Author: briancollapsing

ha, i totally guessed it too. congratulations on the big big plans. gives the rest of us hope about love and life and all that. best wishes to you.

also, i slacked off again on the song of the week, but i remembered now, and this week is a good one. this band’s demo found its way to the radio station somehow, and i gave it a listen and really liked it. they sound like old jimmy eat world, and that’s a high compliment coming from me. they’re just starting out i guess, only four songs so far on the disc, which you can get for 2 dollars shipping at their website. you can also download two songs, but i’ll save you the trouble by just putting them up here and spreading the love. so check out blue sky goodbye, the song of the week stop raining, and another bonus track on top of that.

now i go to gobble up some taquitos.

i’m listening to “dead leaves and the dirty ground” by the white stripes right now. this song is so damn good it’s hard to listen to sitting down.

on to serious matters — tonight was “senior concentration night” at the business school where a bunch of department heads told us about the various course options for our last year at business school. choose from a handful of exciting tracks into corporate america such as finance, operations, information systems, management consulting, marketing . . . each with its own list of available courses in how to prepare ourselves for the all-important Selling Out to the Man we’re about to face in a manner of months. it just becomes a matter of what function you wish to perform in His service. so i was sitting and listening to these men and women list off careers, potential employers, starting salaries, and all that lovely stuff and it hit me. in the next week or two (we register for fall courses second week of april), i will in essence be selecting my career path, as long as we’re assuming what i study is what i end up doing. in the next 15 days, i could decide hey, maybe consulting would be fulfilling. maybe what i really ought to do is go into I.S. — everyone needs computers nowadays right? or i’ll just stick with marketing, nevermind that it’ll mean some of the lowest starting salaries in the business school. what’s important is that i enjoy what i do, not that i can pay off my mountain of loans . . .

all i’m trying to say is that this is scary. i’m all for change, but being aware that you’re at a key turning point in your life — in a decidedly serious, long-term kind of way — is pretty damn intimidating.

back to more lighthearted things: if you can, you really really ought to try to catch today’s daily show. one of the correspondents gave a commentary on the new star wars trailer and how much he loved it and trailers in general, and then he talked about how much better his commentary would have been to watch if it were in trailer form, and then they played it in trailer form. complete with melodramatic intro lines, gratuitous car crashes, and the cutting off of him about to say a swear word by explosion of tanker truck. it was utterly brilliant.

i remember this feeling. it set in last year at about this time. just after spring break (although i could feel it creeping up just before then too). i also recall it from november, just before thanksgiving. this is not a good feeling to have, even though it feels good — don’t get the two mixed up.

this is a definite and hard-to-resist urge to do what i’m doing right now: sit in my desk chair which is thankfully able to rock back and forth, listening to music and swaying front to back, staring at the posters, out the window, at a blank computer screen; to do this only, and at all times. schoolwork and even things that at other times would be enjoyable hobbies have no appeal or draw or hold over me. the list of projects to work on cowers in the shadow of my lethargic springtime apathy. i want to sit in the sun and watch the wind blow through the trees. i certainly have no desire to study the morphological differences of monkeys vs. apes, look through job listings, or give presentations to classes full of similarly disinterested students.

springtime is definitely here, and that means it’s time for a change. if i could make a wish right now, my first thought would be to skip the month of april. but then my first fear becomes, “what happens after next spring, when i’m not guaranteed a change of pace every 4 months? what do i look forward to then?”

stagnation is a terrifying adversary.

another thing i didn’t mention from saturday night: it always astounds me how quiet and deserted some parts of a city this large can get at 3am. sure, it’s 3am, but you’d think that there’d still be a decent amount of life out on the major avenues. this is not true. it’s eerily peaceful and fairly strange that a world with so many street lights can have streets so deserted. that’s another reason i like going on late night bus trips.

enough about the weekend already, how about today? it’s a mild and pleasant day here in los angeles. i just took a quick dash trip (dash is the downtown shuttle bus system. short range trips for only a quarter, very practical and nice padded seats) to pick up my trusty pocketwatch. everything seems shiny and precise, so i’m happy. the man at the house of time was friendly and cheerful as well, so all in all that went well. if you need a watch repaired while you’re downtown in la, i recommend house of time, 404 w. 7th st. #301. now you know.

oh, and to top it off, i was looking at some preliminary scheduling for next semester (fall, that is), and if i’m not making any mistakes, and i get into all the classes that i want, i’ll be looking at two days of class per week. sure, i may be at school for 9 (non-consecutive) hours those two days, but still — only TWO days of class a week! i’m sure i can steel myself against having to be somewhere at 8am for those two days if it means the other three days i have no educational obligations whatsoever. this could be a whole new world of opportunity here. i mean, imagine the possibilities of having brian unleashed on an ususpecting world that would guess i’d have class monday wednesday and friday. they’ll never know what hit them.

for once i feel like i have so much i want to write down, i have to actually hold some of it back so that i don’t overdo it. is overdo a word, or is it just over do? that’s not one of the things i wanted to talk about though.

last night i had started feeling cooped up so i went on a public transit outing to see gosford park and get some in-n-out. all in all, it ended up taking over six hours from leaving to returning to my apartment; this should attest to the efficiency of los angeles mass transit. what added to the inconvenience of the whole affair was the fact that, as i already told you, my watch is broken. since i have no replacement timepiece, this causes me great stress when trying to take busses to a theatre in time for a movie, for the main reason that i’m not able to know if and by how much time i am running late. and, as knowing how late i am is key in figuring out how worried i should be about getting there on time — which of course has a vital effect on the travel time in my semi-compulsive mind — not knowing adds the extra worry of not knowing how worried to be.

somehow by trying to read (just started naked lunch; terrific book) and otherwise not think about it, i managed to worry just the right amount and buy a ticket at 10:08 for a 10:15 showing (so says the ticket stub), and sit down, take off my hooded sweatshirt and kick back just as the lights dimmed. yes, i am considering doing this professionally.

the movie was not excessively funny, or excessively intriguing as far as mysteries go. but still, i really liked it. it seemed very professional, i think, as a film, and i appreciated that. and it was pretty clever even if there were fewer outright laughs than i might have expected. some might say though that the hardest laughs to get though are the internal, cerebral ones that don’t really evoke guffawing as much as an inner tip-of-the-hat. maybe i was cracking up on the inside. say what you will, i liked it all the same.

waiting at the bus stop on sunset after a tasty burger was exciting, because i got to watch people cruising for a good half hour at least. it wasn’t so awful i guess — waiting for busses in populated areas is kind of fun almost. it makes me feel like part of the city. leaning against a signpost, watching cars crawl by in a steady stop-go stream; it’s sort of calming. that was ruined though by sitting right behind mr. itchy once the bus came. mr. itchy was a bony black guy who must have been tripping on something, because aside from smelling strongly of feet, he could not stop scratching himself all over his body. hands in his shirt scratching his chest. scratching his bald head. pulling up his pantleg to scratch his legs. oh, and he was drooling too. then he took off his shoes and socks, scratched some more, and put them back on again. all of this was not as calming. mostly unsettling and malodorous, actually. i didn’t have the heart to just stand up and move to another seat for some reason either, so i just tried to read my book through tearing eyes until i could escape the stench 10 blocks later.

there are days when i find a moment in which to just reflect and be grateful — to myself, my parents, past educators, natural talent, who or whatever i have to thank — that i have some appreciable level of articulate self-expression. i was in a discussion class today, and listening to one very blond, very talkative, not necessarily unintelligent but completely incomprehensible girl stumble through a jungle of like’s, you know’s, and i don’t know’s on the way to her confused main idea — well, it caused me great pain. i just wanted to stand up, go over to her and shake her violently and scream “SPIT IT OUT!” into her face. it was hard not to actually laugh out loud in the small classroom.

it made me feel bad too, because i’ve heard her make some good comments in the past, and i know it’s not simply that she’s utterly stupid. and she talks plenty and seems very social, so it’s not that she’s shy or just uncomfortable speaking. she’s just awful at it. terrible. and i don’t know if i should feel more sorry for her for being stricken with this problem or for myself for being stricken with the task of forming a part of her audience. a true moral dilemma, right there.

on the opposite page, i must mention again how much i love the fact that my favorite author maintains his own weblog. if ever there were a man who could write about anything, as long as it was in his own personal writing style, and have me eat up every word of it, this is that man. and here he is, writing about conversations he has on airplane rides, and here i am sharing it with you because for one, it’s a good story, two, it’s well-written, and three, i only wish that someday i may be presented with a simlar opportunity.

[after describing the addlebrained conversation two women seated on either side of him are having across his lap]:

“At the end, one of the ladies asked what I did. I said I was a writer. “Well,” she said, “When are you going to be a New York Times Bestseller then?” It was the kind of cheerfully patronising thing people say to strangers they meet on planes. I’m sure if I’d said I was a musician she’d have said “Well, when are you going to have a hit record then?” I think I was meant to shrug and say “One day,” hopefully with a wistful smile, and she would have told me that was the spirit, but I said “Last June,” and then it all turned into a strange exercise in pronunciation when she asked me for the title of the book, and I said “American Gods”. She said, puzzled, “American Guards?” “No, Gods” said her friend, “American Gods,” I added. “American Gourds?” she asked, rather desperately. There is obviously a Texan way of pronouncing Gods that I wasn’t able to do.”

oh my god have you seen this new trailer yet? i mean, say what you will about george lucas, episode i, or even what some people argue is an awful title (i disagree with those people heartily), i still reply to them all with a defiant “fuck you, attack of the clones is going to rock my nuts off.”

i’m sorry, but i just get emotional about star wars films.

housing for next year: still no closer to settled.

job for this summer: still have no idea.

amount of work to do in the next month: steadily increasing.

various girl issues: nothing wrong there but still, nothing’s certain.

i think these are the reasons people develop ulcers. i’m sitting here at my desk listening to music and just staring into space trying not to let the feeling in my stomach get any worse, trying to think about where to begin sorting things out for the near future. and don’t even get me started on trying not to think about what happens a year from now when i’m about to finish my education and dive into the great beyond . . .

i can’t stop picturing myself taking the first sure-fire, steady paying opportunity i get because i’m too afraid nothing better will turn up, and then being horribly bitter for years afterward that i’m not doing something either more exciting, more prestigious, more glamorous, or at least higher-paying, after spending so much time, effort and money going to this big fancy private school with its shiny reputation and eye-popping tuition bills. this is my biggest fear right now, and it’s still a whole year away.

damn you, real world, for encroaching on my fanciful college student existence.

some people spend lots of money when they’re on vacation on drinks during a night on the town. fancy dinners. silly tourist activities. maybe even kitschy souveneirs. me? i spend money on cd’s and books, just like when i’m at home. so this week’s songs of the week (yes, there are two) are fun picks from the white stripes for one, and pinback for the other. (i also bought thursday’s cd along with the white stripes at newbury comics in harvard square, but i’d put up a thursday song just a few weeks ago so they’ll get left out this round).

the white stripes cd i should have bought long ago. that guy has a natural swagger to his singing voice that just oozes rock and roll, and the tunes back him up perfectly, and hotel yorba makes the case for them i think. pinback put on a good show for me in toronto so i bought their self-titled cd, and although they don’t ooze rock and roll so much as they massage you gently into rhythmic and pleasant groove, they still do what they do very well, e.g. on the track hurley.

hopefully the spring break wrap-up wasn’t too wild and wacky. so much happened, and i had such a great time, i couldn’t really tackle the retelling without falling into a weird haphazard frenzy of fragmented recounting. i just wanted it to be interesting and readable but still complete as a valid record of the experience. hopefully in a few months if i go back to read it, it will all still make sense.

what’s worth sharing from today? well i brought my watch to get fixed from it’s critical canadian crash landing today, to a place called “house of time” which seemed like a strange thing to call a watch repair shop. it seems more like a carnival attraction or perhaps something from norse mythology. it was really just a very small shop on the third floor of a building in the jewelry district downtown though, with a very nice indeterminately foreign man who told me he needed disassemble and clean my watch because the “movement” (which is watch-speak for working parts) was very dirty. the watch isn’t broken because it’s still ticking, it’s just not working right because of all the grime. well, what do you expect? it’s a pocket watch, it spends all it’s time in my pocket with a bunch of lint, not to mention my greasy paws. i guess lasting through two whole years of that is actually pretty decent, now that i think about it.

oh, for posterity’s sake and those enrolled in the brian longtin book club ™, over spring break i finished this, and i had a fun time reading it. laughed out loud, didn’t want to put it down sometimes. now i’m about to finish this, which is pretty good too but doesn’t have any detectives or random bouts of cursing. well, not much anyway; or at least not in the same way. still enjoyable though.