Wading in the Velvet Sea

2002-10-06T17:07:00.000-04:00

making the move

While for now all archived content will stay here, I have officially set up shop thanks to the great people at Hosting Matters. The new blogs can be found at

http://ryan-mcgee.com/blog

and

http://ryan-mcgee.com/buffy

set your bookmarks and links accordingly.

Now up at my new blog is a review of a very special movie...

2002-10-05T02:33:00.000-04:00

zzzzzzzzzzz

almost done moving to the new site...Movable Type is such my bitch.

just need to figure out how to get counters and transfer all this material over and we'll be all good.

and if anyone wants to help me design a homepage, let me know :)

2002-10-04T13:46:00.000-04:00

moving buffy talk

WiccaWillow will be the home for all Buffy Talk from now, lest I bore all you non-Buffy fans who just want to hear stories about me falling on my ass socially or talking out of my ass culturally.

You're all just here for my ass anyways, right?

2002-10-04T12:44:00.000-04:00

senior year part 2

I'm a bit torn here, I must confess. As much fun as it would be to continue to demonstrate the complete jackass that I was back then, it's coupled by the fact that I did some incredibly sh$tty things to girls who didn't deserve it. And while I have no problem enumerating my faults for others to consume, it doesn't mean I want to dredge up any memories for these girls or their friends in such a public forum. So for now, Part 2 will have to wait. Perhaps indefinitely.

If anybody is really curious, you can email me via the link above and I'll give you the basic skinny. But as for the site itself, mum's the word.

Gonna go flog myself in the corner now...

2002-10-04T10:39:00.000-04:00

moving on up...to da eastside...

well, cross your fingers, my fellow readers, the process has begun to move to my new home on the web.

provided of course, i can figure out how the hell to do it. i already have some of the faithful helping out, especially Janet who is helping me move to Movable Type which I quite like, but am rather inept at FTPing and file directoring and pathing and all the other made-up gerunds you can think of.

I'll be here for a bit longer, fear not. But if anyone else wants to offer a hand in helping me pack up, I'd love it.

Part II of Senior Year will be up sometime this afternoon.

2002-10-02T23:55:00.000-04:00

why maturity is a good thing

If you know me, you know the gist of this story, so feel free to roam along other parts of the Internet. But in keeping with the theory that nothing I could make up is as funny as the stuff that really happens to me, I’m gonna give you the skinny on what Senior year of college was like on the dating tip for yours truly. Fair warning---it gets ugly, but about 87% of this actually is true. The other 13% should be readily apparent.

I’m telling the story because I’ve been having quite a few conversations lately with not only the parties involved, but those around me at the time. And without equivocation, we’re in a much healthier place as a group. Different lives, different parts of the globe, all with certain setbacks to go with the advancements, but yet all with a sense of, “Well, yes, that was fun, but I’m certainly glad it’s done.” A Very TS Eliot “Wife in ‘The Wasteland’” type of vibe, is what I’m driving at. We laugh about the old times, mostly because we actually somehow still talk after all of it went down.

Names protected to save the innocent.

So November, 1997. I start dating this girl Sue. Sue and I are the result of about 5 weeks of sexual tension while I am dating this other girl Sally with whom I would have had a perfectly inconsequential 6 week thing except that she cheated on me so of course I blew up like Pompeii. Sue and I had one of those romantic starts you look forward to telling the grandkids about: hot and heavy in the basement halls of a dorm. This wasn’t any basement though mind you. The basement of this particular dorm (Adams House for your Harvard-ites out there) is lined with hundreds of yards of murals painted by the students every few years or so. Each student gets roughly a 5’x8’ section that they can do pretty much whatever you want. Add on the fact that we were ostensibly supposed to be at the Halloween dance upstairs, you have two costumed folk pressing each other alternately against Gaia, Winnie the Pooh, and random lyrics by Jim Morrison. Just as romantic as a splinter in the eye.

Two months or so go by. Sue is the producer of a production of “Antony and Cleopatra” directed by Commander Foley. Sue becomes increasingly convinced that the girl playing Cleopatra has the hots for me. Having not yet entered fully into the levels of jackass that were to follow, I dismissed her jealous claims (God bless Sue, but she was even more jealous than myself, and that’s saying something.) But Sue was right, “Jessie” was indeed staring at me. She had seen the work I did light designing a dance production in December and just decided I was juicy, I guess. Hey, it happens to the best of us.

Yet I was clueless. At the cast party I brought a mix tape I had made which told the entire play through modern day songs (yea, geek, guilty as charged). Jessie tells me that if I make her a copy, she’ll make a mix for me. Clueless Boy sees no problems with this. Jessie’s mix tape is nothing but trip-hop, slow grooves that beg the libido to come out and have a party. Idiot Man cheerfully accepts tape and leaves her room. A week later Jessie comes over to watch a movie and basically, by the end is spweing subtle phrases such as “I….I want you. Is that bad to say?” Still a bit stunned, a ask her what on earth she sees on me. “I dunno, you just have such…I dunno, passion.” And I didn’t even have to give her Franzia, which was the usual way in which I convinced girls to shower me with such praise. Now of course the dilemma is clear---I am dating Sue but little lithe Jessie is pretty much going to attack me at any moment. I could

A) Say “thanks but I have a girlfriend”
B) Kindly talk for a few hours about the pros and cons of why this may or may not be a good idea.
C) Say “Bring it on” and sloppily make out and get your eventual swerve on

I am at this time a 21 year old man-boy who has an incredibly attractive girl telling him she’s hot for his bod, so Option A is out. Neither of are Harvard lesbians so option B is out. So the trip hop tape gets played and Option C is played out to the hilt.

(By the way, I’ve never seen people talk the fun out of hookups they way my lesbian friends did. My God it was epic. They are the best contraceptive known to man. Put them in a room of horny teenagers on Prom Night and you can guarantee no shotgun wedding the following Fall.)

(By the way again, I’ll never ever outgrow the phrase “get your swerve on”. I’ll be 87, in a wheelchair, wearing a diaper, and asking my great-grandkids if they’ve gotten their swerve on lately. I’ll be the hippest man in dentures, I tell ya.)

So, here we have it, a guy who wouldn’t speak to Sally for roughly 8 months because she cheated on him goes and cheats on his next girlfriend. I am fully aware of the irony throughout the entire encounter yet keep going. The charade goes on for about a week. Normally you would think I would simply break up with Sue and go my merry way with Jessie. Well, that would be sensible, and dear readers common frickin’ sense took a hibernation during my Senior Year. So I wait until Sue is finished her exams, and with tickets in hand to Blue Man Group for me and Jessie in hand, I break up with her.

(Amazingly enough this was only the third worst breakup I pulled off in my college days. Let’s run them down, TRL Style.

“Hi, my name’s Larissa, I’m from Staten Island, and I’d like to vote for the time Ryan cheated on that girl for two weeks, bought Blue Man Group tickets for his new girl, and made the breakup itself as short as possible so he could hop on the T and not miss the show. WOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

“Hey, what’s happenin’? Tanya here. Wanna give my props to Brooklyn. I’d like to vote for the time Ryan went to breakup with his freshman year girlfriend in January, only to find out upon arrival she had bought him a jacket and a bound copy of “henry V” over Winter Break, and with said objects in hand dumped her anyways. REPRESENT!”

“Yo yo yo, Darren here on the flip side. I gots to vote for Sophmore Year, breaking up with that nice girl by telling her he thought he was in love with someone else, while the nice girl was still recovering from her hospital visit after getting her stomach pumped after drinking the tequila he bought for her, and then her making him come back AFTER talking to the would be next GF, who of course didn’t like him, and he knew it, but had to tell her anyways to get over her, so trudged twenty minutes in the to have it told to his face, and then trudge twenty minutes back to talk to a girl who couldn’t even hold down solid food yet. HI MOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Like I said, I am very glad I am not in college anymore.)

So Jessie and I ride high. Nothing can stop us. Everything is great.

For five whole days.

Then yours truly blurts out THOSE THREE WORDS.

Which comes as much of a shock to her as to me. Just an awkward, awkward moment. I’ll never forget the feeling right before I said it---it was a slight cold spot in the back of my throat. And I just KNEW. Never happened before. Hasn’t happened since. Doesn’t mean I haven’t loved anyone since, just means that this was a unique experience. After a day of “Wow McGee, even for you that was supremely dumb,” she comes to my room, verbally reciprocates, and all is good.

And 24 hours later she recants and alternates between “I never said it,” and “I didn’t mean it.” Neither explanation sat very well with me. Ugly. We’re talking Philip Seymour Hoffman covered in Crisco ugly. We talking “Spice Girls Unplugged” ugly.

Since God wasn’t done slapping me silly that week, he organizes a cast party for 3 days later. Both Sue and Jessie are going to be there. I really wanted to test that “Not enough liquor in the world can dull this pain” theory for myself. I’m miserable, I’m single (which for some people is a redundant statement), and I’m ready to consume my weight in Cossack brand vodka. I remember as clear as day writing the Commander an email which almost verbatim read:

“Man, f$ck women. F$ck them all. If this were 2002, I would invoke Mary J Blige and ask for no more drama in my life. But since that song hasn’t come out yet I’ll make more a chronologically sound reference. Man, mo’ money, mo’ problems. Only substitute “money” for “women” and you’ll get my drift. Anyways, no mackin’ for me at the party this weekend. Just keepin’ it real with the boys. The only way I’ll hit on anything is if Julie shows up wearing her outfit from the show.”

Julie played, among other roles, a gypsy dancer in the play. Having designed enough dance shows and having seen more than my share of warmup routines, needless to say I was intrigued by dancers’ flexibility.

So God, enjoying watching me bounce from side to side like a pinball against the bumpers, sends Julie to the party after I had consumed, by my estimation,

---6 Cider Jacks
---4 shots of Goldschlager
---2 drinks consisting of a double shot of vodka, 2/3s OJ, and 1/3 cranberry juice

and of course she is dressed as the gypsy.

What happened next is really like a slide show. I have strong recollections of individual moments frozen in time as clear as day. The rest of the night is as lost as a person with Alzheimer’s driving cross country.

I remember the following:

---Seeing her and uttering under my breath, “No good can possibly come of this.”
---Us inexplicably dancing 5 minutes later
---Her on my lap, with a blanket being thrown over us by Antony

All this of course in plain view of Sue and Jessie.

The Commander, who wisely keeps his liver pure of liquor, filled in the rest the next day. Apparently we put the Lambada to utter shame in terms of its “Forbidden Dance” title, eventually working our way to what seemed, in our drunken state, to be an isolated corner. We did not see the Commander trying to escape as he returned from the bar with his Coke. We did not hear his initial cries for help as we cornered him with our sloppy making out. We really didn’t hear his utter cries of desperation as the hookup went from the Disney Channel to Skinemax right in front of him, all the while confounding his every effort to escape the porn he suddenly was an unwilling actor in. Finally, with an earth-shattering, “FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT’S HOLY, SOMEONE SAVE ME” Antony swooped in, saw the scene, retrieved what was later dubbed “The Blanket of Iniquity” (I think Tim burned it soon after), covered us like we were victims of a 5 alarm fire, and brought Tim to safety.

I’d love to say that all of my bad kharma was purged then. But I was still 3 months from this all playing out. Stay tuned, more to come tomorrow….

Adddendum courtesy of Commander Foley

BTW, you missed, for a second time, the highlight of the party. Caesar was ridiculously drunk. And clad in a Canadian flag. And someone decided putting on "Justify My Love" would be a good idea. He then proceeded to dance right in front of you and "Julie" and do his best to justify his love, just short of dry-humping the both of you AND YOU STILL DIDN'T NOTICE.

Now me getting cornered up against a wall and you not noticing is one thing. Me shouting for rescue and you not noticing? Perfectly understandable. But a drunken Canadian in a flag-toga attempting to give you both a lapdance not registering on your synapses? This fire water is a strange mixture indeed!

Undeterred, Caesar then proceeded to hump the wall. So at least he had a happy ending.

2002-10-02T10:04:00.000-04:00

more search engine merriment

how is the world randomly finding me?

to wit:

"justin timberlake hypnosis" well, his music does tend to put me to sleep...

"nude nuns" come here so I can slap you

"avril lavigne's feet" more foot fetish searches than I care to talk about

"hair-job erotic" i've heard of hand and blow, but this one is new to me

"camel toe anna kournikova" i had to consult a coworker on what this meant. I just had to pick the Mormon co-worker, didn't I?

Can't someone search for "hot guy with a 'Buffy' fetish?" Is that too much to ask for?

2002-10-02T00:22:00.000-04:00

buffy review, in short

OK, so someone in the UPN promo department should be shot. Here I was thinking it'd be a stupid stand alone "big worm eats things" episode and instead we have several huge developments, a killer last scene, and one of the best Xander one liners in recent memory. ("Yea, I don't think she'll be calling.")

Specifically, the development of Spike this episode was outstanding. The scene in the graveyard will be tough to top, actingwise, for the rest of the year. The use of light and shadow was breathtaking. Both actors brought their A game. And the final image and Spike sizzling himself on the cross....jesum. It was anything but violent, just this slow walk to the cross and you're going "Oh boy, he's not....oh Christ he is." Juxtapose his desire for "rest" here with wanting to "rest in peace" in "Once More With Feeling" and you see an enormous progression for the character. And the show wisely put any discussion of "Did Spike really mean to get his soul back?" to rest.

What's also interesting is the balancing act he has with sanity. It's clear something went very wrong when his soul was restored. How much Spike is used as a pawn by the Big Bad will be interesting. Rewatching the first episode of the season, Spike clearly tells Buffy that even the zombie/ghosts won't come in the room he has inhabited. There is something specific about Spike that the Big Bad needs or can exploit. (I am personally waiting to see tif the Big Bad's arrival has its roots in Spike's transformation or Willow's attempts to end the world---my gut is one of the two started the chain reaction of this season.)

Knowing this, taking into account all the proto-Slayers being killed, and the fact that Faith is coming back for the last five episodes, and you've got a basic season-long arc of "Big Bad kills all the Slayers until there's just Buffy and Faith, Buffy needs Faith to fight the BB, Spike gets pulled back and forth on both sides, and finally dies saving Buffy, who is finally in love with him." Something this shattering will give Buffy a good reason to leave the show yet still have it continue, leaving Faith or (cringe) Dawn as the Slayer, with Willow being set up as a new Watcher. (What is England if not Jedi training, really, for Willow?) And while I cringe at the notion of "Dawn the Vampire Slayer", I give props to the show for finally making her watchable again.

The only thing I was diappointed in was the lack of continuity with the school material. Principal Wood is an interesting character, if for no other reason that Buffy-philes are honing in to try and get a reading on where his allegiances lies. It was a nice continuity touch to have Anya be the source of the worm in order to show her actively trying to counter Halfreck's claims from last week. I am glad we got rid of Xander's almost new romantic interest since she was way too Jamie Gertz without being Jamie Gertz for my liking.

I'll give it an 8 overall for Spike's stuff alone, everything else was gravy. And after rewatching the first episode again, I bump it up to an 8.5. Really great start to the season.

2002-10-01T00:41:00.000-04:00

list time

OK, haven't had a list in a while, so here goes. Today's list includes really unbelievably bad songs but really unbelievably good artists. Usually. Except for this crap.

Now, doing a "Worst Songs Ever" list is pretty trite, as is "Worst Artists Ever". Making fun of "Macarena" or Rick "Never Gonna Give You Up" Astley isn't exactly breaking new comedic ground. Instead, I'm gonna try to find songs by normally solid recording artists and find the worst possible thing they've ever actually allowed to be pressed onto a record on CD. Normally I'd adhere to the Rule of 5 but they are too many good ones. I hope I don't lose to many people here. Again---I love these artists; I hate these songs.

In no particular order:

1) "Velcro Fly" by ZZ Top

Since I grew up with MTV, I didn't realize until about 3 years ago that ZZ Top one were one kickin' blues rock band in the 1970's. Give me "Jesus Just left Chicago" or "Tush" anyday. But in 198 they unleashed this sonic atrocity on an unsuspecting world. Using Human League's drum machine and a riff that even Kajagoogoo passed on, they answered the question "What would happen if we took "Walk Like an Egyptian" and made it suck even worse?" even though no one had even thought to formulate the question. I had put this song out of my memory until i caught it on VH1 Classic about two weeks ago. After going to the emergency room to stop the bleeding from my eyes I silently wept for a few more hours until they released me from the straight jacket.

I don't like this song, is what I'm getting at.

2) "Hawkmoon 269" by U2

There's a good reason most of you haven't heard this song. For starters, it's on "Rattle and Hum" which was U2's first flirtation jumping the shark. (Most people assume "Pop" was attempt #2 to pull a Fonz, although I happen to really like that album, but that's for another article.) In any case, Bono and the boys decided to write a song with 2 chords and 50+ lines of lyrics that start with the word "Like..." Now, it's OK if you wanna construct a song around a simile trop, but for God sakes it's like "Chopping Broccoli" on the spot lyrics that he never bothered to rewrite. To wit:

Like a desert needs rain
Like a town needs a name
I need you love
Like a drifter needs a room
Hawkmoon
I need your love

Bwa? To quote Stoppard, "Consistency is all I ask." That doesn't even make SENSE. This is like Ionesco translating an English phrase book, handing the lyrics to The Edge, and saying "Run with it." I'm sure Edge was a bit put off after they laid this track down:

Edge---"Hey, uh, Bono? Are those um, are those the final lyrics?"
Bono---"Yea, mate. Why do you ask?"
Edge---Oh, no reaosn, except, um, well, for the fact that lines such as, Like a Phoenix rising
Needs a holy tree is FRICKIN' TERRIBLE. And why can't I play a third chord? Please? Bono? Bono, come away from Graceland you nit."

I've tried and failed at writing love poetry for women, but I've never tried to compare my love to a town committee meeting where they're trying to come up with a spiffy name to attract tourists. And what if the drifter wants to sleep under the stars? Did Bono think of that? Do a little research, man, come on.

3) "Pulk/Pull Revolving Door" by Radiohead

No, the title isn't a typo. I love Radiohead more than just about any band, hell, I based my entire production of "Romeo and Juliet" off of "OK Computer" practically. I love the sonic adventure, the lyrical enigmas, the soundscapes, the sheer vastness of their production values.

And this song makes me want to find Thom Yorke and beat the snot out of him.

Now, it's no secret that I love all kinds of music. Pop, rock, hip hop, classical, you name it, i probably own a record in the genre. At the base core of it, all I ask is for a nice little melody. Something to tickle the ear. That's all. Tack on some lyrical heft and you've won me over. This isn't rocket science. I like pop songs cuz by nature they're SUPPOSED to be catchy. But give me a song like "Fake Plastic Trees" which is as tuneful as any Max martin composition AND those lyrics and well, you've got a winner in my books.

"Pulk/Pull" however must be the sonic equivalent of being dragged along the back of a HumVee across a field of broken glass. It starts off like your CD player has broken and doesn't get much better. Thom does his best Stephen Hawking impression as he spits out dribble about...God, I can't even understand a word. At one point I think there's a solo by a "Simon" game. Or the turtle underworld of "Super Mario Brothers". I can't listen to this anymore, I'm developing a tic. I feel like punching a nun. Damn you Radiohead.

4) "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan

Yes, I know it was popular. Yes, everyone but me seems to like it. But it's about heroin addiction, people. Abou rock stars who end their lives through drug use. Sarah's trying to prevent more Kurt Cobains.

Ok, semi-noble, but Sarah's got as much of a right to talk about heroin addiction as I do telling the men of the world how to keep a thick, luxurious head of hair. Just not qualified. "Surfacing" as a whole proves the point that artists should be left alone and miserable to actually produce good material. "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" will forever remain in my top 5 Desert Island CDs. But between that and "Surfacing" she went and fell in love. Just thinking about "I Love You" makes me want to throw Sarah through a pulk/pull revolving door. Sorry, still stuck on the Radiohead rage. Gonna go squeeze something soft and round for a bit...

5) "Wild Honey Pie" by The Beatles

Yes, the Beatles are unequivocal geniuses. Yes, this song could have been written by Mrs. Richardson's 2nd grade class after ingesting way too many sugar cookies at the Christmas party. Moving on....

6) "Everyday" by Dave Matthews Band

Not the song, the album. DMB swings for the fences and connects with the 11 worst songs of their entire career (the title track being the only one I can stomach; it's actually an OK song with a pretty great video). I sat listening to the record for the first time realizing three children somewhere near Sally Struthers died because I spent my $15 on Dave and not them. I could have just forgotten the whole experience through electroshock therapy if "The Space Between" wasn't so ubiquitous. I love watching Dave play this live; he always has this "OK, I am gonna pretend this song isn't complete crap" look with Glenn Ballard pulling a "Being John Malkovich" and entering through a portal into Dave's head. Seriously, Glenn must have honestly said at one point, "Gee, the acoustic guitar/bass/sax/violin/drum sound is really unique. Let's ditch the sax and violin, strap Dave to an electric guitar, and play utter derivative crap." I bet the sax and violin guy were as surprised as anyone to hear they had a record coming out. Glenn sent them to get a sandwich and by the time they came back, a record had been cut.

Well, I'm pretty much cross-eyes with rage by now, so I should really stop. Feel free to remind me of the hundreds I haven't come up with yet.

2002-09-30T11:40:00.000-04:00

sweet jesus

The new Two Towers trailer has me in complete awe.

My God.

I am geeking to the max.

2002-09-29T20:20:00.000-04:00

ramblin' man

not enough energy or foresight to write a coherent article, so you'll have to bear with these unrelated paragraphs...

---Spent Friday night helping my female roommate pick out clothes for a booty call. That was an interesting experience to say the least. The psychology of booty call clothes in and of itself should be someone's Ph.D. dissertation. I guess my perspective on booty calls is one the "yes" has been established on the booty call, clothing is irrelevant since sex or some permutation thereof has already been mutually consented and therefore, extraneous things such as how one looks suddenly becomes moot. Then again, I'm a guy. But it's been about 3 years since I've either made or received a booty call. My favorite one I ever got went something like this:

"Hi Ryan."
"Hey, whassup?"
"Well, I was just nearby your dorm..."
"BUt uou live all the way across campus."
"Well, I was at Lamont Library."
"That's 10 minutes from my dorm. That's still not nearby my dorm..."
"Welll, um..."

After about 4 more exchanges where I blatantly did not get what was going on, I recognized it was a booty call. (Memory is hazy, but I'm pretty sure I woulda said something like, "But why are you telling me about your underwear?") I read about this stuff in books, you see. I'd love to say it's because I was puritanical, but most I was a dork. ("Was", the masses ask?) Getting the booty call completed was a tad bit difficult since Liz of the stripper fame was completely plastered in my room at the time and reciting Tennyson's "Ulysesses" ad infinitum, accelerating the speed of each repetition 'til she ended up sounding like the guy from the MicroMachine ads of the late '80s. Another in the "never happens anymore now that I am out of college" files.

---Saturday night's highlight including a near fist fight with one of those new-fangled self-serve machines at supermarkets. For those of you who don't have them, they're just scanners to supposedly "speed up" the process of getting out of a supermarket if you only have a few items. After about 10 minutes of this expiditious process, the girl and I were looking for the "ACME" sign on the machine and waiting for the Road Runner to pass us in the 12 and under lane four feet away. Long story short, we scan in 3 items, slip in a $10 to the proper slot, and then the machine pulls a Chris Farley in those "Da Bears" sketches on SNL: "Gack, piece of sausage, heimlich, heimlich, cough, BLERGH" and dies. While trying to find the paddles to start it's heart back up, an employee, who apparently has a beeper for situations like this hooked up to "MartMachine", walks over, shouts, "GODDAMNIT IT", and rhuffs and puffs her way to the back, the "Employee Only" sign swaying like a saloon door in and old Western. 5 minutes later, we're still hoping she comes back. Literally 5 yuppie/hippie couples try to use the machine in front of us, which has likewise broken down. By the end I was staving them off at the path, but watching pretty people not being able to use technology always cheers me up. Luckily, Angry Employee of the Month comes out with a new set of change, and we go on our merry way. Meanwhile, the couple in the automatic machine, who was there when we started this debacle, still had that confused, deer-in-headlights look as they stared at the screen. Ahhh, technology. Love it.

---I enjoyed a good solid weekend of pop culture perfection. Not only did I watch "Almost Famous" but picked up both the new Beck CD and the official soundtrack release of the Buffy musical episode. Pop culture at its best never has to say anything profound, it just has to comment on universal truths in a way you never thought of or expressed more eloquently than you could ever have yourself. Cameron Crowe's dialogue consistently has me green with envy. "I gave her my heart, she gave me a pen" will forever be my favorite movie quote ever (followed closely by Jet Li's epic cry, "I am Hu Law! I am nobody's bitch! You are all my bitches!" at the end of "The One", the most worthless $10 I spent in the year 2002). Beck's newest record may be the breakup record to end all breakup records (well, it will never surpass Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks", but the fact I can even compare the two shows you what I think of the CD). Intimate scope, beautiful music, heartfelt lyrics...the age of irony is over for Beck and it suits him great. And "Buffy"...well, it's just freakin' perfection. Playing both within and stretching the boundaries of musical theatre genre, playing within the continuity of the show, amazing special effects, his dialogue...Joss is the next...well, Cameron Crowe. Both have an intensely close relationship to the pop culture pulse, can shape it to their own whims, and re-present it to us with an authorial voice that is at once original irreverent, heartfelt, and deeply poetic.

2002-09-27T13:57:00.000-04:00

blogging has gone the way of avril lavinge

Marc Weisblott makes an interesting claim on his guest post on Dawn's website that

I believe that "the blogging phenomenon" is the biggest heap of hooey since Gretchen Mol making the cover of Vanity Fair.

Strong language. And I recently have been concurring.

I feel weird writing about this here, given the inherent meta-irony of it all. (Plus, this site has pretty much veered entirely into pop culture sarcasm with readers who don't really give a crap about the term "blogasphere" which has easily ascended to the top of "most hated words" on my list.)

The whole "you're not linking me cuz you're sexist" and "who cares who links who" volley of posts and comments a few weeks on various blogs I read just highlights that none of us seemingly have left the high school cafeteria. I was as guilty as any early on of basically having blogs that say "hey check out X" or "this person RAWKS" or any of the 134 tropes that have been established both before I came onto the "scene" and since as well. We want to be popular, we want to be in the in-crowd, we want to be liked by those around us. God knows I linked myself silly, posted on comments pages, and got caught up in what can be a very alluring sense of community extending far beyond your hometown. But the fact that certain people suddenly have actual POWER in the blogworld (power to drive large numbers of people towards specific content and by linking, in and of itself legitimizing said content as being worth someone's time) seems to me an amazingly interesting phenomenon that may itself signal the end of the First Era of blogdom and the start of the second phase which has yet to be named. The sheer venom poured forth on both sides, the sheer sincerity on both sides, speaks to me of something quite large and therefore quite relevent to the place blogging itself seems to be headed. (Check this out, it's as good a place as any to get into what little I myself have seen.)

The term "blogasphere" is one I hate since it belongs to the language of exclusion---people are either in it or they're out of it. Those who don't blog are out. Casual readers are likewise out of it since they can only visit from afar on the periphery. People are anxious to include themselves in this world in their blogs lest they be left behind somehow. So the word itself has exploded in terms of usage recently and it's making me vaguely queasy.

If i understand warblogging, it was to provide unbiased reporting or pundit-izing on issues outside of the corporate structure. REAL reporting, none of the washed-down, Time-Warner approved stuff we see as we eat our processed dinners with our 2.4 kids. A very punk thing to do, very noble, all that and a bag of chips. I am not a very (or even remotely) political person but I recognize that the distribution of information need not be controlled by a few sources and in fact, the distribution of information on a grass-roots level as about as democratic as you can get. However, we now have "established warbloggers" given both credentials and traffic because of these credentials (ie, everyone is 'supposed' to link to or read Glenn Reynolds). I don't know Glenn, I don't read his site every often, but by golly lots of people do. More power to him and I wish him tons of success. My problem here certainly isn't with Glenn or warbloggers like him.

My problem is instead, as mentioned before, the language and attitudes of exclusion that seem to be running rampant. Maybe I don't get it, maybe (most likely) I am extremely naive about what I am 'supposed' to be doing with my blog. Some people have outright accused me of being crazy that I wouldn't try and do as much as possible to drive as much traffic here as I can. The whole MSNBC thing was great and it was fun to see a few thousand hits in the space of a few days, but believe me, I am getting a lot more pleasure out of the 30-40 of you who seem to come back on a regular basis just to hear what I have to say. That's just mind-blowing and I can't thank you enough for actually thinking I am worth spending even five minutes a day on. But getting on MSNBC, getting a core of readers wasn't and can't be the point of what I do. Getting my site mentioned on various media and websites is terrific and surprising when it happens, but luckily I am in the position where it's really OK if none of that happens. I am not, as far as I know, in the "blogasphere" and that's really OK. I have my little, Blogger-published site here where I can spit off whatever's in my head without having to worry about what anyone thinks. Now, many of those seeking membership do their sites as their lifeblood, their livelihood, their very income. To get 5,000 hits versus 500 may in fact mean the ability to pay rent. Again, more power to you, if that's what you want. Would I like a few hundred dollars a month rolling through my PayPal account? Sure. I am writing this as a person lucky enough to have a steady income who need not rely on the charity of my readers to literally survive.

But what the blogging world is in danger of, so far as I can see it from my little perch here in Boston, is turning into exactly what it tried to step away from initially. We have this potential "Animal Farm" type scenario where those who led the revolution against "major media" are in fact themselves major media. "Legitimizing " blogs is a slippery slope, especially when it comes at the expense of exclusionary tactics. Again, let me make perfectly clear that I am not slamming individual sites for their content nor the status they have achieved through the collective psychology of linking and legitimizing. This is not a "Person X is ruining the Internet" because, well, that's dumber than the idea of a Tara Reid Movie Marathon.

In any case, now that people seem willing to subscribe to a hierarchy within a "blogasphere" created by the blogging collective, it should be interesting to see how this all plays out. To me, this belies the grass roots nature not only of warblogging, but blogging itself. I just know that all this drama isn't what I signed up for when I started this site, and, luckily, I still don't have to sign up for it. I am one of those on the periphery, always have been; only now, I've pretty much stopped looking in. They're doing their thing, I'm doing mine. We'll both be pretty much OK, I think. It's like two cars who are splitting at a slight fork in the road---neither of us is quite sure where they other's heading. Hell, neither party knows where they themselves are heading. Maybe we'll coverge somewhere down the line. I think I'd like that.

Then again, maybe we'll smash into a great fender bender. We'll just have to see. In any case, the punk days are gone, the TRL days are here.

2002-09-26T10:51:00.000-04:00

see saw theory redux

OK, I am going to revisit an old topic here, cuz hey, I actually have readers now. You can read the original article here but I am gonna repost it here pretty much verbatim anyways, so why go there? You have about as much reason to do that as pay for the Criterion Collection of "Van Wilder" on DVD.

Here's the proposal:

I've been kicking the basic tenets of this theory for a few years, but it really started to gel a few months back at work when a coworker insisted that no good could ever come out of one night stands, they were inherently evil, someone always got hurt, yadda yadda. Now, I was trying to insist she was wrong, since I myself have had one night stands that were totally chill, no harm no foul, all good the next day. I've also had year long relationships that were 12-month exercises in pain.

So, to account for the myriad of relationship possibilities, and gradations therein, the See-Saw Theory was born.

Simply put, assume a scale from 1-100. Break that down into increments of 4. So, we have 25 levels, each corresponding to a potential social relationship between two people, from platonic (0-4) to life-long mates (96-100).

Ok, so next find 25 animals that correspond in relative size to each to match with each of these twenty-five gradations. (so a badger is like 17-21, a lion is like 57-61, etc).

The trick to knowing whether you're gonna work with someone is if the two animals you and your partner represent could successfully balance on a see saw.

Note that this does not imply that you need be the same animal. A platypus and a hedgehog might get along just fine. But an elephant is gonna shoot a field mouse into the next county when its fat, commitment-heavy ass sits down on that contraption and sends Stuart Little's relationship-phobic booty out of the park.

I feel this can explain how one night stands can work (two hummingbirds decide to hum...uh, anyways...) and so forth, up and down the line from the "casual dating" to "we can see other people but if he does his testicles will end up somewhere unpleasant" to permanent monogamous bliss.

(Of course, this theory also assumes that a life-long loving relationship is the pinnacle, so the Freaker would be utterly lost here. He'd be too busy checking out the girls coming down the slide anyways, I suppose.)

Once again, I need your help, faithful readers. I need any and all suggestions for both the 25 levels and the 25 animals. this is important sociological work we're doing here, and i can't do it alone. (I could write overly melodramatic poetry set to Peter Gabriel's "Passion" about it, but this is an entirely different story). So post your suggestions, and I'll be updating the results periodically on this site. Hopefully I can also use some of your web-savvy talents to really make this sparkle. Get creative. "Puppies" are boring. "Marmasets"are fun. "Weekend fling" is bad; "get-your-freak-on-fridays" is better.

(btw---yes, this is what Harvard students do instead of actually dating. We spend hours coming up with stuff like this, involve Nietzche in the debates, and wonder why we're not getting laid. Somewhere right now my current girlfriend is checking the expiration date on her passport so she can flee the country to avoid ever having to see me again.)

2002-09-25T10:37:00.000-04:00

buffy review

OK, this may bore most of you, oh well, I do that anyways unintentionally most of the time:

An excellent first episode, not so much for the "plot" per say (zombies in a high school attack Scooby Gang Version 2.0) but for all the separate strands it has set up in just an hour. The creepy assasination in Instabul. Willow's coven training. Sunndydal High's return. Xander making coin over a building built on a Hellmouth. Buffy's new job. A new principal. Everyone and their sister going, "We're in for some majorly bad juju soon." And finally, the morphing end sequence. All set up in about 40 minutes of TV that lays the groundwork for the entire season.

About the morphing in particular: I love that Joss and Company seem to finally be ready to explore the very nature of the Slayer herself and the locus of what has been implied to be a struggle throughout millenia. The news reports have always leaked a desire by the writers to go "back to the beginning" so people took that to mean the show would return to Season 1, the Master, etc. But Joss went even beyond that, and shockingly morphed the Master into Buffy. The notion of the primal power of the Slayer has been teased on and off for the past 3 seasons (starting with the First Slayer in Buffy's Dream, the Dracula episode, and all of Season 6 with Spike consistently reminding Buffy of the incredibly thin line between them) will hopefully finally be explained within the mythology of the show. The only problem may be that, after going into the very root of Evil itself, there may be nowhere for the show to go (and given that SMG may leave, it's not a bad idea to really go for the gold here).

The season being about "power", as it seems to be, normally would sound annoyingly like a Literary Criticism class I took in college, but fits in nicely in contrast to last season, which was largely about impotence---inability to love, inability to connect, inability to change the terrible things coming down the pipe for each of the characters. Willow went completely the opposite of this at the end of the last season, overindulged in her attempt at potency, and damn near ended the world. This season may end up being a 22 episode search for the primal source of the good and evil in the Buffyverse---as Willow says, it's all connected. Buffy is connected to the Master is connected to Glory is connected to flowers from Paraguay. The Big Bad will most likely turn out to be someone trying to disrupt the balance of the these forces, a Lucifer-type figure who wants to finally tip the balance once and for all. The killing of the Slayer-in-training is just the start. The talisman is part two. Who knows what the next step will be? (I know, this sounds eerily like "Star Wars". God help me if someone takes Buffy's midichlorian count.)

Point of the matter is, we have already seen the Big Bad. It is haunting Spike, for reasons yet unknown, and has been for as long as he's been back in Sunnydale. My gut instinct tells me that even though we haven't seen it's corporeal form, in a sense, this Big Bad has ALWAYS been in the show, if Joss is going after what I think he is. The spectre of evil which has always been present in the Buffyverse, had guided everyone from the Master through Warren, is about to reveal itself. The interesting thing is, it most likely will be the very driving force behind the Slayer as well.

update: So Liz is mad because Dawn and her friends scream parallelism to the Scoobies way too obviously. Well, yea. But I don't have a problem with that. Whedon's a huge X-Men fan; he ripped off the Jean Grey/Dark Phoenix saga last year, and now he's positioning Dawn, Goth Girl, and Slater's Cousin as the New Mutants to the Scobby Gang's X-Men. Odds are about 3-1 at least one episode these year has the younger three acting EXACTLY like their older counterparts.

And it's clearly obvious that Buffy and Dawn don't have Sprint PCS for their provider of cell phone goodness; their reception is indeed way too good for that.

2002-09-24T14:05:00.000-04:00

best work conversation in months

me: Hey.
co-worker: Hey.
me: You look kinda down.
co-worker: Well, yea.
me: What's wrong?
co-worker: Well...
me: c'mon, you can tell me.
co-worker: OK. Well, thing is, my hair's not duckbutting.
me: Excuse me?
co-worker: You know, like the feathers on a duck's butt sorta curl up?
me: Ummm...
co-worker: Yea, duckbutting. My hair isn't doing that today. I hate this haircut.

So that's our new word of the day, kids. Repeat after me.

2002-09-24T13:17:00.000-04:00

buffy's back

and the return of "Ryan needs to be home at 8 pm every Tuesday or suffer dire consequences" begins.

I have a fun habit of coming into every trend late in the game. It took me 19+ years to get into the Grateful Dead, and when I finally get tickets, Jerry Garcia up and died. I get into Phish about a month after they swore off touring (thought mercifully they are going back on the road starting on New Year's).

And in the first episode of "Buffy" I ever watched, she died.

Since then, phrases like "Big Bad" and "Scooby Gang" and all of the other phrases that I had heard betwixt my friends during college suddenly started to make sense. My hardcore devotion to the show started at the same time I got into "Alias" and "24"---I took my well-deserved and much-needed break from unpaid theatrical freelancing and needed something to fill the suddenly large amount of free time I had. Concurrent with discovering "Buffy" I also discovered reruns on FX 2 hours a night and sites like "Ain't It Cool News" which religiously details every bit of the show. I wanted to BE Xander. I wanted to date Willow. (Sorry y'all, gimmee Alyson over Sarah any day). I wanted to be able to write one-liners as effortlessly as these writers did. Everything about it just seemed way too good to be true.

I won't go too deep into what other people are much more capable of doing, namely delineating the web of metaphor the show employs (high school as a literal Hell, vampirism as rape, boyfriends who turn evil once you sleep with them, disguising fear and neuroses through various demon/mystical incarnations) but sufficed to say, as long as growing up was painful for you, "Buffy" will ring true. And since I know of none who enjoyed high school completely, you should watch the show. Period.

Most "Buffy" fans seemed to LOATHE last season. Me myself and I had nothing to compare it to, so for the most part I was much more lenient. Plus, for most of the year I was dizzy with how frickin' amazing "Once More With Feeling" was; just mind-blowingly good. It was plot-heavy, musically-savvy, and itself a dissertation and deconstruction of the musical theatre genre all at once plus with about 20 laugh out loud lines to boot. I may have to add Joss Whedon to my list of "dream roommates"; he's a god on earth. (Someday I might fully geek out and explain how I see “Once More…” both reacting to and exulting in the musical theatre paradigm, but for now I wanna keep the 8 or 9 readers who still come

Be that as it may, even _I_ couldn't take the "black magic as drugs" metaphor thrown about last year, even if it drove the season's plot to it's conclusion (Willow goes bad, which is turns gives you varicose veins apparently). (As Liz's boyfriend pointed out over the weekend to me, that whole story line was a simile, not a metaphor, and a crappy simile at that.) However, having watched all of seasons 1 and 2 (thank you DVD box sets!), plus most of the other seasons via reruns, I feel the last 5 episodes of the season were on par with anything the show's done. The stakes were enormous, the pain was real, and, given the mutli-year buildup for some of the storylines, the payoff was HUGE. They also left the season, at least in Sunnnydale, with the unspoken line which is uttered near the end of "Once More...": "where do we go from here?" you have most of the cast literally picking up the pieces from the mess their lives had become. (Spike being the exception, of course.)

I am looking forward to watching my first full season starting tonight. Let others make predictions, it's more fun to let it unfold (even as I have just read spoilers on AICN, stoopid curiosity). All I can hope for is the return of Red-Head Willow. Sigh.

(update: I'd give tonite's episode 7.5/10. Great, great set-up for the season: a bizarre intro, a killing ending, a dubious principal, and more good one-liners than the entire run of "Becker". Dawn's speech about liking "Britney Spears' earlier work, you know, before she sold out...her watercolors, for instance..." was priceless. And did I mention the ending rocked? My feeling is they are finally going to get down and descroibe what vampires and Slayers primally have in common, and perhaps locate either their common source or the source of the split; a sort of Lucifer figure that pre-dates the Master. Or Xander will kill everyone in an ice cream truck. Either one is feasible. More tommorow. "Its about power.")

2002-09-23T14:57:00.000-04:00

new york, part 2

so about the stripclub.

Let me preface all of this by saying I am not into dehumanizing women. I respect women. You can tell my the “Freaker” saga that I feel your pain as a gender if not empathetically, than sympathetically. I deplore the debasement of your sex, I am all about the empowerment thereof, you’ll save the planet from the mess we men have made of it, etc etc. You rock and deserve not to be objectified.

That being all said, I had a great time at this strip club.

It was the third time I have ever been, the other two times were driven by outside sources (bachelor party and roommate’s request for her birthday) and this time, again, I was not the motivating factor in going. I didn’t object in this case however, unlike the first time where to be honest I was a bit queasy about the whole thing. I distinctly remember three mental phases of that first night.

1) “Oh lord, I can’t look, I shouldn’t look, what in the name of Zeus am I doing here?”
2) “This must be the single greatest night of my life.”
3) “If I see one more set of nipples so help me God I’ll light myself on fire.”

Number 2 was the longest phase of the night, to be sure, but even then was tampered by a strange feeling, one my friend Liz had on Saturday night. She said to me, “You know, I was all worried, thinking it would be all objectification, and that I’d feel bad for the women, but Jesus, you men are the pathetic ones here.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’d say maybe a third of the crowd was there under either a bachelor party (and bachelorette party, in one case) or like us, going for an almost comical shtick “this will make a good story” case. But that leaves two thirds of the crowd these horny, desperate guys who can’t get laid, yet inexplicable are at a place where not only will they continue to not get laid, but will come as close as a stupid man will think you could get laid and STILL not get any. Call me crazy, but dropping $20 per blue-balling doesn’t sound like the world’s best way to spend your hard-earned money.

And I am sure, lest you argue, that there are plenty of women who are hard-up, can’t find any other work, hate being there, types of women. Know what? People in my office hate their job and they’re fully clothed. At least strippers have the decency to hide their hatred from the clients.

What little interaction (if having your butt repeatedly grabbed without my permission qualifies as “interaction”) we had didn’t seem to be with these people. It took us a while to not feel like deer in headlights (a $20 admission fee and $10 Bud Light will set off the “we’re being rooked” alarm pretty damn quick), but pretty soon we get to the task at hand, which was consistently “get Liz lap dances”. Scott and I were perfectly happy to blow our hard earned money towards this purpose.

The problem was initially that this place was tiny---there must have been 4 breasts per square foot. Sorta overwhelming. And while Liz intellectually understood, she couldn’t emotionally deal with the fact that she could in fact be picky, since really, they weren’t gonna say no. Also difficult was the fact that hardly any chairs were available, and without being able to form a lap, Liz was gonna have difficulty getting said lap dance.

So she finally gets a chair, and I swear not 18 seconds later was a half naked blonde on top of her. (I’m telling you, this place was as efficient as DisneyWorld. It was like she had a mental “Fast Pass” for a chair.) So “Stella” is working her mojo, but my mind is actually reeling from the fact that the song being played is a remix of Sarah McLachlan’s “Sweet Surrender” and cursing the fact that this song has now been utterly ruined now.

Songs which later got ruined:

“You Shook Me All Night Long”
“Been Caught Stealing”
“Jump Around”

I got to thinking the strippers were all deaf, since no matter what song was on, their rhythm stayed exactly the same. This prompted Liz’s best line of the night: “Look, she must be new, she’s shaking her tits in time.”

So, Stella has come and gone, everything’s hunky dory. Scott paid for that one, now it’s my turn. We’re trying to figure out who will be next, and then all three of us laid eyes on “Vivian”, aka “Alterna Girl”, who was just a bombshell and a half. So it was clear from the line of drool from Liz’s lip to the floor that this should be the next girl. Sadly, most of the club pretty much agreed, so after about 15 minutes, we had to give up.

We moved around a bit, scoping what little other views there were to be had. After my initial $30 rooking I had managed to not spend any more money, and had only been asked by one girl if I wanted a dance. Oddly, I was insulted that not even strippers were hitting on me. (Just kidding, Jenny. Ha. Kidding. Put the knife down.) I give one dollar to one girl who winks, touches my face, and says thanks. She totally wants me. I know, I know, strippers are supposed to make you think they want you, but this chick was totally digging me.

Finally, Vivian walks back. I grab her by the hand and tell her, “You know, my friend loves your technique.” She is utterly confused. I realize she speaks barely any English. Whoops. “She likes how you dance!” Ahh, recognition descends. I ask her if she’s free, she says yes and grabs my hand. I tell her no, for Liz. She’s cool with this as well, and takes Liz away from me and Scott. Scott and I pursue with the tenacity of Javert pursuing Jean Valjean..

So Scott and I get a front row view of an excellently spent $20. About halfway through, completely out loud and in ear shot of the girls, Scott sighs, “Well, my mind is officially blown.” I casually remind him of the incredible sex he’s gonna receive later. He wistfully nods.

So the song ends (I think it was Pachebel’s Canon in D) and Liz is sorta sitting there, unable to move, with this ridiculous grin on her face. We ask her how she is, and she replies, “I need to go before I spend all my money.” Having satisfactorily completed our mission, Scott and I take her out (avoiding the ATMs), and we split ways.

2002-09-23T11:54:00.000-04:00

new york state of sweat

ok, so someone forgot to tell mother nature it was supposed to be Fall weather this past weekend. opting for jeans on a humid new york saturday was one of the sillier things i've managed to do in a long time.

it seemed to affect everyone around me as well. for starters, the commander and i were starting out on the town around new from jersey city. a quick path and MTA ride later we were near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to meet our friend Matt. Matt never called, so instead of walking around Central Park as was the plan, we were smack dab in the middle of a German-American Pride Parade. Miles and miles of lederhosen. Shannon would have been in heaven. Sadly though the German population of the Greater New York area were a little lacking in the looks department o the whole thing was sorta scary. Not as scary as the Mime Duel nearby, however---It was "Gold Guy" versus "Cloth Man" as both vied for who could creep the tourists out the most, it seemed. I ended up rooting for Gold Guy, who at least stayed in character ("evil, creepy servant of Ganesh" seemed to be his character) whereas Cloth Man couldn't decide if he was "6 Million Dollar Man Running After a Bad Guy" or Red Skelton. He went from that reaaaallllllly slow mime to the over-expressive gesture man. Just weird.

We went through the park, finally reaping the benefits of the weather (bikinis in September? well, if you must...), saw a mini-castle (which prompted the commander's funniest line of the day, "wow, this doesn't suck nearly as much as i thought it would"), saw "cleopatra's needle" (which prompted a bevy of freemason jokes from myself that even tim didn't get, so obviously i was geeking to the max), and finally headed back into the Times Square area.

Our friend, it turned out, had fallen asleep, a victim of the weather. the commander himself was feeling quite under the weather. and the friend we had traveled to meet likewise was napping when i called her to find out where we were going for dinner. i was batting 0-3, is what i'm saying. the commander left to drink tea and read Homer, I eventually met my friend for dinner at an italian restaurant with a german waitstaff (again, the german theme), and finally got to the commander's show.

now, i knew going into this that, aside from the commander, this was going to be probably be a bad night of theatre. i might as well have urinated on the $18 i spent on the ticket and gotten roughly the same level of satisfaction. the guy taking tickets has a creep factor of 12 on a 1-10 scale. you take one look at this guy and you think, "somewhere, probably close by, this guy has a stash of kiddie porn." but the commander's my boy, so i went, met up with sleeping boy, and the commander's new girlfriend. all of us has psychically girded ourselves in anticipation of the theatrical onslaught about to level its hammer upon our brows.

(quick background---i had seen a production by this group before. the first act was a "comedienne/impressionist". god pity her. a typical joke from her was: "so, ever notice how there's nothing on TV? god, i haven't been laid in months!" we were stunned. a row of us just hiding our heads, unable to look at her. i willed myself to bermuda, mentally. the longest 15 minutes of 2002. you had to be there.)

the night was divided into 4 short one acts. no comedienne in sight. the first play featured "shoulder boy" and "forearm girl"....two physical specimens that you can't believe exist. they should be on "ripley's believe it or not". shoulder boy had neck and shoulder muscles so 'roided up that that got their own name in the program. forearm girl managed to wear just the inappropriate dress to think you were gazing at her through a funhouse mirror. we had no clue what it was about. but he was EVIL. supposedly. i started daydreaming about halfway through. i think he killed somebody. the play ends with the girl having to run off, SCREAM, and the guy walks towards her as the show fades to black. however, the commander is backstage, trying not to pass out from illness. the girl runs offstage. concerned, the commander says, "hey, you OK?" and she lets out a bloodcurdling scream right in his face. i love off-off-off broadway.

the second play was as if Harold Pinter submitted a draft of "Cocoon". two old people, enormously long pauses, plus a Fargo accent to boot. you learn the old man (played, of course, by a 22 year old kid) just had his wife die. "she probably died of boredom," sighed one of the commander's friends.

finally the commander comes on, actually employed diction and dynamics (unlike the first 2 scenes which were drowned out by the 8 oscillating fans in the 15'x15' room) and did a great job performing whitman's "out of the cradle endlessly rocking".

BUT

there's one more piece to go. 5 of us in the front row of an audience of 15. do we stay? hell no. we bolt at the last minute before the final scene change. to the day i die i will not forget the stunned, saddened look of the actors in the final piece as we barreled out like sailors on shore leave. oh well.

about 8 beers later, i've washed the bad taste of the first two pieces out of my pysche. almost everyone is exhausted except for me (ironic since nearly half the tab is my bar bill) and my friend liz shows up with her boyfriend. the commander and everyone leave like 10 minutes later, but since i have keys to the commander's fortress of solitude (jersey city can feel as far away sometimes), i stay out with liz and scott. so we're in the bar, chatting away, and the subject of strip clubs comes up.

and liz is intrigued.

and liz says "gee, i'd kinda like to go to one."

so scott and i take her to an ATM, and we head over to flashdancers...

...to be continued...

2002-09-20T16:09:00.000-04:00

big apple bound

don't miss me too much, munchkins. off the NYC in a few hours to see the Commander throw the theatrical smack down. will be back monday.

for my NYC fans, I'll be signing copies of my new book at the Virgin Megastore in Union Square Saturday afternoon, 1-4 pm.

2002-09-20T11:18:00.000-04:00

after the freaker

sorry if you've been coming back looking for chapter 4, but that's about all i can say on the subject for now. life went and got in the way of my blogging so it's been hard to add content lately. as much as i am sure you all want to here how i ended up nearly drunk at work at 11 pm meeting a deadline on wednesday well, you'll have to email me if you want the gory details. sufficed to say, there's a certain company in a certain eastern state that i wouldn't mind erasing from existence.

i realize i shouldn't complain, the job market being what it is...just having a job should be an automatic positive (unless you're my roommate, whose managers have read "The Art of War" via "Tiger Beat" so near as I can tell). and there are the occasional perks to working till 11 pm or midnight. these perks usually take the form of food ordered in on the company's bill. which is great and all, unless you consider the planned activities for wednesday versus actual happenings:

planned activities: go to gym (dips, bicep curls, bench press, lat pullovers, situps, 45 minutes cardio), healthy-ish dinner, read a book
actual happenings: work until 11:30 pm, eat half an extra-cheese with pepperoni pizza and down four Sam Adams' Octoberfest

calorically speaking i got bitch-slapped, is what i'm trying to say. work dropped the soap in the penal shower and i bent over like the little girl i am. but free food is always good.

unlike my roommate, however, i don't actually have to ask permission to go to the bathroom at work. hell, even morgan freeman with his supermarket gig in "the shawshank redemption" had it easier than she does. i've been carefully looking for carvings in the woodwork around our apartment, is what i'm trying to say.

i love college kids who tell me how much they love "office space". that's pretty much akin to me telling them how I much I love Africa having seen "Survivor". to all you kids out there: you...have...no...idea. that movie isn't funny because of how far it stretches the truth, but actually how close it adheres to it. i am fortunate in that my own office is relatively normal when it comes to those things, but the monolithic economic giants we work for absolutely rewrite the book on corporate stupidity. i temped here for three months before being hired, and upon being hired, i had the following exchange with our company president:

"so ryan, where do you think you'd like to try and further yourself in this company?"
"which area, specifically, deals the absolute least with our clients?"

seriously. i saw/see amazingly cool, amazingly nice people brought to tears by these clients. just stunning. said everything but their mother's a whore, it seems. (well, one company might have said something akin to that, if i remember correctly) we tend to deal with people who are the bottom of the totem pole in the power matrix of their particular division, and the only power they can exert is over us, it seems....same thing applies to my roommate's managers, so near as i can tell. when you have only a sliver of actual power in this world, you exploit it in retribution for all the unfair crap ever dumped on your doorstep. it's what most people refer to when they speak of "empowerment", i think.

so i opted to go the way of computers---desktop publishing in particular. i've been very fortunate to be in a position in a company that has basically offered me a "what do you want to do and how can we help you do it" approach which i realize more and more is very unusual and i am very lucky to be in it. not to say there are some days unemployment looks like a glorious alternative (see above, cf. Sam Adams) but on the whole, i work in a great office with amazing people who i try my damndest to shield from these pathetic people who's only consolation in life seems to be that they can step on my coworkers/friends/roommates.

yours truly from cubicle america,

ryan

2002-09-18T10:13:00.000-04:00

final chapter in the freaker saga

I learned one more piece about the great epic that is The Freaker. As mentioned before, I left during the double-team action, which is why I didn't have the dialogue of those dances until Monday. However, apparantly the Freaker went above and beyond the call of cliché.

Not only did he pull a rear-end violation, not only did he repeatedly do so to everyone at the bar, not only did he then offer to buy the girl a beer after soiling her with his essence, but then, with the leftover dollar bill that he refused to give as a tip to the bartender, he wrote his phone number down, handed to the girl, and left.

Much merriment was had as the dollar bill then went to the super cool waitress who handled our tab all night.

Let's sum up some lessons which can be extracted from this specific tale which may be application to situations at large, broken down across the sexes:

A) "Game Plan for the Night"

Women: "Let's get some friends, have a few drinks, dance to some cheesy music, and have a great time."
Men: "Gonna grab me some boobs, so help me God."

B) "Scoping the Scene"

Women: "OK, you get the first round, we'll get that postage stamp-sized spot on the dance floor and hold it for us."
Men: "OK, so who's not wearing a bra?"

C) "Ordering Drinks"

Women: "3 drinks with hard liquor disguised by frozen fruit concentrate, please."
Men: "What's the cheapest beer that's not Natural Light?"

D) "Dancing"

Women: "Woohoo! Come on Eileen!"
Men: "Damnit. You can't possibly freak a girl to a song featuring banjos." *keeps sipping his Red Dog*

E) "More Dancing"

Women: "Woohoo! Hot In Herre!"
Men: "Our time is nigh. Fan out boys."

F) "Initial Encounters, Mental Monologues"

Women: "Maybe if I just smile that half-hearted crooked way and try to walk away, he'll release the death grip on my hips."
Men: "Damn, this chick is SO into me. What a tramp."

G) "Monologues, 18 seconds later"

Women: "I wonder if my kick boxing training is about to get it's first real-world application."
Men: "I wonder if she has a sister."

H) "The Escape"

Women: "Whew, thanks for pulling me off and dancing with me Suzie."
Men: "She AND her friend want me. Score! I need another Molsen Ice."

I) "The Aftermath"

Women: "Can you believe the nerve of that guy? Thank God he's leaving me alone."
Men: "Pssst, Ted, gimmee that pen. Gonna write my number down on this dollar bill. That way, on the next wave I can tuck this inside her shirt."

2002-09-17T11:14:00.000-04:00

freaking follow-up

I missed one of the seminal highlights of The Freaker, which was the "tandem freak" employed late in the night. As I mentioned there were 5 of us---myself, my girlfriend, two coworkers of mine, and a coworker's sister. Trying to freak one half of a sister duo is only slightly dumber than throwing a steak at a vegetarian. You're only asking for a world of pain.

When sisterhood is involved, the "anti-freak Jedi sense" leaps from Padawan- to Yoda-level instantly. (If you don't believe me, just look on a girl's face when a Freak is about to occur, and cross-reference it with Obi-Wan's face when Alderan exploded. It's the same face.) So the sister is constantly foiling the Freaker's attempts at various points of the night. Now, if we men truly weren't thinking, we'd eventually develop a Pavlovian response and equate "Girl X" with "failure" and move on.

But like I said, we men are always thinking, damn us to hell but we are. We're not thinking much, but we're thinking.

So after about 2 hours, The Freaker returns, after going through about 12 more girls in plain sight of all of us in the past 15 minutes since his last bump'n'grind extravaganza. The coworker goes in to swoop the sister away, but instead is met by The Freaker's friend who is, unbelievably enough, running interference for the Alpha Freaker.

Now this is pure, evil genius.

The Freaker actually went to his friend and developed a strategy. To call it tactical warfare is not too far-fetched. They established a target, developed an multi-layered attack plan, and executed. The timing was impeccable; as my coworker reached out for her sister, the friend descended out of nowhere, took the hand, and spun her away. Pairs figure skating isn't choreographed this well.

So now the scene is eerily like the end of the "Enchantment Under the Sea" dance in "Back to the Future", with each sister simultaneously playing Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson, that combo of "I can't believe this guy is dancing with HER" coupled with "I can't believe this guy is dancing with ME" look on their face. Meanwhile I am playing the role of Christopher Lloyd, looking back and forth between these demented duos going, "Damn. Damn damn." My girlfriend is Michael J. Fox, the life-force being sucked out of her, thinking, "This is why I looked forward to finally turning 21?" while simultaneously summoning the primordial forces of the Earth Mother to whup some serious Freaker hiney.

So, this is apparantly the conversation between the Beta Freaker and my coworker:

"Don't worry, he's my cousin, I can vouch for him."
"Yea, well, I'm her SISTER, and I don't know either of you."

(typical male logic: hey, he's cool, i KNOW him. we know it's BS but our only hope lies in pulling off a sincere performance. unless of course you're dealing with someone of INTELLIGENCE. jackass. god i hated this undynamic duo.)

Concurrently, this exchange took place between the sister and the Alpha Freaker:

"So, want a beer?"
"How many times have I told you tonite that I am not interested?"
"So, want a beer?"
"OK."

He slithers off, confident that "Operation: Cousin" has worked to perfection. Alpha and Beta give a high five on the way to the bar.

The sister turns to all of us and says, "He's buying me a beer. What a dipsh*t."

And people wonder why I don't go out to bars more often.

2002-09-16T10:12:00.000-04:00

dance floor decorum

I’d like to turn away for a moment from the world of celebrity pop culture and instead focus on a more everyday, but nonetheless important, facet of pop culture which has touched each and everyone of us (literally) at some point of our lives. You’re on the dance floor, whether it be at a club, a bar, a dorm room, and IT happens. IT transcends race, culture, age, basically any demographic you can think of. IT binds us as humans, creating a global network of oneness so immutable that it could potentially render all conflict as we know it moot if only the eyes of the world could be made to see it’s all-encompassing totality.

IT, of course, is “the freak.” Not the person, but the action.

“The freak” takes on many shapes and sizes. “The freak” can be exemplified in many different forms, but one in particular, witnessed yet again by myself this past weekend will serve as our model for this heinous, global-bonding action.

The term “freaking” is fairly common, but for specificity sake let me define what I consider to be said action within the context of today’s analysis. To “freak” someone is to get right up into someone’s dance space without their knowledge and initial consent and do anything from that bizarre dance from “Can’t Buy Me Love” to sheer, full-on dry-humping. Both men and women can instigate the “freak”, likewise both can be recipients thereof. Now, there are three basic types of “freaking”:

A) After the initial “shock”, both parties are consensual on the matter and a grand ol’ time can be had be all. There are two basic subgroups---the “friends at a party decide to gang up on an unsuspecting member of said party and freak him/her for the amusement of themselves and all” and “I’m going to really embarrass my significant other in front of his/her friends cuz I am really drunk or it’s funny to see them annoyed in public.” Option 2 seems to be my preferred course of action here.

B) The across-the-board immoral “freak”. For example, on a nun at a Catholic high school dance. Or your friend’s mother. The kind where “deserve to be hog-tied and dragged across broken glass for being that weird” suddenly seems like a feasible option for even the most-liberally minded folk.

C) The “they didn’t expect the freak, but now that freakdom has been initiated, they want no part of it and seek the quickest and least painful way out”.

Option C is what we’re gonna discuss today.

Option C is almost 90% perpetrated by men. It may even be higher but I don’t wanna be labeled a playa hatah. (Heh, I always wanted to type that. Cross that off the big list.) For instance, my senior Fall, an Option C was unleashed upon me with great vengeance and furious anger. She was dubbed “The Barnacle” after this night. I don’t think I need to illuminate why. I’d really rather not dwell on it.

Anyways, Option C is the reason most women travel in packs when they go out together. Its in our genetic make-up to travel in herds, and this primal instinct is consistently engaged whenever girls try to go out and actually have a good time. We as men simply cant allow them to do that measly thing. I have no clue as to why. Now, I can understand the basic “wow she’s cute I’d love to talk to her/dance with her” instinct; however, these guys totally have ruined any chance I might ever actually do this because they are Class A Option C offenders.

This particular offender came across my path Friday night. The scene: a local bar. The parties involved: me, four women, and The Freaker. The Freaker obviously had read his manual on “How To Look Like a Freaker From Across the Room”. Let’s break down the list:

---cheap-ass beer in one hand: Bud Light, check
---shirt unbuttoned low but not showing nipples: 3 down, check
---hair that is highly flammable: heavy gel job, check
---has sufficient inability to dance but thinks he can: does basic “arm pump” while slithering through crowd, check

So we all notice him (I have the advantage of being 6’5’’, the ladies of course have the anti-Freaker Jedi sense imprinted on their chromosomes) but for the first hour he stays away. Again, the 6’5’’ isn’t hurting. He doesn’t know I’m a wimp. Go me.

But, soon enough, he employs my absolute all time favorite “freak” technique: the rear sneak attack.

To quote Saruman, “You know of what I speak.” It’s that come from behind, grab the girls hips, and shove your crotch into their butt and pretend like a) you have rhythm and b) you haven’t completed offended the woman’s sense of self.

If I could interview anyone, past or present, famous or infamous, I would want to interview this guy, right at this moment. Pull one of those world freeze frames, sit him down, and ask him what in the blue hell he thinks he is doing. It’s just stunning that any guy thinks this is gonna work. It’s as if they expect the woman to turn around, look longing into his eyes, and say, “You know, all night I’ve been wondering why I’ve been feeling so incomplete, so lost. But with your unwanted denim-clad erection firmly pressed into my unwilling backside, now I feel whole again.”

I’ve been wondering for a few years now what on earth these guys are thinking. Most of you would say “They’re not thinking at that moment, Ryan” but believe me, the smartest thing men have ever done is convince women that they are completely stupid. These guys are in fact thinking the whole time, I suspect, but I think what they may be onto is the same principle that guides the sales force of our company.

I know, bringing economics into this? I said men think, I didn’t say we thought nice.

Basically, we’re talking law of averages here. According to our VP, (and I’ll misquote the actual numbers but you’ll get the gist) is that you want to have 50 pre-emptive proposals sent out at any time to get 10 interested parties to eventually end up with 2 sales. So, you plug away at 50 companies to get a 4% success rate. You don’t actually expect most of your attempts to work; you in fact fully expect most of them to fail.

I am not suggesting the success rate of the Freaker is 4% (though wouldn’t it be fun to ask the government to look into grant money for this) but I think I may have finally hit on a possible reason for the activity of the Freaker. A simple mathematical postulate. Eventually, if they freak enough, someone will actually go for it. They are literally prodding women to get the response they want. Just amazing. Neuter me NOW, I hate being a man sometimes.

Anyone else have some theories? I am sensing important sociological work to be done, and I need your help.

2002-09-13T19:09:00.000-04:00

writer's block? nay, i tell thee verily

A lot of people ask me if it's tough coming up with new content on a daily basis. (Well, OK, no one has asked that yet, but eventually they will.) And my answer is simple: as long as we have people like Jennifer Love Hewitt around, I'll never be short of content.

A few weeks back, in my post about the VMA's, I noted the curious title of "Singer/Songwriter Jennifer Love Hewitt". I figured it was a pathetic attempt to acknowledge her past "singing career" and try to answer the "what the heck is she doing here" factor. Sadly, I didn't realize she was planning to unleash another sonic assault on America with a new CD. (Blogging decorum would dictate that I link said album, but then again, I'm trying to prevent a tragedy here, people, so we'll remain largely link-less here, except for one important exception below).

Now, what I am about to link to is not for the faint of heart. Parents, make sure you're kids are well out of the room, preferably with earmuffs. I give you the link to this "singer/songwriter's" latest affront to humanity, "Barenaked".

here is a link to the video

so we're gonna go multimedia here today folks, and if you've never seen the video, or don't care to go see it, well, this will be about as much fun as Marxism for ya. but for the rest, read along to the video...

Video opens on JLH on the world's biggest bed and an amazingly sparsely decorated room. This may have something to do with the fact that the bed is bigger than most studio apartments. And why is she in a bed? Cuz the song starts off while a very non-cliched line of "Do you ever have that dream..." Ah, she's waking up from a dream...thus a bed! Aha! I get it. As a professor of mine once sad, there's a fine line between symbolism and completely sucking. JLH proceeds to get up and reveals an outfit of tank top, boxer shorts, and a pair of socks she must have stolen from the wadrobe of "The White Shadow".

Well, the director's waited a generous 25 seconds of so before getting to the money shot, JLH taking off her shirt and....DAMN YOU WICKER SCREEN. DAMN YOU. (Does anybody in the real world own one of these screens? Is there an actual need for one if you live alone? Exactly who are you hiding from?) Employing the best special effects 1954 has to offer, she walks from one side of the screen to another, magically switching clothes to create an entire ensemble with the fashion sense of those socks.

Cut to her walking down the street, presumably NYC. In a town where people step on dead bodies in the sidewalk, everyone is maintaining a healthy distance from our singer/songwriter. There's an at least 10' safety zone these folks are maintaining. The chorus hits and inexplicably horns kick in, presumably from a Santana outake that they never released. You could throw 10 llamas playing kazoos while being whipped into this mix and it wouldn't be less dissonant.

Cut to shot of girl and guy in a restaurant which is severely lax in its no shirt, no service policy. I think the director's instructions were, "OK, you're motivation is 'hey, JLH is there, it's time to make your move.' no, seriously. why are you laughing at me? i can have you replaced, pretty boy." The girl obviously isn't digging his move, deciding to leave the video for a Jay Z one. Having Cristal poured on you by Nate Dogg is apparantly less demeaning to your self-worth than being in this video.

Aaaah, the moment we've been waiting for---the performance shot. It's our hero Jennifer and a band full of guys with the "I went to Berkelee for THIS?" look on their face. Cut to African-American girl falling down on the sidewalk outside the performace space. I believe she's having a bad reaction to JLH's voice, a la Mary Hart's fan a few years back. Just knocks her to the ground senseless. She quickly gets up and smiles, which is the quickest recovery from severe trauma this side of Amidala on Geonosis.

Cut back to a wider shot of the performance, wide enough to include the angry mob waiting the signal from their leader to swoop in for the kill.

JLH nows has more poignant lyrics: "You ever try your luck with a pickup line...But you just sucked?" JLH is SO street, she swears! Cut to yet another guy who's topless (sensing a theme here) who uses the infmaous bad pick up line. I'm not a great lip reader, but I'm pretty sure he's saying "Hey baby, you remind me of a Jennifer Love Hewitt song." The girl, sufficiently horrified, walks away.

Picking up the pace, we cut immediately to another guy without a shirt, completing the trifecta. Right about now I am longing for the equal-opportunity pedophelia of that Jimmy Eat World video. At least in this vignette the ex-GF has the decency to throw him some clothes. Somewhere in the background I think I see three more people screaming, falling to the ground, clutching their ears, as JLH pulls a "Scanners" on them.

Ah, we mercifully reach the bridge of the song, and to quote Commander Foley: "Well, she finally took my advice to go and play in traffic." I heard rumors that it took two weeks to film this because the drivers kept trying to run her down. We then see an excellent sense of foreshadowing as she sings alone on a sidewalk with not one person paying any attention to her.

Bravely tightroping the symbolism line before freefalling into inanity once again, JLH ends the video by gradually losing all of her clothes, with the camera artistically showing us....her clavicle. Woohoo, break out the party hats, I love me a good clavicle. She ends up again in the bed big enough from which to launch Maverick and Goose, apparantly incredibly amused that she lost all of her clothes on the way home.

Like I said before, it'll be a while before I run out of stuff to talk about here.

2002-09-12T09:44:00.000-04:00

office fun

(true story, on the phone with a client...dialogue slightly embellished)

US: "So we're done the recolorization of the file, did you see it?"
CLIENT: "Um, yup."
US: "So the PDF came to you alright?"
CLIENT: "Um, yup."
US: "So what do you think?"
CLIENT: "Well..." (long pause)
US: "Well, we switched the colors of the headers, per your request, and added the correct Pantone colors to the bars below per the email you sent us..."
CLIENT: "Mmmhmmm..."
US: "And uh, we also replaced the icons."
CLIENT: "So I see."
US: "And we uh..." *starting to sweat*, "We uh, took out the garbage, did the dishes, and mowed the lawn."
CLIENT: "OK."
US: "Yea, with the mobius strip pattern you like so much!"
CLIENT: "Hmmm...."
US: (panic setting in) "We could always, you know, reverse it back, the way it was before, if you prefer that..."
CLIENT: "..."
US: "Or, you know, try some different colors."
*somewhere in a nearby cubicle, a tumbleweed blows aimlessly by*
US: "It was all Greg's fault, Greg broke the vase! I'm sorry I blamed Sam the Butcher!"
CLIENT: "You know, this would be a lot easier if I weren't colorblind."
*officemates looks quizzically at each other*
CLIENT: "Yea, if you say this looks good, let's roll with it."
US: "Um, do you maybe want someone else to look at it?"
CLIENT: "Nah, it'll be fine, I trust you guys."

Two weeks and three books with this design later, during the meeting with another member of the team:

CLIENT: "Yea, these colors look awful. Let's do the following instead..."