two.points.collapsing

hey, look at that. my name next to a cool picture from 2001.

if i’m wrong about that movie reference, i’m going to smack myself.

kate gets to be collapsing friend #13, lucky her. (that’s clever because 13 is unlucky, see?). i decided that kate is rad in just under 24 hours. and i’m seldom wrong about these things. i do have a slight tendency to be judgmental (yes, only slight, i swear), but it was put more delicately by my friend shannon once who said, “you’re just very selective about who you want as friends”. as that sounded much more flattering, i made sure to remember her wording. it’s not that i hate indiscriminately for petty reasons. i’m just very apt at determining quickly when someone i meet or have to interact with is someone i feel like getting to know better. i find very few such cases on a day to day basis, but i’m not perfect and have been proven wrong on occasion. it’s just easier with this ability not to bother with people that i know early on are just going to bother me more later on.

so when i say someone is rad, it really means something, is what i’m getting at. now to study.

this one’s especially for dominic.

i’m sure you’ve all seen those annoying (well, i think they’re annoying. you may think they’re a perfectly appropriate patriotic gesture and not in any way tacky, ugly, or embarrassing) car-window-mounted american flags. from my counts, the phenomenon of flying flags, american or otherwise, in this fashion is a very recent one. i think it looks awful, but that’s not the point here. neither is me going on about the merits (or lack thereof) of showing your undying support of all things american by flying one of these wal-mart monstrosities.

but i’ll get to my point. my first observance of this style of flag-flying was this summer, when a similar bout of flag-flying occurred during and after the LA lakers played in and won the NBA finals. they were everywhere for a month or so. everyone was so proud of those little basketball guys and naturally wanted to show the world — or at least everyone else on the freeway. my summer roommate and now best buddy dominic and i thought from the start this was stupid, and since these laker flags are either yellow or purple, they’re even uglier than the american flags you see now. so we always laughed at these people, especially those excited enough to fly one on both sides of the car for twice the lakers enthusiasm.

but a month after the finals, we still saw a fair amount of these flags. the last game was won in mid-june and they were prevalent well into july, even early august — terribly lame. it became the mission of dominic and i to be the last one of the two of us to see one of these laker flags, and have had the privilege of seeing the car that must be owned by the lamest person in los angeles. i had him for a long time with a car somtime near mid-august, but then by some freak chance, right when we were talking about how it was all over, he saw one during the conversation, and reclaimed the title. i think this was either at the very end of august or maybe even september or october. who’s to really know. either way, i knew he had probably won the battle.

but oh no. saturday night, NOVEMBER TENTH, 2001, on the 110 north freeway on the way to see spike and mike’s animation festival, from the backseat of spencer’s roommate max’s SUV (i had three witnesses), i saw a car with a laker’s flag flying from the driver’s side window. it was a feeling of triumph i am rarely privileged to know. i now, with almost utter certainty, have seen the car of the lamest man in los angeles! take that, dominic! (enter queen music) no time for losers, because i am the champion . . . of the world (exit queen music). thank you.

a very nice girl from far away wrote to tell me she read my webpage. i thought that was grand. i read her page, and wrote her back to tell her i thought it was splendid. perhaps you’ll agree, and would like to follow the conveniently located link to quid pro quo at the left.

if she ever comes back: hi kate!

it’s time to turn in a few verdicts from this weekend’s activities.

first, the ozma concert. i saw them open for jimmy eat world over a year ago, and although i liked them okay, i wasn’t blown away by any means. after that i heard some of their stuff recorded and it just didn’t do it for me. they seemed like lousy weezer wannabes that weren’t very fun to listen to. i guess you can count me as converted now though. i went last night only because it was free and i was bored. but they played a really good show, i thought. so my verdict on them has gone from “not good” to “good”, although i still think they’re weezer wannabes and not “great”. they certainly aren’t lousy, they were fun to watch, i like their use of a keyboard, and some of their songs i enjoyed a lot. so good job in proving yourselves to me, ozma. i’d buy you a soda if you were behind me in line at 7-11.

also, i got to hung out with my man justin who i seem to only see at radio station events like this concert. (something’s wrong with that. some bowling is in order, i think.) sadly though, i met no new rock girls really. i should just stop expecting for that to happen i think, it only leads to disappointment. all that happened was talking to sexy music director brigette and having my crush on her turned up a notch, and seeing the girl i work with, who gave me an unexpected hug. that wasn’t so bad. of course, maybe she’d been drinking and it doesn’t mean she desperately wants me to ask her over some time like i’d like to think. we’ll see.

next, spike and mike’s animation. i thought it was alright. there were a couple shorts that were really great, like the finale, rejection. that and a couple others made me laugh a lot (one of them was the tenacious d animated video for “fuck her gently”. i’d seen it before, but now i got to see it on a movie screen — haha. what a good song, musically), and the people i went with, who’d seen previous years, said this year was disappointing in comparison. guess i’ll have to go back next time and see. it was fun to go even if some of the stuff we saw was godawful.

that’s enough for now. soon i’ll be done with savage love and i can turn in that verdict too, in a couple hours if i get in the bloggin’ mood again. for now though i should probably finally have a meal, today . . .

when your finacial situation can be classified as “very limited”, as i’m pretty sure mine can, you have to plan ahead for things. especially expensive things, like christmas. by my count of friends and family close enough to expect gifts from me, i have to buy nine gifts, and i’m only getting three more puny paychecks before christmas. ugh. so luckily i realized today that i had better get started on this business.

to get things going, i spent the day — that would have otherwise been completely wasted and boring — listening to music, doing a little bit of thinking, and a decent amount of internet exploring. other than this, i did nothing today, not a single solitary useful or enjoyable thing. it was sort of relaxing though, and now i have my little sister’s gifts sitting on my floor already bought, and three of my friends’ gifts lined up and soon to be bought. that means i’m almost half done before midway through november. i am the best gift giver ever.

tonight i have a full plate though: free concert on campus featuring ozma, and out to see spike and mike’s twisted animation festival after that with my buddy spencer. i’m not a big ozma fan, but i’ll see them for free when i have nothing better to do and there might be cute rock girls there. personally, i think they’re overrated and only everyone from orange county likes them. it’s a bizarre phenomenon. as for the animation festival, i really know nothing about it but it sounded fun so i accepted the invitation. plus i love spencer.

i’ll let you know all about the details tomorrow. party on.

oh man… new tenenbaums trailer. this movie i cannot wait for. definitely the most promising film of the year. even if it’s not the best thing i see in 2001, which it really could be, i know it’s the movie i’m most anxiously awaiting.

this is a good season for gene hackman, apparently. i wouldn’t have said i’m a fan of his, but he’s doing great things lately. i’m really looking forward to catching the heist soon, which he also stars in. i love the david mamet. i’d see it tonight, but my two mamet-loving compatriots are taking a weekend jaunt up to the bay area, which i sadly cannot afford to join.

soon though. soon.

what am i doing right now? i know it only takes me about twenty-five minutes, tops, to get cleaned and dressed in the morning, but i always get up an hour before my classes. so i finish scrubbing up and all that, and even on a slow day, end up with 15 minutes until it’s time to leave (15 minute skate to class), during which i sit here and stare at the wall or something. at least one of my roommates is still asleep so music is out, checking email takes up about 30 seconds, and i never have breakfast anymore, so what do i do with this time? well, for now, i do this.

i should take up some intricate hobby, like building a ship in a bottle or one of those little scale model cars, and work on it just during these fifteen minutes every day. then i wouldn’t be stuck sitting here drooling every morning, and in a year maybe i’d have a nice dumb ship in a bottle, or a stupid little car (i don’t really like cars, in that guy way where you’re supposed to be excited about them. they are good for transport, though) that i could look at and say, “i was really stupid for not just sleeping an extra 15 minutes every morning and then rushing to get ready on time, you damn ugly trinket”.

but if i did that, i’d always feel like i’m running late, since this routine is already ingrained. how about that.

uh oh, time to go to class.

(should have been posted at 9:45 — blogger error)

not a promise or a threat or an ultimatum, though i can do those too, i’m just telling you i’ve got this life i’ve got to live

after singing this to myself a thousand or more times it only gets better and better, not to mention i feel like i understand more and more where he’s coming from. best song of the week yet.

it’s peculiar how the slightest attention from a couple pretty girls can turn my day around. for example, tuesday i had a short chat with the sexy girl at work about independent film and books and music. this is someone i really hadn’t done anything other than politely acknowledge prior to that day. not only was it nice but i found out she’s more interesting than i gave her credit for. today i got the feeling she made a point of talking to me even though she was only around for a little while. more likely though i’m just pathetic.

this was even better though: a girl sat next to me in my visual culture class today, whom i’ve said hello to before, and who’s good looking and wears the coolest thrift-store type clothes. during the lecture, i looked down and saw that she was wearing two different socks (one thin stripes of lavendar purple and blue, the other plain gray). i turned to her and said (i’m so smooth, watch this:), “your socks don’t match.” she said she knew, but that she’d lost the other striped one, and she liked it too much not to wear it. i’m sure she had no idea how much i loved her right then. i could have died (to borrow from catcher in the rye). though i did manage to tell her i approved of the decision because it really was a good sock.

so i decided that’s the kind of girl i want — although not necessarily this girl, specifically. i just want a girl with mismatched socks.

to convince you further, for those of you who haven’t done so, to buy the dismemberment plan cd, i put up one of the songs that i’ve been really digging this week. download the others from their site, but in addition now you can check out “following through”, the new song of the week.

the long list of things i’d love to do right now does not include writing a short paper on “art in the age of mehcanical reproduction”; and to do the top few things on the list i would need a special someone which i’m painfully aware of not having tonight. these are not good feelings.

why is it that over a month later i’m feeling more instead of less pain in regard to this? not constantly but in occasional but very piercing little jabs. the thoughts that things maybe aren’t so bad, finally, are mixed up with the intermittent reminder that oh yes, they are.

someone needs a hug or a root beer.

ugh. i wonder sometimes if it’s at all possible, at any point in your life, to be happy with what you have. will there ever come a time when i realize the things i have going for me are enough to keep me satisfied? will the grass on the other side always be greener? it seems to me like there won’t be any end to the habit of perpetually telling myself, “things would be better if only…” or “i’d be happier if i gave a chance to…”

of course, i pick something out, and make it so, and it’s only a matter of time until i want something new, or sometimes want back to how things were before. so where does it all stop?

the whole time i ask these things though, i know the answer and just don’t want to have to admit it — it doesn’t stop. the case could be easily made that i don’t really want it to stop, because what’s the excitement in having everything you want? still, knowledge of this doesn’t keep me from hoping that at some point i can just finally “get it right” and be okay, no matter how irrational a hope that is. even worse, maybe, is the suspicion that at some of my high points in the past i did have it right and i just messed it up or let it slip away. horror of horrors, what if i missed my best chance of being as close to “getting it right” as i was going to get?

what a ludicrous thing to think at age 20, i know. but what can you do but sound like a fool when you’re in love with the past and the future but stuck in a present that lacks the spark of either?

my answer to that for now will have to be dismemberment plan and dreamland, until something better comes along. see you in the morning.