Personal:
Home
Blog
Archives
CD Projects
FAQ
Last.FM
Radio SFT
Creative:
The
Truth
Audio Biography
Contact:
Mail
Roll Call:
Weasel
Trust But Verify
Astral Base
Cartoon Colin
Remmev
Pampered Queer
Fluid Pudding
Daddy, Poppa & Me
Extrasuperfantastic
Geek Press
Boing Boing
Goldenfiddle
Wilco Base
Be My Demon
Podcasts:
The TWIT Network
The Fredcast
The Spokesmen
|
|
Posts for the date of Friday, July 26, 2002
|
posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:57 AM |
permalink |
(0) comments
Not much to say today. Was up late last night at a concert and my brain is a tad fuzzy. Litterally. It's beginning to grow hair of its own. I fear that it may very well become its own sentient being, pop out of my head and go on a heinous crime spree. And then, of course, I'll be blamed because it's my brain, after all. You just can't get around that, can you?
But, I would like to thank Meg for the links and kind words about my wife and me. Of all the wonderful things she said about us, I think my favorite is that she said we're "in love."
True. So true.
|
|
|
Posts for the date of Thursday, July 25, 2002
|
posted by Gary O'Brien at 7:59 AM |
permalink |
(0) comments
I had the distinct pleasure of meeting my new neighbor yesterday. At eleven p.m. As he was unloading his truck to move in. Great.
I hear he has a five-year-old daughter, which will be great for Matilda and her friends. They could use another little girl. But her dad? Oh boy. Maybe the rumors about a child are exaggerated.
GeekFriend and I had just seen K-19, continuing a great tradition of watching sub movies together and looking for clichés (red lights, tapping gauges to see if they work, leaking pipes, etc.) and we were chatting outside, as is our habit. This SSV (Social Status Vehicle) comes backing into the spot next to GeekFriend’s truck. Glancing in the back, there was a coffee table, some rugs and a computer.
Ah, I thought. My new neighbor!
The window his SSV was open and my heart sank. Drifting out were the strains of that classic song, “Smack My Bitch Up.” Yes, this individual is not only hip and up to date; he has the proper attitude towards women. They don’t belong in the workplace or in politics. The bitches and hoes should be barefoot and pregnant catering to men’s every whim.
He seemed friendly enough. However, after I went in to tell my wife about my encounter with the new neighbor (as if he were some sort of strange alien being) I began to wonder about him.
Supposing he is one of those guys. One of those ultra-hip white guys who like to listen to urban music because they feel it gives them a sense of toughness. Much like people used to listen to Frank Sinatra because Tommy “Two Times” Grambano did.
I started to worry that the crew of “Cops” would be visiting our neighborhood because they had such a great subject. Here’s new neighbor, with his copy of the newly minted Eminem album blasting, screaming to his wife, “You don’t know me. You don’t know me!” And the cops are beating him down as he yells “Playa hata!”
Actually, he seems nice enough. It’s just that he has destroyed me secret dream of having a new, cool neighbor. (Granted, he thinks he’s cool because he listens to Rap. Rap is defiant and rebellious. To this I say, um, no. Rap deals with issues that are too obvious to be rebellious. If you sing about drugs and murder people will get pissed off. It’s too easy. If you want to be truly rebellious, take on real issues in extremely singable songs.)
My dream was that a writer, his artist wife and their neo-hippy child named Destini would move in next door. The husband would be the writer of intellectual essays that were described as heartfelt and moving with neo-Sedaris sentimentalism. The wife would be an abstract painter who worked in the oft-overlooked medium of duct-tape and store mannequins. They would both look at me eagerly, hanging on my every word as I told them what cool music to listen to and insist that they absolutely MUST see Un Chien Andelou because it is a wonderful example of cinematic surrealism!
Oh and they’d look like Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpi.
But, alas, I have to deal with a guy who thinks he’s a member of the Wu-Tang Clan. Or maybe the Funky Bunch.
Way too hard to tell at 11 o’clock at night.
|
|
|
Posts for the date of Wednesday, July 24, 2002
|
posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:12 AM |
permalink |
(0) comments
A particularly rambling and poorly thought out installment of the Halves and Half Knots is up today.
Long gone are the summer days where I would spend hours reading a book, sometimes reading one a day. 75 pages a day was a light day. Now, I’m lucky to read 74% of a page. Life changes and your priorities shift.
I was never exactly the wild child, unless you consider having three beers and wings with extra hot sauce on the side wild. However, my life these days makes my earl twenties self look like Charlie Sheen on a bender.
I miss the days where I would read non-stop. No matter the size of the book, no matter the subject, I’d devour it like it was a candy bar. And then move on to another one. Read, read, read.
I still have the desire and the need to do so. I just lack the time and ability to stay awake. One page into “Calculating God” last night and I was fast asleep. Like a baby. (On the flip side, my baby slept like an adult.)
It’s not like I’m not reading, though. I’m just not reading the books I want to read. The books that are sitting in a pile next to the bed, piled high enough to become a public safety hazard. (I think I’m up to roughly 22 or so). I slowly make my way through the pile but I just don’t have the time to read even a chapter a day.
These days I look at a books length as a measure of time. “488 pages? Geez, I won’t be done with that for eight months. Perhaps I should read this pamphlet on food poisoning. That’s only two nights worth of reading.”
I do read. I really do. It’s just I read as a performer now, and not as the primary audience. Matilda and I have always read together but now, it’s a ceremony and we have to make sure we have at least an hour set aside for it.
This summer, we’ve already burned through two of the Harry Potter books (there are four) and are on track to complete the third long before the school year starts. I read and provide voices and Matilda provides me with critiques on my performance.
“I feel Ron’s motivation was clear, but Hermione’s needs work. When you said, ‘totally barbaric’ I didn’t feel as though you meant it. You were just saying the words.”
Each morning I wake up to a set of notes that will guide the next evening’s performance. It wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t started wearing a beret and sitting in a canvas chair with her name on the back, demanding a double-cap-frap-half-caf-mocha-alpacino.
In all seriousness, the hour or so we spend reading Harry Potter is a joy. We’re both totally immersed in the world. So much so that we discuss everything throughout the day when I’m supposed to be working and she’s supposed to be playing.
“So, who do you think the Heir of Slytherin is?”
“Clearly it can’t be Harry. He doesn’t have Slytherin blood, does he? Malfoy denied it, but perhaps it is his father or maybe even someone who hasn’t been fully developed yet.”
And on and on. (By the way, the Heir of Slytherin was a complete surprise.)
The only problem is that summer is nearly over and soon we’ll be done with the third book. What will we do then? She’ll be focused on school and I’ll have to start focusing on “Calculating God” or some other silly physics based story that purports that you can find proof of the Creator in the basic laws of Physics.
If that’s true, and there is a Creator and he is, in fact, trapped in the laws of Physics . . . he’s saying, “Dude a body at rest stays at rest and, you know what? Creating a universe is tiring. I’m on break.”
|
|
|
Posts for the date of Tuesday, July 23, 2002
|
posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:03 AM |
permalink |
(0) comments
If I were stranded on a desert island I would die. Quickly. Within the first eight minutes of landing I’d be dead of starvation and would be a new wild animal snack food.
I say this because I recently watched Swiss Family Robinson for the first time since I was very young. It’s still a great movie, with all sorts of really exciting contraptions, exotic animals that, biologically speaking, would never co-exist on the same island and a few really mean baddies that are not your usual pirates, but make great cultural stereotypes. Plus, there was this great Swiss family that seemed to consist of two British parents and a bunch of American kids.
They built this amazing tree house in the middle of an empty island, complete with running water, satellite television and broadband Internet access, which really pissed off their neighbors in upstate New York who have been waiting for broadband for years.
This was done to show how well the family adapted to their new environment. Apparently, in their sinking ship they carried the whole series of Time Life Driftwood Architecture books. How some effete Swiss with his annoying children and his slowly over boiling sexpot of a wife knew how to build a house in a tree is beyond me. In fact, it should be well beyond them, but I don’t suppose it ever occurred to the author.
They found food on the island, probably at the Deserted Island Chicken Shack because they never hunted, fished or gathered food. Yet, they appeared to be in good health and happy, despite the fact that the swimming hole they adopted probably had generous amounts of dysentery floating around in its brackish, brownish-green depths. They captured plenty of edible animals that their youngest son adopted as pets and they never thought twice about not eating. Personally, I’d look at the Ostrich and think of burgers with 80% less fat than cattle. And the pigs? Floating playmates, not bacon.
This is why I’d never survive being stranded, if Disney produced my shipwreck. I’d line up those animals and come up with my meal plan until a luxury liner came to rescue me. Fluffy the pig would quickly become a pork chop feast. Screw Disney morality. I’m friggin’ hungry! Nothing’s too cute to eat at that point.
So, Uncle Walt would never hire me. Of course, Uncle Walt is rather dead, so I doubt he’d be able to.
Naturally, if the film was made today, it would be produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and contain some wondrous explosions.
That was pointless. Oh well.
|
|
|
Posts for the date of Monday, July 22, 2002
|
posted by Gary O'Brien at 10:49 AM |
permalink |
(0) comments
I went to a wedding this weekend of an old friend. This friend and I spent much of our single days together. Alone. With beer. A lot of beer. Both of us were hopeless romantics, sure that life could be just like a movie in which the perfect woman would just waltz into our lives and turn us upside down. We thought we were wrong. Turns out, we were wrong about being wrong.
We don’t talk very much anymore. We try to get a beer now and then but somehow our pathetic lives transformed into busy lives and we have very little time to get together. Yet, we still consider ourselves good friends. Why? It’s hard to say. All I know is that if he called after not speaking with me for two years and said he needed help with something, I’d be there.
Anyway, the story of how he met his wife is interesting, and thought provoking. They met in kindergarten. Spent grade school together and then . . . nothing. Perhaps they saw one another at a movie or a coffee shop, but nothing else. They moved on with their respective lives, putting the kids from grade school behind them. Much as we all do. Then, one day, their mothers ran into one another. Then they started seeing each other and . . . voila! Love hits them after 20 years.
It occurred to me, because this is the type of person I am, that we spend our lives envisioning everything that happens to us as scenes from films. When looked at in retrospect, we can take those scenes from our lives and categorize them into genre films. Romantic comedies, tragic love stories, action, and on and on.
At the time this friend and I would convene for beer and hot wings, we were in the midst of our depressed singles movie. Our conversations, much like the dialogue of Swingers or even the television show Sex and the City, pondered our abilities to love and be loved. Why, we would moan, does it have to be so hard? We’d reconvene and talk about our attempts that week to not be alone or revisit past failures and try to analyze them, all the while flirting with the waitress. Once we had an odd urge for toast and bacon after our beer, so we went across the street to Denny’s.
These moments, these details are what we see in movies. These are the moments that these movies ring true.
Prior to meeting my wife, I had gone through my teen comedy phase (though I was a supporting character in that one . . . Kind of a Ducky type). It was funny, but hardly a romp that I look back at fondly. The good news out of that one was, when I entered my pondering college film phase, I had made a friend from the teen comedy phase that acted as my partner. The end of my pondering college film was interrupted by a tragic drama, after my mom died. That film was about a young man who finds himself on his own trying to cut ties and make connections. Lost, sad and confused. The tragedy was replaced by the depressed singles comedy where I floated from one infatuation to another, while convening with friends to have deep conversations about the nature of love. Beer was usually involved. Sometimes coffee. Often music.
Then, in the third act of that film I entered the romantic comedy phase, when I met my wife. In a series of touching, funny and romantic gestures, we fell in love. Slowly our romantic comedy evolved into a family comedy, where we work hard to raise our kids and not lose our minds (though the passionate love story film is ongoing). Interspersed were a few working comedies (a la Clerks and Office Space) that will someday go down in history as classics in the genre. Right now I’m in the midst of a Mr. Mom type of film, where I use 220, 221 . . . whatever it takes.
Because GeekFriend is moving back home, which is the best decision he can make, I’ve been reflecting on the time that my wife and I have spent with him. Generally, geography has always come between my closest friends and me (East Coast seems to be popular). So, I had become used to not having friends outside of my wife and kids. I’m generally closed off and do not trust potential friends. Much to my surprise, in the midst of one of those workplace comedies I found myself entering into a buddy movie. I hadn’t intended it to happen, but it did. We were Murtaugh and Riggs. He was a loose cannon and I was getting too old for this shit. We moved through a series of buddy scenarios, including a few situation comedies. And the time was good. I had always imagined that one day he, Boston Friend and I would be a bunch of crusty old men sitting somewhere drinking coffee and complaining about how all these youngsters had no idea what real music was. “Why in my day . . .” we’d say. We’d yell at kids about Elvis Costello, Stereolab, Roger Waters and contemporary classical music (which by then will probably just be “classical” music).
Odds are, this probably will happen from time to time. The three of us are suited for each other. We’re all obsessive geeks who, in some ways, are interchangeable. GeekFriend and Boston Friend had a chance to hang out with each other last summer. Oddly, when the three of us did things together, it felt as if we always did things together. It was an easy, pleasing fit.
Now, I’ll be in the middle of them. One to the east, the other to the west. Hell, I’ll have good travel opportunities.
GeekFriend is now in his coming of age road flick. He’s packing his things and moving cross-country, no job, no place to live. He’ll reflect over his life as he drives and moll over the concept of home, which is where he is going (though he denies it). His journey is one that will help a soul find its way. And he’ll be the better for it. He’s truly wild at heart.
Me? I don’t know what my next film is. Whatever it is, it will be interesting, I’m sure.
But, I can’t think of that just now. Soon enough, my girls will be starring in their own teenage romps and I have to prepare for my role of the stern but loving curmudgeon of a father.
“You kids turn down that noise you call music!”
|
|
|
|
|
