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Friday, 20 July 2001 (still walking) 11:47am (If you haven't seen Memento yet, this entry could be considered a spoiler. It doesn't reveal anything that isn't established in the first ten minutes of the film—or in the first two paragraphs of every single review, for that matter—but you've been warned. By the way, Billy Zane's character deflowers Audrey Horne in Twin Peaks. And while I'm at it, I'm going to reveal the big secret about The Crying Game: Forest Whitaker isn't really British. He's just acting.)
I've figured out why Memento is doing such great repeat business
amongst artsy types such as myself. It's not to watch again knowing the
secrets of the story and how it all fits together. It's because we tend to
be cat owners, and it's a dead-on representation of what it would be like to
have a cat's attention span. Especially, as Maddy pointed out, the part where
Carrie-Anne Moss leaves the house, sits in the car for a few minutes and comes
back in. Tell me your cat wouldn't react the same way.
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Thursday, 19 July 2001 (beachy head) 9:25am Feh. The file is corrupt. Well, "corrupt" may be too highfalutin a term. It don't work. The search continues. 10:28am With hope that weeknight crowds would be slightly more tolerable than those on the weekends (we were mistaken), we went to Chez Target last night. The first available parking space was next to a gaggle of abandoned shopping carts. (Now that I think about, I think they were actually a murder, not a gaggle. I get those confused sometimes.) When we returned to the car, the carts were gone, and we discovered they'd been in a handicapped spot. Ain't that America? The total is $30.23. Exhibiting too much confidence in their math and/or counting skills, I hand the clerk a two twenties and a quarter. "Out of forty," they say, and type $40.00 into the register. "I gave you a quarter," I object, before they open the register. They give me a dirty look and say "I know," then change the amount to $40.25. Yes, of course. Silly me.
For as much effort as I'm putting into feeling more comfortable in this
world, I wonder sometimes if this world is really worth the effort.
Interestingly, I'd originally seen the movie in the theater the previous September with The Other and The Ex. Afterwards, The Other commented—and for some reason I can still picture this vividly, her standing there, cigarette in hand, a look on her face bordering on thoughtful—that the movie had given her a new respect for drag queens. Previously she'd disliked them greatly, had always wanted to say to them, "Stop flaming, boys!" It's astonishing to think that this was before our relationship really picked up, that I wasn't scared off by her occasional displays of open resentment and hatred towards others. But those were different times.
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Wednesday, 18 July 2001 (20 jazz funk greats) 9:58am I wonder if Godwin's Law can be applied to complaining about The Department of Parking and Transportation. It's astonishing how often I've heard them referred to as fascists just because a car got ticketed. Of course, the meter had never run out, nor had the person been parking in one place longer than the signs allowed—gosh, no, it's intentional persecution, honest...
Yeah, I've been ticketed before, and it sucks. But they're just doing their job. Be glad
it's not yours.
I'd start sooner, but too much is happening before the end of the month, most of it the weekend after next: Lucinda Williams, Jonathan Richman and a party which Orky assures me is not to be missed. He's also tells me that before it, "The Item" will be at hand, and the long drought will be over. It's about time. So last night I found the first half of Star Wars Episode 1.1: The Phatom Edit in mpeg format on Morpheus and started downloading. Being roughly 580MB on a PacBell DSL it was still downloading when we left for work this morning, but at least I didn't lose the connection (again, I'm on PacBell DSL which means I'm almost guaranteed to get kicked off between 9-11pm), and it should be done by now. Granted, I won't be able to play it on my computer at home, which faints in terror at the thought of running video. So I'll see if Nero can convert it into a VCD, and if not—Nero is extremely fickle about these things—I'll just bring the mpeg work and make sure it actually functions. It's a lot of work, but if you're of a mindset, it's fun as hell. Still, it would be nice to be able to skip a step; to that effect, one of Maddy's few decent coworkers (a sweet gay boy of the kind that makes her want to cook soup) in the otherwise kindergarten-esque IT department has agreed to work on my computer, essentially nuking it and reinstalling '98 from scratch. If that doesn't work, then I'll get a new grapics card, but hopefully that won't be necessary. Anyway, he was originally going to do it last Thursday, but the company picnic threw a kink into that, and Friday was no good because there was no guarantee he'd have it done in time for the weekend. (Yes, I'm that bad.) We would have brought it in Monday, excepting for the fact that his vacation was scheduled to start Tuesday, and that seemed like a bit too much pressure, especially for a computer as notoriously screwy as mine. So it'll have to wait until he gets back, which won't be until the end of the month. So be it.
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Tuesday, 17 July 2001 (adremochrome) 9:44am My midsection has been sore for the last couple days, which is one of the reasons we went to a movie last night rather than working out as originally planned. In all likelihood it's because I started doing crunches this weekend, and, well, I crunched my stomach. For want of a better way to put it. Still, based on the pain equals progress equation, that means I'm doing the right thing and should continue with it.
But it huuuuurts. So we're going to a movie again tonight, probably The Anniversary
Party. See how it works?
(Look! A segue!) We went to our favorite sushi place on Saturday after the movie, only to discover that they'd changed their menu and raised the prices. The two do tend to go hand in hand, and though I liked the old design better, they still have the best prices in town. Actually, that's not quite true, since it's out of town, which may account for why it's still so inexpensive. No asparagus, though. Since our last time there Maddy was introduced to the joy of asparagus maki by Pike, and she was looking forward to trying it there. No such luck. Nothing's perfect, I guess. It still beats Blowfish. (Look! Another segue!) (In truth, it's a complete change in topic, without anything connecting the two. So it's not a segue at all.) There was a line outside the women's room at The Red Vic; ahead of us was a fairly...um...chatty woman. You know the type, I'm sure. Anyway, both Maddy and I were expecting her to look at me and point out that the men's room was unoccupied. Never did happen. I was in full battle gear, but that doesn't mean I pass completely, not by a long shot. Nor can I realistically expect to. Still, though. Go figure. Thursday afternoon we were driving down Battery towards Market, and I saw a woman getting into a car. She was roughly Anodyne's size—which is to say, not much shorter than me—with black bangs and pigtails, black boots, black leggings and a top which was essentially a long shirt, but not shapeless. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all (name the movie!), but she immediately became my new role model. Pity I'll never get a chance to tell her.
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Monday, 16 July 2001 (a million scars, a million promises) 7:42am If it's called Hellman's east of the Rockies and Best Foods west of the Rockies, what's in called in the Rockies? 11:33am We had a departmental meeting this morning, the first one I've attended since the last round of layoffs. There's so few people left, it almost feels like a startup. (Not that I've ever worked at a startup—I haven't even seen Startup.com yet, sadly—but I can imagine.) In a way it's kinda depressing, but on the plus side, people that I didn't like are gone now, including but not limited to The Fidget Queen. Pike and Leigh are still among us, which is also very good. The Dreaded Russian Guy has gotten a promotion of some kind, but it probably won't affect me much. It's quite nice to be insulated from the managerial torrents, although I know my luck is going to run out eventually. 1:45pm let that be a reminder: there will always be people who put scare quotes around your name, no matter what. period. they have more of a right to do it than you have to ask them not to, and no court in this or any other land will ever suggest otherwise. they're just speaking the truth. 4:37pm Chatted for a bit with Zaleska. Neither of us had much to say, but it was nice nonetheless. Sometimes it's nice just to be remembered.
Maddy's been looking into the procedure for changing her name, to rid
herself of her ex-husband's surname. Even if it wasn't difficult to pronounce,
it would still have unpleasant associations for her. Anyway, at this rate
we may end up changing our names at the same time. How romantic is that?
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Sunday, 15 July 2001 (reinforcement) 7:41am We weren't very good about making it to the gym this week—I don't think we went at all, though I could be misremembering—though I went yesterday morning and I'm about to go again. Weekends are better than nothing, I suppose. I do wish my self-worth wasn't so negatively associated with my waistline, but that's how it is, and it's been that way for a very long time. 6:01pm The night of the Dyke March (why yes, we only just got the pictures developed), a carpet-bombing approach was used to advertise Margaret Cho's concert this September. As advertising goes I guess it was fairly effective, since we bought tickets the next day.
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Saturday, 14 July 2001 (citadels and minarets) 10:52pm Never ones to pass up a good (or otherwise) junkie flick, we saw Blow today at The Red Vic. It's really the best place to see mainstream movies, and they all seem to end up there eventually. Unfortunately, sitting behind us was a couple would have fit in better in a multiplex. Yes, fine, people in the seventies wore funny clothes and had hairstyles generally different from this point in time. We get it. The people around you don't need to have the fact that Johnny Depp has big sideburns loudly announced. Thank you, drive through.
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Friday, 13 July 2001 (messianic ghosts) 1:50pm Walking through Union Square this morning, I saw a store employee putting up a sign with the words "Christain Dior." I wonder how long it'll take for someone to notice the misspelling. Kinda reminds me of the time we saw a handwritten sign at Chevy's describing an item as being served on a "sizzling trey." Being South Park fans, we got a hearty chuckle out of that one. I also ran into Demi. It's always nice to see her, and we haven't talked since before her and Crawford broke up. I didn't bring that up, of course, since I'm sure she's tired of talking about it. She did suggest that I email her so we could get together sometime; maybe I'll get the story then. It's none of my business, but I can't deny beng curious. And I admit that I'd like to think it took just a little of the piss out of Crawford, but somehow I doubt that's the case. So yesterday was the company's annual summer picnic, and in keeping with tradition I skipped it and did something interesting: Maddy and I went to see Tomb Raider. Don't look at me like that; I've seen Memento twice, okay? Even movie geeks can't live on bread alone. Anyway, it was fun. I had to keep reminding myself that it's not just a movie, it's a movie based on a video game. If you remember that, you'll do just fine. For as bad as packed evening shows at multiplexes can be, relatively empty middle-of-a-weekday shows can be equally perilous. Like when we saw Book of Shadows, a man who was either homeless or had a terminally short attention span wandered in halfway through, sat entirely too close to us, and left after half an hour no doubt to bounce into another theater. The fact that this time he spent most of the time staring at Maddy didn't help.
Two of the trailers we were assaulted with (can't they leave the lights up just enough for
me to keep reading until the movie actually starts?) featured blantat homophobic jokes,
of the "Oh no! That woman's actually a MAN!" and the "Oh no! That faggot thinks I'm
one, too!" varieties. (From The Rat Race and Rush Hour 2, respectively.)
Coincidentally, at home that evening we watched The Celluloid Closet. I'm not sure how many steps
forward have been taken, but sometimes I wonder if there have been just as many back.
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Thursday, 12 July 2001 (metavoid) 11:08am If a dream isn't a place where you can act free of consequence, then really, what's the point? I guess it's a question of being aware that you're in a dream, without the dream then losing its self-contained "reality." If you (well, I) become aware that you could wake up at any moment, waking up is almost inevitably the next step. All of which, somehow accounts for why I've never had sex in dream—not being cognizant of the fact that I'm not in the real world, I can't do it because I would be cheating on my girlfriend. Madeline assures me, however, that as far as she's concerned it doesn't qualify as cheating. I'm not sure if I ever asked The Ex; I may not have had the courage. In any event, the older I get, the more I feel like I've been ripped off. I mean, jeez, everybody else gets to...
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Wednesday, 11 July 2001 (gutless) 7:00am Have you ever told yourself you weren't going to do something (anymore, or to begin with) and you end up doing it anyway?
According to my scale, I'm 189.6. So I'm going to start telling
the machines I'm 190.
They have two gender-specific single-occupant restrooms. Since we'd come directly from work and as such I was still in boi mode—no makeup, t-shirt, velvets—I used the men's room, because at my most basic I still don't feel that I look like I belong anywhere else. I could be very wrong about that, and evidence is beginning to suggest that's the case. But it's kinda hard for me to tell for sure—after all, not a day has gone by in the last twenty-eight years that I haven't seen this face at least once. It's not easy to remember that it hasn't necessarily always looked like this.
Anyway, as I was leaving the restroom I got the hardcore doubletake
from a guy waiting for it, complete with doublechecking the door to
make sure he's going into the right one. I'll take that to be a good
sign—either that, or a sign that I need to start being a lot
more careful. And lord knows that if I was sent to prison I'd probably
be worth several cartons of cigarettes...
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