The (Old) Boxclockery

So I Guess I Have to Vote for Him Now

2007-12-31T17:52:00.000-06:00

Truth be told, in spite of what I was thinking when I wrote this article over a year ago, and though I still think that the arguments which I make are valid and that Obama, like all the other Democratic candidates, refuses to take a legitimate stand in support of gay rights, I've come to the point now where I support Barack Obama. He's my candidate in the Democratic Primary race now.

But if nothing else, this seals it: Brandon Routh is campaigning for Barack Obama.

From CNN: "Superman Swoops in to Save Obama"

Also, hello blog. I've missed you.

Barney Frank During ENDA Floor Debate

2007-11-09T15:16:00.000-06:00

I'll have a lot more to say about this eventually (I swear I'm getting back to blogging regularly!), but for now, here's video of Barney Frank during Wednesday's House floor debate on the passage of ENDA.

Just Like There Weren't Any Jews in Poland

2007-09-25T11:08:00.000-05:00

I watched some of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's address at Columbia University on TV before having to run off to class. I managed to catch some of his crazy -- I was partiucularly charmed by how American scientists are apparently inferior because they do not accept the greater reality of the Almighty as scientific fact -- but had to leave before he dropped this whopper:

"In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I do not know who has told you that we have it."

Right. On account of you're killing them all.

The outrageously stupid statement was apparently the only moment in Ahmadinejad's speech met by boos and derisive laughter from the crowd. And deservedly so.

I may not be the biggest fan of our current Iran policy, but that doesn't even come close to making me a fan of Ahmadinejad.

Should I be considered naive for hoping that the Iran situation somehow gets resolved peacefully?

Jerry Sanders Press Conference Video

2007-09-20T17:54:00.000-05:00

Wow.

This video of Republican San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders describing his personal change of heart on the issue of same-sex marriage actually moved me to tears. I was completely caught off guard by it. It may be the most honest, most basically human argument made in defense of equality for gays I have ever seen from an elected official.

Congratulations, Mayor Sanders. And thank you.

(Via JMG)

"Hi, Thanks"

2007-09-18T18:35:00.000-05:00

I shook hands with former president Bill Clinton on Friday.

He was at a book signing at BookPeople and I decided to swing by. I've always been a fan.

After waiting in line for several hours, though, my actual face-time with the guy was pretty underwhelming. Unfortunately, the dude in front of me decided to chat Bill up for more than the time which the president was really able to give him (Bill's a lefty, so he can sign books and shake hands simultaneously, resulting in a blazingly fast book-signing line), so when it came to be my turn in line, all I got was a quick "Hi, thanks," in that oft-parodied Arkansas drawl as Bill hurried to try to make up lost time. Didn't even really get eye-contact.

I don't blame him, though. I blame the guy in line ahead of me. As for Bill himself, he seems charming enough. Whatever you have to say about his ability to keep it zipped up, he was a good president.

I'm still not crazy about the missus.

I now have a signed copy of his book Giving sitting on a pile of clothes on a chair in my room. I've barely been in my room to do anything else with it since I got it on Friday.

Also, I got a flyer from the creepy doll-faced guy who runs this website while waiting in line. I meant to save it to scan it, but I think I threw it away.

Teaser

2007-09-13T12:10:00.000-05:00

This is just a post to remind myself that I actually do still have this blog. I swear, I'm going to get back into using this thing regularly. In the next few days, expect:

My long-overdue response to Michael's 8 Facts Challenge!
My equally-long-overdue take on the Larry Craig thing!
School!
Working as a bartender!
A general tone alternating between self-deprecation and righteous indignation!
Possibly a new color scheme! I'm thinking green! Matches my eyes!
Bulleted lists aplenty (Now with exclamation points)!

I'm Not Dead!

2007-07-13T00:04:00.000-05:00

Anyway, not yet.

Sorry for the delay, folks. Haven't had regular access to internet for almost a month. Nor TV. And my cell phone died. I like to think that I'm not a total media junkie, but when I finally did get all those things back within two days of eachother, the experience wasn't entirely unlike surfacing for air.

Found that over the course of that month, Iraq continued to suck, Bush continued to be a fuck up, the weather got hot, and baseball continued to be boring. Then I got bored with the internet again.

Anyway, I've moved into my new apartment, I'm working at Threadgill's, and generally feeling a little bit more grown up every minute.

I'll have a real update in a couple of days. Swear.

Makes the End of the Sopranos Seem, by Comparison, Reasonable

2007-06-15T01:20:00.000-05:00

Taking the non-sequitor to dangerous new heights, Mike Gravel's campaign has decided to produce a series of campaign films that appear to be fished out of the "hack" pile of early 80's avant-garde videography. The following videos are produced by Mike Gravel's actual campaign and are 100% and completely for real.

No, really. This isn't a joke.

Why yes, Gravel does support the decriminalization of controlled substances and proposes ending the War on Drugs. Why do you ask?

Unfortunately for the former Senator from Alaska, the disaffected youth he wishes to connect to by using this so-called "YouTube" aren't as into abstract performance art as disaffected youths were back when he was a youth.

(BTW- I fucking loved the end of the Sopranos.)

The Prodigal Son Returns

2007-06-07T23:43:00.000-05:00

So it's been a whole month since last I blogged.

...sorry.

I've finished school for the semester. I've been home in Arlington for the last four weeks. I've got a car loaded up with my stuff and a full tank of gas to get me back to Austin tomorrow morning, when I move into my apartment.

I'm nervous, sleepy, relieved, and whatever the emotion is that best corresponds to the word "bittersweet." I will miss my family, my pets, and HBO. I'm gonna love having my own bedroom. Even if it is tiny. Like, seriously, really tiny.

A few bullet points from the missing 30 days of blog.

I knew Charlie was toast the second I saw Kate wearing his hoodie.
The football-player-turned-ballet-dancer (ballerino?) on So You Think You Can Dance is incredibly cute.
The Salt Lick actually is the best barbecue in the world.
I want to see Knocked Up.
Hilary is not going to admit she fucked up on voting for the war until after Gonzales resigns.
I shaved my beard. I kinda like the way it looks, but I need new glasses in order to pull it off. My face looks lopsided with the thick black Giorgio's. So it's grow it back, or buy new frames.
I am becoming increasingly more vain with every passing moment, having just passed "high-maintenance," and now rapidly approaching "probably thinks song is about him."
Nothing says "I'm in Arlington" quite like watching the Rangers lose, getting a farmer's tan, and eating a Nacho Supreme. Good seats, though.
Baseball should have a pitch-clock ala basketball's shot-clock.
Having seen the debates, I take back previous complaints about Obama being a wuss on the gays: turns out he might just be the best we've got.
Tom "The Assimilator" Tancredo should defect from the Republican Party and found The Borg.
Here's that depressing horse documentary I told you about making:

Money, Money Money... Canoli!

2007-05-09T21:06:00.000-05:00

So I talked to Francis Ford Coppola on Monday.

Well, by talked to, I mean asked a question at a Q&A. Which he answered.

...That's all.

Demand It!

2007-05-08T23:16:00.000-05:00

Want The Polyphonic Spree to play a gig in Austin?

Yeah, me too.

(Facebook folks, click here to see it.)

Six Seasons of Lost (Sorta)!

2007-05-07T14:44:00.000-05:00

ABC has announced that, following this season's finale, there will be three more seasons of Lost, each with 16 episodes -- roughly 2/3 the number of most network dramas.

I say, "cool."

What's really significant here is that it could indicate a sort of paradigm shift in terms of network programming. Not only is this model more like an HBO or BBC broadcasting schedule, but it also shows that the network has decided to let the show run its course in a way based as much on the storytelling demands of the show as on raw economics.

Showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have been saying for nearly a year now that they want to be sure the show ends on its own terms (which really means on Damon and Carlton's terms), with sufficient time to finish the story, but without having to "tap-dance" for season after season once the show has run its course just for the sake of putting more episodes on the air for the network. They have said that they originally planned for the show to run about 100 episodes -- roughly four seasons -- but could see the room to potentially extend it to about 125 -- roughly five full seasons. The current plan will bring the show's total episode count to 119. From the way everything sounds, it seems as if Damon and Carlton really managed to get a deal that works for them.

Still, the new deal does make plenty of sense from the money's standpoint. Not only does the network get to keep the show on the air for three seasons while only having to produce two regular seasons worth of content, but they also get to make a killing down the road with three sets of DVD's (Lost sells an assload of DVD's). Plus the show has the highest non-traditional digital viewership (DVR, iTunes, ABC.com's full episdoe stream), so they get to milk it there, too.

Personally, I find it exciting. There had been rumors in recent weeks that the announcement of the show's end-date would put it at the end of next season, a prospect that I had kind of warmed up to. But the way the producers are talking, they seem to be really happy with this resolution, so if that's what they really want, that's what I'm happy to get. If the people who make the show are given three years to create two seasons worth of the show, theoretically that gives them more time to make a better-quality product.

So the question becomes, will the audience be willing to stick it out for three more years? Plenty of viewers are likely to be annoyed at having less Lost per year, and in fact, many of them are already voicing their frustration online. In response to that, I'm prone to agree with this quote from user GilesT on Aintitcool:

So the show HASN'T been cancelled...
It's got a definite endpoint, a sufficient distance in the future for them to wrap everything up without it seeming rushed...
It's not even got a reduced budget for the remaining seasons...
...and some of you fuckers have STILL found something to whine about.

Two episodes left this season, then no more Lost until probably January.

Can't frikkin wait.

(PS - My apeshit theory of the moment: in the season finale, we find out that the Jack who is on the beach is not really Jack, but is in fact "Jacob," the leader of the Others, and Jack's bad twin. Crazy? Maybe. But so was saying that the hatch would be destroyed by the end of season two. And I was right about that.)

Wherever There's a Hang-Up

2007-05-06T16:18:00.000-05:00

I was really looking forward to Spider-Man 3. Sadly, it's something of a let-down.

Don't get me wrong, I didn't hate it. In fact, part of me really wishes it was truly offensively awful, in the vein of X-Men 3. But it's not. As far as big-budget action movies go, it's pretty decent. And I'll be damned if the special effects in it aren't some of the most impressive things I have ever seen on screen. But the story, as everyone else is saying (and as everyone had suspected as long as two years ago, when we learned that it would have not one, not two, but three supervillains in it) is just way too bloated. The script is fundamentally flawed.

It would likely have been ten times the movie it was if they had excised the Sandman plot entirely, and taken that screen time to develop the drama between Peter, Harry, and Eddie Brock. And besides that, a whole lot of the movie really suffers from a nasty case of having been co-written by the Raimi brothers. Alvin Sargent's script for the second film in the trilogy was a (relatively) subtle, nuanced character drama about young people in New York struggling with their identities. By the end of that movie, I really genuinely cared about those characters.

But this script? Ham-handed. Unsubtle. Unoriginal (Sick daughter? Amnesia? Seriously?!).

Eh. It's alright. See it if you want to. Just don't expect the miracle of the second one to happen again. When Spider-Man 2 ended, I had tears in my eyes. With the third one? Not so much.

Hate Crimes Bill, and the Broad Definition of the Word "Representative"

2007-05-03T13:30:00.000-05:00

First thing I did when I woke up today was turn on C-SPAN to watch the vote on the hate crimes bill. The Bill passed, but its been a nail-biter.

Lobbyists from both sides have been gearing up for a showdown on this one, deluging congresspersons with phone calls. Anti-gay groups, like the increasingly hilariously misnamed Focus on the Family, claim that the law makes it a "thought crime" to "read the Bible" and speak out against homosexuality... in spite of language in the bill expressly affirming First Amendment Rights and making it clear that it refers only to violent crimes.

The actual showdown on the floor was fronted by the Republican congressman from Texas' 21st district, Lamar Smith. "Our criminal justice system has been built on the ideal of equal justice for all,"he said. "Under this bill justice will no longer be equal, but depend on the race, sex, sexual orientation, disability or status of the victim." Smith then followed up his decrying of categorization of victims by requesting the bill go back to committee to add more categories.

Texas 21st district... why does that sound familiar?

Oh, right. That's my district.

With Representative Barney Frank presiding over the House, the bill passed 237-180. That's less than the 2/3 majority needed to override a veto, which is important because a few hours before the voting started, the White House threatened a veto. From the AP:

"The White House, in a statement, said state and local criminal laws already provide penalties for the crimes defined by the bill and 'there has been no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement.' It also questioned the constitutionality of federalizing the acts of violence barred by the bill and said that if it reaches the president's desk 'his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill.'"

Just like he did in Texas. Okay, he didn't actually veto the bill in Texas, but he refused to sign it, and just let it die.

They say a presidency is defined more by the vetoes than by the laws passed. This would be Bush's third veto, bringing his record to: standing in the way of the progress of medical science, refusing to acknowledge a failed war that's killing countless thousands, and being anti-gay-rights.

Look, I'm a realist in that I realize that hate crimes legislation has not been proven to reduce the rate of bias-motivated violent crimes. The passage of hate crimes law, however, is intended to be symbolic. It says, "we, as a society, refuse to tolerate prejudice and hatred." In a country that prides itself on being founded on tolerance and equality, those sorts of principles should be paramount. Instead, far too many of our leaders -- including and especially the representative of my own damn district -- are willing to kowtow to the homophobic interests of the extreme right.

January 2009 really can't come soon enough.

32 Digits

2007-05-02T17:53:00.000-05:00

09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0

Not sure what exactly it means, and I don't have the technical knowledge to say where (or how) you'd use it, but it scares the shit out of lots of important people that this hexadecimal combination is out there on the internet, and that's good enough for me.

09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0

That 32 digit sequence is the processing key for the HD-DVD format. Aparently, 32 digits is enough to qualify for a copyright under the DMCA, a document viewed as ridiculous by technophiles, people with a passing knowledge of copyright law, and basically anybody who isn't the head of a major media corporation. When the combination got leaked, C&D orders started flying left and right. But that seemed to be the last straw for the internet community, and an all-out war was declared by the folks at Digg when they decided to give the power to the people. Now, there's no going back.

09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0

Nerds all over the planet are positively giddy, calling this the digital equivalent of the raiding of the Bastille. If they want to enforce their bullshit copyright, they're going to have to sue basically everybody with a blog. Myself included.

Bring. It. On.

09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0

And I'm Sitting Here on Capitol Hill

2007-05-01T12:32:00.000-05:00

Plenty of exciting legislation over the last few days, and in the upcoming days as well.

On Thursday April 26th, the House voted in a 277-137 landslide to restore some of the protections for American wild mustangs which had been eliminated in an eleventh-hour rider attached to an appropriations bill by Senator Conrad Burns (R[naturally]-MT) two years ago. HR 249, which restores prohibition on the commercial sale and slaughter of wild horses, will now go to the Senate.

Sort of an obscure thing for me to be writing about, I know, but the reason I mention it is that for my editing class this semester, for one of our projects we were given hours of raw footage shot by documentarian James Kleinert for a film he has been making on the issue. My cut, so I am told, ain't too shabby. I'm going to post it to YouTube here in a couple of days.

Also of interest is the fact that the recently renamed "Matthew Shepard Act," a bill that would extend federal hate crime protections to include LGBT people, is likely to see a vote sometime this week. We'll see how this one pans out. One of the moments I clearly remember from my early adolescent days where I was both starting to understand politics, and first starting to realize that I was gay, was when the governor let a state hate crimes law die because it included protections for gays and lesbians. I remember thinking, "The governor thinks its perfectly alright to hate me for being gay."

I was thirteen. And that governor is now the president.

And speaking of our fearless leader deciding not to sign something, the Iraq spending bill that calls for a timetable to withdraw our troops is likely to hit Bush's desk today. As you're probably aware, today is the fourth anniversary of "Mission Accomplished." Doubt that was a coincidence.

It's gonna be an exciting week, folks!

Fuzzy, Logical

2007-04-28T19:17:00.000-05:00

Moving from political commentary to idiotic blog quizzes in two posts flat, The Boxclockery runs the ~~Gambit~~ gamut from snobby to juvenile.

Polyphonic Spree Fragile Army Mashup

2007-04-28T17:50:00.000-05:00

The Polyphonic Spree, one of my all-time favorite bands, named the LP they released last August "Wait." It was sort of a tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that their third album -- The Fragile Army -- was supposed to have been released back in May of last year. The album is now set to come out sometime this June, so, obviously that didn't pan out.

Yesterday, the band released an eight-minute mp3 mashup of all eleven songs on the new album. From the sound of things, The Fragile Army will be worth the Wait*.

Everything I had heard about the album suggested that it was going to be very production-y compared to previous Polyphonic Spree albums. I was still surprised by how much that turned out to be true. The clip from "Mental Cabaret" is way more produced than it was originally on Wait. Of course, that could just be something they did for the mashup.

What's especially great about the album is that it sounds like the band has maintained the character while making their sound a bit edgier and more accessible. Tim DeLaughter said at the concert I went to last fall year where they werre testing out some of the new material that "there is a revolution coming -- or perhaps I should say an evolution -- and we would like to be the soundtrack for that endeavor." He was talking, at least in part, about politics, because The Fragile Army is apparently something of a political album. One does have to wonder, since everybody and their dog released a political album last year, whether now that the midterms have already swept the Republicans out of power a political album will seem as edgy and relevant.

Either way, I enjoy the hell out of the music.

* I don't say that to diminish Wait at all. It's actually a pretty bitchin' little record -- especially the cover of Nirvana's "Lithium." I was just trying to turn a phrase.

Democratic Debate -- And So It Begins...

2007-04-27T10:18:00.000-05:00

The Democratic Debate last night was fairly tame as far as presidential debates go. Doesn't mean there wasn't still some fun to be had.

Hillary was frumpy. Dennis Kucinich brought props. Mike Gravel out-crazied Dennis Kucinich. John Edwards made sure we didn't forget that he's from the South. Bill Richardson badly needed somebody to brush him up on his debating skills. Dodd played it safe, while secretly regretting that he got asked the gay marriage question, by offering this sing-songy gem: "strongly support those civil unions." And in what will doubtlessly be the highlight of his campaign, Biden said "Yes."

My favorite moment, though, was when Dennis Kucinich rebutted Obama in an attempt to look tough, then moderator Brian Williams broke the debate format to let Obama rebut the rebuttal. And Obama was all like, "Oh no you didn't, Elf-man. I crush you!"

What's bizarre is that most of the news outlets are saying that Hilary came out on top during the debate, even though these polls from MSNBC (who hosted the debate) show that the viewers thought Obama did a better job. Especially interesting are the numbers for the question "Who had the most rehearsed answers?" where Hillary has 44% -- more than any three candidates combined.

I'm curious about next week's Republican debate, just to see how things pan out. Especially now that golden-boy Rudy Giuliani has decided to follow up his politicizing of 9/11 with a flip-flopping on the marriage equality issue worthy of Mitt Romney. So much for that slim chance he had my vote in the general.

To Boldly Score

2007-04-23T00:10:00.000-05:00

While I am not by any stretch of the imagination a Trekkie, I do have a pretty healthy appreciation for Star Trek. I think I strike enough of a balance in that department to be able to find it hilarious that some Google nerd made the spell-checker remind me that I was supposed to capitalize the word "Trekkie" in the first sentence of this paragraph, but at the same time still feel kinda stupid because I should have known that.

Being the non-Trekkie-but-healthy-appreciator-of-Star-Trek that I am, I have been looking forward to J. J. Abram's upcoming Star Trek prequel film with only mild curiosity and amusement. It could be great. It could be awful. If it is awful, I have no personal investment in it, other than that I like movies to be good. It's not exactly like I have a lot of reverence for the Trek. My favorite Star Trek movie is the one where they travel back in time to the eighties and save the whales. Because that's freaking hilarious.

Today, however, I made a realization that put that movie into the elite top echelon of geeky movies I'm most looking forward to, right up there with Indy IV, and Superman Continues to Return. That realization being that Michael Giacchino will be scoring the movie.

Think of the brass, people! Simply think of the brass!

Symbolism

2007-04-19T00:38:00.000-05:00

I knew I had to write something about the Virginia Tech shootings. Bloggers everywhere have already written pages and pages about the terrifying "Richard McBeef" and "Mr. Brownstone," about whether or not NBC was right to broadcast the killer's video rants, about the school's response, about the Second Amendment, about Simon god-damned Cowell.

Instead of adding my voice to the din of second-hand reporting, I want to talk about something I can give some first-hand insight into. Specifically, this picture: The photo doesn't really illustrate what the Tower looks like when dimmed. It's hugely overexposed. To the human eye, all that can be seen is the barely illuminated top sections of the building. The rest is as black as the night sky around it. And even if the photo did show that, it wouldn't illustrate how chilling of a sight the dimmed Tower is. In fact, nothing can really illustrate it to people who aren't accustomed to seeing the Tower out their bedroom windows, or ahead of them as they walk to class, or looming over them as they wait for their bus.

You get used to having this bright column of light in your vision at night. You don't realize that there is something comforting about the iconic image until you find it missing. When you round a corner, expecting to be greeted by the beacon illuminating the Austin sky, there is a brief flash of fear -- some primeval horror of the kind that panicked ancient civilizations during eclipses -- at its absence. It passes quickly. Almost so quickly you don't acknowledge it before the rational thinking kicks in, and you understand that there is a reason your night sky looks like this:

Something bad has happened.

The absolute horror of what happened on Monday at Virginia Tech didn't really kick in for me until Tuesday night, when, walking out of the communication building into the rain, I unfolded my umbrella and unconsciously looked ahead of me at where the tower should be. There was a quick tug at my stomach when all I saw was the ominously up-lit columns and gables of the Tower's upper sections, seeming to hover over a vacuum of darkness.

The midpoint of the path from Comm to my dorm takes me right along the back of the Tower. The first leg of that trip has me walking straight towards the tower, now a black monolith growing larger and larger in my vision.

A symbol is something that is used to represent or indicate something else. Darkening the Tower, I believe, is the most powerful symbolic gesture the University could make, in some abstract and unintentional way made all the more relevant by the infamous bloodstain on the Tower's own history. There is something haunting about having a part of the identity of your school -- of your home -- go missing.

That was what was working through my mind as I drew closer to the building. Or maybe I just think too much.

Somebody switching off a few dozen Fresnels doesn't hold a candle to somebody unloading hundreds of bullets into dozens of young people. When the understanding that the darkness on the Tower is a symbolic one, that initial feeling in your gut goes away. But that feeling isn't a fleeting one for the people who have lost friends and loved ones on Monday. That darkness is going to stay with them for the rest of their lives.

Something bad has happened. Be good to the people you love. Hell, be good to everybody. It'll keep bad shit from happening. But right now, especially, do something for the people of Virginia Tech. Even if that something is just a symbol.

At Least I Can Fill Out Page One

2007-04-12T15:16:00.000-05:00

As the semester is now winding to a close, all the crap that I have been putting off all semester is finally catching up with me. Which means, not only have I been finding it harder to make time to sit down and punch out some blog entries (sorry), but I've also been finding it harder to get out to the gym, and my flagging willpower has found me choosing to eat really crappy food.

I have lost 25 pounds in the last year, and I really don't want that to go to waste. So, yesterday, I decided to start a new diet. No cutting carbs or anything like that. What I'm doing is just a form of self-policing.

The plan is to have a book called Baylor's Little Book of Crap He Should Not Have Eaten. Every time I eat something I shouldn't have eaten, I have to write it down in the book. The idea is that the embarrassment involved in having to log stupid crap like "Got Fried Chicken Sandwich Instead of Grilled" and "Extra Side of Ranch Dressing" into a little book will discourage me from getting the stuff in the first place.

Satisfied with my new plan, I went to the convenience store in Jester to buy the book last night before Lost started. But they didn't have any small notepads like the kind I wanted.

They did, however, have pints of Ben & Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk.

And it was delicious.

Fireflies in the Garden is the Lamest Title Ever

2007-04-03T23:04:00.000-05:00

Today was one of those days that blogs are made for. And also one of those days where I badly wished I owned a digital camera.

Julia Roberts' new movie Fireflies in the Garden was shooting scenes on campus today. The university did an excellent job of keeping it under wraps until the day of. The filming took place on the West Mall, on the west steps of the Main Building. Ryan Reynolds (yes, that Ryan Reynolds) and Ioan Gruffud were the two actors in the scenes being shot. Gruffud's character is apparently a professor (though not at "UT" -- no Texas-identifying marks were allowed to be seen on extras), and Reynolds comes by to visit him. They may or may not be related.

They rounded up a few paid extras at the University Filmmakers' Alliance meeting on Monday. I got an email about it, but didn't read the email until this morning. Still, since I had nothing to do this afternoon once I was done preparing for a Spanish presentation, I wasn't about to let the fact that I wasn't getting the 75$ check that the "official" extras got stop me from being in a movie. I'm not in this for the money, see.

So, at about 2PM, I popped out of the FAC onto the west mall to find a crane for the camera, some equipment trucks, lights, and a small crowd of students forming around the whole thing. And up on the steps of the Main Building, Ryan Reynolds and Ioan Gruffud. While they were changing set-ups, I scanned the area to see where they were corralling the extras, and, finding one group of extras seemingly unattended, made my way over.

The number one rule in getting somewhere you're not supposed to be is to act like you're supposed to be there. Some of the other extras were texting. I whipped out my phone and sent friend Sam the following message:

Im trying to get into the next shot. Acting casual. Texting, because thats what other extras are doing.

As I sent him the message, I listened in on the conversations of the "real" extras. Apparently wardrobe had made some of them change into brighter colors (thank God I opted for cornflower blue today). I waited about five minutes, and finally they were ready for the next take. They called for quiet, called "rolling," and then called "background."

One of the AD-types with a headset in his ear started directing the corralled extras into a steady stream crossing the plaza right in front of the steps. I started to get a little nervous, but I tried not to let it show. When it got to me, he hesitated briefly, clearly deciding whether or not he recognized me. I just returned his gaze, as if to say "where do you need me, cheif?" Afterall, I have done this whole extra thing before. He put a hand on my shoulder, grabbed a girl, paired her with me, and pointed across the mall to a ramp which was to be our destination. I strode out, and crossed the frame. I was now an extra in Fireflies in the Garden.

And so, for the next two hours or so, I stood where I was supposed to be, crossed to where I was supposed to cross, went back to "one," lathered, rinsed, and repeated. The crew members directing the flow of extras had us changing starting (and ending) locations on more than one occasion. Background continuity isn't going to win this movie any awards. They did begin to catch on that maybe they weren't dealing with just the official extras by the time the number of students "casually crossing" the mall quadrupled in an hour. But the crowds were (surprisingly) manageable, so there were no complaints.

From what I saw, this is going to be one of those movies where people talk about how much a young comedy actor -- in this case Ryan Reynolds -- has really matured as a performer (which translates into "grown out a beard and isn't playing Van Wilder"). Ioan Gruffud was... not subtle. But he's getting paid to act, and I'm not even getting paid to be an extra, so what do I know?

So, when Fireflies in the Garden drops in at the indie house near you to tepid-yet-favorable reviews, watch for a scene in which Gruffud and Reynolds are chatting it up on the steps of a university building. I, in my dark blue jeans, light blue t-shirt, and brown messenger bag, may just cross by in the background. At least once.

Another Blog Meme

2007-04-03T14:19:00.000-05:00

This is one of those juvenile, cryptic, "15 Things You Want to Say to 15 People but Politeness/Social Anxiety Forbids" things. Saw one the other day, don't remember where, and I didn't copy the form. But here it is:

Enjoy this.
You are incredibly pleasant.
You have a nasty case of self-loathing that seriously undercuts your pleasantness.
You, doubly so. I almost pity you. "Almost" is the operative word.
Nobody wants to see that.
Yeah. I saw that. Don't worry, I think it's funny.
I am going to be living vicariously through you. Fair warning.
I really hope it pans out. It's perfect, and you deserve it.
I envy you.
Seeing you laugh makes me happy.
My plan to kidnap you, disguise myself, and assume your identity is already well under way. As is my back-up plan to do the same with your equally adorable boyfriend.
See above.
If I had known I was about to lose the job anyway, you bet your ass I would have.
Get your act together. And see me more often.
Whatever it is, say it.

Copy this and do it about ur 15 pplz for yrs gr00d luck lol k thx bai <3<3

The Writing on the Wall

2007-03-30T20:12:00.000-05:00

So, there's a Christian group on campus that has the plaza in front of Gregory Gym reserved for the week. Unlike some of the hate-spewing groups that have cropped up over the last few months to condemn the queers and warn the innocent youths of the University of Texas about the dangerous Homosexual Agenda, these folks seem genuinely positive and innocuous in their message. Positive is good.

Anyway, as part of their thing on the plaza, they've put up a bunch of large white panels with questions written on them for the passers-by to write their responses on. The questions run from directly Christianity-related -- like "What has your experience been with the Christian Church?" -- to the more generally or tangentially spiritual.

It is into the latter category that the board which poses the question "What is worth dying for?" fits. Among the answers written on this board are some seemingly genuine ones: "Love," "family," "your country's honor." There are even a couple of ironic or political additions, like "Oil." But my favorite answer is one that appeared on the board's third day at the plaza:

"SPARTA!!!"

Amen.

Media Clucks Tongue at Obama's Marriage Stance

2007-03-26T16:42:00.000-05:00

I have written here on the blog about my feelings on Barack Obama's stance on marriage. Specifically, that -- while I greatly appreciate the work he has done for gay rights in Illinois -- I feel his unwillingness to support my right to marry is in direct contradiction to his "Audacity of Hope" message.

The issue is starting to gain traction in the MSM. Three different Chicago-based news sources have run pieces in the last few hours taking a swipe in at Barack Obama's disappointing response to Peter Pace's "homosexuality is immoral" comments, as well as his wishy-washy stance on same-sex marriage.

The Chicago Daily Herald ran this article comparing Obama's current rhetoric on gay rights to that which he used in a three-year-old interview. They also ran a transcript of the interview, which is fascinatingly honest and informal, in which Daily Herald reporters grilled Obama over whether or not his stance reflected his "being more politically expedient than principled."

The Chicago Tribune had this short op-ed which mirrors my own, stating that "[s]ometimes it's hard to tell pragmatism from hypocrisy, cowardice, or plain old stubborn wrong-headedness."

And finally, The Gothamist ran a little blurb which compares the three major candidates' responses to Pace's remarks, and says of Obama's response and its relation to the larger issue of his stand on gay marriage that "[w]hat's disappointing is watching a man whose personal story, background and persona have the power to unite a nation that is clearly worn down by the politics of division and false choices try to find an answer that will satisfy everyone."

I am writing a letter to Senator Obama, asking him to clarify and/or reconsider his stance on marriage. I had considered writing the letter months ago, around the time I wrote that original blog entry, long before he "officially" announced his candidacy. I probably should have done it then, when it had a better chance of getting through to him. Once the letter is written, I'll post it here.

Lost 3.13: "The Man from Tallahassee"

2007-03-25T14:54:00.000-05:00

SPOILER WARNING: If you're not and don't want to be up to speed on Lost, I don't want to be responsible for ruining anything for you. So, please, read no further.

So, the question is, was "The Man from Tallahassee" the best episode of Lost ever?

Quite possibly. Easily the best since the start of the third season. And what is really interesting is that it managed to be so damn exciting with only two major bits of action. Outside of the exploding of the submarine and Locke's fall during the flashback, the episode was primarily talk. Most of the drama and suspense came from the delightful back-and-forth between Locke and Ben.

These two are my favorite characters to see paired up together. Ben, with his passive-aggressive creepy manipulations is always a kick to watch, and Locke, fancying himself wise to Ben's tricks, is entertaining to see maneuvering around them. And once again, the writers have given us an episode in which Locke's layers of mystery and badassedness are stripped away to reveal a sad, insecure, broken man.

Of course the climax of this is when Locke's plans to trap Cooper comes crashing down (pun most decidedly intended). Unfortunately, I ruined this moment for the folks I was watching it with, by calling it out loud, seconds before he got pushed: "That sure is a big plate-glass window behind him..."

People probably hate watching stuff with me.

Besides being a huge special effects moment and a big mystery reveal, it was actually very intelligently tied into the emotional thread of the story. This moment when Locke got put into his wheelchair was as powerful as it was when it was revealed that he was in a wheelchair in "Walkabout." This total deconstruction of the character could only have worked if Locke had been restored to the enigmatic actionhero he was in the first season, which he most certainly has been.

And Locke's return to form hasn't just been in his demeanor. It's been in his actions, too. Not since he smashed Sayid over the head for using the transceiver in "The Moth" has Locke taken such drastic actions to ensure that they don't get off the island. Calling back to that characteristic and paying it off big time is another reminder that, yes, doubters, there is a grand master plan.

And speaking of grand master plans, about that "magic box..."

Ben's actual quote is as follows: "What if I told you that, somewhere on this island, there is a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it when you opened that box, there it would be? What would you say about that, John?" Now, even as weird and sci-fi-ish though Lost has gotten over the third season, I still think it's safe to say that Ben is being a little bit metaphorical, and that there's not actually just a big cube in the middle of the jungle that grants wishes.

But something to keep in mind is that back in the first season episode "Numbers," Leonard tells Hurley that, by using the numbers, he has "opened the box." So, if he's referring to the same "box," that means that it was already opened before the 815ers got to the island. This is interesting, because it could explain the mysterious apparitions on the island.

Let me explain: if Anthony Cooper did in fact come out of the box, it's possible, if not probable, that the other people who have "impossibly" appeared on the island came out of it as well. Remember Christian Shephard in The White Rabbit? Jack was having an emotional crisis over his father (exhibited by his flashbacks about him) at the time that he saw him wandering the island. At that moment, Jack wanted to see his father -- needed to find him ("Where are you?! Where are you?!"), so, the box, knowing that, gave Jack his father.

How about Kate's horse? Kate's crisis made her flashback to the time when the horse had inadvertently helped her escape from the marshall. When she once again needed to escape a feeling of entrapment from the male figures in her life, the box provided her with the horse. In Hurley's past, his imaginary friend Dave helped him reject his responsibilities, and when responsibility became too much for him to bear on the island, Dave came back to him. And so on...

Everyone I have talked to about this week's episode has been excited about how the show is in a completely different place now that it has ever been. And not by the result of a shark-jumping, but a paradigm shift. It's as if the season so far had been a transition into the pieces being finally arranged for the beginning of the end, and we can finally start looking at the show as a whole.

Weird little thing that I'm most curious about? The music Jack was playing on the piano. That was a Michael Giacchino composition if I ever heard one, so it's original to the show. Something tells me that it's going to get paid of somewhere down the line. Can't wait to find out how.

Disgruntled Former Employee

2007-03-24T19:31:00.000-05:00

I don't handle it well when I get treated shittily.

Especially when I don't feel it's entirely my fault.

My thirty-day "trial period" at Toy Joy ended with me being let go. They said they were looking for someone who had more availability (bullshit, since they knew my school schedule when they hired me), and someone who just had a higher energy level (bullshit, because if it had once been brought to my attention that my "energy level" was somehow lacking, I would have gladly, and easily, stepped it up).

I get told this 2 hours and forty-five minutes into a Saturday opening shift. If you're just going to cut me before the shift is even halfway over, why even bother making me set an alarm? It actually would have been way less annoying had they at least waited until the end of the day. Or, hell, let me know the night before when I was finishing up.

Anyway, I'm not cool about the way this went down. I worked three 8-hour shifts a week, including during spring break, never had to cancel, and only came in late once (ten minutes, because I tried a different bus), so my availability was never an issue. I was never informed that my job performance had left something wanting, so how could I have known that there was an issue there?

I had bruises on my hips for two days from hula-hooping for an hour and a half. Outside. Waving and shouting at traffic. I'd seriously like to know how I managed to do that without any energy. Could I have been a little bit more motivated on the job, you're damn right I could have. But often that perceived lack of motivation was out of wanting to make sure that I was doing what I was doing right, or out of wanting to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong. And, since nobody had told me otherwise, I kept doing what I was doing. If someone had just taken me aside one day and just said, "dude, you need to step it up out there," something, anything that resembles professional courtesy, not only would I still have the job, but they'd have a better employee. Basically, I was given no reason to suspect that my job was in danger. This was totally out of the blue. And pretty goddamn unprofessional.

Maybe I accidentally pissed someone off. That may have to be my excuse, since I can't pull the gay card -- the vegan coffee shop next door run by the same folks is fully staffed by lesbians.

Ah well. I'm not going to waste too much time being annoyed because I no longer have a part-time job at a damn toy store. Sure did enjoy having the extra money, though.

To quote Bernadette Peters from The Jerk, "I don't care about losing all the money. It's losing all the stuff..."

Obama-Rama Across the Street Lake

2007-03-22T15:20:00.000-05:00

Awhile ago, I mentioned that Barack Obama would be coming to UT to speak.

Well, the response to his announcement was so huge that his campaign ended up moving the event to Auditorium Shores, the huge park on Town Lake. When he came, he spoke to a crowd estimated to be between 15-25,000 people. It's shots of this rally that all the news networks use as B-roll when talking about the Obama campaign. This all happened four weeks ago, but at the time I was being lazy and not updating the blog with any regularity. Sorry.

Here's pictures:This is the view over our right shoulders, along the sight-lines of the cameras. I left to get there right after class in order to ensure that we got a good spot. We ended up getting a really good spot, literally three rows back from the stage.We got free signs. Because 20,000 people holding up the same sign looks awfully good on television. There were these really obnoxious guys next to us, one of whom completed the "I am an unoriginal jackass" Trifecta by quoting Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Borat. After an hour or so of delays, the man finally hit the stage, with his trademark tie-less look, to deafening cheers and applause. This shot gives you an idea of just how close we were.You get a pretty good sense of the size of the crowd in this one. As far back as it extended in that direction, it extended probably twice as far behind us.
After he finished speaking, he stepped down from the stage to shake hands. Using my skills of crowd-navigation, I made my way forward and got my hand out there. This was taken seconds before I made eye-contact with the man, and managed to get the word "Senator!" out over the din.

The handshake was different from other politician's handshakes I've received. It wasn't as rigid. It was firm, but gentle. And, of course, faster, since I shook his hand in a mass hand-shaking situation, as opposed to at a book-signing or a chance encounter where I had a moment of the person's full and undivided attention.I love this photo. He looks Christ-like in it.

The man is one hell of a speaker. I'm still not one-hundred percent sure he has my vote. It is just March mind you. Of the year before the election. Even when he was repeating himself from previous speeches, he was fresh and convincing. And as much as I wish just one candidate would stand up and say that he (or she) will stand up for gay Americans, Obama at the very least has my support for his Iraq strategy.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the whole 2008 campaign plays out.

Sithi Uhm, Ingonyama

2007-03-21T00:58:00.000-05:00

So, in what may be the single gayest thing I've ever done, I blew half of my first paycheck on a third-row seat for The Lion King. Y'know what? Totally worth it.

See, I've been wanting to see this show since... just about the moment that I heard they were making a stage musical out of The Lion King. I wasn't then (and am still not) exactly the biggest musical-worshiping of gays, but even the butchest of eleven-year-old faglings knows good theatre when he sees it. And when I first saw stuff from the show during, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, the 1998 Oscar telecast, I knew I needed to see this show.

Last year, I found out that the Cheetah Company -- the show's western-states touring production -- would be coming to Austin. Specifically, to Bass Hall on campus. And I wasn't about to miss it when it was playing three blocks from where I sleep every night. When the show finally arrived, after a few weeks of hemming and hawing over the seat, I finally decided to splurge and get a really crazy expensive "VIP" ticket.

I'm the kind of person for whom the excitement of anticipation over something doesn't really hit until very shortly before the thing being anticipated is about to happen. It wasn't until I was ushered to my seat and looked up at the red curtain with the pseudo-tribal designs that it dawned me that, "Holy shit. I'm actually about to see The Lion King. And I'm sitting on the third row."

Hot damn.

Anyone with a passing interest in the stage -- or, hell, pop culture in general -- in the last ten years already knows that this show is the greatest spectacle ever put on in the history of performance, so I'll spare you all a full review of the show and keep it brief:

All the gushing talk about the show's technical and visual wonder isn't just hype -- it really is the most amazing thing ever seen on stage (some of the touring company's costumes and set-pieces didn't quite have the level of perfection that I've seen in stuff from the Broadway show, but it wasn't enough to hurt the experience). And the actors were solid. Only a few performances, as sometimes happens near the end of a show's run, came across as a bit stale, particularly Zazu and, sadly, Young Simba. The kid is earnest as hell, and boy does he have a stage smile, but it really sucks the wind out of the otherwise tear-jerking death of Mufasa when he phones in his "Help! Somebody! ... anybody..." after finding the body. Kevin Gray's Scar was more campy than eating s'mores in a canoe, but it was menacing enough when it needed to be. A couple of nit-picks aside, it was absolutely amazing. It lived up to the decade-long buildup and was more than worth the cost to see it so close up. I'd love to see it again.

What I'd like to take a moment to talk about, however, is something that has my inner child very confused and somewhat upset.

That being that I am totally hot for Simba.

The man in the picture is Wallace Smith.

He doesn't know it yet, but he and I are going to be married someday. I have a feeling that when our powers combine, it could really be world-changing. With my brain and his looks, we could go places.

When people who say that we shouldn't be married find out it's Baylor Johnson and the guy who plays Simba in the touring production of The Lion King we're talking about, they'll totally understand. He and I are going to change a lot of minds on that front. Break a lot of barriers.

We're also going to muscle past the biological barriers that would keep us from having babies. And the muscle involved would probably be the deltoid. No, really, take a look at those deltoids! If you're holding onto his arms and he shrugs his shoulders, you're getting your fingers broken off.

Seriously, the hotness was distracting. Because I was raised by Disney (and am an animation-obsessed movie nerd), I knew every word and was singing along -- in my head, assholes -- to every number. It was somewhat alarming when he hit the stage at the end of Act One during "Hakuna Matata," and I suddenly found myself thinking "You Can Leave Your Hat On."

...Which, by the way, he totally could.

Insert pun of your choice involving the phrase "Pride Rock" here.

Ann Coulter is Fucking Hilarious

2007-03-06T21:54:00.000-06:00

I'm a pretty foul-mouthed motherfucker. But There's one four-letter word that I have made an effort to never say. Ever. I don't like the sound of it, and I don't like the sick feeling in my guy when I hear it. That's the nature of a slur: it's intended to demean, to dehumanize, to make low. And I think that this word is so particularly demeaning, that no woman deserves to be called it.

But it turns out, according to Ann Coulter, that I don't have to feel that way. Slurs, Ms. Coulter argues, are totally cool, just as long as they're used in the correct context. In defense of her using the word "faggot" to describe John Edwards, Ann had this to say:

"I didn't use an insulting word. I used a schoolyard word, about a married man with children — for the eight billionth time, and the audience knew that. I mean the joke wouldn't have worked if I had inserted the name of a gay Democrat. Any other Democrat, the name could have been inserted. It could have been Howard Dean or Hillary Clinton because it's a schoolyard taunt meaning wuss, meaning nerd, meaning weenie, meaning lame."

Oh. So slurs aren't insulting. Just as long as you claim that the word doesn't actually apply to the person you're slurring, and just as long as you frame the slur in a "joke" that proves how culturally aware you are, then the millions of people who have that word pointed at them every day by people who wish to make them feel marginalized, ostracized and dehumanized have nothing to complain about. You're totally in the clear.

It's alright to call John Edwards a faggot, because he isn't one. But he is everything that faggots are: a wuss, a nerd, a weenie, lame. A weenie like that marine who was the first United States soldier to get his leg blown off in Iraq. Lame like that other marine who was honored at your HPAC convention who used to suck dick on camera for a living. You know, guys like that.

Just to make sure we're clear on that particular issue, Ann added this:

"[The word] 'faggot' isn't offensive to gays; it has nothing to do with gays."

Right! And besides, the great thing is that gays can't get pissed off that she said it, because she doesn't mean that John Edwards is actually gay. He's just all of those crappy, weak things that the gays intrinsically are. So, to show that you think negatively of him, you should call him gay -- because being gay is a negative thing. It's a joke! And it's totally not homophobic!
Well, since I don't actually think any woman deserves to be called a certain word, and since Coulter, ostensibly, qualifies as a woman, I won't have any regrets over the following:

Ann Coulter, you are a stupid [EDIT: Ater giving it some thought, I decided that, while in doing so I illustrated my point pretty clearly, it wasn't worth lowering myself to Coulter's level just to illustrate what Coulter's level is. If a family of orphaned puppies was trapped in a burning building, it wouldn't be worth lowering myself to Coulter's level if that's what it took to save them. Plus, like I've said, I just don't like the word.]

See, if you actually were one, that culturally-relevant joke wouldn't work.

Okay

2007-03-05T18:09:00.000-06:00

So, I haven't blogged in awhile. A little over a week, actually. And lots of stuff happened in that week. The Oscars. Me getting a job at Toy Joy. Me shaking hands with Barack Obama.

But between working and midterms, I've completely failed to update the ol' blog, depriving you, my faithful readers (mom, and two people on facebook), of the opportunity to learn about what's happening in my world. Sorry.

I'ma try to get on that in the next couple of days. I'm basically done with school until the end of spring break, so expect a return to form.

(Oh, did I mention that I shook hands with Barack Obama? Because I totally did.)

Oscar Predictions

2007-02-24T18:10:00.000-06:00

Visual Effects:
Superman Returns

Sound Mixing:
Flags of Our Fathers or Dreamgirls (why isn't Children of Men nominated here?)

Sound Editing:
Flags of Our Fathers

Song:
Probably one of the Dreamgirls songs.

Score:
Pan's Labyrinth

Makeup:
Pan's Labyrinth

Editing:
United 93. While I was watching this, I kept on thinking, "this movie is a lock for an editing Oscar."

Feature Documentary:
An Inconvenient Truth

Costume Design:
Curse of the Golden Flower, or Dreamgirls

Cinematography:
Please, God, Children of Men. Superman shoulda been nominated.

Art Direction:
Pan's Labyrinth, or Dreamgirls

Original Screenplay:
Little Miss Sunshine, or Pan's Labyrinth

Adapted Screenplay:
The Departed

Foreign Language Film:
Pan's Labyrinth

Animated Feature:
Cars

Supporting Actress:
Jennifer Hudson

Supporting Actor:
Mark Wahlberg or Alan Arkin

Lead Actress:
Helen Mirren or Judi Dench

Lead Actor:
Forest Whitaker

Director:
Martin motherfucking Scorsese

Picture:
The Departed or, longshot, Little Miss Sunshine

Pent-Accosted II

2007-02-20T12:56:00.000-06:00

I had written already about how earlier in the semester, I was stopped on campus by two Asian dudes who wanted to talk to me about Jesus. Some bluffing and awkward shuffling made the experience both brief and moderately painless.

I hadn't mentioned on here that several different "church" groups have been appearing on and around campus the last few weeks spouting homophobia and what have you (one group on the west mall had a rather amusing visual aid involving plugs and sockets), but while that doesn't bear directly on the issue at hand, it serves to illustrate that, for whatever reason, the armies of God are in full force patrolling the streets of the University of Texas campus.

Yesterday, during my little lunch break, I cut through the basement of Brackenridge and Roberts dorms on the way to San Jacinto for some spaghetti. They make a mean spaghetti there. And I was hungry for it. Right as soon as I step out of the Roberts lobby into the sunlight of 21st street, I see a man. Early twenties. Tall. Burnt orange t-shirt. Backpack. Eerie smile. He looks like someone doing his best to appear to be a student, but something tips me off that he isn't, and just as I begin to realize what's about to happen next, he locks in the eye-contact and begins striding toward me.

"Hi there. What's your name?" His voice has that affectedly ethereal southern twang that I suppose is the modern-day equivalent of having your hair turned white by the burning bush. I take his extended hand and shake it. Sometimes I wish I had the balls it takes to be rude.

"Baylor."

He doesn't repeat the name, which I find odd. Everyone repeats my name when they first hear it to make sure they got it right. It's not a very common name. But rather than repeat it, he smiles warmly as if out of recognition of a kindred. Someone named "Baylor" could only be a Baptist, right? Thanks, mom and dad.

"My name is John. It's very nice to meet you." He takes a step toward me, and then another uphill of me -- this part of 21st street is pretty steep. Maybe I'm just a paranoid short guy, but I notice it whenever someone makes a move to the higher ground like that -- especially when they're already pretty tall. It's an offensive strategy.

"Baylor, let me ask you: are you a Christian?"

Just say Buddhist. JUST SAY BUDDHIST!

"Yes, I am."

"And how do you know God?"

"I grew up in the church."

"That's nice, that's nice." He pronounces it 'naahze.' "Baylor, do you mind if I talk to you about Jesus?"

And then here's what went through my mind: Just say you're going to class. Wait, shit! You don't have your backpack with you. Just go for it. If nothing else, you can write about it in your blog.

"...myyyyes, alright."

And so begins the Gospel according to John, 21st century edition. And no amount of awkward shuffling was going to stop him from getting to the end of it. Never changing that affected voice and never losing the starry-eyed smile, John tells me about how he grew up in the church too, but he wasn't a good Christian. He would be in church every Sunday and in the youth ministry, but he used to party and have fun with the girls and do other things against God's will, to which he adds to me, "You've probably had the opportunity to have some fun with the girls, right?" Brace yourself, folks, this is a recurring theme for this one.

Well, one day John had a revelation -- his word -- and realized that what he was doing was wrong. He read a verse, and naturally, I don't remember which one, that said that what is wanted of us is that we "know God."

"And I don't mean 'know God' like you know Chemistry," he says, making sure that I remember that he's connecting with me, what with his being a 'student' and all. "I mean really, intimately know God, the way you would know your wife."

And what follows is a protracted metaphor about how a person's relationship with God should be like the intimate relationship a man has with a woman. I wish I could relate more of it to you, but I could barely restrain myself from laughing as he was speaking, so I didn't retain much of it. But, oh, the sexism! Oh, the heteronormativity!

"You're not married, are you Baylor?"

Hah! "No." Not if you have anything to say about it.

"Well that kind of an intimate knowledge, like the one a man has of his woman," (for emphasis, I would like to repeat 'man has of his woman'), "is what God wants there to be between us and our God."

This goes on, and I really wish I had been able to remember more of it, but boy was it ever offensive.

When the story reaches it's end, he tells me that he would like the opportunity to pray with me that I could know God in this way. This, I just don't feel up for. I tell him "You know, for me, prayer is more personal thing that I like to do on my own. I'd really rather take some time on my own to think about what you've said." He smiles and nods, and tells me that he thinks I would enjoy the first book of John. In much the same way, I'm sure, that he thinks I'd enjoy having fun with the girls.

We shake hands again. He heads towards a 40 Acres Bus, (where I later learn he spends much of the day doing the same thing to a captive audience -- this makes me look less paranoid about the uphill thing), and I turn to leave for my spaghetti. He calls out after me, "God Bless you, Baylor." I figure, why the hell not: for continuity's sake, I raise my right fist as a sign of solidarity.

Baylor Johnson, American Idol

2007-02-18T16:33:00.000-06:00

I was on American Idol.

No, seriously.

Some background: during the first week of classes in the Fall of '05, the show held auditions in the city of Austin. Well, sort of. They held the first round of auditions in Austin, then when Katrina hit, the production vacated the Austin Convention Center to make room for refugees. The people from the Austin auditions who got to the three judges did so in other locations across the country. Of course, the producers chose to make no mention of this when the show finally aired (at the time, ignoring Hurricane Katrina was really in vogue), making for a creatively edited episode which relied less heavily than others on establishing shots of the audition city.

Or so I understand. I don't really watch American Idol. I've learned all of this after doing some research onto why I was on the show. Because, really, beyond the glory that is the truly awful auditions in the first few weeks, I don't give the first flying fuck off the last hair on a rat's ass about American Idol. Is it because I'm a snob? Yes. It really is.

My family, however, has no qualms about watching the show. And when the Austin auditions aired last year, I got a call from my little brother who said he thought he had seen me during one of the episode's scant establishing montages. I thought it was funny, though doubtful, and having no way to check for sure ( at the time, YouTube was not really in vogue), I kind of forgot about it. And that was that, for over a year.

Anyway, another interesting happening about the Austin audition was that a bunch of students crashed the audition line dressed as zombies (at the time, zombies were really, really, obnoxiously in vogue). I hadn't heard about this until fairly recently, and when Lincoln and I were watching YouTube videos of this year's gloriously bad auditions when I remembered hearing about the zombie thing. So, we set about looking for a clip of it.

And then, at the 00:09 mark, I appeared.

There it is. I was on national TV -- and not just national TV, but what was probably the highest-rated thing on that week. Talking into a cell phone, about twenty pounds heavier than I am now, with a haircut that can only be described as, "What were you thinking? Oh yeah, now I remember. You weren't."

Taylor Hicks, eat your heart out (if you don't, the zombies will eat it for you [if the zombies don't, the fatass in the shorts will]).

The Importance of Being Tim Hardaway

2007-02-16T10:09:00.000-06:00

When Mel Gibson did it, he was drunk. Doesn't excuse being an anti-Semite, but it does at least explain how someone could be stupid enough to babble about it in front of a cop.

When Michael Richards did it, he was angry and in some sort of "stage persona." Doesn't excuse his being a racist, but it a least explains what triggered the idiodic rant.

But Tim Hardaway, you stupid, stupid, petty, ignorant little man. Free of any provocation or booze (though I guess I can't rule it out), you volunteered on a live broadcast that you are homophobic. And not just in the run-of-the-mill kind of way, where someone politely if assholishly just doesn't much care for the gays, but swears up and down that he's not a homophobe. No, no. You described yourself as homophobic. On the air. Free of provocation.

Though you hilariously struggled to pronounce the word, it's pretty clear that you're aware of what it means. We can at the very least assume you do based on the context. And oh, the context:

"You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am hom-o-phobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

That little quote (stripped of its charming additional words and meaningless 'for that's) rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Now, other players had responded to Amaechi's coming out with the expected level of naivete and ignorance that only borders on offensive. But they at least managed to have the self-awareness to frame their responses in terms of some kind of broader team issue. Take for example LeBron James' insightful little pearl, "if you’re gay and you’re not admitting it that you are, you’re not trustworthy." Okay, problematic because of his tone, and of course the use of the word 'admitting,' which implies doing something wrong, but overall, not entirely unexpected.

Then there was Ray Allen's little byte, "You don’t want to know that there is somebody in your locker room [who is gay] and you are not aware of it, and maybe you had to be careful being where you put yourself in a situation where you might get hit on by a teammate." Like in Lebron's statement, the implicit homophobia is framed as a matter of trust, (by the way, I love that old 'just as long as they don't hit on me,' number. Don't flatter yourself, Ray-Ray) but again, nobody is flatly saying that there is hatred involved.

But you, Tim? You didn't skirt the issue. No-no. You came right out and said that you hate -- not dislike, not are uncomfortable around -- hate gay people.

You later called the radio station back and apologized. Sort of. With the tone of a little kid whose mother just forced him to say he's sorry for kicking the neighbor's dog, you said that what you said was a "mistake," and you were sorry for having said it. Not for your opinion. Hell, I guess nobody should have to apologize for their opinions, but goddamn, most in your position at least have the awareness that what you say is harmful and wrong. But you didn't apologize for that. At least not then. The day after your embarrassing rant, you released a (well-worded and grammatically correct) statement of apology through your representative.

But the hits, they just kept on coming.

Later that same day, you said in a television interview at which you were supposedly further apologizing:

"I don't condone [being gay], and if people got problems with it, I'm sorry. I'm saying I can't stand being around that person."

Asked what you would do if a person in your family was gay, you said that you would distance yourself from that person. You just kept on failing to get the point. You've ended your life as a respectable person. And it's all your fault.

You are incredibly stupid. Like, epically, titanically so.

And I thank you for it.

And you're not just stupid because you're homophobic. Hell, if that was all it took for someone to be stupid, then I'm saying that, in some way or another, most people in this country are stupid (though it is, I am, and they are). But you, Mr. Hardaway, are exceptionally stupid because of your total lack of class and your inability to sugar-coat your bigotry when being interviewed. That or your obliviousness that you probably should sugar-coat it. I'm not sure which is worse.

But what makes your stupidity so wonderful is that it's actually going to help the fight against the very things you stand for. The rampant homophobia in the U.S. (or at the very least in sports culture) now has a face. Better, a celebrity face.

It's troubling, of course, the number of people rushing to your defense. While you have made yourself a villain in the eyes of the pubic, you've also provided a rallying point for those who agree with you. Also, lesser homophobes can make themselves feel better by saying, "well, I don't think the gays should marry, raise children, be protected from being fired for no reason, or be treated as equal citizens under the law, but my goodness, at least I'm no Tim Hardaway!" The good news about that, if there is good news about that, is that by choosing to align themselves with your statements, these people are proving that they, too, are villains.

You've blown the lid off this sucker. And while, like Mel's and Michael's before you, your story will stop getting airplay within a couple of news cycles, it will have significantly more cultural staying power. This country has seen public racist and anti-Semitic rants in the past. But this kind of homophobia has long been kept under the radar in this country, hidden under the guise of political action and moral correctness. We've just been waiting for someone earnest and idiotic enough to finally say what's on everyone's minds.

Rage and booze don't make you say things that you don't mean. They just make you more likely to say things you don't mean to say. It's refreshing to see a bigot who doesn't need to have it plied out of him. Tim Hardaway, you stupid, ignorant, bigoted, has-been: thank you for your honesty.

Lost 3.08: "Flashes Before Your Eyes"

2007-02-15T14:16:00.000-06:00

SPOILER WARNING: If you're not and don't want to be up to speed on Lost, I don't want to be responsible for ruining anything for you. So, please, read no further (that means you, Ryan).

Damn. That was freaking insane.

Last summer, showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse promised us that sometime near the beginning of the second "chunk" of Season Three, we would be getting our collective minds blown. This week's episode, "Flashes Before Your Eyes," appears to have been that mind-blower. To be perfectly honest, while I was watching it, I wasn't crazy about maybe half of this episode, was neutral to okay with about forty percent of it... but the ending was redeeming enough to make me love the episode.

We knew that Desi could see through time, which was actually something that I was not really crazy about when it was manifesting itself throughout the first chunk of the season. Smoke monsters, freaky science cults, and some all-pervasive hand of fate connecting the lives of these total strangers -- that I was down with. But psychic-ness was kind of pushing it for me.

So the episode begins with Locke getting back to the camp, and telling Charlie and Hurley about Eko's tragic end, when suddenly Desmond darts off through the jungle, to the beach and starts swimming out towards a drowning Claire. He rescues her. And Hurley tells Charlie that Desmond can "see the future." Our comic relief tagteam, accompanied by some needless scenery-chewing and over-the-top melodramatic music, get Desi sauced and confront him about his new abilities. Really, everyone seems oddly pissed off in this scene. It's bad writing. Then when Charlie calls Desi a coward (non sequitor, anyone?) Desmond flips out and has a flashback to what happened when he turned the fail-safe key.

So begins the most structurally-distinct episode of the show since and including The Other 48 Days. What follows is a sort of flashback-within-a-flashback. When Desmond turned the key, his life "flashed before his eyes." But not in the traditional sense. More in the sense of, he actually went back to his past life. Only he didn't remember that he had been to the island. Only, he had. Sort of...

So he's courting Penelope, and we get a little more history on how that went down. The whole middle chunk of the episode unfolds like a frustrating cross between Vanilla Sky, the Oracle scenes from the Matrix sequels, and Being John Malkovich. Desi sometimes seems to remember that he's travelled through time and has some agency and that he can change his fate, and at others, he seems to have forgotten and is just reliving the past. Plus his meeting with Charlie makes it hard to tell if he has actually affected the timeline, or if it was going on in some alternate reality -- surely if Charlie had met Desmond on the street like that, he would have remembered it, right? Though I really did like the line about "this is why we don't do drugs," and the fact that Charlie was playing "Wonderwall," seeing as Driveshaft is supposedly based on Oasis.

Normally I love time travel stories, but for the most part, this one just left me flat. It was nice to establish the rules of time-travel in the Lost universe in a way that sort of ties into the greater issue of fate at work on the show ("the universe has a way of self-correcting," or whatever), but the whole affair just seemed... not clever. And out of place. If you're going to throw a curveball like time travel into a show like Lost, at least do something to make it fit in with the whole thing.

I did like the weird, hybrid Matrix/Wizard of Oz reference with the guy in the red shoes. And as much as I hated the cricket-bat-to-the-head snapping Desi back into real-time, I really loved his panicked "I want to go back!" moment. It was like that weird sad thing where you wake up from a dream and badly want to get back into it.

As a matter of fact, the whole episode felt less like an episode of Lost and more like dreams I've had about the characters of Lost (yes, I have Lost-centric dreams. Shut up). But as much as I was bothered by the inconsistency of the whole thing, the reveal at the end about Charlie being about to die was bad ASS! The best kind of "twist" is the one that makes perfect sense, but that you never in a million years see coming. And this one meets the criteria. The most exciting part about it is, given that Lost has a long history of actually killing off major characters, we really do have reason to fear for Charlie's life. Exciting!

Oh, and a closing thought: remember how last year, I predicted back in February that the hatch would be destroyed in the season finale? Well here's my big prognostication for this year's finale: Desmond is going to get to go back, and he's going to tell Penny to watch for the discharge. Which would explain why the Portuguese-speaking scientists were watching for it at the end of Season 2. Also, it would explain how he has so much faith that Sarah's surgery will be a success, because Jack has already told her. So maybe their meeting in the stadium is revisited when Desmond goes back into his past. This, of course, causes some problems with the whole time-travel thing, since Desmond would have had to have already altered the timeline... but I have faith that it will get sorted out.b

The Lipstick Makes the Lesbian

2007-02-14T18:42:00.000-06:00

Check out this video from Ellen Degeneres' TV show of her getting all glammed-up for a W photo shoot. It's hilarious, because she's having so much trouble taking herself seriously enough to do any "looks," (Blue Steel, etc.), but the shots they show at the end are freaking amazing.

The choice of music is pretty great. "Damn, Girl" indeed.

Amazing what ridiculously expensive lighting equipment, some strategic hair gel and a dash
of eye-liner can do, innit?

Obama-rama Across the Street

2007-02-12T12:13:00.000-06:00

Two days have passed since Barack Obama officially, finally, definitely, totally for-sure and super-serial announced what we've all known since the Democratic Convention in 2004. But here's something I didn't know: he's going on an "announcement tour." And his February 23rd stop?

The University of Texas.

Some the details of his visit seem kind of sketchy right now, in terms of where one obtains tickets, etc. But I do know that it is going to be on the 23rd, at 1:00PM. In Gregory Gym. Which is right across the street from my dorm. I am there.

I saw Hillary when she spoke at Ann Richards' memorial service. If I manage to get into this thing, there is a pretty good chance that I will have heard the future President and Vice President of the United States both speak in person.

A.N.S. R.I.P.

2007-02-10T23:37:00.000-06:00

Two points: First, Anna Nicole Smith's death, as is the death of any person who is not fundamentally evil, is a tragedy. Second: Anna Nicole Smith is, by no stretch of the imagination, a hero.

I really do believe that nobody deserves to die at the age of 39, and I hope that the legal entanglements get sorted out so her daughter will be able to find some sort of stability in her life. But contrary to what lots of people are saying, Anna Nicole did not have a hard life. At least not for the last fifteen years or so of it. She was famous for being famous, which is all anyone in the age of entitlement wants to be. That doesn't make her a villain, of course. But it doesn't make her a hero either.

So to the people who keep saying that her personal and legal turmoils over the last few years make her some kind of "role model" for women everywhere who have "hard lives?" Sure, Ms. Smith had the whole paternity suit thing going on, and yes, her son did just die, but there are plenty of women out there facing similar battles who don't have the luxury of, well, luxury. Those are the women who have "hard lives."

And as for comparing her death to that of Marilyn Monroe? The similarities these two women share in looks and in drug-related endings are more than negated by the ocean of classiness that separates them. We could do a point-by-point comparison about their relative talent, their taste in men, any number of dimensions where these two don't quite equate, but I'll leave it at this: where in Marilyn's twilight she struggled to hide from the spotlight, Anna Nicole spent her final years happily parading around in front of the camera -- a reality show camera, a red carpet photographer's, whatever -- in a state of chemically-induced blissful ignorance that the few of us who paid attention were mainly just waiting with baited breath for the next embarrassment.

I really do believe it is a tragedy that the woman died so young. Just wanted to reiterate that. Though, I'm not really surprised. I used to joke that she -- along with Paris, Nicole, and the like -- was a testament to the resilience of the human body, given that her diet consisted mostly of booze, pills, fried chicken, metabolism-altering weight-loss products, and the occasional octogenarian knob, and that a weaker animal would have keeled over years ago. Now that it's come true, it's not so much a joke as a lesson in basic medicine.

I suppose the lesson to be learned here, if there is indeed a lesson to be learned here, is that having more money than you know what to do with for having done nothing at all does not a happy ending make.

Memento mori. On methadone, more so.

(PS - Googling for images of "Anna Nicole Smith" for the purpose of this entry made me really glad I did this from my room and not from the computer lab... Y'know she really did have a fantastic rack.)

Gay-Bashing on Sixth Street

2007-02-10T10:01:00.000-06:00

(Okay, I'm going against what I said in my last post. Something important has come up.)

With a name like "Sapphire," you'd think that the newest bar to open its doors on Sixth Street would be expecting some gay clientèle. Hell, you'd think any establishment which opens in Austin would know by now that this town is pretty cool with gay couples. But apparently at Sapphire, if a dude starts dancing with another dude, the bartender assaults both of them... after throwing them out of the bar. Which is what happened to UT students Austin Hambrick and Matt Crump at Sapphire on Tuesday night.

The pair were apparently having a good time going down Sixth Street with a couple of friends In Hambrick's words:

"(T)here is another round of dancing, only this time when Matt and I decide to dance solo, the bartender snaps his fingers, grabbing my attention: 'Hey, you guys need to cut that shit out.'"

In Crump's words:

"We stop, but I'm fuming and embarrassed. Alicia ... asks the bartender, 'is dancing not allowed here?' The bartender says, 'Yes, dancing's allowed, just not between them,' pointing to Austin and me."

Ho-oh-oh, no you didn't.

Well, rather than just take that sitting down and leaving quietly, the group verbally confront the bartender about this "policy," resulting in something of a tussle, in which the group was thrown out of the bar, and then physically assaulted in the street, by the bar staff.

The guys don't seem particularly interested in pressing charges (Hambrick, God bless him, is a staunch libertarian and doesn't like the idea of using the courts), but that doesn't mean they haven't begun to take action. In the few days since Crump started two Facebook groups -- one UT-specific, and one global -- to spread the word about the incident, over 700 people have already joined the groups and sworn to never patronize Sapphire and to tell their friends to do the same.

Now, reportedly, since that time, the manager of the bar has gotten in touch with Hambrick to apologize and inform him that the staff involved have been fired. However, Facebook user Aldo Bautista has posted on one of the group's message boards the following message:

"Last night I walked by there. People were at the door and asked my group to come in. We were like, 'we cant go in to a place where gay people are not welcome.' They were like, 'well you can take your kind elsewhere, we don't want you here!'"

Clearly, this isn't over. And so, I want to do my part to help.

I'd like to ask anyone who reads this to post to PLEASE mention on your own blog that a hotbed of discrimination has opened its doors on Sixth. I don't necessarily want the place put out of business (just like I don't necessarily want people to abuse the bar's MySpace page), but the more people who find out about this, the bigger and better a response we can hope to get.

Spread the word.

Not That There's Anything Wrong with That

2007-02-07T18:08:00.000-06:00

Go ahead and scroll down the page a little. Then come back.

Noticing a pattern?

The Boxclockery has skewed a little heavy on the "gay-issue news headlines" lately. I don't know what's up, but the news has just been full of the gays lately, and I, being me, have opinions. So, in order to get you back to your standard diet of self-righteously nerdy bitchings about life in Austin, I'm going to do a quick rundown of a few of the stories I haven't gotten to yet.

John Amaechi, a former NBA center, has written a book entitled "Man in the Middle," in which he describes being a gay professional athelete. That makes Amaechi the first former NBA player to come out of the closet, and one of very few major American male athletes to be openly gay. Hooray, role models! This will surely be an aid in our next recruitment drive.
Teg Haggard is "completely heterosexual." In related news, a flock of pigs was spotted flying outside downtown Cincinnati. Guess we all knew this was coming. But why are all the news nets framing this in terms of "is it possible to be a reformed homosexual" and spending airtime interviewing the "ex-gay" crazies? John Q. Public is pretty stupid, and by framing it as even a distant possibility, you're going to give him the idea that you actually can change your sexual orientation.
Then again, maybe it isn't so bad to have the ex-gays on TV, when they keep admitting they're full of shit. Alan Chambers, one of the most vocal proponents of the "ex-gay" movement says so himself on Anderson Cooper, and I quote: "The truth is that I'm a human being. And for me to say that I could never be attracted to men again, or that I couldn't be tempted would mean that I'm not human." Uh-huh. So you're basically saying that your homosexuality is an innate and irrefutable part of your being. And thereby completely contradicting everything your movement stands for. It's a shame when things don't stand up to logical scrutiny, innit?
Congressman Gary Ackerman pounced on Condi Rice about Don't Ask Don't Tell, when she kept bitching about the lack of Arabic-speakers in the government during a State Department budget hearing, saying that "the military seems more afraid of gay people than they are [of] terrorists... If the terrorists ever got hold of this information, they'd get a platoon of lesbians to chase us out of Baghdad." Funny!
You know, I was rooting for the Colts. And I'm glad they won. But I don't like Tony Dungy anymore, now that I know that he is going to be the guest of honor at a banquet for the Indiana Family Institute. In case you haven't figured out what it means when a political organization has "Family" in it's name, it means they're a pro-discrimination group.

That's all the queer that's fit to print. Don't worry, the next one's gonna be about Lost or Superman or something.

Doesn't Satisfy

2007-02-05T21:43:00.000-06:00

Dear Snickers,

About your series of Super Bowl ads. Nice to know that knee-jerk homophobia is still good for a laugh. My favorite is the one where they drink a bunch of poisonous chemicals. Better dead than gay, right? Stupid fucks.

P.S. - There is no context in which the removal of chest hair is not totally gayer than kissing a dude. None. Whatsoever.

02.07.07 -- UPDATE:
So Snickers pulled the ad, issuing the lamest non-apology statement in the history of marketing: "We know that humor is highly subjective and understand that some people may have found the ad offensive. Clearly that was not our intent... As with all of our Snickers advertising, our goal was to capture the attention of our core Snickers consumer."

Um, not quite sure what to make of that last line. Did you not think that any of the gays like Snickers? Or maybe that they don't watch the Super Bowl? Yeah, not clear where you're going with this one.

And, for the record, I didn't hate the initial commercial that aired. I didn't think it was particularly funny, but I didn't hate it. It was the stuff on the website that bothered me.

By the way, how classy is the way Fox News John Gibson frames the story with the headline for his "report" on the subject: "Snickers Kiss -- Gay Bashing or Just Repulsive?" So if it's not offensive (which you imply its not), it's still pretty fucking gross that dudes kissed on TV, right?

Where There's Smoke, There's Fire (and Brimstone)

2007-02-02T16:03:00.000-06:00

My roommate Lincoln showed me this video last night of Grapevine, Texas-based super televangelist Benny Hinn "healing" the masses, set to Drowning Pool's "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor."

The idea behind the video, in itself, is pretty funny. It's also really astonishing how these people are willing to spasm their wallets away for this charlatan. That too is something worth mentioning.

But as much as the video by itself may be worthy of a blog entry on it's own merits, it pales in comparison to my shock at the fact that of the thousands of people who appear in the crowds in this video, not one of them seems to have the first inkling of a gaydar!

Benny, who prophesied that the gays would be "consumed by fire" in 1994, is a little bit on the incredibly swishy side in this video. Maybe if it hadn't been for the whole Ted Haggart thing still being fresh in my mind (fortunately not fresh enough to trigger my visual imagination), I could chalk it up to showmanship. ...But then what is "showmanship" but a polite euphemism for being a total queen?

Look at the above screen from the 0:08 mark in the clip. You've got the jazz hands on one side, and the other side... rather speaks for itself, don't you think? If that one screen isn't enough, watch the whole video:

Seriously, look at Mother Superior go!

Why is it that we're surprised when these guys get caught in meth-fueled anonymous trysts with male prostitutes? I'm beginning to wonder if that's the rule and not the exception. Maybe I'm being a smart ass here, and I'm completely off-base (I'm totally not), but I do think there's one thing we can all agree is pretty disconcerting about this whole thing:

See those folks throwing themselves onto the floor and convulsing? The ones that paid this guy money to get to do that?

They vote.

Molly Ivins, 1944-2007

2007-02-02T10:58:00.000-06:00

Molly Ivins was one of those rare and wonderful people with the ability to confront the often astoundingly frustrating stupidity of the system head on and still somehow always have a smile on her face.

She never became a cynic because she was always convivted in her belief that things could be made better -- that her words could effect positive change. And that where they couldn't affect change, they could at the very least bring hope and a laugh to the people.

During her life, she wrote for the Texas Observer, The New York Times, The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and holds the honor of having been banned from the Texas A&M campus.

She was one of those sorts of persons that remind me, against sometimes incredible evidence to the contrary, that Texas is a truly great place. Her wit, her words, and her optimism will be missed.

It's Not a Hurricane, It's a Brrrr-icane!

2007-01-31T10:01:00.000-06:00

Climate scientists went to Congress yesterday to tell the legislature that the Bush administration has pressured them to downplay the threat of global warming.

This, for some reason, is news.

Anyone with any sense of pattern recognition should be able to say that the White House has been trying to suppress the science on the issue. Hell, even if you couldn't draw that conclusion on your own, I distinctly remember (and may go looking for a link later [Linklater? Heh.] to back this up) hearing in a blurb on the news that NASA and NOAA scientists were given a memo specifically telling them not to comment on The Day After Tomorrow back in '04. Not that I think any decent scientist would ever attempt to substantiate the film's silly vision of apocalyptic freezing hurricanes, but I heard three years ago that the administration was handing scientists gag orders when it came to discussing climate change. Even then, I was thinking, "Well, no shit."

So, good for the scientists for having the balls to stand up and say that, for the sake of humanity, they want their science heard. Not so good for the anyone acting like we should be at all surprised by this.

More Presidential than a Locomotive

2007-01-28T17:18:00.000-06:00

So how do you get a politician who I kinda like but who kinda irks me back into my good graces? Why, you have him pose with Superman.
All is forgiven.

Pent-Accosted

2007-01-26T13:07:00.000-06:00

So I was evangell'ed to on campus today. It brought me near to having a crisis. Not a crisis of faith, mind you. Simply a matter of not knowing what to do or say.

It happened while I was crossing through the bus stop/plaza in front of Gregory Gym on my way my editing lab. When walking through there, you get used to being handed flyers and cardboard "invitations" for various events and parties thrown primarily by fraternities, sororities, the occasional church group, but mostly (strangely enough) Asian student groups. For the most part, though, the people handing out the flyers are exactly as interested in getting you to come to their event as you are in actually looking at their flyer before you jam it into the overflowing recycling bin ten feet from them.

It's a robotic system. For the hander-of-flyers it goes: intercept target, hand target the flyer, search for next target, repeat. For the targets, however, it is a slightly more interesting game of trying to subtly maneuver through the place such that another student comes between yourself and the ones handing out the stuff. There is no eye contact. No speaking. That's why I didn't initially assume that when the tiny Asian guy in his mid-forties who stopped me on the plaza had any kind of agenda -- he didn't blend in with the monotony.

Now, this was the third time in the last couple of months that an older Asian gentleman had stopped me in my tracks on campus. The first time, the guy was looking for a certain building and I directed him there. The second time the guy wanted to know how long our winter break was at the University. So, given my long history of providing older Asian dudes administrative information about the University, when the stranger approached me and said "Hello, sir," I politely paused to prepare for his question.

He introduced himself, with a bit of an accent. Then a student-aged Asian kid standing next to him also introduced himself. There was a shaking of hands. Perhaps the guy wanted to know when his son got out for spring break. I was prepared to answer that. I was not, however, prepared to answer this question:

"Do you know Jesus?"

"Er... yes, yes I do." I said it in a way that suggested recognition. Yes, I am familiar with Jesus. In the same capacity that I am familiar with Napoleon or the works of Pablo Neruda. Yes, I am aware of Jesus.

"Oh you do?" Said the younger one, strangely surprised. As if he had mentioned an obscure band he was into and was shocked to find out that someone else had heard of them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Jesus is kind of a big deal. Bigger than The Beatles, even. "So have you been saved?"

I quickly did a mental assessment of my appearance to see if something tipped them off that I, of all the literally hundreds of students in the area, was the one who needed this right then. I realized wasn't wearing my "I Heart Dudes" t-shirt, nor did I have on that "Ask me about my religion" button. A second quick assessment reminded me that I own neither of these things.

Curiosity made me briefly interested in seeing what would have happened had I -- politely of course -- told them that, while I believe in the teachings of Jesus as a philosophy of love and tolerance, my frustration with the system, my staunch disagreement with many of the philosophies professed by his so-called "followers," and last but not least the fact that I'm dating a guy would probably keep me from qualifying in their book as "Saved." Had I had my wits about me, a bit more spare time, and if I were the least bit of a confrontational sort of person, I might have gone for it. But the combination of confusion, meekness, and the hurry I was in to get across campus found me doing what you always want to find yourself doing when talking to religious folks: lying.

"Yes, I am saved."

Both of them, in chorus: "Amen."

In response, I nodded and held up a fist as a sign of solidarity. Wait, that's not right at all.

The older one: "So how long have you been saved?"

Oh, Jesus. It was like when the dentist asks you about flossing. You don't lie out of malice, you lie because you just don't want to go through what you know is coming if you tell them the truth. It's just so much easier. You wish you could just keep it one simple thing and move on, but they keep asking questions. So you keep lying.

"About... five years, I guess?"

"Oh, really?" Again the tone of dismay from the young one. Five years is apparently an awfully long time. Yes, really. I've been following them since they put out their first album, In the Beginning. You know, before they had even gotten a label and back when the hip-hop influence was more apparent.

"Wow, I jus' been saved this yee-ah," said the accented one.

What do you say to this? Congratulations? Don't say congratulations. Up goes the fist again. Put your fist down, jackass.

"You look like you're older than most other students," says the younger one. "Are you almost finished with school? Grad student?"

Okay, whatever signals these folks are getting from me, they're way off. Yes, I'm in my third year, but I'm younger than plenty of sophomores. So I say, "Well, I'm in my third year."

"Right, so you're almost finished." He says with a bit of condescension as if I was trying to deny it. Like he caught me in a lie. My patient goodwill is suddenly diminished. The one thing I say that's completely true, and he gets all uppity about a technicality.

Now my confusion with the situation is beginning to turn into mild frustration. I badly wanted to tell a passing woman that she had a right to do what she wanted to with her body. I badly wanted to call one of my fellow film students and assure them that I supported their choice to use graphic violent and sexual imagery in their works in order to convey a message. I so badly wanted to tell them how much I enjoy this guy I'm seeing. I wanted to do all these things, and then tell them that I was sure Jesus would be in my corner for all of thgem.

I don't say anything. I don't even put my fist up. I just begin to shift my weight to suggest that I need to get going. The younger one picks up the cue. "Well, I guess our work here is done."

You have no idea.

I smile politely. I have to say something again now, don't I? "Well, you guys... keep up the Good Work." I emphasize the words such that they should be able to sense that they're capitalized. Even though I'm not really sure that you're supposed to capitalize them.

Now's the part where you turn and walk away. So I do. The other cheek, I believe is the phrase.

Blitzer v. Cheney

2007-01-25T16:19:00.000-06:00

Wanna watch Dick Cheney barely restrain himself from stabbing Wolf Blitzer through the chest and sucking his soul out for asking a question about his lesbian daughter?

The ending is hilarious. Blitzer is almost apologetic trying to get Trigger to show any kind of love and sympathy for his daughter. Trigger, meanwhile, just snarls.

Classic.

Slow News Day

2007-01-24T23:56:00.000-06:00

Mm. Not much happened in the world today.

The president gave his State of the Union speech, which, while far from the worst chapter in his storied history of sucking at talking, still did nothing for me. The highlight? No, not the genuinely classy introduction to Nancy Pelosi which was, as I said, geniunely classy. It was when the subway dude mouthed "You da man," while pointing at Bushy. Hilarious. By the way, a 20% reduction in gas consumption is weak.
The Oscar nominations came out. An interesting bunch this year, with a few surprises and relatively few clear-cut shoe-ins. I'll give my predictions in a couple of days. And they will all be right. And you will all be like, "damn." And I'll be all like, "I know, right."
All the pundits who talked about about how the prosecution in the Scooter Libby case wouldn't focus on the administration were right. The defense, on the other hand, went ahead and did it. And that, my friends, is awesome.

Yeah, glad I'm not a journalist today. Pretty unexciting, overall.

Quick Messages

2007-01-21T23:26:00.000-06:00

To Omar:
You threw what -- as many people have already told you -- was probably the best party ever on Saturday. The food, the dancing, the debauchery. Oh, the debauchery! It was truly marvelous. I haven't known you for very long, but I've known you for long enough to know that you're a hell of a guy. The middle east will be a better place for having you in it.

To people with earpieces for their cell phones:
You are not being made any more chic, productive, or powerful by what you are doing. You really, actually do just look like a crazy person. Rectify this: hold the thing up to your ear like every-damn-body else.

To the writers of 52:
Okay. You got me. I humbly admit that you had me, hook line and sinker. I've been had. Rumors of Buddy Baker's death have been greatly exaggerated. I was wrong for ever doubting you. Please take me back? I got the second volume of Morrison's run on Animal Man from the eighties, and had just got introduced to those reality-manipulating yellow dudes when I finally got 'round to reading last week's 52. I love them, and was glad to see them appearing this week. Very, very cool. Testament to the power and skill of what you're doing that I as the reader believe nobody is safe. You are back in my good graces.

To the artists of 52:
You, however, are not back in my good graces. Just because Buddy didn't die doesn't mean the art didn't still suck. I realize it's a weekly, but guys, don't be afraid to go the extra mile and make it look nice.

To the folks in the RTF 369 section that meets from 12 to 3 on Mondays:
Listen, I'm first on the waitlist for the class. I'd really, really like to take it. It would keep me from having to take the screenwriting class I'm currently registered for, which is from 7:00 to 10:00 PM on Thursdays. It isn't that I don't want to be in class that late at night. Oh, who wouldn't? It's really more a matter of me needing that time in my schedule to work, since work gives you money, money can be used in exchange for food and shelter, and food and shelter are useful for the continued existence of a person on this planet.

To Isaiah Washington:
The rest of the blogosphere (jesus, did I actually just use that word?) has already put in their two cents on what a colossal dumbass you are and how much it must suck to be you. So I'll just leave it at this: you are a colossal dumbass. It sucks to be you.

To Ryan:
You. Me. Smash Bros. It. Is. On.

Centennial

2007-01-19T11:42:00.000-06:00

This is the 100th post on The Boxclockery, and what better way to celebrate themilestone than by looking back on the blog's humble (and humiliating) beginnings? And so, I'm linking to my old Livejournal. I was reading over it earlier today for nostalgia's sake. What I found was some bitersweetness, some humor, plenty of moody teenage angst, lots of swearing, but mostly more than my share of embarassment.

Give it a read, folks. Hit up the archive and glance over my personal accounts of some of the most awkward years of my life. January through May of 2004, the final months of my senior year of high school are a highlight, rich with joy, bitchiness, and barely restrained sexual frustration.

Anyone have embarassing old blogs from high school (or whenever)?

Those Icicles Have Been Known to Kill People

2007-01-18T15:34:00.000-06:00

Among the things they don't tell you when you live in a region that never freezes over is that when the half-inch of ice that has accumulated on the trees begins to thaw, walking under them is like walking through a hailstorm.

The first two and a half days of school were cancelled due to the ice storm that hit Austin this week. This, however, didn't keep Rick Perry's inaugural festivities from going more or less as scheduled. Embarassing appearances by Ted Nugent and all.

I had my first class today: a Creative Writing class on poetry. And because the guy who teaches it, A. Van Jordan, actually knows what he's talking about, (and because I haven't written poetry since high school) this class intimidates the hell out of me. My second class for the day starts at 7:00PM.

Yeah. 7:00PM. Until 10:00. We're trying to get that fixed.

What did you guys do with your snow day(s)?

Pink is the New Black

2007-01-15T23:55:00.000-06:00

Dear Carey from The Apprentice:

Okay. So you made some swim trunks. Hot pink ones. Hot pink floral ones. That you modelled. Nay, that you worked. You worked them because you knew that the length would look good on your body, and that the color would look great on your skin. Because you're maybe a little vain like that. And then, Donald Trump fired you for it. And you know what? It may well be the case that you doing these things is the reason your team lost. Maybe, just maybe, you deserved to get fired. But you know what else? Fuck Donald Trump. Fuck him right in the ear.

You're clearly a total badass, and you don't need the dubious blessings some cheap reality show to continue to be a badass. Who would want to be an "apprentice" anyway -- and especially his -- when they've clearly got what it takes to be their own boss. And while I am not by any stretch of the imagination the sort of gay who would ever buy short pink swimtrunks, I do, unlike that puffy manchild, know that such people exist*. And they are legion. And, most importantly, they have lots of disposable income.

And you know what else? The team that won went to the Playboy Mansion. That team consists of all females and the show's other gay. You should have seen how the ladies gritted their teeth and pretended not to be offended, and how the 'mo did his damndest to look at all interested in the goings on. It was totally wasted on them. Apparently Mr. Trump doesn't realize that there are large sections of the population that, unlike him, aren't interested in scantily clad ladies parading around because of either their sexual preference, or just plain old fashioned maturity. So, again, fuck him right in the ear.

Sincerely,
A person who never watched The Apprentice regularly and sees no reason to start watching it now that you're not on it anymore.
*They would, however, demand that the trunks be not so flat. The type of gentleman you targeted with your design wants... how to put this delicately... he wants a suit that provides structure and accent where yours provided the eunuch look. Wait, no, sorry, that wasn't delicately put at all. But yeah, if you're gonna do a show-all design, you might as well actually go ahead and show all.

And You, and You, and You, You're Gonna Love This

2007-01-14T13:11:00.000-06:00

(UPDATE: The CopyrightNazis have struck it down. Woes and lamentations.)

Worst. Death. Ever.

2007-01-13T12:36:00.000-06:00

All right, so the whole weekly comic write-up that I started last month didn't pan out. Being back in Arlington made my funnypaper buying/reading become kinda sporadic. But, I have gotten caught up on all of the stuff I'm following and I... need to do descend into some pretty deep geekdom and do a bit of venting about something that really, really bugged me.

I. Am. Pissed! About the way that Animal Man went down like chump in this week's 52!

Animal Man is one hell of a character. He started out as a third-string character from the sixties, and, like so many others from the time, faded into obscurity almost as quickly as he was created. In the eighties, however, DC brought over a young writer from Scotland and let him choose a character to revive in the post-Crisis DCU. That writer was Grant Morrison, and the character he chose was Animal Man.

Now, if you're wondering how anyone could take a character named "Animal Man" seriously, you badly need to read Morrison's early work on the character. People talk about Identity Crisis as marking the arrival of dark realism and adult subject matter into the DCU, but you should see some of the stuff that was going on twenty years earlier in Animal Man. The celebrated "family" element of Identity Crisis is here in spades, and so is some really fantastic action and powerful, morally ambiguous thematic stuff. The series was so dark and so unlike anything else that was being published at the time, that it eventually got moved out of the DCU and was published under Vertigo.

The high point of the series, and the best single issue of anything I have ever read, is the fifth issue: "The Coyote Gospel." It's hard to describe "The Coyote Gospel" in a way that would do it justice but not spoil it. It is an epic, transcendent, heartbreaking piece of post-modern art eons ahead of anything contemporary to it in the world of comics.

So, for a character with such storytelling potential to be so lamely discarded in a grossly uninspired six-panel layout at the end of a hugely underwhelming (and impossible to follow) fight scene in the who-gives-a-damn "Lost in Space" subplot is... really fucking frustrating. It took me a second reading to realize that he was pointing to the reader when he says "they're cheering us on," a nod to the character's history of breaking the fourth wall, which is admittedly pretty cool, but even that couldn't compensate for how weak the art was. Hell, the art was weak even for 52!

I had been hoping, since the character had been brought back from obscurity and featured so prominently in Infinite Crisis and 52, that he would be figuring more significantly into the DCU. Of course, we were tipped off that he wasn't going to make it through 52 back in Meltzer's Justice League of America #1. But I was hoping that, if he didn't make it, at least Morrison would ensure that the character that brought him to fame and brought out the best in his writing would have a fitting death. Sadlt, we were left wanting.

And I am pissed!

Buddy Baker, 1965 - 2007

Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the (Cardboard Burger King) Crown

2007-01-11T15:48:00.000-06:00

There's a lot to talk about with regard to Bush's speech last night, announcing an escalation in troop levels in Iraq. And as much as I could go on about how -- much as I hate the idea of perpetuating the Great Sumerian Clusterfuck -- I have to admit that parts of the plan sound like an Iraq war first (i.e. strategy), I'd much rather talk about something else. Specifically, the fact that our little Georgie looks like hell!

Here's what I mean. The following is a picture of Bush from December of 2000:
Boy, that picture takes you back, doesn't it? Granted, he was running against a robot, but the doofus pictured here isn't Will Ferrell's stunt double from Talladega Nights, this is a man who actually just (sort of) won a presidential election. Christ, 48% of American voters in 2000... what were you thinking? I remember being annoyed by this when it happened, but now I look back and am amazed by my apparent lack of pessimistic imagination.

Now here's a picture of our boy from a little less than a year ago:
Now granted, this is about the most forgivingly lit photo of any person I have ever seen, but I'll be damned if that guy hadn't aged well over five and a half years. Sure, he's gotten some bags under his eyes and he's a little grayer, but hell, if anything he looks better than he did in the 2000 photo.

Finally, here's Bu-bu as he looked last night:
Holy.

Shit.

Bags under eyes? Heavier. Forehead wrinkles? Deeper. Old-mannish turkey neck? Old-mannisher. Cheekbones? Waitaminute, since when did he have cheekbones? And where's the ape-like glimmer of obliviousness in his eyes? Where's the juvenile, terrifying, "I'm not listening to you" smirk? Where's the depressingly "folksy" incompetent oratory? ... No, wait, that was still there (I swear to God, your approval rating would jump eight whole points if you just got over yourself and pronounced the word fucking "nu-cle-ar"). And just look at all that gray!

Why it's almost as if... as if George W. Bush has the face of a man... suddenly... horrifyingly... in touch with reality. He looks like a man who, over the last year, saw his pet project further spiral madly into a bloody fiasco with thousands dead and no end in sight, saw his support within his own party erode, saw his approval rating amongst the voters drop as low as the 20's, and saw the other party take the Congress in a landslide. I was just getting used to a president who was blissfully oblivious of the world around him. This looks like the face of a guy who's become aware that it's all. his. fault.

That or he just talked to God in the form of a burning bush.

It's probably the latter.

With a Capital T, that Rhymes with P

2007-01-10T15:59:00.000-06:00

Today's developments surrounding the tragic 2005 death of UT freshman Jack Phoummarath have everything a trashy news story ought to have: youth, death, alcohol, nudity, bigotry, and most importantly, the gay. Put those things together, and you've got a category five media shitstorm poised to make landfall on the UT campus. And, having been in one before, I'm not sure how to feel about this one.

If anything good can come of this, it would be that it reveals the juvenile absurdity of bandying about slurs and epithets whenever one wants to be demeaning -- especially since in this case the victim wasn't even gay. Of course, that'll come at the cost of the media shitstorm and the sensationalizing of a story about a (year-old) tragedy.

This whole thing's kinda a downer. Here's a sleepy kitten.

Top Ten Movies of 2006

2007-01-07T09:46:00.000-06:00

I know I'm a little late on this one, but I had to wait at least until I had seen Children of Men before I put the list together. I'm glad I did.

10 - Little Miss Sunshine
I'd heard it described to me as "The Diet Tannenbaums." I think of it as being more like The Night of the White Pants meets Vacation. But nobody's heard of one of those two movies, so I guess I shouldn't compare things to Chevy Chase movies (see what I did there? That was funny). Steve Carell was really great in it and, even though the ending was pretty uneven, the trip more than made up for it. This could very well be the year's dark horse to sneak in for a Best Picture nod at the Oscars.
9 - United 93
The jarring, deeply researched, polar-opposite of Oliver Stone's 9/11 movie. United 93 is a film at it's best when it's about everyday working people on the ground trying to make sense of the most incomprehensible morning in modern history, and is also the best edited film of the year. It stands as proof that docudramas can be deeply emotional without ever once (okay, once, in the phone call montage) descending into being maudlin. It was hard to watch, because it was so real. Of course, aiming for realism is not just the best way to approach the subject matter, it is the only way to honor the lives lost.
8 - Borat
Now you tell me, is it crass and tasteless to have this above United 93? I swear, I think I was the last person on campus to see this one, but no amount of jackass frat boy quoting could ruin this movie for me. Sacha Baron Cohen is a comic genius in the mold of Andy Kaufman. Only sicker. Much, much sicker. And is nice, I like.
7 - Dreamgirls
You know everything you've heard about Jennifer Hudson's performance? It's all true. She and the rest of the cast (along with Bill Condon's skill at adeptly interweaving the songs into the reality of the film) elevate what could have been a fairly generic, inoffensive song-and-dance flick with fabulous production design into a solid Hollywood musical. Just be sure you see it in a theatre where the surround sound is coming out of the proper channels. Because I didn't.
6 - Casino Royale
So I might've kinda outed myself to at least the first row of my government glass while debating the merits of this film before lecture one day. This (ostensibly straight) guy said he couldn't take Craig's Bond seriously because he was "so goddamn ugly." To which I... dissented. Strongly. Because he's not a pretty man, but he is really, incredibly, very, not ugly. Also, the movie itself was incredibly smart and incredibly cool, so it's not like that's the only reason I loved this movie (but with pecs like that, it might has well have been a remake of Moonraker, it still would have cracked my top ten).
5 - Superman Returns
It's difficult for me to write about this movie and keep it at about the paragraph length of the other ones on the list. The movie is wonderful for what it tried to be (that is, the greatest Superman story ever told) but incredibly frustrating for what it was (about 85% of the greatest Superman story ever told). Most of the stuff that ended up getting cut out of this one should have stayed in. But it seems that most people don't want to see a 200-minute Superman film. Most people, it seems, don't know what's good for them. To Brandon, Bryan, and everyone involved (except you, Kate), thank you for making me remember that a man can fly.
4 - The Fountain
Take the dream logic of a David Lynch film, add the trans-millennial grandeur of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the bittersweet science fiction heartache of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and you get the masterpiece of Darren Aaronofsky's career. It's a romantic epic consisting of three simultaneous stories separated by 500 years, connected by common themes, characters, and symbols. It's dazzling in its scope, but amazing in its simplicity. It was booed at Cannes, and critics said it was too confusing. Critics have obviously never read a fucking children's book.
3 - Thank You for Smoking
Mmmm, that's good satire. Morally ambiguous and twistedly hilarious, Thank You for Smoking is the funniest movie of the year by a wide margin. I've always wanted to see William Macy play a bad guy, and the scene where he talks about picking the right "cancer boy" is about the most delightfully evil thing ever. And, here's something: I didn't hate Katie Holmes in it. Any movie that's able to make me stomach her must be pretty damn good.
2 - The Departed
If Martin Scorsese doesn't win a Best Director Oscar for The Departed, I'm hanging up my hat and swearing off film forever... Okay, totally not true, don't call my bluff on that. But he deserves the hell out of it. It's an old-school Scorsese crime movie. It's cinema history. But moreso than any other Scorsese movie, this "high art" has a decidedly pop undercurrent.The whole violent affair unfolds with the timing of a perfectly told joke. Jack is, naturally, incredibly fun to watch. Leo is, in a strange twist, believable playing butch. Martin Sheen is America's grandpa. Matt just plain old fashioned kicks ass. And I never thought I'd say this, but Mark Wahberg deserves awards.
1 - Children of Men
When I saw the trailer for this a few months back, I remember thinking, "Well, that's it. Movies are over. They did it, it happened, it's over, and we're done. Wonder what the job market's like for architects these days." Funny thing was, other people in the RTF department were making the same joke. This movie was straight up my alley. Hell, it was up alleys I didn't even know I had. It's a war movie, it's a sci-fi, it's an adventure, it's a cautionary tale, it's the second of thirty six stories, and it's also none of those things. It was almost good enough to make me rescind my sexuality and take up breeding as a civic duty. Almost.

Honorable Mentions
Cars, For Your Consideration, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, The Queen

Most Colossal Disappointment: The Da Vinci Code
Boring. Incredibly boring. Incredibly, depressingly, boring. Of the last six movies Ron Howard's made, one and a half (A Beautiful Mind and half of The Missing) have been any good at all. It might just be time to step back and re-assess the whole being a director thing. That or at the very least time to stop working with Akiva Goldsman. By the way, X-Men III isn't the winner of this one, because Da Vinci at least had a chance at one point of being adapted into a good movie. From the moment Bryan left X-Men, it never had a chance.

I Still Need to See:
Babel, Flags of Our Fathers, The Illusionist, An Inconvenient Truth, The Last King of Scotland, Letters from Iwo Jima, Notes on a Scandal, Pan's Labyrinth, The Prestige.

And Now, a Photograph of a Man Wearing a Top Hat and Coattails Sitting on a Dead Horse in the Middle of the Road

2007-01-05T22:33:00.000-06:00

What, you thought I was kidding?

Somehow, I feel certain this man had just let out a resounding "Good Lohd!" That or he was about to. Once he realized he was sitting on a dead horse.

2007 Year in Preview

2007-01-03T14:21:00.000-06:00

I rang in the new year with some good friends, some folks I hadn't seen in years, and a redheaded guy named Trevor who did magic. No seriously. I partied with Magical Trevor.

Now that I'm settling into this 2007 shenanigan, it's time to start looking forward to the future... by doing the exact same thing I did this time last year. Here is a list of ten things I am looking forward to in the year 2007.

10 & 9 - Stop Loss & The Night of the White Pants (tie)
Two real, bona-fide honest to God movies that I worked on (in very different capacities) will be getting real, bona-fide honest to God releases this year. Probably. In White Pants, my name appears in the credits. In Stop Loss, my visage appears in disappointing wardrobe. White Pants played at TriBeCa back in the Spring and went over incredibly well at the Austin Film Festival a few months ago. There was a time when Warner Independent was supposedly about to snatch this one up. Don't know if that's still the case, but given the success of Little Miss Sunshine, somebody has to be looking for a cheap R-rated "dysfunctional family" comedy. And there was some real For Your Consideration-esque on-set Oscar talk at Stop Loss -- we'll see if that pans out. They'll crank it through post and have it out in December. A third movie, the first one I worked on way back in 2003, called Mad Bad may finally get a straight-to-DVD release this year. But probably not. That's why it ain't on the list.

8 - Beowulf
Polar Express was creepy, and not in a good way. Monster House was excellent until about halfway through, but the animation was never any good. The third one might just be a charm, and Zemeckis' latest whack at an entirely performance capture film sounds very promising. An incredibly realistic adaptation of an intensely violent Old English epic? Written by Neil Gaiman? Starring Crispin Glover as the monster? If those things alone aren't enough to get you into a seat for the (rumored) NC-17 cut, then the thought of Anthony Hopkins parading around a green stage in a leotard with all of those ridiculous dots on his face and body should be.

7 - Exercising
I've been somewhat documenting my sort-of battle with being kinda overweight over the course of the blog. I've done a lot of good, with a net loss (last I checked, and that was before Christmas) of 17 pounds since the end of the summer. But between injuring my knees back in October and spending three weeks over the holidays at my house in Arlington (a refrigerator with stuff in it?!), I haven't done nearly as well as I would have liked. So, this is the one item on the list that I suppose constitutes a "Resolution." I'm going to continue to kick my own ass over the course of 2007. And (please, God) reap the benefits.

6 - Employment
This is on here under the same condition as it was last year: I'm not so much looking forward to it as anticipating the future occurrence of it. And whereas last year I said I didn't want to do food service, this year I think I'd actually prefer it. Maybe I can get a gig waiting tables over at Threadgill's with everybody else. One way or another, I need to start working. Like, regularly.

5 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl
The first Smash Bros. is still one of the best games on the old '64. Melee is basically the only game that you still want to pick up and play from the GameCube. A new one coming out for the Wii? I play as Fox and take each and every one of you bitches.

4 - Apartment
No more dormitory life for me. This year is the year I finally get my own place... Alright, so my own place that I will be renting... Actually that my parents will be renting... And that I will more likely than not be sharing with somebody. This, nevertheless, is pretty cool, and better than constantly feeling like my situation is temporary. As much as I'll miss my super-awesome bitchin'-tacular dorm and all of the wonderful conveniences of on-campus life, it's time I moved on and moved out.

3 - Spider-Man 3
The second one really caught me off guard by being one of the best movies of 2004, and also probably the most fun superhero ever made (until The Incredibles came out that November). From the look of the trailers, they're going the gravitas route with this one. They've made me have a blast watching these characters, but can they really make me care about them? I don't know. But I do know that I'm excited as all hell to find out. Plus, while I'm not the world's biggest Venom fan -- hell, I'm not the world's biggest Spider-Man fan -- I am a pretty big Sam Raimi fan, and I am looking forward to the off-the-rails super-creepy fun he's going to have with the big-tongued one.

2 - Twenty First Birthday
Placed much higher on this years list than last year's 20th, and for good reason. Of course, I'm aware that 21sts aren't necessarily all they're cracked up to be, but plans have already been made and things are already being set in motion to make for a pretty fantastic birthday celebration for yours truly. And if it doesn't pan out, hey, I can buy beer.

1 - The 110th Congress
This one's position might be a little inflated since I just watched the swearing in of the new House and I'm riding the whole Damn it Feels Good to Be a Gangsta vibe that all Democrats are feeling right now. But I actually really believe that these folks are going to effect some serious positive change in this country. As much as they can, anyway, what with the whole Chief Executive situation being what it is. Still, it's exciting.

What are you looking forward to in the new year?

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

2007-01-03T14:05:00.000-06:00

Just a friendly reality check. While most of us (anyway, I know I was) were blinking away the lingering remains of our first hangovers of 2007, two major battles erupted on the "all men are created equal" front.

On one side of the sanity gap, John Shalikashvili, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appointed by Bill Clinton has written an op-ed piece calling for an end to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." While he doesn't ask for an immediate end to the policy, saying that drastic changes could hurt support for the Iraq war (wait, there's still support?), it is nonetheless significant, since this guy was in charge when DADT went into effect. Every once in a while, I find myself thinking about the fact that if I wanted to put my life on the line for my country, my country wouldn't have me, nor the other millions of gays and lesbians in the United States.

While an op-ed piece by a retired general is far from indicative of a shift in policy (when was the last time the administration listened to a retired general?), I think it's indicative of the fact that this debate could very well be front and center in the coming months. Once the numbers come in for 2006, the total number of servicemen and women discharged under the policy will total well over 10,000. Seems sort of foolish, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, from the other side of the sanity gap comes the railroading of a same-sex marriage ban in Massachusetts. In the only state in the country where same-sex marriages are legal, Governor Mitt Romney (henceforth to be referred to as Captain Douchebag) was petty enough to sue his own state just to try to get the legislature to put the issue up for a constitutional vote. He lost the case, but Republicans in the statehouse are doing their damndest to rush it through the process.

Captain Douchebag pushed for all of this nonsense in the last days of his tenure as governor in order to build an image as a conservative republican, as he plans a run for president in 2008. Because, afterall, what self-respecting conservative would vote for a man who let the faggots be happy during his administration? All of this, of course, is made all the more amusing when you remember that Captain Douchebag promised gay voters he would be the biggest supporter of gay rights in Congress, during his failed campaign in 1994. Should the ban pass, it would not invalidate the thousands of marriages which have taken place, but would prevent new ones from occurring.

Ain't nothing like starting off a new year feeling like a pawn and a political punching bag.

2006 Year in Review

2006-12-31T19:10:00.000-06:00

Last year, on my old livejournal, I made a list of the top ten things I was looking forward to in 2006. Here is that list again, only this time in hindsight.

10 - Twentieth Birthday
I still think it's odd that I'm twenty years old. But I feel like I have matured a lot in the past year, so it seems more reasonable. Mostly this one was on the list because I had promised myself I wouldn't hit this benchmark without having come out. You can sense my disappointment when I technically missed it. But within a few days, it was all said and done. And everything has been a lot better because of it.

9 - No Friday Classes
That was fun while it lasted.

8 - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
As much fun as I had hoped it would be. But, as I've said before, the most significant thing about it was the epic presentation and cinematic storytelling.

7 - PlayStation 3
Boy. That was a colossal failure, wasn't it? It's almost amusing that this is actually on the list.

6 - Cars
My least favorite Pixar film. But also totally not, as I had expected, the last Pixar film distributed by Disney. As a matter of fact, that whole thing turned out pretty much for the best.

5 - Employment
I had a job at Hollywood Video over the summer. It was... pretty awful. Especially for $5.50/hr. But I got some pretty goddamn hilarious stories out of it. I did get paid for my writing for the first time ever this year, in the form of a screenwriting scholarship. And paid more for it than I was paid all summer by Hollywood Video. That's pretty substantial, I think.

4 - Lady in the Water
I wrote a moderately disappointed review for it. I have since decided that I went too soft on it. This movie either marks the final (and, in my book, first) nail in the coffin of M. Night Shyamalan's career, or a wake-up call that could bring about a return to form from him. Either way, it was not a good movie.

3 - The Nintendo Revolution
Now known as the Wii. And also known as awesome.

2 - Mid-Term Elections.
That went well. Oh, and I totally called the results back in, like, August, except I gave the Republicans more of a chance than they obviously deserved.

1 - Superman Returns
I'll elaborate on this one when I do my list of the best movies of 2006 sometime in the next few days. It wasn't perfect. And it wasn't the best movie of the year. But looking at this list, I still think it deserves it's place at number one.

Happy New Year, Everybody!

iSore for XMas

2006-12-27T16:39:00.000-06:00

Alright. I take back what I said about Arlington not having the infrastructure to support the new Dallas Cowboys' stadium. It may not be ideal, but it is a hell of a lot better than the situation over in Irving. Texas Stadium is a nightmare.

My uncle managed to score my dad, my brothers and I some tickets to the Christmas Day game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Philadelphia Eagles. I had never been to an NFL game before, and even though the Cowboys played like shit and we left in the third quarter, I was glad for the gift and really enjoyed myself. But damn, that is an ugly ass stadium.

The thing was opened in 1971. That should tell you just about all you need to know about the inside: claustrophobic, lots of concrete, dark, dank and basically unsuitable for human use. And, with it's sun-faded exterior, exposed concrete ramps, and placement in the middle of uneven asphalt parking lots in the armpit of three freeways (that aren't designed to mitigate the traffic), flanked by sketchy dive bars and pawn shops, the place isn't exactly an aesthetic wonder on the outside either. The place is better suited to host monster truck rallies and Billy Graham festivals than NFL football.

The people sitting near us were... an interesting group as well. Sure, there are plenty of drunken jackasses and other obnoxious types surrounding my seat at UT, but those folks, obnoxious though they are, at least come across as pleasant. At Monday's game, however, we had the season ticket holders in their mid-fifties sitting further down our row with their angry eyes, leathery skin, voices scarred by Marlboros and the worn out copies of North Dallas Forty forever in their VCR's at home. Then there was the Plano yuppie couple, her with highlighted hair, him with the goatee, slumming it in Irving for Christmas and getting up every thirty seconds for another beer. There were the teenagers with the catcalls (seriously? catcalls?) for the cheerleaders, and, my personal favorite, the twenty-something jocks in the row behind me who punctuated every observation they had for he Eagles with the "F" word. No, not that one, the other one.

Yeah, that one.

Nevertheless, I really did have a pretty great evening, and nearly screamed myself hoarse by halftime. It also made me appreciate what a great facility DKR is back on campus, and made me more optimistic about the plans for the stadium in Arlington.

I had a wonderful Christmas with the fam, eating myself stupid, and watching my present from Santa, and I hope everyone out there had a great one, too.

Merry Christmas!

Nieces. Or 2nd Cousins. Or 1st Cousins, Once Removed. Or Something

2006-12-24T18:00:00.000-06:00

Saturday night was the big family Christmas gathering. There was much eating, drinking, and being merry. I got to do a little bit of that, but mostly I was too busy trying to keep my cousin's adorable daughters aged two and four entertained. But, hey, what is Christmas about if not spending quality time with the kids because your cousin's wife takes "It Takes a Village" a little too literally and has this amazingly effective child-raising tactic where she totally ignores them at group gatherings because she knows some sucker will pick up the slack for her and keep them from killing themselves?

What with my whole not-wanting-kids-to-kill-themselves hangup, I am just the sucker for the job.

By the way, that isn't a knock on the lady's parenting skills. Hell, if I had kids, I'd be thankful for every opportunity to let someone else take over for a change. And to be honest, it wasn't that bad, really. Just completely exhausting. The girls themselves are basically very sweet and very well behaved. It was just a matter of the whole thing being way out of my field of expertise when it comes to kids. What with my whole not having any experience with toddlers. Much less female toddles. Much less more than one female toddler at the same time.

And to say that I got suckered into it fails to give credit to the girls for their part on imprinting on me for the evening. They had already made friends with the hyperactive six year old of the house so they could play with all her toys, but since her little attention span was splintered for the evening between presents and cookies and any prop she could use as a bludgeoning device, the girls had to find someone a bit more... stable. Besides the six year old and these two young ladies, there are no girls in my family under the age of 30. Two generations almost entirely male. And at this house party choking with testosterone, what did these two girls not even old enough to spell their own names do? They found themselves a gay.

The main event of the girls' evening, to which everything else (including opening presents) was secondary, was "The Monster Game." We kept coming back to the monster game. Over. And over. And over. Again.

The Monster Game is a variation on the game of chase, wherein one player -- the monster -- chases the other players -- the not the monsters -- around the backyard. On second thought, that's not a variation on chase, that is chase. Anyway, this chasing continues until someone gets tired, falls and scrapes a knee, or is concerned about his expensive sweater being stretched by little fingers, or badly needs a beer. Damn, those girls can put away their Miller Lite.

I tried to teach them the democratic process when selecting a movie to watch, and Over the Hedge was the final selection by a margin of one ballot. I tried to teach them the difference between VHS and DVD in order to quell the furor when the DVD player refused to work and Over the Hedge wasn't on VHS. I even did the bathroom thing with the two year old.

I stood in the corner of the room after she took me into the upstairs bathroom-- yes, the two year old is quite adept at taking you where she wants you to go. I tried telling the child to wait so I could go downstairs to get her mother and inform her, politely of course, that this well beyond what I was willing to do, but the girl informed me as she climbed quite independently onto the seat that I could not leave. I flashed back to my freshman Psychology 301 class, suddenly terrified that I was going to accidentally do something to scar the child for life. So I didn't leave. As she sat there on the thing, I asked her, "Uh, what's the protocol here? Are you able to wipe?" I asked. She shook her head side to side, still smiling, and tore off the paper. "So you need me to do it?" She nodded, and extended the paper to me.

That's right. I wiped. Because I'm just that fucking responsible.

We washed our hands and opened the door to find the four year old standing right outside. "Can we play monster game again?"

As exhausting as the evening was, it was made entirely worth it when they were being tucked in to (finally) go to sleep. The four year old whispers to me, "Come here, I have a secret."

I lean in closer, "What is it sweetheart?"

"Closer. It's a secret for you."

I lean a few inches from her face. She pulls her hands out from under the blanket, cups them around my ear and whispers "I love you." Then she kisses the side of my head, and lays back down on the pillow.

Even though I think I'm pretty much incapable of handling kids until they're capable of, at the very least, going to the bathroom sans entourage, and even though I think I'm not technically their uncle, I suddenly felt like I was pretty much the best uncle ever. So I decided right then and there that my Christmas present to the girls was to be the best gay uncle they ever had. I kissed her back, tucked her back in, turned off the light and left the room.

Fifteen minutes later, she was crawling all over me again.

Kids are adorable. It's probably for the best that I'm not having any.

Psycho Drugstore Cowboy has Mala Noche in Own Private Jail Cell

2006-12-23T13:59:00.000-06:00

There are few words in this or any other language to describe how much I hate Gus Van Sant.

His directorial filmography runs from the decent helming of a good script saved by great performances (Good Will Hunting) to the brain-meltingly unwatchable "real time" "narrative experiments" that the French go ape shit for (Elephant, Gerry) to the telltale sign of a pseudo-snob auteur, the sex-and-drugged-up Shakespeare modernization (My Own Private Idaho) to the shot for shot remake of a classic with bad acting and some masturbation thrown in (Psycho).

In fact, it says a lot about the guy that what he added to Psycho was masturbation -- that, and the random inserts of cows and rain -- because no filmmaker in all the world is more hard for himself than Gus Van Sant. He's a post-modernist 0f the worst breed. The Moe Szyslack variety.

MOE
(beaming)
It's po-mo!

Homer, Carl and Lenny stare blankly.

MOE
Post-modern!

More blank stares.

MOE
Alright, weird for the sake of weird.

Homer, Carl and Lenny "ooh," "ahh," and nod approvingly.

What's perhaps worse than his snobbish, obscenely over-rated "artistic" approach to filmmaking is that practically every single one of his films is dripping with homophobic self-loathing. Yes, Van Sant is one of very few openly gay filmmakers who makes his sexuality an overt issue in his films, and while I'm generally the sappy sort to hand out medals simply for representin', there are few things worse than a member of the tribe going out of his way to create negative representations. Except maybe if he went out of his way to maliciously misrepresent. And Van Sant is guilty of both.

I'm not trying to be the PC-police, and of course I believe in the right of the artist to do whatever the hell he wants. It just strikes me as, at best, irresponsible or, at worst, a malicious and misplaced projection of of serious personal issues. Given that there are so few gay images on the screen, and so few of those are positive images, and that so few of those are something besides the stereotypical fashion-savvy best-friend with a lisp and no depth or arc, why would someone with the position and capacity to affect change in the discourse continue to make films with gay characters that are violent drug-dealers, creepy strung-out prostitutes or Columbinesque school-shooter-uppers?

Anyway, though he may not have been charged for any of his crimes against cinema (including but not limited to: criminally negligent use of a camera, masterpieceslaughter, and robbery of the Palm d'Or from anyone who isn't Gus Van Sant), you can hopefully nevertheless understand why the following headline made my holiday weekend.

'Good Will Hunting' Director Arrested for Drunk Driving

And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Working, Withdrawing, Winston and Woodrow Wilson

2006-12-22T18:35:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the hiatus. Between cramming for exams, taking exams, packing to go home to Arlington, going home to Arlington and one night of debauchery somewhere in between , I've been kept away from regularly updating my wonderful readership on the goings on in my day-to-day stuff. The details are fairly uninteresting: the cramming was unpleasant, the exams were a bitch (on one, I had to write a six-page essay comparing the economic concerns of Alexis de Tocqueville, Woodrow Wilson and Milton Friedman), the packing was haphazard, Arlington is comfortably predictable, and one night, I became familiarly acquainted with the floor on a number of occasions.

Actually the details of that last one are pretty interesting. Unfortunately, I care too much for my dignity to recount (what I can remember) of them. And besides, the best part were the videos, which were mercifully deleted. Thanks, Lincoln. And happy birthday, Dani.

Like I said, I'm back in Arlington and enjoying the leisurely life. As leisurely as I can be, anyway, since I'm painfully aware of how expensive Christmas is. Since this is my first holiday season with any substantial expendable income, I'm going crazy and, you know, buying people stuff. This, I've discovered, requires moneys. And moneys are hard to come by. But, hey, I love people, and people who love people buy stuff for people. That's what love is about, right?

Anyway, besides the fam, the picture is of somebody who I'm very glad to be getting to spend my holiday with.

I know how nauseating it is when people put adorable pictures of their pets on the internet, but I guess I'm just lame like that.

Lame, and spending Christmas with Winston.

By the way, as a point of reference, the Scooby Doo doll is about 12".

How to Know When You've Been Studying Too Late

2006-12-14T11:58:00.000-06:00

Rhett: A company just got approval for a take-home laser hair removal kit. Good news for me.

Me: What hairs do you need removed?

Rhett: Back. And I could do without the stomach.

Me: I kinda like my stomach hair. It grows in a funny pattern.

Rhett: ...

Me: It goes clockwise around my belly button.

Rhett: ...

Me: I call it "Hurricane Baylor."

Rhett: ...

Now More Texas Stadium-y!

2006-12-13T14:12:00.000-06:00

Well, it's not the tacky neon pseudo-Times Square nightmare of a complex I had feared, but the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium as revealed this week is nevertheless a towering monument to the ego of Jerry Jones.

I'm (characteristically) conflicted about these plans. I wish I knew what to make of it. Part of me is relieved that the stadium isn't as awful as it very likely could have been. Part of me is actually quite impressed by the way they've managed to design a decidedly "Dallas Cowboys" structure that at once retains the character of Texas Stadium and brings the team's increasingly-dated image into the 21st century.

But still, an even greater part of me is annoyed by the senseless extravagance of it all. This building doesn't need to be all of the things it is. It could be a great Dallas Cowboys stadium without being so over-the-top. Hell, the website's fancy 3-D render alone with the stadium superimposed onto a flyover of the site probably cost somewhere in the six-digits.

A short list of the because-we-can features of this billion (with a "B" -- one thousand millions) dollar colossus.

The largest column-free room in the world.
The largest domed structure in the world.
The largest movable glass doors in the world.
Two quarter-mile steel arches. You guessed it. The longest in the world.

I can't help but get the feeling that these things are going to be a bit incongruous in my humble little birthplace. Arlington is the world's largest suburb. More people live in Arlington than live in St. Louis (by the way, St. Louis, your arch just got pwnd), but the character of the city is a bit more... vanilla. Almost tragically so. Maybe this behemoth will sort of put the town on the map, so to speak. But I can't imagine it'll mean anything but more homogeneity for the town.

I'm rambling like an undergrad. My point is this: they're building a big football stadium in my hometown. I think it looks kinda nice, but that it's too big.

My favorite feature of the stadium, though? The insufficient parking. Because logistics are for pussies.

Stupid Quiz Thing

2006-12-12T22:03:00.000-06:00

No self-righteous ranting tonight folks. Just a silly little quiz stolen off of Michael.

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?
...Guh. (I'm not particularly articulate in the morning.)

2. How much cash do you have on you?
$70. I just hit up the ATM last night. Ask me how much is in my checking account.

3. What's a word that rhymes with "DOOR?"
Whore.

4. Favorite planet?
Krypton.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?
Omar.

6. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone?
Theme from Superman: The Movie.

7. What shirt are you wearing?
Two-tone blue striped Express polo. I got it a size small, anticipating weight loss. I anticipated well.

8. Do you "label" yourself?
No. I label myself. Similar, but without the scare quotes.

9. Name the brand of the shoes you're currently wearing?
A pair of Teva sandals. Thems my lazy shoes.

10. Bright or dark room?
Dark. With incandescents in the corners.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?
He's kinda awesome.

12. What does your watch look like?
Broken.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night?
Kinda studying, but mostly talking on AIM with Omar.

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell say?
"Steet. I think."

15. Where is your nearest 7-11?
MLK and Guadalupe.

16. What's a word that you say a lot?
Jesus.

17. Who told you he/she loved you last?
My mom.

18. Last furry thing you touched?
Klaus.

19. How many drugs have you done in the last three days?
Does NyQuil count? I've had a cold.

20. How many rolls of film do you need developed?
None. Who has film anymore. What is this, 2003?

21. Favorite age you have been so far?
Twenty.

22. Your worst enemy?
Incomplete sentence as question?

23. What is your current desktop picture?
The "S"-Shield from Superman Returns.

24. What was the last thing you said to someone?
"Thanks."

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be?
Flight.

26. Do you like someone?
Yes.

27. The last song you listened to?
"Feelin' Good," Michael Buble

28. What time of day were you born?
Dunno.

29. What's your favorite number?
4. Probably.

30. Where did you live in 1987?
Arlington, Texas.

31. Are you jealous of anyone?
Yes.

32. Is anyone jealous of you?
Yes.

33. Where were you when 9/11 happened?
Vicki Risinger's high school Theatre I class.

34. What do you do when vending machines steal your money?
Say inappropriate things in a sing-song voice, maybe get a little ragey. Kick a dog. Strangle a nearby orphan.

35. Do you consider yourself kind?
I'd say so.

36. If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be?
I'm working on it.

37. If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be?
All of them, actually. It'd be pretty handy.

38. Would you move for the person you loved?
Potentially. Depends on where we're moving to.

39. Are you touchy feely?
About the right things.

40. What's your life motto?
Two: "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight. You Gotta kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight." and "Laugh." Yeah, kinda odd, those two together.

41. Name three things that you have on you at all times?
Cell phone, keys, pack of Trident White.

42. What's your favorite town/city?
Austin, Texas.

43. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
A cheeseburger with jalepenos, fries and a drink.

44. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it?
Um. A long time ago. Like, fifth grade, maybe? Unless typing counts. In which case, thank you letters for scholarships.

45. Can you change the oil on a car?
I probably could, by following the instructions in the manual. But just walking up to a car and doing it? Not likely.

46. Your first love: what is the last thing you heard about him/her?
He blew me off. In the sense that he ignored an opportunity to hang out with me.

47. How far back do you know about your ancestry?
It's spotty, but I know for sure back about three to four generations on each side.

48. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy?
"Fancy" is a broad term. Last time I wore a suit was in the Capitol building in DC. Last time I dressed up would be at a scholarship banquet. I badly need new formal wear.

49. Does anything hurt on your body right now?
My wrist, a little. But me knees don't anymore, and that makes me happy.

50. Have you been burned by love?
Not burnt, per se. Singed, perhaps.

The Audacity of Duplicity

2006-12-11T20:42:00.000-06:00

The period between the end of classes and the beginning of finals is known as "dead days." This is because nothing happens during these days. Theoretically, the period is set aside for studying, but since the one final that I really need to study for isn't until a week from tomorrow, it's hard to get motivated to do so. The result of this spare time is a considerable amount of boredom. I tell you this so the first sentence of the next paragraph doesn't sound so pathetic.

So I was channel surfing a little while ago, and I landed on C-SPAN. I watched Barack Obama giving a speech at a victory rally in New Hampshire. This was his first visit to the state since announcing that he may run for president in 2008.

Barack Obama is a damn fine speaker. It's no wonder that everybody loves him. His voice is deep and commanding. His charismatic smile is irresistible. And he talks about the sort of things that would (or should) make any American proud to vote for him. Seems everybody on the left side of the spectrum (and plenty of those on the right half) are getting caught up in the Obama-rama... everyone, that is, except me.

Let me explain:

The part of the speech I saw was about themes explored in his book, The Audacity of Hope, a title shared by his 2004 keynote address at the Democratic convention. The "audacity" from the title is the rejection of cynicism. He says that, given the state of affairs in the country, it's easy to be cynical, to believe that things can't get better. However, every great thing to have come in our country has come as a result of people having the audacity to say "things can get better, and we can make them better."

He cites the founding, when a bunch of oppressed Colonists said, "yeah, they're pretty big, but you know what, we don't have to be subjugated by the most powerful empire in the world." He cites the abolitionist movement as people with the balls to say, "yeah, the southern economy is kinda based on this thing, but you know, just because the founders left us with this horrible scourge doesn't mean we have to perpetuate it."

He cites the women's movement. He cites the civil rights movement. And he says these moments in our nation's history -- when people had the audacity to look inequity in the eye and say "we're ready for something better" -- are all great strides to perfecting the union.

I, naturally, agree. Because this kind of an assessment reflects an understanding of America's history that is neither blindly saying that ours has always been a perfect country, nor smacking of what I believe is colloquially known as "liberal America-hating."

You'd think that a person who so clearly believes that historical advances in civil rights are some of our nation's proudest moment would support social progress in his own time. You'd think that, and you'd be wrong. When the issue of same-sex marriage came up on Larry King this October, the Democratic Party's new golden boy had this to say: "We're not ready for that kind of redefinition of family in this country."

...

Huh.

Odd.

To base a book, a potential presidential campaign, and, hell, the 2004 keynote speech that got you the book and the presidential campaign in the first place on the idea that greatness in America comes when people say "we're ready to end the inequity," and to then say you don't think we're ready to end it now -- doesn't it seem kinda... I dunno... contradictory?

And, by the way, to say that something would "redefine" family suggests that there exists a concrete definition of family in America. How about the family of a boy who's mother was a white woman from Kansas and whose father was a black foreign exchange student from Kenya who divorced the mother when the boy was two, leaving her to marry an Indonesian, move her son to Jakarta for four years, then send him back to the states to live with his grandparents? Is that an American family?

Of course it is. But there was a time, and not that long ago, where any American politician worth his salt would have described such a family life -- the life of Barack Obama -- as downright un-American. And there was a time, and not long before the birth of the junior Senator from Illinois, that the marriage between Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham wouldn't have been sanctioned in this country. It's the idea of breaking down that sort of elitist notion of what makes something American and saying that "American" means "inclusive" that drove Obama into the political sphere in the first place.

So why doesn't he want to continue that struggle on what is currently it's most prominent frontier? Now, as a US Senator, given the opportunity and power to affect change like the people he cites as heroes in the American struggle, he doesn't want to emulate them? Now that his family can be safely called "American," but the one I (knock on wood) may someday have is left out in the cold, that's where the struggle stops?

To give him some credit, in The Audacity of Hope (the book form), Obama says that "...it is my obligation not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society, but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided." Translation: "I know I'm wrong about this, but I'm going to stand here in my wrongness anyway." To say that you're open to the possibility that you're misguided is a tacit acknowledgement that you already know that you are misguided. At least he's honest. And self-aware enough to know that he's contradicting himself. These are admirable (and rare) qualities from such a high-profile American politician.

In fact, he has many admirable qualities. And the party -- both at the leadership level, and at the level of the voters -- has good reason to be excited about him. But if he can't get his story straight on the application of his own rhetoric, then he should not be President of the United States. The ideals behind The Audacity of Hope sound like the foundations for a strong and unifyingly American presidency, but unfortunately, they may amount to little more than lip service.

He's brilliant, he's charming, he's self-aware, he's honest, he loves his country. I like the guy. I really, really do. But Barack Obama doesn't want to practice what he preaches.

For that reason, I can't support him as a presidential candidate.

Plus the whole inexperience thing. Yeah, that too.

The Road to Awe

2006-12-11T17:17:00.000-06:00

Darren Aaronofsky's new film, The Fountain, has got it pretty rough. It was booed at Cannes. As of this writing, it's clocking in at only 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, and considerably lower than that from the "cream of the crop" critics. It's being described by these reviewers as pretentious, messy, fragmented, and hard to follow. Lots of critics just don't seem to like The Fountain.

Lots of critics, on that note, seem to suffer from a nasty case of the "stupid."

I'm not saying this to be some stuck-up, condescending, film snob, but I found every second of The Fountain fascinating and engrossing. And I was never lost. Not once. After seeing just how bad it was getting reviewed, I asked all the people I saw it with. None of them were ever lost either.

Since I seem to be one of the only people who was able to enjoy this movie, I guess the Tree of Life is my new golden tree.

Distorting the Value System

2006-12-09T16:01:00.001-06:00

First of all, a preface to everyone reading this on my Facebook:

Hello, friends. What you're reading is an imported feed from my blog, The Boxclockery, updated regularly on The Workingchair. These posts are sometimes political (such as this one), often trivial (such as this one), self-effacingly nerdy, and self-congratulatory. Feel free to comment here on the Facebook note if you like, but I encourage you to visit the blog and check it out. It's got some great links, as well as about fifty posts that, for some reason, didn't come over in the import. Anyway, onto business...

Relatively little hubbub has been made (especially on the right) regarding Mary Cheney's baby, due, as I suggested, in no small part to the timing of the announcement, occurring on the same day as the Iraq Study Group's report. Well, it seems that Paul Cameron, the virulently homophobic head of the virulently homophobic Family Research Institute, was unwilling to hold his tongue.

Cameron's Family Research Institute was, needless to say, a major supporter of both Bush-Cheney campaigns. Seems Mr. Cameron's alliance to homophobia is much stronger than his alliance to his buddy at Observatory Circle.

"(Cheney's) pregnancy is further evidence that participation in homosexual activity distorts value systems, inducing practitioners to harm the commonweal. Our society already has too many children born without the benefits of marriage; Cheney’s action is not only a bad example, but poor treatment of an innocent child.”

Ahem.

A rebuttal from the logic camp?

"Oh, that’s hilarious. Our society already has too many children born without the benefits of marriage—I couldn’t agree more, Paul. So let Mary and Heather get married. Let me and my boyfriend get married. There are millions of children in the United States being raised by same-sex couples—if you want more children to enjoy the benefits of marriage, let more children’s parents marry. But don’t deny us the right to marry and then fault us for failing to marry."

I couldn't have put it any better myself. Which is why Dan Savage gets paid lots of money for being Dan Savage.

(Thanks to Joe. My. God. for the heads-up.)

Comic Book Nerd -- 12/06/06

2006-12-06T18:08:00.000-06:00

Over the course of just a matter of months, I've become a comic book nerd. It started with making a weekly trip just to pick up the latest 52, when, if you recall, Travis got me a taste on some of the classics, and Sam got me hooked by letting me borrow his Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis. Between these two Crises, I managed to get (more or less) up to speed on the happenings in the DCU, and began buying 52 every week just to see how things wrapped up.

But what started as a matter of me keeping track of an ongoing story out of curiosity and a need for closure has turned into a matter of spending between ten and twenty dollars a week on my funnybooks... much to the chagrin of my wallet and that little voice in my head that assures me that I am somewhat datable.

And so, I've decided to take a(nother) page from the book of Michael and start doing a weekly write-up of my comic book purchases. Let's see if it sticks this time.

52 -- Week Thirty-One
This week's issue shows how you make Grant Morrison suck. His goofy, fantastical, outer-space culty stuff works like gangbusters when it's backed up by the kind of art that you see from, say, everyone working on Seven Soldiers of Victory. But when the art backing up the fantastics is as mediocre as the stuff Batista has consistently been churning out for 52, it reads like the flimsy, derivative pulp that it resembles but isn't. My point is this -- the whole subplot involving the apparent death of Captain Comet (who is alive, by the way, one year later in Mysteries in Space, isn't he?) just didn't work for me, especially given that it didn't dovetail into the equally-difficult-to-follow adventures of our regular lost in space heroes until the very end. I dug the cubes. That was about it. I did, however, dig most of the stuff going on back on Mother Earth. I'm finally giving a damn about Infinity Inc., now that there's some seriously creepy shit going on between them. I also really enjoyed the scene between Ralph and Cassie at the Superman/Superboy memorial. It was a bit heavy on the recap, but it wasn't distracting. Also, nice save on that whole "cult of Connor thing was just between us," bit. That could have been embarrassing, eh, writers? The following scene between Ralph and Supernova was a great, frustrating tease. I halfway believed they were going to tell us. Foolish of me, I know. Freddie E. Williams III's art on the Robin origin is made meh by Alex Sinclair's colorings, and, by the way, whatever happened to Jason Todd? He got a lot of coverage in the badass opening for Week Thirty, but isn't even mentioned in this "history" of Robin.

Justice Society of America #1
Hot damn. This book rocks. I have to admit, I was a little nervous at first. The cover was alright (this might be tantamount to blasphemy, but Alex Ross' group shots just don't do it for me), and that first page was pretty lame considering it was "World War III." But at the point where Mr. America unmasks himself, I was pretty much sold. I dig Wildcat's annoyance during the selection process, and not just 'cause I think he's a little hot. Keeping him somewhat on the outside makes him, in a way, the audience here, and letting him comment on the personalities of Jay and Alan is a fun way to give us a glimpse at who these characters are. Damage's fight with Rebel is pretty fun, as is his conversation with Hourman and Liberty Belle. It's here that Dale Eaglesham's otherwise serviceable pencils really stand out, when the characters he draws are smiling and enjoying themselves. Oh, and I love Maxine. Having her sing the line from Wicked before flying off the building? Brilliant. That was all I needed to know exactly who this girl is. Starman's stuff was fun and weird. Interesting how "crazy" characters in the DCU have been shouting the word "52," lately. Wonder if that'll be explained. Also, Obsidian, the DCU's openly gay shadow being dude, makes an appearance. Neat! The last four pages, going back and forth between the JSA's "Trinity" and Mr. America's desperate race to the hideout is awesome, awesome, awesome. I'm sold. One can't shake the feeling that Geoff Johns is aping Brad Meltzer's approach with this one, but saying that this issue feels a lot like the first issue of Identity Crisis -- which I happen to think is the finest in-continuity story arc I've ever read -- is high praise from me.

Midnighter #2
I know next to nothing about The Authority, or, hell, the entire Wildstorm universe. But I know this much: The Midnighter is pretty cool. And also totally gay. Which is probably the only reason I branched out into Wildstorm with this title. So I'm easily sold by a book having gay title character. Eh, sue me. I was actually kinda worried that I wouldn't find Midnighter as exciting as more -- dare I say it -- mainstream fare, but writer Garth Ennis is the man responsible for Preacher, so I guess I should have known that those fears would be unfounded. This was a hell of a lot of fun to read and, since it's all time-travelly and out of context, I don't feel like a moron for not being more aware of the greater continuity! Plus, I love time-travel! Plus, I love killing Hitler! This is a win-win-win for me. When the time police showed up at the end, I nearly lost it. I love time cops. Chris Sprouse's artwork is pretty solid, though inevitably a bit dizzying during some of the busier action sequences in the trenches. We were limited to one homophobic slur ("trouser-pilot"?) from Rourke this go around, though that doesn't mean his inevitable ass-kicking at the end of this arc isn't being any less clearly telegraphed. If this series manages to maintain the level of darkly British violent time-warping fun that I've enjoyed so much from the first two issues, I'll be sticking around to see that ass-kicking happen.

Trigger McCoronary's Havin' a Grandbaby

2006-12-06T10:23:00.000-06:00

Conveniently timed to occur on the same day that the Iraq Study Group gives it's recommendations on war policy comes the announcement that Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter Mary is pregnant.

By the way, Mary's the one with a nasty case of the lesbian.

Now, there's a certain amount of animosity in some segments of the left -- and especially in the gay community -- toward Mary Cheney for being a, well, loyally serving spawn of Satan Himself.

While I certainly have some resentment toward her for not using her position in the Republican hierarchy to point out the sheer cynical hypocrisy in the GOP's enforcement of homophobia, I don't hate the girl. Hell, in many ways, I love her simply for existing. Even if she doesn't make herself especially public, the fact that she is the spawn of Satan Himself and is doing normal lesbian family stuff is enough for me.

Let's discuss the moral abominations at play in today's news, shall we?

The baby isn't Mary's partner Heather's. That makes the baby an illegitimate child.
Mary and her Heather aren't married. That makes the baby a child born out of wedlock.
Mary is a lesbian.

Congratulations Mary. Your happiness makes your daddy's buddies nervous. And for that, I wish you all the happiness in the world.

By the way, given the gene pool, Miss Mary has done pretty well for herself in the not-being-ass-ugly arena.

Is it Cost-Effective to Make Snow from Coconuts?

2006-12-05T16:23:00.000-06:00

I'm very nervous about Studio 60.

I used to be nervous because I thought it wasn't any good. Now I'm nervous because the show has gotten really good. Almost West Wing good. Good to the point where I will be upset if it doesn't get picked up for a second season. Very, very upset.

And the fact that I have little reason to believe right now that they will pick the show up for a season two makes me very, very nervous.

So far, the show has been uneven to say the least. I loved the pilot, liked the second episode more (though that has somewhat diminished now that the tease to the effect that D.L. Hughely's character might be gay turned out to be either a false lead or just a nasty case of me grasping at straws). But the next episode, not so much. Michael and I both seriously disagreed on whether the episode "The Wrap Party" was any good at all. Then things started looking up in the episodes that followed.

Then came this week's Christmas show, titled ... well, "The Christmas Show." And it was good. It was good like the way I know Sorkin can be. The dialogue was snappy and cute and never condescending, I liked all the subplots, and I genuinely cared about Steven Weber's character. It takes a lot for me to genuinely care about TV characters if I've found them boring for most of the show.

By the episode's final callback to the "we live here" line, I realized that, in my mind, Stuido 60 on the Sunset Strip is here to stay. Let's just hope that the folks at NBC and I are somewhat like-minded.

It took Sorkin a full season to settle into a groove with -- and eliminate the useless Mandy character from -- The West Wing. If the last few episodes are any indication, Aaron has cut his adjustment time in half. But, in order to ensure continued success, some pruning may be necessary to Studio 60's sprawling cast so that all the characters can be developed and have their voices become more distinct (right now, I'm still a little concerned that I only know most of the characters by the names of the actors who play them and that everyone is just a slightly different shade on the catty-Hollywood-bitch spectrum).

Wing-watchers used the word "Mandyland" to refer to the place that characters cut from that show dissapeared to, never to be heard from again. My gut reaction is to say that Harriet needs an all-expenses paid, one-way trip, but now that the Matt-Harriet relationship is looking pretty permanent, that may be unfeasible. Ah, well. Maybe, just maybe something good will come out of that pair.

I'm going to keep watching the show, but like that little lost puppy you bring home, I'm going to have to try hard not to become too emotionally attatched to it. Mommy and daddy at the network may very well say we won't be able to keep him.

The All-Nighter

2006-12-04T23:05:00.000-06:00

Things that could take place in the amount of time I went without sleep:

Mercury-Atlas 6 could make John Glenn the first American to orbit the earth, five times over.
A runner could run from my dorm in Austin, TX to my house in Arlington, TX.*
Desmond could have pushed the button 14 times. Fifteen if he pushed it right when the alarm sounded.
A war in Iraq could start and be over one quarter complete.
You could contract a 24-hour cold. And be over it.
104 people could have their fifteen minutes of fame.
You could go to Wendy's hoping to order something off the breakfast menu but realize you're too late, wait for the next morning, and get there too late again.
Keifer Sutherland could grow a beard, shave it, go deep undercover, blur the distinction between terrorist and counter-terrorist, save the world, and have a new beard ready for the next threat to freedom.**

* - Maybe. If he didn't have to eat. Or sleep. Or use the restroom.
** - You never see Jack Bauer eat, sleep, or use the restroom, so the runner thing isn't entirely inconceivable.

Well, Excuse Me, (Twilight) Princess!

2006-12-03T18:25:00.000-06:00

When it comes to a critique of things like movies, games, books, etc., I'm not a person prone to hyperbole.

Having said that:

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess may be the greatest video game I have ever played.

Sure, much ado has been made of the fact that, since it was developed as a Gamecube title, it's not as graphically impressive as other "next-gen" titles. That's probably the reason it's fallen out of the top-ten best reviewed games of all time. But pretty does not a good game make.

Incredibly fun and intuitive gameplay, a gigantic game world that invites exploration, epic cinematic storytelling and presentation -- these things, however, do make a game great. And Twilight Princess has these qualities in spades.

I'm not particularly far into the game right now. I've only just beat the second dungeon of, I believe, 12. But I'll be damned if the sequence starting where young Colin pushes Beth out of the way and ending with Link looking up at Death Mountain doesn't make you feel charged with a quest.

It's a good thing that my roommate got a Wii here at the end of the semester. After all, I don't have to be productive at the end of a semester, right?

Stay Golden, Ponytree

2006-12-01T13:40:00.000-06:00

There's this tree right outside my dorm. I think it's some kind of an olive tree, but I'm botanically retarded, so I couldn't say for sure. Anyway, over the last two weeks, the leaves on the tree turned a really incredibly gorgeous color of yellow. Not like your normal autumn tree yellow, either. A really striking, technicolor sort of yellow.Whenever I would walk up onto the patio area in front of my building, I would look up and marvel at how great the leaves looked against the bright blue Austin sky. Strangely, the tree looked even better on cloudy days, where the colors of the leaves exploded against the grey.

Stupid, I know.

The tree really wasn't that big of a deal, just one of those simple pleasures that made me smile. Perhaps what I loved more about the tree than the color was the fact that I would notice that nobody else who would walk under it took the moment to glance up at it. It was like my own private piece of beauty in the middle of a very public space.

I really wish I had a digital camera, just so I could have taken a picture of the tree to post on here. I kept on meaning to borrow a friend's camera, or to just buy one of those cheapo disposable ones from the convenience store in Jester.

Two days ago, a serious cold front blew through town, giving Austin it's first freeze of the year. Yesterday morning, as I'm walking out the building to go to my first class, I see that the patio is covered in leaves -- vagulely yellowish, but browning, shriveling. I look up to see that my tree is almost completely bare.

I never got to take that picture.

This all has me thinking about some cliche about the transience of youth. Something about how nothing shiny sticks around. Or how things made of precious metals have to leave.

... Eh, I'll think of it.

Dear Santa

2006-11-29T23:14:00.000-06:00

Please? Thanks.

Like Bulimia, Without All the Pesky Free Will

2006-11-27T22:58:00.000-06:00

Hey, you! Yes, you!

Tired of those extra holiday pounds?

Like spending the day curled up in bed?

Have a strong appreciation for irony?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you should get yourself a brand new:

STOMACH VIRUS on THANKSGIVING!

Yes, what better way to celebrate the one day a year when you're encouraged to overeat than by being completely unable to keep anything down? Not sure a Stomach Virus on Thanksgiving is for you? Just listen to this testimonial from a real, satisfied customer.

"Oh, Christ... I'm so dehydrated that I'm starting to hallucinate. I really want a glass of water, but last time I drank a glass, I threw up water. And then some bile. And then just the dry heaves for a while. It's like my body is forcefully rejecting anything that doesn't have my DNA. Out both ends.

I know that there's a football game on the TV but I can't tell whether or not I'm dreaming it. And I'm not even asleep. Anyway, I don't think I'm asleep. I'm cold. I'm really cold. I know that much. And all I managed to have of Thanksgiving dinner was two carrots, a bite of white meat, and a half a roll. I think I'm going to go brush my teeth again.

...Ah, shit. I shouldn't have stood up so fast. I'll be back in a second."
Baylor Johnson, SVOT user since 2006

Friends will marvel at your reverse-peristaltic action!
Strangers will gasp at your sweaty face and shocking pallor.
Loved ones will be amazed as you try to be pleasant while your grandmother politely chats you up about incontinence.

A Stomach Virus on Thanksgiving promises all this and more! Get yours today while they're still contagious!

Figures in Action!

2006-11-25T18:05:00.000-06:00

Question: Is this awesome?

A) Yes.
B) Hell yes.

I never really got into the ~~"action figure"~~ "~~useless merchandise"~~ "~~tacky crap"~~ "collectible" side of fandom. Because I think that so-called collectible action figures are, well, useless merchandise and tacky crap. But I'll be damned if these aren't incredibly fun to look at, and really freaking well made. Still, fun to look at and well-made do not a useful thing make, so I don't plan on buying these. I just think they're awesome.

It's great how they've managed to recreate these little iconic character snapshots from the show. The only one I'm disappointed in is the Locke one. I would have had him smiling with the orange peel in his mouth, or at the very least, doing something besides excavating the hatch, since the big group one has that covered.

Hiatus and Still

2006-11-25T16:24:00.000-06:00

It's been 12 days without any Boxclockery. I'm sorry to everyone who has been left cold and hungry for more petty ramblings from me. But you can end your hunger strikes and/or let the hostages go now. I'm back.

Nature abhors a vacuum, so expect a bunch of useless entries from me in the next couple of days to compensate for my absence. Posts about exciting stuff like action figures and stomach viruses (virii?).

Just so this entry isn't a total waste, let's watch the trailer for this movie I co-made last year. I'm the one shouting into a cell phone and brandishing a real magnum revolver. It's practically bigger than me.

Kate, Damnit, Run!

2006-11-13T13:45:00.000-06:00

So, the first part (oh, forgive me, the "fall season") of the third season of Lost is over. What do we think? We think the last six episodes are better than any other six episodes in a row in the show's 50-ish episode run. Yes, we do. We think this. And, after a number of weeks of hindsight have informed our opinion of these episodes, we may think of some of them as some of the best episodes ever. This, we will come to think.

They brought adventure back. Remember how much I was looking forward to adventure returning to the so-called adventure series? Well, as far as we are into season three, we've gotten adventure in heaping doses. Probably more so than there was in all of season two put together.

Ooh, and at about five different times throughout these episodes, I actually gave a damn about Kate! I actually gave a damn about Kate! How great is that?! Kate has always been such a frustratingly mediocre character. To have me actually give a damn about at five different points over the course of six episodes is a pretty monumental achievement. How did I give a damn about her? Let me count the ways:

Kate looking scared and vulnerable as she's getting put in her cage after her meal on the beach with Ben.
Kate being sad and vulnerable ("more vulnerable!") while hauling rocks or whatever before Sawyer kisses her.
Kate talking to Jack through the glass. A debate erupted in my viewing party over whether she should tear her clothes off and press her naked body longingly against the glass for Jack.
Kate tearing her clothes off and pressing her naked body longingly against Sawyer. This, by all rights, should have been awkward and stupid. It wasn't.
Kate, in the rain, shouting and watching Sawyer being prepared for execution.

So now, I have to wait until February for the show to come back...

T-minus thirteen weeks.

...

I'm so damn impatient.

On a completely unrelated note, does anyone else think it's funny that Jared from Subway is getting fat? Because I think that's freakin' hilarious.

EDIT: Changed the title. Apparently, the "Kate" comes before the "damnit."

Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome

2006-11-09T15:52:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned before, I've hurt my knees (well, I said I hurt my knee, but I actually hurt both of them, one worse than the other). Since mentioning this, I've gotten the diagnosis that I kinda knew was coming: patellofemoral pain syndrome in both knees, plus a strained hamstring. Basically, what this means is that I've made some of the muscles and tendons that affect the knee joint too tight by not stretching them before and after working out. So tight, in fact, that they've begun pulling my kneecaps out of alignment. So out of alignment, in fact, that they've started grinding up against my femur.

Sounds worse than it is.

But it's still not fun.

Doctor's orders include doing lots of ridiculous stretches in my room, taking lots of Ibuprofen, and staying off my feet as much as possible. Staying off your feet is hard to do when you have to walk across campus a couple times a day to get to and from your classes. Still, things have gotten better such that walking isn't painful as it once was, so that's not too bad.

The really rough thing, though, is that another one of the doctor's orders was to basically stop doing the exercises that may have caused the injury in the first place.

Meaning I haven't been able to go to the gym in two weeks.

I haven't weighed in to confirm this, but I feel like in just these two short weeks my metabolism has grinded (ground?) to an absolute halt and I've gained back all the weight I'd lost over the early part of the semester. This probably isn't true. The day before the pain got to where I had to stop working out before I went to the doctor, I was down to 175. I'm sure I haven't regained thirteen pounds in basically that many days... but it feels that way.

Today, the last callus that the rowing machine had put on my palm finally flaked away. I feel like I'm back to absolute square one.

I know what you're thinking. I probably think this song is about me, I'm so vain. Well, maybe that's fair. But it was nice to be feeling good about the shape I was in for a little while there. It's frustrating to feel myself slipping backwards, and doubly so because the reason I am slipping backwards is that I hurt myself while trying to move forward.

So now, until I can get back on my feet and start working out again, I'm going to have to really start watching my calorie intake. Because I really haven't been.

Fear not, folks. In spite of this setback, the Oprah-esque battle to bring sexy back continues!

Post-Election Open Notes

2006-11-08T11:51:00.000-06:00

To Democrats:

Congratulations. Enjoy this. You've earned it... all right, so you didn't so much earn it as much as it was handed to you on a silver platter. But you should enjoy it nonetheless. I know I will.

To Republicans:

You, on the other hand, earned this. According to the laws of physics, a pendulum can only swing back as far in one direction as it is pushed in the other. No further. This "tidal wave" response to your policies should give you an idea of just how far out of whack you've been trying to take things.

To the majority of voters of Colorado, Tennessee, Wisconsin, South Carolina, South Dakota, Idaho, and Virginia:

With all due respect, screw you. Screw you in a way that is not part of a relationship based on a mutually pledged contract sanctioned by the government. Extra-same-sex-marital sex screw you.

To the majority of voters in Arizona:

Thank you. One out of eight isn't good, but it's better than nothing. And it's historic. To all those who have said that marriage is "under attack" from the judiciary and that it can only be "saved" by the democratic process, you've joined me in giving them a firm "screw you." You've proven that it doesn't take a robe and a gavel to know that America is about inclusion, not exclusion.

To Donald Rumsfeld:

The news of your resignation is breaking as I am writing this. As glad as I am to see you go, if you'd gone away months (nay, years,) ago, your party could very likely have held onto Congress yesterday. Is that a delicious irony, or another instance of profound stupidity at the highest levels? Or both? I look forward to the publishing of your upcoming memoir, Oopsie-Daisy: Waging War in the 21st Century with No Clear Victory Condition or Long Term Plan. I don't know how you can sleep at night, but I wish you nothing but the best in your retirement. Alright, that's a lie.

To Robert Gates:

I don't know you well enough to make a judgment on whether or not your nomination is a good call. I do know this: you were appointed director of the CIA -- the former job of George H. W. Bush -- in 1991. The man who appointed you to that job was George H. W. Bush. After leaving the CIA, you became the Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. Texas A&M is also the home of the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library. Given what I know about you, I can say unequivocally that your nomination will do nothing to help the arguments of those who say that this Iraq war is a Freudian nightmare scenario about a guy trying to impress/replace his own daddy. Nope. Surely you add no credence to that theory.

To the entire new US Government:

All of you, on both sides of the aisle, in all three branches and in all departments, have been put in an interesting situation. It would be easy for the Democrats to make revenge the order of the day and be real assholes. It would be easy for the Republicans to drag their heels and be obstinant and be real assholes. But for two years, you're going to have to work together. Americans didn't vote this way just because they were sick of Republicans -- though, believe me, we are -- but because we're sick of nothing. Getting. Done. We voted for who we feel are the right people to get. Things. Done. Now its your turn to do them.

Party Night in Hollywood -- Studio 60 Don't Suck

2006-11-06T22:17:00.000-06:00

During the day today -- and in fact for the past two weeks -- I was all ready to do a blog entry entitled "Studio 60, We Hardly Knew Ye." It was going to be about a TV series that, after a brilliant pilot and an even better sophomore episode, deteriorated rapidly into a clunky, unfunny, exposition-heavy non-comedy. I was all ready to talk about how the entertainment collumnists were reporting whispers that NBC was ready to drop the show. I was sad about it, but I was ready to write it.

The last episode was the penultimate straw (look it up). For those who didn't see it, Television Without Pity gave the episode a D+. Their recaps usually run a little bitchy for my taste, but for once, I totally agreed with the abyssmal rating. The episode alternated back and forth from painting Nate Cordry's parents in brain-meltingly broad strokes (that I found potentially more offensive to red state viewers than any of the show-within-a-show's actual "offensive" content) to a ham-handed "no shit sherlock" critique of racism in stand-up comedy.

After for the first time in my life watching an hour of Aaron Sorkin-scripted television and thinking "I want that hour back," I began to feel that all of these naysaying folks were right. That Sorkin, in giving his characters their quixotic quest to make Great Television, forgot that he himself needs to make good television. That NBC, in spite of having just bought a full season's worth of scripts, wasn't going to air a full season's worth of show. That, as some would have it, "this whole project will be remembered as a Sorkin-shaped hole in the wall" (kudos, Scott, for the [intentional?] West Wing reference).

But, I decided to wait for the next episode to air before I joined the chorus of Studio 60 eulogizers. Maybe the last few episodes had been flukes. Maybe the show was just struggling to find it's footing and that it would start hitting it's stride. I was hopeful, but pessimistic. Especially after NBC didn't air the show last week, instead experimenting with Friday Night Lights in Studio 60's slot. Against Monday Night Football. Yes, the thinking at the network seemed to be that fictitious high school football would fare better against real, actual, football than a completely non-football related show.

So, finally, with my fingers crossed, I watched tonight's episode, "Nevada Day Part I."

...Wow.

This was one damn fine hour of television. In fact, it was the most consistently entertaining episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, um, at all. Entertaining enough that I'm holding off on my "We Hardly Knew Ye." Hopefully, indefinitely.

So, congratulations, folks. You've managed to keep me on as a viewer. Keep this up, and you may not have to worry about the catch 22 of the unprofitable show that's too expensive to cancel.

Ted Haggard, I'm Running Out of Synonyms for "Hypocrite"

2006-11-05T16:48:00.000-06:00

(I swear, I'm going to stop writing blog entries about gay news... just as soon as raving homophobes who brag about chilling with the president and affecting policy stop paying for drug-addled anonymous sex with dudes.)

When I heard that Mike Jones, the male escort with whom Haggard has had sex for three years, was doing interviews, I was kinda nervous. It's hard to put anything but an ugly face on "male prostitute" in a story about moral hypocrisy. And, lets face it, when you think of a prostitute, whether this is fair or not, you don't tend to think of a person with especially refined speaking skills. And when you think of a prostitute involved in a sex scandal speaking to the press, you (or at least, I) think of the little black girl from The Birdcage.

So, I was pleased to find when I read his interview with The Advocate that Mike Jones is -- on top of being the total badass that I knew he was for calling out Haggard for his lies -- to be a reasonable, intelligent guy; not particularly passionate, but humble and honest.

I don’t know where this is going to end. We’re all sinners, in some way. Since we’re all really the same, don't try to prevent other people from having an enjoyable life. Let other people have a chance to get married, have a family of some type, whether it’s adoption or whatever…and have a home and enjoy their love for their partner. If you’re going to be up there as an example, you have to lead by example, and I think Haggard failed that.

What a badass.

Here's an interesting, reverse-prophetic clip of Ted Haggard talking about "homosexual activity" and making an awkward and unfunny joke about blackmail -- during a sermon -- in the documentary Jesus Camp.

This, I beleive, is what psychologists call "projection."

In other news related to politics and self-loathing repressed homosexuals, take a look at the guys in the photos for the website "Protect Marriage Arizona," a campaign site for Arizona's proposed constitutional yadda, yadda, yadda. Obviously, I don't know any of these guys, so I can't actually say anything about them for sure, but I can say unequivicably that they suffer from a nasty case of the gay-face. You decide for yourself.

Exhibit A:

Which of the following things was more likely to have come out this guy's mouth when the photo shoot was over?

"Hey, I've got some season tickets to the Cards, you wanna catch a game, maybe get some beers after?
"By the way, I love the print on that top, and how cute is it that you matched the lipstick to the flowers? Love it."

Exhibit B: (This one's a little tougher, but the ol' 'dar still went ping.)

True or False: Day-umn! That little asian guy in the blue tank over by the DJ booth can fuckin' dance.

True.
False.

Favorite Campaign Ads of the Day

2006-11-02T16:20:00.000-06:00

This one is for Ned Lamont, who is rapidly closing the gap (though still back by ten points) in the last minute of the Connecticut US Senate race.

I don't know if the Mr. Smith Goes to Washington reference is going to do anything for the voting public at large (in fact, I'm worried about having the black-and-white imagery without commenting on something along the lines of a return to old-fashioned American government or something; B&W = "boring," with the kids today and their skateboards and cellular telephones), but I'll be damned if it doesn't work for me. I know I'm a sap, but Mr. Smith chokes me up every time. It's exactly the image that Lamont needs to go with against Droopy McCynicalpants, Joe Lieberman.

This one is against Prop 43 in Colorado, which is for a constitutional amendment to define... hell, do I even need to say it?

This is one damn fine ad, and I only wish that someone had the balls to run one like it in the great state of Texas last year. Of course, such a thing would be blasphemous, as criticizing Beloved Leader in Texas (or at least doing so at this time last year) would be committing political suicide. But it's nice to see someone coming out and saying what the whole damn marriage debate is really about: distraction.

Finally, another one from Connecticut, this one starring my own personal hero, Wesley Clark.

Wes Clark is the man that should have won the Democratic primary in 2004. He was far and above the best candidate with the broadest appeal (if Michael Moore and my hardline Fox News-watching high school government teacher could agree on something, that's pretty significant) and the strongest chance of winning against W, but his inexperience in the politics part of politics cost him the nomination. Still, I love that he's remaining in the political spotlight and not playing it safe. Clark/Obama '08, anyone?

This election is a big one, folks. Wherever you are, whatever the issues on your ballot may be, this one really matters: and so does your vote. If you haven't voted yet, you still have a couple of days of early voting left so that you can beat the crowds before Tuesday. If you can't be out before Tuesday, then be out on Tuesday.

In fact, I'm heading out the door to vote early right now.

Vote.

Or die.

Because Puffy and I will kill you.

UV Index = Spooky

2006-10-31T16:30:00.000-06:00

Q: How can you tell if the world is warming up?

A: If you've got an hour of free time and decide it's a nice day to go lay out and get some sun... on Halloween.

Tonight, depending on how my knee is doing (I hurt my knee, did I mention that?), we're gonna be going out and walking around downtown. Sixth street is always pretty nuts on Halloween. Moreso if you're 21+ (and, sorry, I'm not paying a $10 cover charge to not drink, thank you very much). I'll be Clark Kent, changing into Superman. Suit pants, Kent glasses, dress shirt halfway unbuttoned revealing a Superman t-shirt. Specifically, the Returns t-shirt with the 3-d "S."

Happy Halloween, everybody.

A Gay on Lost? Take That to the Bank

2006-10-31T00:13:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite things about Lost is the level of dialogue between the powers-that-be behind the show and the viewers. It's an amazingly post-modern "new media" text for network TV: it has multiple levels of accessibility, and a full enjoyment of the text can be achieved at any of these levels.

You can simply enjoy the show on an aesthetic level by watching a fun TV show every Wednesday. Or, you can truly delve into the continuity of the serial narrative, finding all of the clues and loose ends, following the sub-narratives like this summer's online "Lost Experience." Or, at the highest level of accessibility, you can communicate with the creators of the Lost narrative and, potentially, influence the resultant narrative. You're not any less of a Lost viewer just because you don't take advantage of the numerous avenues by which you can reach the show's creators. However, the series is significant in that those avenues do exist.

Am I sounding like an academic snob yet? Good. Then mission accomplished.

Anyway, I told you that to tell you this: executive producers and head writers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse do a (nearly) weekly podcast about the show on ABC.com. During this, the "Official Lost Podcast," Damon and Carlton -- yes, it's a first-name basis sort of thing -- answer questions posted by the viewers on the official forum. They never quite give a straight answer to anything, and joke around the whole time, very informally. Nevertheless, sometimes, if a question is good enough, they let out an interesting tidbit about things to come on the show.

Here's a transcript from this week's podcast, at about the 17:19 mark.

Damon: This is from Boxclocke*. "The show has gotten a lot of positive attention for the diversity of it's cast, and deservedly so. I was wondering if there is any chance that the show could be getting a gay character, or that one of those great, gut-punch, didn't-see-that-one-coming flashbacks will out one of the current characters?"

Carlton: Yeah, I think that there is a good possibility that, y'know, we will discover one of the characters is gay on the show.

Damon: Like, if I was a betting man, five to one?

Carlton: Uh... four to one!

Damon: Four to one. Those are good odds.

Carlton: Those are pretty good odds.

Damon: All right. Thanks.

* - That's me.

I don't know if anyone on the show has said anything about that before, but if they had, I would probably be one to know, being the obsessed, rabid information sponge of a Lost fanboy that I am. And also gay. I have to say, I'm very pleased with myself for having gotten that kind of information out of them (no, it wasn't the only question I wanted to ask them, just the one that was A: not already being asked in another post, and B: the type of question that they would actually answer on the podcast).

Now that that's out there, I'm curious to find out who it is -- my guess is it's "Paulo," the new Brazilian guy... or is that just wishful thinking? Because Rodrigo Santoro is, besides being an incredibly hot Brazilian, the guy from that incredible Chanel No. 5 commercial, and what's gayer than a Baz Luhrmann spectacle? So, either Paulo, or Tom, who told Kate that she "wasn't his type." I'm gay but I'm not stupid: my understanding is that Evangeline Lilly is pretty much the type for, um, heterosexuals. I'm rooting for Paulo though, because, again, super-hot Brazilian.

Beyond my curiosity as to who the gay character is, I'm also curious to see how Lost viewers and fans are going to respond. I mean, I don't really expect a moral panic from the audience of a show that has an Arab guy having on-screen sex with a barely-legal blonde white chick. But it should be interesting, nonetheless.

Here's a direct link to the mp3 of the 'cast.

Calm Down and Speak Slowly

2006-10-30T16:57:00.000-06:00

I was going to post an article about my frustration with how the Republicans -- and especially our beloved leader -- have pounced on the New Jersey ruling (which, in spite of what you may have read into my enthusiasm, was one that I feel was a medium-sized step in the right direction at best), and somehow managed to make same-sex marriage a national campaign issue this week in spite of it... um... totally not being one.

I was going to write about that, but then I found this.

I don't believe I am being hyperbolic when I say that this -- a Japanese clip that is combination English lesson, rape prevention, exercise video -- may be the single greatest video ever to appear on the internet.

(Thanks to So I Like Superman for brightening up the day.)

Austin Film Festival: Days 2 - 7

2006-10-29T03:33:00.000-06:00

Run Robot Run! (**/5)
A micro-budget Canadian indie comedy set in the not-too-distant future. A guy works at a "Dream Factory" (would you like to go ahead and guess the amateurish central plot device now?), and is replaced in his job by an all-too-perfect robot. So, our hero spends the duration of the first two thirds of the film trying to make the robot malfunction so he can get his job back. Overall, the film is funny, but it doesn't run the risk of being confused with hilarious. It also lasts about 15 minutes too long -- not good when you've got an 80 minute run time. But some of the gags are actually pretty funny (the huge drink servings at restaurants, for example). The lead actor is fairly decent, the female lead is kinda not, but Peter Mooney, who plays the robot, is really pretty fantastic (and I'm not just saying that because I thought he was really cute). The movie never entirely bored me, though I can't really recommend it, either. In hindsight, I probably should have seen something else that afternoon.

Tootsie (****.5/5)
Yeah, that Tootsie. I'm not going to bother reviewing it, because you know what this movie is. It was at the festival because Sydney Pollack was there to introduce it and do a Q&A. The really funny thing about the Q&A was that all Sydney Pollack wanted to do was talk about working with Bill Murray. I found that both odd and very funny. Pollack seemed like a nice, down-to-earth kinda guy in a neurotic introverted filmmakery sort of a way. It was great to see this with an audience.

The Night of the White Pants (No Rating)
I interned on this one (my name is in the credits), so I can't really give a very good, unbiased review of the film. But let me just say that I thought the script was pretty decent, and that the finished film is much better than the script. It's a little rough around the edges, and there is some sound stuff that needs to get worked out before it sees distribution, but my understanding is that they're working out a deal with Warner Independent right now to do a limited release for next spring. My name will be on screens all across the country! It really is cool to see something that I worked on actually making it into distribution, even if my contribution to the production basically consisted of breaking the copying machine, fixing the copying machine, putting brads in scripts, and moving furniture around.

Death of a President (***.5/5)
This movie is getting resoundingly terrible reviews, which is a shame, because I found it pretty interesting. Of course, I'm a sucker for fictions that are tangential to reality. It's just a specific kind of story that I happen to really like. But I will say that it was not the film I expected to see, nor is it the film that probably most people are expecting to see. Nor is it the film that most of the people who don't want to see it probably think it is. After an incredibly tense, almost claustrophobically anxious first thirty minutes, the remaining hour essentially boils down to an FBI procedural. For all the brouhaha the film stirred up in the news a few months ago, it's criticisms of US policy are fairly primitive. The film's statement is against all forms of violence -- not just unjust wars, but rioting crowds, bullying policemen, and acts of terror. In its scattershot effort to condemn all kinds of violence, it fails to provide a very insightful critique of any of them. Nevertheless, this was a very, very interesting film.

Garden State

2006-10-25T15:06:00.000-05:00

I had a midterm exam in my 2PM class today. But that wasn't why I was nervously counting down the minutes and hours until 3e/2c this afternoon. It was because this was the time that the decision on the New Jersey Supreme Court's case Lewis v. Harris was expected to be announced. This is the case which sought to prove that the state's laws defining marriage were unfair in that they failed to provide equal rights for same-sex couples. Essentially, this decision would say whether or not New Jersey would become the second state in the country to allow marriages between same-sex couples.

As soon as I turned in my exam, I dashed down the hall to the nearest computer lab -- where I now sit -- to read the decision.

I never thought I'd say this: I love New Jersey.

HELD: Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same-sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.

So says the beginning of the 90-page document provided by the court clerk (and available in PDF form here) which goes on to say that the state legislature has 180 days to amend the state's marriage statutes or create new statutes which reflect this decision.

In short, the state has six months to legalize partner rights between same-sex couples under either the name of marriage (supported by 50% of the voters of the state) or civil unions (supported by 65%).

I'll save my frustration with a 15-point gap over semantics for another time, but for now, allow me to repeat myself: I love New Jersey.

The statutory and decisional laws of this State protect individuals from discrimination based on sexual orientation. When those individuals are gays and lesbians who follow the inclination of their sexual orientation and enter into a committed relationship with someone of the same sex, our laws treat them, as couples, differently than heterosexual couples. As committed same-sex partners, they are not permitted to marry or to enjoy the multitude of social and financial benefits and privileges conferred on opposite-sex married couples.

...(T)he unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our State Constitution.

When you live in Texas, you forget that there are legal documents being written out there in the world that are grounded in concepts like reason and equality. You know, your basic founding of the republic, hold-these-truths-to-be-self-evident sort of things.

Election day is two weeks away, and with same-sex marriage bans looking to fail on the ballots in Arizona and Wisconsin (though likely to pass in several other states), this could be a watershed year in the fight for equal rights.

Good job everybody. Keep it up.

You're On Notice

2006-10-24T14:42:00.000-05:00

We interrupt the write-ups of films from the Austin Film Festival to inform some of you fuckers that...

You're On Notice!

David Cross - A baby that throws up? Holy shit, man, that's comedy genius. Freak Show forever, man. This kind of wit and intelligence puts it right up there with Drawn Together. Be proud, Mr. Cross. Be proud.
BCS Rankings - Computers doing humans' jobs is the beginning of the end. Especially when those computers are stupid and don't know that losing to the number 1 team is less of a big deal than losing to an unranked team.
Jeffrey Sebelia - It was a close one between you and Queen Mother of the Over-rated, Laura Bennett. But I think Laura and I could at least carry on a conversation. You're kinda douchey. Kinda alot.
Frank Miller - Let's take a little longer on All-Star Batman, shall we? I mean, we don't want to rush out-of-character asshole dialogue and comical violence bordering on self-parody, do we? If the 300 movie sucks, you move to the "Dead to Me" Board.
Ugly Betty - Stop sucking. You should be so much fun. I get your gay-appeal, but you're missing your share of, um, brains. And that certain, um, not-suck-ness that makes shows watchable.
"Random" - Oh, wow, that was unexpected. It came out of nowhere. This makes it "random." And therefore hilarious. Except for... no, it doesn't. And that's not even what random means. So shut up.
Closeted Celebrities - You know who you are. And anybody who cares knows who you are, too. Tom. Anderson. Mr. Schwimmer... It's okay.
Dallas Cowboys - Christ almighty, will you get your shit together? Please? For the love of God?

Special thanks to Michael Hartney for pointing out the first useful blog meme ever. Make your own Stephen Colbert-esque On Notice Board right here.

Austin Film Festival: Day One, 10/19

2006-10-23T19:01:00.000-05:00

I certainly haven't seen all there is to see or done all there is to do at the festival so far, due to school and what I think is a minor cold. But I have made it out to see some pretty good stuff so far.

The TV Set (***.5/5)
A feature from writer-director Jake Kasdan of Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared fame about a TV writer (David Duchovny) struggling to get his pilot for a show finished and on the air without having it mangled and destroyed by the network along the way. Bitter much? Sigourney Weaver is hysterical as a charismatic, egotistical network exec with no taste, and Lost fans will love M.C. Gainey as a D.P. who seems to have some serious anti-social tendencies. It's clever as all hell, and most of the time very, very funny, but in terms of storytelling, it lacks closure for most of the characters' arcs-- especially Ioan Gruffud's character, who has an oddly dramatic story that doesn't really gel with the rest of the picture. I also do wonder how well the film would play for a less production-savvy audience than at a, um, screenwriters' festival. Overall, though, I enjoyed watching it, and I can't wait to see it with some of my filmmaking buddies.

The Queen (****/5)
One of the "Marquee Screenings" for the festival is this one with Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in the weeks following the death of Princess Diana. She's going to get nominated for an Oscar for this one -- and not just because she plays a british monarch, though that's usually enough for a nod, but because she's actually very good in the role. Depending on how much attention the film gets around awards season, expect some nominations for Michael Sheen's pitch-perfect Tony Blair as well. The film deals with the tension between Blair's brand new "modernist" administration and the stubbornly dignified "old ways" of the royal family, and how the two begin to clash over the public handling of Diana's death. It paints everyone in a sympathetic light, making subtle statements about both how out of touch the monarchy can be, and the need for nationalistic nostalgia and respect for old traditions. This is 2006's version of the award winner that nobody saw.

Fictional Narrative Docu-drama?

2006-10-22T14:38:00.000-05:00

I've been going to the Austin Film Festival for the last few days because of that pass I won as part of my screenwriting scholarship. I had meant to do a day-by-day write up of the films I had seen, and I was going to start today by writing up the films I saw on Thursday. But I wanted to go ahead and post this.

One of the "Marquee Screenings" for the festival had been listed as "TBA #2" for the longest time. They told us on Thursday that at 11:59 on Saturday night, the festival website would say what the film was. This didn't turn out to be true, as I was up well into the morning last night, hoping to find out what the film was.

So, one of the first things I did when I got up today was checked to see if they had announced the title of "TBA #2." The following message greeted me:

AUSTIN FILM FESTIVAL PRESENTS FIRST U.S. PUBLIC SCREENING OF “DEATH OF A PRESIDENT”

Hot.

Damn.

I'm actually really curious about this film. Most of the time, these sort of big, sensationalistic kinds of things that get the "media watchdogs" on the right all up in arms are usually not worth the attention they get (read: Rockstar's Bully). But what I've heard is that this is actually a fairly deep and powerful film. I'm very, very curious about it.

Top Bunk

2006-10-16T10:30:00.000-05:00

My older brother Austin and my dad came to visit me at school this weekend. We went to the Baylor vs. Texas football game (there are jokes to be made about Austin coming to Austin to visit Baylor and see UT Austin play Baylor... all of them are punny, none of them are funny, so I won't make one), and saw Colt McCoy break the school record for touchdown passes thrown in a game. We also hit up many of the wonderful places to eat offered by the great city of Austin.

Lincoln, my roommate, sacrificed his bed and spent the night at the place of our mutual friends, so that Austin and dad wouldn't have to get a hotel. It was wonderful getting to spend some time with them, and I was glad they both came to visit.

However...

Both of them have a snoring problem.

Like, bad.

As I was being kept up on Saturday night, I had the time to come up with the perfect metaphor to describe the roaring gasping fury going on beneath me.

"Like a pack of wild javelinas being attacked by a polar bear."

Satisfied, I drifted off to sleep.

See the World in Green and Blue... and (RED)

2006-10-13T23:20:00.000-05:00

This may be the greatest thing Bono has ever done.

And this coming from a tremendous U2 fan.

www.joinred.com

I'm getting shirts. You should, too.

There are these days -- and they're coming more frequently now -- where I feel like all of these scary things are transient. Where I feel like real people are being proactive and effecting change. And I feel good about the world.

Imitate Art

2006-10-12T17:14:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago in my American Cinema of the 1930's class, we watched this pretty awful Marlene Dietrich movie called Blonde Venus. In it, Cary Grant, Marlene's rich suitor, offers her ex-husband something like ten thousand dollars to let her see their son for five minutes. To prove that he's a tough independent guy, he refuses the money, but lets her see the kid for ten minutes. Ten! Because money doesn't matter to him! It's so dramatic, and emotional!

I roll my eyes, because it's such a lame, overused device in old movies where somebody proves their honorable by throwing away free money. It's not that I don't respect the idea, but it's usually a grotesque overstatement being made by the characters in these cheesy, cheesy movies.

Walking back to my place from the Communication Building where the screening was held, I walked past one of those poster kiosk/message board thingies that are all over campus. I absently glanced at it, and saw this flyer, which I will paraphrase, posted on it:

BLACK LEATHER WALLET STOLEN
from Painter Hall room XXXXX
Call: (512) XXX - XXXX w/ info
Keep the cash and the cards,
Just PLEASE return my photos!

Now, that's a tear-jerker.