two.points.collapsing

going to see zoolander in a little while. that’s good.

in my finance class today, predictably, the teacher felt it was a good idea to take a few minutes (about 20) at the beginning of class and offer his thoughts and opinions on recent events. this is bad. as soon as i left for my first class yesterday, i told my roommates, “you know, i bet all my professors are going to use this as a chance to get up on their soapboxes and make me listen to what they think about all of this, which frankly i don’t care about a single tiny bit.” and naturally, it happened today in finance, the class where i don’t care even when he’s teaching the class, much less how he thinks “we need to be sure not to blame any group for the actions of a few men”. yeah, thanks prof. you’re a very wise person.

my asian religions professor, god bless him, first said, “in news of a topical nature, you should give blood…” and wrote on the board the times and location of the campus blood drive. and then he said something like, “but our job right now is to talk about Buddhism,” which he went right into doing. i seriously love that guy.

this was odd though; with about 15 minutes still to go in class, in a lecture room that seats about 300 and which has no windows or open doors, all the lights suddenly go out. it’s pitch black, and the professor stops in mid sentence and everyone’s quiet for a second. but that’s not the worst. some obviously ingenious person toward the back of the room says, to the dark room, “i smell smoke…”. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT! so everyone gets freaked and is about to leave in a scrambled panic, and the lights come back on, on a crowd of peole half-standing and nervous. the teacher says, “okay okay, everybody sit down”, one of the TA’s goes out to insure there’s no smoke or fire or anything going on out in the hall (which there isn’t at all… yeah, that guy was brilliant), and we finish class.

okay that’s my story for now. ben stiller, don’t let me down.

if you’re lucky, you’ve seen this amazing new video by a band called kenna playing on mtv 2 recently. the song is called “hell bent”. it’s a pretty decent song with a sort of synth-pop sound, but the video is unbelievably cool. it breaks my heart every time i see it. if you haven’t seen it you should try to track it down somewhere. it’s so beautiful. and every time i think about the slogan “have bliss product” i laugh.

hey look, the mail just came and i got a couple cd’s and a state and main production crew t shirt (ten bucks on ebay, shipping included. cha ching). so now i gotta give a listen to the new end original single at least before i head to class — which excites me because this band is extremely promising to my tastes — and probably save the owls’ cd for after i get back from school a few hours from now. but i’m glad they finally came.

check that out, my computer couldn’t find the track listing for this cd on the cd database. i’m too cutting edge indie for my own good (not true).

hopefully no one took my blogging silence as an indication of tragedy. the only effects that today’s utterly insane world events have had on me so far are 1) a phone call waking me up early to watch the news (thanks to my girlfriend) and therefore an hour and a half less sleep, 2) watching more tv in one day than i have in the last 15 days probably (i sat in front of cnn for at least six hours today, easily, in blocks of up to two hours at once), 3) having one of my two classes cancelled, and 4) a phone call from my mother in the middle of the week (we usually only talk on sundays).

well, those and some complete disbelief that this actually happened in the world i live in. the first time i saw the footage i could have sworn i was just watching a movie like true lies or something. the bad guys were supposed to have been found, delivered with witty one-liner retorts, and then either killed or captured by a hero in a ripped shirt with bulging muscles. and this within an hour and a half of the initial misdeeds. the real side of terrorism is way scarier, because this leaves the possibility that things aren’t over, that we won’t find out who did what, that our response won’t make things all better in the end, etc.

and to top it off (and not with any intention of belittling the tragic number of lost lives), i never got to see the new york skyline. i’m sure it’s completely different now. can you believe that? one day, a few crazy (but dedicated) individuals, and the world is a different place now. mind-boggling.

in all honesty though, i have to admit that since i’m not really affected by this so far, personally, i feel bad talking about it at all. bad things happened today to a lot of people that probably didn’t deserve them. out of respect i think i should just hope for the best in the coming days and be grateful for my luck in not losing anyone i loved. it may be the corny, trite thing to say here; but what else is there to say?

i heard another report from a highly respected film buff friend that the musketeer was an awful awful movie. actually, he said, “it wasn’t even awful, it was downright painful to watch,” or something along those lines. so i’m glad still that i didn’t go see it. poor tim roth, two utterly disappointing film choices in one short summer. and he has such a cool accent too.

how about this though, some of us get to go see a free pre-screening of zoolander on wednesday night. i’m excited. i know it looks awful, and it may well be a strong example of murray’s law (see archives), but i have to say all the same that i love ben stiller and there’s at least a chance that it’s not as dumb as television would make it seem. come on ben, you can do it. think reality bites. think zero effect. think your small part in happy gilmore or your promising upcoming role in the royal tenenbaums. i believe in you.

i was looking for some examples of propaganda for my visual culture class, and one of the war posters that i found said “when you ride alone, you ride with hitler“… “join a car-sharing group today!” i thought, what a fun poster that would be to have for the apartment. show my patriotic and anti-hitler sentiments (which both need constant declaring), and spruce the place up, because it’s a colorful poster too! i only wish i had a car so i could help out the country by joining a car-sharing group.

that’s right, i’ll say it again. a car-sharing group!

the trick to feeling better is to forget why you were feeling bad, pretty much. right? there’s really no other way, unless you can go back and change whatever it is that made you start feeling bad. that’s the only reason i felt better today, because i kept forgetting to think about why i was down last night.

otherwise i don’t think anything good happened to me today. the only thing that made me go “oh boy!” today was finding out that october 16th will be a happy happy day. and it’s about time, too.

my classes all run together on mondays, so i didn’t get lunch. i found though — being a busy college student — that if you’re hungry and busy and just don’t eat, the hunger sort of fades away and only comes back in mild waves over time. usually once i stop being preoccupied it comes raging back though. so as soon as i finish typing i’m gonna need to go hit the kitchen.

oh, and i start my new job on friday. maybe it will give me all sorts of exciting stories about shelving government documents in a library to share with you. if it doesn’t, perhaps i’ll make some up to keep you from thinking i’m a complete bore.

and another thing…rock concert friday. outstanding.

looks like i’ll be participating in next semester’s improv shows as a member of the audience.

see you tomorrow, probably.

gulp.

back from the callback. doesn’t feel like i was as good as i needed to be. dammit.

this is where i fall back on my addiction to root beer to get me through the tough times. i know they keep telling me i should kick the habit, but i can’t imagine getting through nights like this without it. if you need be i’ll be knocking back a cold one.

(sad).

nervous nervous nervous nervous.

but i have to do some homework. nothing like some good old assignments to calm a guy down….huh?

i don’t think i get nervous about almost anything anymore, and i’m guessing because there really aren’t that many things i care enough about to want to do really well at, which would cause me to be nervous about my own performance. i get semi-nervous going to interviews but i can’t say i really care much about those generally.

this is a good feeling though in a way, because at least i know i still care about something. i worry sometimes that i’m getting too apathetic and cynical over time and nothing really gets to me any more. but then something like this comes along and i get all queasy and anxious, and reassured that it’s possible for things to penetrate the tough exterior (not muscular tough, don’t get me wrong) every once in a while.

i just need something fresh to give me that sort of jolt, you know?

so i got a callback tonight, and go to round two of tryouts tomorrow (sunday) at 4. wish me luck.

and we went to norm’s, a diner type place on la cienega, for dinner tonight to get out of the apartment, and if you’re thinking of going there, well, just be careful. you’ll leave feeling awfully weighed down. the soup was pretty good though and our waitress was really friendly, but on the way home we were all sort of groaning. some might say that’s what diner’s are all about though. plus, the slogan on the front of the menu was “exceeding expectations since 1949”, which we all agreed wasn’t a very positive thing to see on a menu. does this mean norm’s is fully aware of how little we expected out of them and are proud they can at least do better than that? it just seemed sorta sad. and more so because, upon leaving, i at least have to say they didn’t exceed my expectations as they did meet them exactly. i suspected the place would be a diner with average-quality food, and it was.

i think i exceeded my stomach’s expectations of the amount of greasy food it should be given though, so i’m going to go lie down.

since i know everyone is on the edge of their seat wondering, the tryout last night went definitely pretty okay. that’s about as specific as i can get. i felt good about it, but maybe that’s just because it was fun, not because it was what they were looking for necessarily. compared to the competition, i think i have at least a decent chance of getting a callback. i’ll find out tonight.

last night after the tryout, i went out to dinner with my girlfriend at downtown disney. we were going to see the musketeer, but earlier yesterday i first heard from a friend that it was disappointing, then read some reviews that said it was flat out terrible, so we decided to save the eight bucks. instead we went to a restaurant called “naples” where i had an okay but not great calzone. i wasn’t that impressed with downtown disney or that restaurant, but i had a really good time anyway because i was with my pal.

nothing but maybe homework on tap for today, except a fat bowl of cereal right now cause i’m a hungry bear.