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Archive for October, 2001


2001.10.30 where's paul?

(or, the playa strikes again.)

continuing the story of our trip to bloomington, let me first explain yesterday's "hey, is moves there" thing. it's a kevin smith reference. basically, when kevin and jason mewes were first hanging out, jason was still a 15 year old virgin, whereas kevin had had some "exploits." when kevin told jason that he had, in fact, kissed a girl, jason from then on called him "moves."

anyway, after the thoroughly enjoyable visit with Kevin "moves" Smith, paul, nathan, and i grabbed some grub at the Bell, some refreshments at Marsh, then headed home for a relaxing rest of the evening (it was already close to, or later than midnight) of playstation 2 and some Batman Beyond on DVD. Since i'd never gotten to see the first few episodes (or any episodes, really) of batman beyond, i enjoyed the pilot movie and first episode quite a bit.

we did crash before too long, since we'd all had full work days, a moderately long drive, and a four hour sit in a crowded auditorium.

the next day, nate and his wonderful girlfriend heather took us out to lunch, then to the comic shop and little kids toy store (heather had to buy some gifts for her little nieces.) in the toy store, nate and i had a great time playing with magnets for more than a half-hour. i think i'm way too easily amused. i also ended up buying one of those little balsa wood wind-up rubber band planes.

after all this fun stuff, we went back to Marsh to gather groceries for dinner, then back to the house to chill for a while. nate and i (primarily) played quite a few rounds of Gran Turismo 3, with paul jumping in occasionally. we watched the rest of the batman beyond episodes (four in all, i think) and "Mask of the Phantasm" (yet another batman animated movie…) while we were all in the living room, doing our guy things heather was working up a storm preparing some delicious chicken enchiladas and (makeshift, but very tasty) spanish rice. we also spent quite a bit of time outside in their huge yard winding up and tossing around the little airplane. it as actually a lot more fun, and lasted a lot longer than i expected it to.

all the while dinner was cooking, heather was putting the finishing touches on her and nathan's costumes (blossom and space ghost, respectively). finally after dinner had been eaten and all the preparations had been made, we hopped in the car and headed for the party.

now, the people who's party we were going to, were (pretty much) all grad students and all psych majors. fortunately, the party wasn't nearly as weird as i thought it would be. despite the fact that i was pretty much in neanderthal non-talking matt mode most of the night, i had a good time. the crew had gone to great lengths to decorate for halloween, and pretty much every room or available space was decked out in gory halloween fright-fare. zombies in the front yard, a mad scientist in the living room, pitchforks mounted on the drum kit, and all sorts of other things, including a (motion-sensitive) skeleton hanging in the bathroom that sang "bad to the bone" every time you went to take a leak. they'd even built a maze in the back yard by hanging black plastic tarps or garbage bags or something and putting scary things in the nooks and crannies of the maze. it was, needless to say, a big to-do.

later in the evening, paul, nathan, and one of the house residents picked up the musical instruments and jammed a little. at one point, paul took off and handed me the guitar. we jammed for a little bit and kind of hit our stride on a song or two despite the fact that i was feeling uncomfortable about my lack of really rockin guitar playing ability, paul eventually came back, picked up the mic, and started to sing.

if you notice in the first paul pic, his little cowgirl's right there in the background… which leads to the next part of the story (of which, paul would have more to say than me…). apparently, paul was feeling a bit frisky that night (way friskier than me, anyhow) and after talking to several girls, got invited to go run around town with them. they were headed to a different party, then to a bar. from the story heather told, paul was uncertain at first, but heather insisted… "go. go! we'll find you." so, at heather's prompting, paul took off to parts unknown with girls unknown. go puffin go, indeed. i, for one, enjoyed living vicariously through paul's ability to throw caution to the wind and take off with strange, beautiful (drunk) women.

we were still jamming when paul left, so i got a great kick out of heather whispering in my ear "paul took off with a girl!"

myself, i stayed right there, sat for a couple hours (in between warm-up visits to the indoors) out on the front porch listening to psych majors talk about bloomington or Indiana things, smoking cigarettes, and freezing my ass off.

we went back home late late late and nathan made the "concerned fatherly" call to his friend who'd run off with paul, to make sure our boy was being taken care of. in the morning, through a series of phone calls, heather located him and brought him back while i drifted in and out of sleep.

most of sunday was another lazy day, punctuated by a good lunch and the eventual necessity of saying goodbyes.

all in all, as i've said before, i had a great time, and i look forward to the next time i get to visit. even if there won't be Kevin Smith or a hottie psych major halloween party.

- 06:15 pm - PL :: 18 Comments
categories ::  Comics - Drinking - Friends - Girls - Music - Pleased/Like - Travel - TV

 

2001.10.30 play time is near:

while i'm here at work thinking about it, i should probably write the post i've been promising my co-worker i'd write for several months.

mainly it's to point you guys to his site www.ae4rv.com so you can go get your fun on. geoff has several nice flash games that he's been working on. the big daddy of his games is his (nearly) world-famous version of asteroids/lunar lander called Flashteroids. it's a pretty complex little game that can be quite challenging. he's started liscensing the asteroids portion of the game for a few sites, and even has a custom version (called "Hendroids") up on the phil hendrie show's funhouse.

really though, as far as i'm concerned, the nuclear powerplant simulator is his best game so far… and it's not even finished. but he's threatening to one-up himself with his newest game, the flash based WWII Pacific Theater war game.

he's also got a nice High Frequency Radio Propagation Primer (primarily for HAM Ops, but an instructional piece for the layman as well…) which will soon be featured at the Swiss Museum of Transportation and Communication. (and probably on their site, as well, assuming they can get it working properly.)

anyway, check it out, play some games and enjoy yourself.

- 03:34 pm - PL :: 1 Comment
categories ::  Computers/Tech - Cool Links - Friends

 

2001.10.30 i will if you will:

a reader made some interesting comments to one of my past posts the other day, and i've just now had time to catch up on things.

read the comments to that post for a little fun discourse.

(gotta have something to keep you busy 'til i can finish the bloomington stories…)

- 01:03 am - PL ::
categories ::  Calls to Action

 

2001.10.29 a visit with Kevin Smith:

(or, how i lost my ass)

let me start out with this: Kevin Smith is a funny motherfucker–smart, witty, insightful–but then, we knew this already.

paul & i got off work on friday and hauled ass up to Bloomington, IN for a weekend visit with our close friends. we made good time, surprisingly, considering we left during rush hour and the interstate was packed all the way to the bloomington exit, as was the two-lane highway you have to take to actually reach bloomington. we basically got out long enough to stretch our legs, visit the facilities, and greet the pets (and their owners, of course), and then we were off to see the king of the dick & fart jokes.

the plan, according to the show "program," was for Kevin to talk for about an hour, maybe two, then to go to the lobby to sign autographs. well, apparently Kevin has something of a problem with authority.

once he got on stage, he almost immediately opened the floor up for the Q&A session, explaining that he wasn't really much of a public speaker, and felt more comfortable answering questions.

as soon as the first person spoke, he started busting the poor guy's balls, as he would continue to do for the rest of the evening. one thing Kevin Smith can handle is hecklers and morons. that was almost the most fun part of the evening, listening to him berate those who just got up for attention and not because they had a decent question. it was all in good fun though–he was never really hostile, just having a good time.

frequently, when people would hit on a good subject (or even sometimes when they didn't) he'd go off on a funny story for 15 or 20 minutes. at one point, he talked for almost 45 minutes about his experiences working with Prince at some week-long Paisley Park event.

we got to hear about how he met Jason Mewes (jason originally was an acquaintance of some of kevin's friends, and when they got tired of jason, he ended up bugging kevin until he gave up and decided to hang out with him.) he related the story about the time he and his friends were working in some recreational center, and jason just walked in the room and gave blow jobs to all the even slightly phallic objects in the room (for 15 minutes, without so much as a word to those in the room) until he reached a centipede (i think) arcade game. since there wasn't anything phallic on the arcade machine, he just went down on the rollerball. (the story was much funnier when kevin told it…)

at one point, kevin's cell-phone rang, and he answered it. after a brief conversation he told the audience that the caller wanted to say hello, and held the phone speaker up to the mic. we heard the unmistakable voice of jason mewes yelling "whazzup!" after a couple seconds kevin put the phone back up and jason asked "where's all the indiana ass?!" it was a funny little interruption that again loses a little in the translation. probably the funniest part was just hearing kevin's one-sided conversation with mewes. "yeah, there's about 3200 people here." … "dude i gotta go, i'll call you when i get done."

the prince story was about the week he went to minneapolis at Prince's request, and was asked to film a documentary about the religion themed event (partly a pre-release event for Prince's new album). kevin discovered through the course of the week that Prince was now a Jehova's Witness and had become rather a freak about the whole religion thing. he did say though, that for the first time, Prince joined the visitors to the park and presided over many of the religious discussions kevin was filming for the documentary. it was an interesting story about life in the park, and about being under the direct influence of one of the most eccentric people alive today. as an aside, i love prince's music, but i'm afraid this album may be too much of a stretch for even me, mr. eclectic.

after about two hours, the people running the show were telling the people in the question lines to sit back down, that the time was up. when one of the questioners told kevin this, he mentioned how he didn't like to sign autographs, but would rather just answer questions until everyone was ready to call it a night. the union board (i think is who was "in charge") trying unsuccessfully to shut down the mics and ask kevin to please leave the stage, but kevin didn't leave, and the people who'd gotten back into the question lines wouldn't sit down. people were booing the poor ushers out of the hall (at least, until they just gave up and let kevin and the audience do what they wanted). kevin proceeded to talk for two more hours.

i'd like to relate more funny stories, but really, the funniest parts of the evening were him riffing off of the audience, and ripping into the occasional idiot with little enough self-respect to get up and ask a stupid question or make a stupid comment.

seeing kevin smith speak for four hours was more than worth the two hour drive up to bloomington, even if i hadn't been up there primarily to visit friends, and if you're in the area where he's going to be speaking, do yourself a favor and grab a ticket any way you can. you'll be glad you did. (this is all, of course, assuming you even like Kevin Smith. if you don't like him, you probably shouldn't go.)

i've just found a post by Kevin himself about some of the night's events.

paul's just informed me that his post about the weekend is now up as well. — go read it after you finish reading mine! (that's if you can stand to read anymore, anyway)

so, there ya go. tomorrow i'll post a little more about the weekend, probably about a little less specific stuff–more about the weekend in general and some of the highlights.

tomorrow: "where's paul?"

today: "hey, is moves there?"

- 06:53 pm - PL ::
categories ::  Friends - Music - Pop Culture - Raves - Society - Travel

 

2001.10.29 next time on…:

well, i've just gotten home from a weekend in bloomington… erm. that's not entirely accurate. i've just gotten home from band practice that i went to almost immediately upon returning home from bloomington. unfortunately, it's almost midnight and a half, so i'll just say right now that i had a great time, and i can't wait to tell you guys about it when i get a moment tomorrow. i may have four days worth of posts just from this one weekend!

tomorrow: "a visit with Kevin Smith"

tonight: i want to publicly thank Nathan and Heather for putting up with paul and i again for a weekend. you guys are the best , and i love you both!

- 12:24 am - PL ::
categories ::  Friends - Raves - Travel

 

2001.10.21 low-key, way to be:

my weekend so far has been surprisingly eventfully non-eventful. on thursday (technically not the weekend, i suppose) paul, brax, & i went to the wonderful if somewhat uncomfortable baxter avenue theatre to see "apocalypse now: redux." having only seen the original maybe once before, many many years ago, it was like seeing it for the first time. i've gotta say that movie is very long. most of my friends don't agree with me that they could have cut probably at least 30 minutes (aside from the 40 minutes of added "redux" footage) from the movie. i just feel that there were several places in the movie that could have been made quite a bit more succinct and which probably would have increased the emotional/psychological impact of the film as a whole. i liked it, don't get me wrong. i just think i could have liked it more.

friday i finally got to hang out with brian some, as planned. we went and did a little bit of the coffeeshop hopping that we had planned, but brian didn't seem to be quite as into it as when we'd discussed it earlier. we mainly walked up and down bardstown road for a while. we did run into the infamous MC Seth-yo (of the much appreciated wraith computer systems, our benevolent site hosts) at one of our stops, but i didn't get to speak to him much as the barristas inside took about 30 minutes to deal with the two customers in front of me. ah well.

after grabbing some grub, brian and i went back to chill and digest at my place, where we ran into paul and (brian's roomie, my former roomie) jess. jess begged and pleaded with me to go with her and paul to see the 10:'ish showing of "from hell," but i bowed out because i'd promised to hang with brian (and he was planning to go to a later showing with some other friends). well, as it turned out, the later showing didn't actually exist, so we tried to call guy & scott and see if they wanted to go to the 10 o'clock. unable to get hold of them, we jumped in the car and raced to the baxter to meet up with jess & paul. after finding them (actually, we beat them there) we settled in.

i thought the movie was great. really quite good. well acted, well directed. good visuals. gruesome in all the right places. paul wasn't as impressed with it, ostensibly because he "already knew the story." ah well. you can't please everyone. which is, i'm sure, what he'd say regarding my opinions on "star wars episode 1: the phantom menace."

saturday found me sleeping in after a longish night of carousing at the backdoor (where we met an old friend from back in the murray days, alan who's finally graduated with a double major and is planning on going for his doctorate… who'da thunk it?!). i think i finally got up around 6:00 pm, not having gone to bed until about 6:00 am. shortly after getting up, brian called and we ran out to fazoli's to get some grub. met up with guy there, went to the unfortunately closed compusa, then to target, then home. after that, the night was entirely low-key, sitting around, watching paul's new "phantom menace" dvd, which, unfortunately didn't increase my appreciation for the movie at all.

today… another low-key day. went to BK for lunch, probably going out with jess in a little bit for ice cream, then later, the sunday band practice.

i'd have to say, it's actually been a pretty eventful, fun-filled weekend. still haven't gotten shit done, but that's the way it goes.

- 04:36 pm - PL :: 2 Comments
categories ::  Comics - Drinking - Friends - Movies

 

2001.10.15 feed me:

it has occurred to me that my creativity is like an anemic little creature hidden away in the basement of my life. at least, that's the way it seems looking back on the past few years. it seems that it's just been feeding off of things from the past–not really growing or coming up with anything new.

i used to write scads of poems every day, i used to run around with a camera and take pictures of mundane objects or contrived still life settings. i used to read constantly. i used to make lots & lots of coffee and stay up all hours of the night talking with friends, writing, and listening to and playing music. i used to live to create new things or experience the creations of others.

now, i really miss that. now, i really want to find that part of me again.

the past few years i've been showing people old books of poetry, old short stories, old barely begun fragments of novels, old photographs, old paintings, and talking about how much i loved doing them and how much i still enjoy the creative process.

the most creativity i've expressed in this time has been here in this weblog or with the band i'm playing in. even these things, half the time, just feel like i'm going through the motions.

and, of course, the time of year doesn't help matters any. during the summer month's i'm always too hot, always just wanting to sit down and escape the heat and humidity. in the winter months i always get soulful and introspective, more often than not going beyond the point where those things are able to fuel the creative processes.

i keep thinking about it though, and i know that at some point it's going to be me, a notebook, a pack of cigarettes, and a cup of coffee. again. just like old times.

- 08:04 pm - PL :: 14 Comments
categories ::  Lucifigous Prick - Nostalgia - Rants - Upset/Dislike - Writing

 

2001.10.02 i dream of emasculation:

well, it's time for my bi-weekly post to what was once my daily obsession…

i've been so disconnected for a while… between a few months of hell at work (which are now thankfully starting to slow down and normalize) and the "free time" that seems to be slowly dwindling away from me through some unknown time vortex, i've barely been on my computer in a communicative, productive capacity at all in the last several weeks anyway.

of course, i spend 8 hours a day on the computer, and perhaps that's part of it… perhaps i'm finally starting to burn out on the whole computer thing. i really don't think that's the case, but i have to entertain it as at least a possibility.

really, though, after the events of Sept. 11th, the aftermath of that, and between buying DVDs, PS2 games, and not one, but two games for my PC, i've basically been doing the late 90's teenager thing of vegging in front of the boob tube or drooling in front of a 3D computer gamespace.

maybe i'm due… i never got into this stuff all that much in the past… was never much of a computer game player. of course, occasionally a couple days of my life would get sucked out by the PS1 at a time, but that was usually a rare every three or four months thing. it's just been happening a bit more often lately.

but yeah, so, we saw the series premier of Enterprise last wednesday, and it was pretty damn good. except that opening theme music which was utter crap. in fact, it was worse than that. the opening theme to Enterprise is so bad that i can't even conceive of the words to adequately describe level of disgust i feel for it.

and i bought the V mini-series DVD a weekend or so ago. it was just as good though even more cheesy than i remembered. the scene where the alien 2nd in command swallows the gerbil, or whatever it was, was just laughable.

and i've been having weird dreams lately. the first i remember was one i think i had the night i watched the first half of the V DVD, which apparently was my mind combining the World Trade Center attacks with the V story. we were up in a tall building some 200 stories up, and all of a sudden the building just leans over and falls to the ground. we're alive but scrambling to get out and to find people with our high-tech devices. we eventually make it to a house, but it's quickly taken over by what is apparently a human militia group and we're kicked out on our ass.

not sure what that all means, i guess it was just my subconscious trying to come to grips.

other dreams have come and gone, but this morning it was dreams about my ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend (previously dubbed "idiot-jerk") who were being nice if not overtly friendly towards me. i'm guessing that this dream was trying to tell me to forgive "idiot-jerk" and get over it and on with my life or whatever, but i don't think i can do that. forgive him, i mean. i think i'd like to hold onto that for a little while longer.

otherwise, i've been happy and healthy (a little too healthy if my expanding waist-line is any indication…) and apparently never without something to do.

and now, it's time for me to get out of here a little early so the systems guys can rape my machine and infect it with the Visual Studio .NET virus. apparently, i'm going to have to learn to deal with even more Microsoft crap. bah. bill gates, i spit on thee.

- 05:17 pm - PL :: 1 Comment
categories ::  Computers/Tech - Ex-Girlfriends - Nostalgia - Pleased/Like - Pop Culture - Rants - Society - TV - Upset/Dislike - Work

 


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