08.31.04ii


we're pleased to announce that kidchamp can once again take to the web from the comfort of my very own floor. on a more responsible note, the job search will pick up speed, as i can browse positions for which i am over- and (more frequently) underqualified at least forty-three times more regularly. party people put your hands in the air!


it seems that mike of satan's laundromat was arrested and jailed for disorderly conduct, aka photoblogging, at the manhattan critical mass rally on friday. though the group's san francisco chapter has annoyed me for a long time, i fail to understand why the po-po chose to get nasty at that event. i won't lie: if a passive-aggressive kid like me can feel like leaping on conservatives when they swarm my adopted town, i can totally understand why bloomberg would want to police the garden and big ticket fundraisers. that said, the city's excessive allowances for charter buses (two full lanes of several avenues are out of commission, and that's in areas nowhere near the convention) make protest-related blockages look like crumbs. bike riders aren't mujaheddin, you idiots.


stephen king's the stand (tv miniseries) (++1/2). i hate stephen king for scaring the shit out of me in grade school, for telling writers to go with the first descriptors that pop into their heads, for repeated use of Magical Black People - but i love molly ringwald, and watching her seek solace from crowded house's "don't dream it's over" felt like coming home. sarah and judd's building had a cameo in the superflu-ravaged restaurant intro scene, and i dug that as well. the rest was heavy on honky, light on spooky - better than playing solitaire for five hours, not quite superior to watching taxis meet their doom in the pothole outside our apartment.

08.31.04


greetings, fine friends, from Occupied New York! brevity is the soul of escaping from internet cafes with one's pants and spare change intact, so don't expect much from me. i'm thisclose to having a connection at home, i promise - direct paycheck-sending vibes at The Man if you would like this to happen quickly.


a lot of the city is Famous People Broken, as were the elevators in my office building when mrs. kerry paid a visit to the execs a few months ago. ninth avenue in particular is quite soupy, as everyone's motorcades like to rocket down the street with bowel-loosening mufflerless police bikes. i was on the 1/9 yesterday afternoon with four very young people in solid grey fatigues; they seemed very annoyed when someone struck up conversation and they were forced to admit that they were secret service. i, for one, would have believed they were plumbers or DEVO.


republicans are easy to spot: they really are tall, swaggering, fat and cowboy hatted. they also have high decibel conversations about how asinine it is to tax the rich. we would like to tell them to go home or maybe throw fries in their direction, but at the end of the day we don't really like the look of those special plastic handcuffs that everyone seems to be carrying.


thinking about attending the 'save johnny cash' protest on the upper east side this afternoon. the details are fuzzy - damn the cafe and my inability to do in-depth research - but it seems to be about my speed. still kicking myself for missing the anti-bush-slogan wet t-shirt contest, even after being told that you're not allowed to wear a bra for that sort of thing. i can confront my fears in the name of freedom, really. hand me your fries.

08.25.04


poverty inspired me to take a vacation from SSRIs last week; realized this was a bad idea when 1) kill bill vol.2 led me to believe that i should in fact bear children and 2) i cried all the way through sylvia. the latter is plausible, the former unforgivable.


joblessness sucks. i miss the laptop.

08.20.04


all remains well, though by spotty internet access i meant 'none at all.' am promising myself that we'll pick up tony's spare computer this weekend. in the interim, i have become the world's best "price is right" bidder and developed a disturbing one-way relationship with ellen degeneres. knowing that, you're dying to hire me, right?


babel tower, a.s. byatt: better than possession. worth a read, especially if you find it at a thrift store for $2 like i did.


star, pamela anderson + ghost writer: vegetarians don't eat tuna. really - most of them gave it up first because of all those gill net shenanigans in the early '90s.


golda meir the danish modern sofa is no more. we now have grendel, comparatively styleless but fiendishly comfortable.

08.16.04


administrative note: as The Man took his laptop back, i'm spottily with and without internet access for the time being - don't feel unloved if your notes and/or eastern bloc spam aren't answered immediately (mikhail, nadja and yergei: wire me the balance - my rubles on the way!).


got the best unemployment care package ever from sarah and judd on saturday - cheap wine, toys, an office space dvd, a "take this job and shove it" mix cd - i don't deserve these people. i adore them, though.

08.11.04


look ma, i finally caught some theatre in new york: judd and sarah brought us as their 'plus two' for the moonshine project's the booth variations last wednesday, also known as their old television's stage debut. the telly didn't work so well, but the show was exciting - we like to see talented friends' ambitions pay off. the multimedia format and the narrative meat (edwin booth the shakespearean, the assassin's brother, the historical roadkill) have been getting impressive attention from the press (as have the performances, natch); i admit i'm a bit jealous of their p.r. rep's mad skillz. then again, skillz would have steered me around my upcoming Unemployed Epiphanies, and i'm curious about those.

08.08.04


collateral (+++1/2). the sort of two-lead tension (jamie foxx and tom cruise) that denzel washington and ethan hawke would have given their left eyes to pull together in training day. tom cruise is a bitterly funny sociopath, but foxx clearly gets under his skin; foxx is initially familiar to anyone who's had a few late-night conversations with friendly cab drivers, but his everyman heroics are ultimately, pleasantly, surprising. michael mann gives los angeles a look that's resonant for locals yet eerily his own (heavy use of light-hungry digital video was an excellent choice - tight shots seemed as distant as long-range scans of the freeway, and tom cruise slipping in and out of focus at the climax was brilliant). my only complaints are nitpicky: so cal coyotes are normally knife-thin rather than wolfish, and i have yet to meet someone who's actually used the l.a. subway. all in all, masterful direction, well-managed suspense, and tom cruise's best performance to date.

08.06.04


the bourne supremacy (++). as in bourne the first, the talented mr. ripley, good will hunting - say, most of matt damon's bigger roles - his emotionally-troubled-asskicker characters are most affecting in the rare moments when he's told to play vulnerable, and there aren't enough of them here. as before, the cinematography is excellent, and the culminating chase scene is satisfying and original. i like watching MD beat the crap out of people really efficiently, but those very valid beefs that propel him around the world don't register on his face very often - so why should i care?


garden state (+++1/2). ends on an emotional high note that, while technically a bit weak and unfinished, is very welcome to the twentysomethings zach braff is chronicling. little moments here - natalie portman's eulogy in her pet graveyard, the hospital meeting where she makes braff's character listen to the shins on her headphones - are exactly right, as are all of the soundtrack choices (particularly iron & wine - i hope sam beam rakes in piles of new fans as a result of this). ZB's touches of absurdism keep the big themes from plodding too heavily, and i'm willing to forgive him for the too-polished speech he delivers toward the end, as 1) the los angeles restaurant in an early scene is actually SEA, my beloved thai place in williamsburg, and 2) he actually appears to read his garden state blog. bottom line, i like watching someone my age try to make sense of himself. if he did it too well, the combination of talent and success and self-awareness would be too much; as of now i just get to be happy for him.


the village (+). so glad we saw this at the ziegfeld (c. 1927, frantically stylish theater, site of glitzy nyc movie premieres) - were it not for the elegant surroundings and the primally satisfying act of eating popcorn at 12.30 at night, i would have revolted and demanded my money back. though i didn't catch on to The Trademark Twist, i was thoroughly unfrightened and unimpressed (mind you, i used to quake in terror at the care bears movie - if you can't frighten me, you might as well retire from the movie business); the movie was visually interesting, and that's about it. the new york post ran a scathing review that roasted shyamalan's apparent persecution of the bush administration (using warning colors and indistinct threats to keep the population in line, a leader with the name 'walker' - okay, they may have a point); perhaps watching the village with that in mind would make it marginally diverting. me, i'd see fahrenheit 9/11 instead and wait for the DVD. bleh.

08.05.04


Swansea


Before the pint at my elbow,
before my elbow - before
our evening's table,
or tables, the sea
swallowed monks -
if we believe the plaque
beside your pint.


The waves believe Swansea
is feverish: muddy arms
choke her each spring.
The cells stood where we sit.
The sea cured their studies.

08.03.04


if the city is on high alert for terrorist activity, upper midtown hasn't gotten the memo - the security guard at my bank of elevators has a new metal detector, but he uses it to scratch his bum more than anything else. The Company made me post bloomberg's info on their site - shockingly, i still have administrative access to the corporate portal and the tool that sends blast mail to all 20,000 minions - but in practice their safety protocols consist of showing us the stairwells and counting drunkenly over the public address system. i am less than concerned about explosions. i am very concerned about whether or not the ambiguously gay duo will beat bush and cheney, however, and donated $25 (don't sniff, i'm unemployed) to the kerry campaign yesterday. it made me feel better about being stuck in office purgatory. speaking of, it sure is fun to poke around on the FEC website. who knew hollywood was secretly supporting kucinich in the democratic primaries?

08.02.04


today's very iffy analogy for the situation at the office: it's like getting dumped for something incidental - having small breasts, say - and then having to make dinner for your ex's family. you'd like to serve bad shellfish, but they don't know what's happened, it wasn't their fault, and satisfaction isn't worth assault charges. they should know he's an ass, but it's not like they'd be loyal to you. so you cook really well.


i told you it was iffy.


actually i just come home very tired. i liked these people, and i'm naive enough to be hurt when they act like nothing has changed. an odd, cold pride is keeping me businesslike, but the full-body ache has set in by the time i get back to the apartment. i should be grateful that i'm young and mortgage-free, and i am - but i'm in debt, and job interviews are my kryptonite, and damn it, i thought i was doing well.

08.01.04


decisions have a strange way of making themselves sometimes. no more agony for selling out, as The Company pronounced me canned on wednesday. any twinges i'd have felt about a decent situation going south seemed ludicrous after the first few hours - they immediately started treating me like shit. normally i'd revel in being right about corporate america, but i don't get severance and am locked into filling in until they find someone to replace me. this, friends, is hell.