were sequels to Palin's wildly popular first series, around the world in 80 days, in which he follows Philieus Fogg's path around the globe using mostly the same sort of methods employed by Fogg. He does use cars at some point though I think. Anyway, I downloaded that one and watched it and was amazed. So yeah. I love travel documentaries.

Here is a list of my favorite travel documentaries:

1. Long Way Round
2. Around the World in 80 Days
3. Pole to Pole
4. Long Way Down

Anyway... I'm done being boring for the night... well at least writing boring things. I'm going to bed.
5. Sahara