| ARCHIVES | JANUARY 2001 |
| Monday, January 8th, 2001 | 10:24 PM EST | link this post |
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So then: another new design. A small change masquerading as a new and more efficient approach to life. The tradition lives on. The nicest thing about this design is that I finally made it complete. Everything on the site now complements it, and that includes the fully-formed, easy-to-read, finally-permalinked Archives. Jesus wept for joy, and so did I. There are also a couple of new pictures (taken on my friend Paul's digital camera at his fantabulous New Year's party) in the About Me section; an up-to-date CD listing; mo' bettah links in the sidebar... you know, all the good shit. We'll see if I can channel this newfound motivation into more frequent and entertaining blog entries. It's almost a holy crusade for me now. Must... be... better... at... SOMEthing! But in all this talk of me, we've forgotten about you (this is how it should be, but just play along). Do you hate this thing? Do you love it? Suggestions and death threats to logovisual@hotmail.com. And before you ask, and I know you would have, yes, of course that is my hand. |
| Tuesday, January 9th, 2001 | 6:05 PM EST | link this post |
 Joy. (Other links: U2.com, U2Tours.com, U2Concerts.com) I'm a taxi man today; heading up to Tampa twice -- once to drop off a car and a drill, and to pick up my grandparents at the airport (already done); and in a couple of hours, to bring my friend Kim to the train station so that she can go back to Boston. Madness. It's almost quite literally that, in fact, as I was accompanied by my mother on the return leg home of the first jaunt. Her backseat driving was intolerable. So I went ten miles over the speed limit, argh argh argh... of course, listening to news on NPR didn't help -- apparently the Supreme Court just held the Clean Water Act down and raped it in the arse. Who's happy? Not me. I hate, hate, hate the Supreme Court; and the only reason I don't wish death on several of its members is because The Shrub would undoubtedly replace them with someone worse. ARGH. The vote, for the record, was 5-4. How inspiring. I'll get some links once I have time; I'm in a rush at the moment... |
| Wednesday, January 10th, 2001 | 12:21 AM EST | link this post |
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Well then. That was quite a day. Since the last blog: I ferried Kim up to the train station in Tampa. I'll miss that girl. We sat in the station and talked about tattoos, and my haircut, and Tom Waits, and why she needed a window seat; and she came very, very close to convincing me to rent an apartment with her in Boston this summer. Hell, I still might. In any event, I *will* get up there to visit her. Kim's neurotic and crazy, but it's in all the right ways; and the stunning amount of coherence she's mustered in her life and affairs (considering how incoherent she comes across as in interaction and conversation) is a gentle, silent reminder to me that I've done little to prepare myself for life, while she's forged ahead. That sounds depressing, but it's actually inspiring. But I finally got my long-awaited opportunity to do some serious night driving on the way home. I slapped on the Doves album and cruise-controlled down I-75, getting all mentally poetic and reflective. While coming back to Florida reminded me how much I hate, hate, hate driving in normal surface-road traffic (hurrah for the subway), it also reminded me how much I miss being able to just ride and listen to music and sing if I want to, at the top of my lungs, without worrying if anybody's going to hear my shitty Bono impersonation. I love NYC, but I really did need that kind of freedom about now. I returned home to over 200 messages in my mailbox from the U2Tour eGroup, all of them posted between 4:45 PM and 12:00 AM EST. Jesus. I can't believe the servers held up under the strain... suffice it to say I've blocked the mail and decided to read the messages on the website. So much for rejoining the U2 fan community. Thank you to those of you who've sent feedback on the new design... except one of you. And I think you know who you are. (Git.) |
| Wednesday, January 10th, 2001 | 2:56 PM EST | link this post |
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Let's get political. Clean Water Act:
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| Wednesday, January 10th, 2001 | 4:33 PM EST | link this post |
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So I tried to get a hold of some of the registered-fan only U2 tickets today. But no. Ticketmaster.com crashed, as it always does when a major event goes onsale. This company sickens me; they're essentially a monopoly and they're in the pocket of high-powered scalping agencies. They're certainly making enough money to buy servers that could handle the traffic they *know* they will get for events like U2, *NSYNC, etc., but they don't do it because gridlock on the website makes ticket access easier for scalpers. For more: Washington Post: Whose Line Is It Anyway? |
| Thursday, January 11th, 2001 | 11:53 AM EST | link this post |
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Prol urges a chill-out on the ticket issue... the problem is, the other means she describes are just not within the realm of possibility in America -- ticket-scalping is way out of hand, and there's no way I, or my friends who were going to accompany me, could afford the jacked-up prices on tickets like U2, especially if the show's a sellout. This country sucks. Granted, I'm sure that if I looked hard enough, I'd be able to find a reasonably-priced ticket from a fan who doesn't need one, but (1) I've got to make long-distance travel arrangements to see the Miami show, meaning I need my ticket secured well in advance; and (2) my friends wouldn't be able to come with me, and that would suck big-time. Alright, time to stop obsessing about this -- I *will* get tickets Saturday morning. Don't think about it until then. Even though I violently disagree with much of what they say, FreakyTrigger are the funniest bunch of music-crit assholes I've ever seen. If I met any of them, I'd punch them in the face. Then I'd buy them a drink. Of particular charm: I Hate Music: "Back to StringBean Harvey anyhow. Its interesting to follow her career development from Dry to Stories From the City, Stories From The Sea. Interesting at least if you're waiting for grass growing season. I've seen more development in a polaroid of a white wall. The only difference is that on Dry she got her drummer to sing castrato, and in Stories From The Slag Heap she got a castrato to sing dead low. I assume Thom Yorke has no balls anyway, that can be the only reason why he is so (EDITED FOR FRIGGIN' GEOCITIES) miserable." (I know everyone in the blogging world has been lovin' up to FreakyTrigger for some time, but this is for the benefit of my non-bloggy readers, of which I know there are a few.) |
| Thursday, January 11th, 2001 | 9:15 PM EST | link this post |
Ah, I just couldn't resist. Feast your eyes on moi, StorTrooper style: Went ice-skating with Rachel yesterday; another in a long line of enjoyable encounters with friends which must, sadly, come to a close as of Sunday (though my friend Tina is coming up to New York with me, to hang out and see shows for a week). I ordered all my books today; school looms on the horizon. Ick. It'll be nice to be back in the city, but I'm nervous about holding myself to my New Year's-inspired standards of scholastic effort... Still a few blessed days of non-responsibility left, though. Next up? Mini-golf, baby. Rawk. |
| Friday, January 12th, 2001 | 3:11 PM EST | link this post |
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...Dude. Tobey Maguire in his SPIDER-MAN costume (scroll down to the bottom). Couple this with the news that Ang (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON) Lee will be directing HULK, and comics fans are issuing forth tremendous collective orgasms... (Yeah, THAT's a mental image you needed. Sorry.) Anyway, there's very little hardcore fanboy left in me after my immense buildup/catharsis experience with the X-MEN movie, but these two newsbits still provoke a stir of glee. Good times at the multiplex are forthcoming, methinks. |
| Saturday, January 13th, 2001 | 12:59 PM EST | link this post |
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Success!!! See you there? Oh JESUS this is funny... Brunching Shuttlecocks gives us The Drug Slang Translator. So, so sweet. Wanna know what's been up my nose? Click here... Threadnaught has compiled the Blogging StorTroopers into one magnificent page. As Darren said, this page is just begging to be Hamster-Danced... Final thought: This, ladies and gentlemen, is only my fiftieth blog since October 23, 2000. Shameful. |
| Saturday, January 13th, 2001 | 10:45 PM EST | link this post |
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Ask, and ye shall receive. Oh, thank you, Meg. Tomorrow morning, I return to NYC. Wish me luck navigating the wilds of commercial air travel, and hopefully I'll blog at you from the other side of the voyage tomorrow night... |
| Sunday, January 14th, 2001 | 10:58 PM EST | link this post |
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Back in New Yawk in one piece, with an almost preternaturally smooth trip... scary. I feel like a safe is going to fall out of the sky and land on me at any moment to compensate for the ease of travel... I've been linked on LinkMachineGo, one of my favorite blogs. Go love him up for me. Tomorrow's an organizational day, getting my life back in order after my extended vacation, so who knows if I'll be in any shape to blog after I finish wading through piles of bureaucracy at the bank/university/etc. We can hope. |
| Monday, January 15th, 2001 | 1:05 PM EST | link this post |
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Pixies b-sides album? Hoo-wah! New R.E.M. songs? Double hoo-wah! (The sound quality's somewhat crappy, but I think we can all get by). |
| Tuesday, January 16th, 2001 | 9:00 PM EST | link this post |
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Better blogs coming soon, but for now, a summary of my day: Guggenheim, create a new website (news coming soon), pick up textbooks (grr), Toy Story 2 on DVD, Mexican for dinner, Forbidden Planet, blog, sleep fitfully in preparation for (gack choke) class. |
| Tuesday, January 16th, 2001 | 9:32 PM EST | link this post |
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Can't believe I forgot to link directly to this in the last blog. The Guggenheim has plans to build a new museum in downtown Manhattan. It's designed by Frank Gehry, the guy behind the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain and the Experience Music Project in Seattle. This building, if created, would be the most heartrendingly gorgeous thing to ever happen to New York, IMHO. Read all about it here, right now, and tell me what you think. In the guestbook at the Guggenheim exhibit, some Columbia student wrote about how its "language" was inappropriate for NYC where it was appropriate for Bilbao, and urged them to be "sensitive architects." IMHO, that's crap; this thing is too good to be true, especially in that location. Oh well, go see for yourself. |
| Wednesday, January 17th, 2001 | 11:33 PM EST | link this post |
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Apparently it's "dancing about architecture" week at Not Enough Of Me... my very own institute of higher learning plans to knock down the last surviving home of Edgar Allan Poe. A hearty thumbs-down to that notion. Go visit that link and sign their e-mail petition; I'm going to be looking into this... (Link via lukelog, many thanks for the consciousness-raiser) I have done much in the last two days that is blogworthy, but I'm in no shape to recount it in full. As usual. I'm slipping in the old living-stenographer department... expect a novel-length blog sometime at the end of the week, when things calm down a bit. |
| Saturday, January 20th, 2001 | 5:31 PM EST | link this post |
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Wednesday Night: THE SEARCH FOR SIGNS OF INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE, starring Lily Tomlin, on Broadway. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it: It's a one-woman show by Jane Wagner, featuring an ensemble cast of wacky characters in slice-of-life vignettes, bearing the infamous Seventies humanistic life-is-divine conceit we're all so familiar with (granted, I believe this, but the smirking mysticism and sincerity that it's normally imbued with is off-putting to me). Tina's been obsessed with this show for years now -- I've heard hours of monologues from it pour from her lips -- and seeing it on Broadway was one of her dreams. She, of course, loved it. I'm unwilling to commit to it on that level. It's got very little in the way of subtlety, and a lot of the one-liners are a bit too clever for their own good. The characters, however, are very entertaining, Lily Tomlin is a friggin' genius (she pantomimes like you wouldn't believe, and her delivery and characterization are fantastic), and there are a few standout segments, like the wrathful teenage performance artist Agnes Angst ("I don't kiss ass, and I don't say thanks"), who's always good for a laugh, and the genuinely affecting story of a militant feminist's transition to married life. Sanctimonious, yes; overblown, definitely; entertaining and well-acted, yep. Thursday: Shopping, shopping, shopping. We're out to Broadway again tonight for another Tina wish-fulfillment fantasy, THE ROCKY HORROR SHOW, and we don't have *anything* to wear. -gasp- Tina buys a slinky black dress, red stiletto boots, and an absurdly red wig on St. Mark's Place; I buy THE ADVENTURES OF BARRY WEEN, BOY GENIUS and EXPO 2000, also on St. Mark's (St. Mark's Comics, to be exact). To each his own. Tina dons her get-up and teeters her way through the streets of New York to the subway. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't embarassed; the wig and leather-chick ensemble didn't bother me at all, but her new shoes handicapped her with a complete inability to walk at anything resembling a normal pace/concept of balance. THAT was somewhat mortifying. If you're reading, Tina, and you probably are, then I'm sorry but it's kind of true. Mind you, the usher at ROCKY HORROR used her farcically overblown British accent to hilariously gush compliments about it, so it's far from a total loss. Tina is a complete and utter devotee of the film and the cult which surrounds it, capable of debating the continuity of the film and how it dovetails with the abyssmal sequel, SHOCK TREATMENT, at length (Indeed, she did exactly this at our post-show dessert). I find the film extraordinarily entertaining -- I'm actually one of the few people on Earth who considers it to be an honestly good movie in every respect -- but I've never actively participated in the cult aspect. I have, of course, witnessed it. After taking in your average comic convention, ROCKY HORROR fans are a tame bunch. At least a higher percentage of them no longer live with their parents at thirty-five. We rushed tickets to the show. The Circle In The Square is an interesting venue, with a thrust stage surrounded on three sides by seats; we ended up with tickets against the wall, stage left, practically sitting on top of the stage. We were close enough to touch Joan "I Love Rock And Roll" Jett (hell, she almost fell on me at one point). Our view of the choreography was theoretically not great, but we were so close to the actors that we MORE than compensated. What to say about the show? It was, from my entirely biased perspective, fantastic. Just loads and loads of fun. Everybody camped the hell out of their roles (with the exception of the aforementioned Joan Jett as Columbia, sadly, who clearly can't act, no matter how hard she rocks her costume and brief guitar solo), and the music was fantastic. The stage design was genius. Dick Cavett (yes! him!), as the narrator, routinely interrupts the flow of the performance with ad-libbed jokes, responses to the audience, etc. And oh yes, the audience *demands* responding to. Unless you're dead, stupid, or both, you know that a tradition at ROCKY HORROR is to shout out vulgar jokes at the characters on the screen, finishing their lines with perverse effect. They urge you to do so at the new ROCKY HORROR, but of course, not every line of the stage adaptation is the same. Which makes for some humorous... err... mishaps. Tom Hewitt as Frank-n-Furter actually stopped the show at one point when three people yelled three different participatory remarks, pointing out into the crowd and saying "Just you! Just you say it! Now trust me on this folks, it'll be funny if it works," and then started his line again. "WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE DRINK?" shouts the audience member in the brief pause after Frank speaks; "COME!" Hewitt quasi-responds. Is it genius? No. But in its own sad, quirky, arrested-development way, it's damn funny. In any event, it was the most fun I'd had at a show in a long time. If you like ROCKY HORROR, you'll definitely dig the show; if you don't like it, then in all honesty you probably won't like it here either, but perhaps it's worth a shot. And now I am exhausted. More later, including news on my latest diabolical Web-based scheme; but until then, ta. |
| Sunday, January 21st, 2001 | 4:03 PM EST | link this post |
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A brief suspension in the Story Of My Last Few Days epic, though I will tell you that the city is covered in snow and it's absolutely gorgeous; I'm looking for pictures but am so far fruitless. I really, really need a digital camera. Go check out "Typecity" at i2design.net (it's in the "Experiments" section up top). It's an analysis of how typefaces are used in cities around the world. Sort of. It's really just a well-designed photo gallery. However, it does contain six pictures from the Union Square area, right near my dorm, including Coffee Shop, the place where I had lunch with my sister today. Great pancakes. (Thanks to prolific for the link) And we'll make a lit-slut out of you yet, missy. Mountains of homework to read and do tonight. Pray for Mojo. |
| Monday, January 22nd, 2001 | 3:01 PM EST | link this post |
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If you get Comedy Central, watch The Daily Show tonight at 11 PM EST. Jeremy and I (and one of his friends) will be in the audience. You probably won't be able to see us, but y'know, just on principle.
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| Thursday, January 25th, 2001 | 4:03 PM EST | link this post |
Well, he told me to. |
| Monday, January 29th, 2001 | 3:00 PM EST | link this post |
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Why, why, why wasn't The Smashing Pumpkins' "Stand Inside Your Love" a tremendous hit? As megalomaniacal and unrealistic as Corgan's proclamations get, there is perhaps some truth in the statement that rock is losing the fight against "the Britneys"... "Stand Inside" is just a damn good rock song, maybe one of the best of 2000, but nobody cared. It's a shame. On the subject of the Pumpkins and their humorous melodramatics, you must read this hilarious cartoon, "Smashing Peanuts," telling the story of the band's apocryphal final album (MACHINA II/friends and enemies of modern music) in Peanuts form. It's adorable. This is all adding up to this: I'm in an oddly musical mood right now. I did something I've never done before yesterday -- I wrote a song. Lyrics only, mind you. It's called "Quakershaker," it's a rip-off of/homage to Salman Rushdie's novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet (if you've read it, you know what I'm talking about), and it's just a goofy fun rawk tune. I'd be lying if I didn't say it was partially inspired, in spirit if nothing else, by U2's new b-side *ahem* "Big Girls Are Best". That title is a bit eyebrow-arching, I know, but it's so jiggy (best word for it) that you forgive almost instantly, and once you figure out what the hell Bono's talking about (namely, how damn sexy it is to be married to an awesome woman), it becomes a pretty cool song. So this is an interesting feeling for me. I always dream about being a rock star. Now, maybe, I'm on my way. With one song. And no knowledge of how to play any instrument. And an frighteningly rudimentary concept of how to read sheet music. Yes sir, I'm headed for the big time. Alright, last thing: I advocate voting for Not Enough Of Me in The Anti-Bloggies. I'm a pretty shite weblogger anyway; might as well get recognized for it. May I suggest voting me for "Most Distracting Background Image" or "Most Gratuitous Sucking-Up To The A-List"? (What can I say, they're just much more entertaining bloggers. There's a reason why they're the so-called "A-list," people; it's because they're entertaining, stimulating, etc. And see, there I go again.) |
| Tuesday, January 30th, 2001 | 4:34 PM EST | link this post |
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Hillary's stopped gussying herself up on Capitol Hill. My God! Next thing you know, she'll stop cooking dinner every night... how despicably sexist. If Henry Hyde came in to work with his shirt untucked and hot-dog stains on his tie, nobody would make a peep... I'm sick, poor, and swamped in homework I don't want to do. So imagine my delight when I discovered, sitting in my wallet, the Barnes and Noble gift cards I hadn't used at Christmas... practiced a bit of retail therapy on myself, picking up Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn and The Smiths' Hatful Of Hollow. Ah, soothing capitalism. If any of you feel tremendous sympathy for my sniffling headachey self, you can practice some retail therapy of your own, cough cough, wheeze wheeze... worth a try, anyway. |
| Wednesday, January 31st, 2001 | 11:59 PM EST | link this post |
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The blog is going on hiatus until this weekend, at which point I will return, Bloggerized. Yep, I finally figured out how to work it. I'm not a retard after all! Until then: "I knew who he was, but I was kind of busy and didn't really have time to chat," Schmidt said. "He just kept standing there staring at me, expecting me to react in some way." Added Schmidt: "I tried to be nice and humor him a little. I said, 'Yesiree, that sure is some shocking satanic imagery, no doubt about it. And that one eye with no color in the pupil, very disturbing. I'd sure like to suppress that.' I mean, what do you say to Marilyn Manson?" -The Onion: Marilyn Manson Now Going Door To Door Trying To Shock People. I was stalked by Robbie Williams yesterday. While walking down University Place, some guy strutted past me with his headphones, shouting out the lyrics to "Supreme" at the top of his lungs. Then, as soon as I walked in the doors of Barnes and Noble, they started playing "Supreme" on the sound system. Scared the hell out of me. Don't you just despise sassy women from South Carolina who constantly pay you backhanded comments? ;-) |
| (OLD) ARCHIVE NAVIGATION |
| October 2000 |
| November 2000 |
| December 2000 |
| January 2001 |
| Return to the "modern" blog |