if you don't hear from me after sunday, it means i've been taken.

tomorrow is the first day of my first con, which is what people in the comic book industry insist on calling their comic book conventions. okay, to be fair, i haven't exactly gone out of my way not to use the term, but it seems grandiose. anyway, i'll be hauling ass all the way to the javits center, which, to my mind, might as well be in effing jersey (just kidding! leave it where it is!) it's so far west. ugh. of course, if it were being held a month later i could probably bike there in half the time it will take me to subway and walk there, but... whatevs. i was just about to write "but i'm not complaining," but that's so blatantly untrue that i had to refrain.

to update you on charliedom... things are strange and good and tiring all at once. my grip of time is akin to holding water in my hands, slipping away before i really know what's going on. i'm going to bed earlier and earlier... pretty soon i'll be beating anna to bed (i actually did so once already... go figure). the worst thing, of course, is that my job is so physically unintensive that i feel like i have no excuse for wanting nothing more than a book in bed at 9:30 (haha, 9:30...). that does nothing to stop me from doing it.

working life is strange. aside from the exhaustion, the routine of it is so foreign and seductive and comfortable. i already prepare a thermos of coffee for myself every morning and drink it at my desk (slowly, so as not to get aciddy whatchamacallit) and have been to the gym before work three or four times. what? who is this person that i have so quickly become?

i will report that on the workout front, i've had to take it easy, due to splitting headaches i've been getting while doing the weight lifting machines. yes, all right, please go and have a titter at the idea of me and a weight lifting machine, bulking up, blah blah. hilarious. anyway, they come on suddenly and last for almost an hour, and they blow. speaking of, the last time i was getting said headaches was when i was dating dave, and (hold on, just a second: mom? dad? anna? you guys aren't reading this, are you? good...) i'd get them right after, well, orgasm (sorry, i'm feeling medical and blunt). needless to say, this put a bit of a damper on the sex, and i started getting freaked out that i had some sort of nate fisher-like head injury or something. of course, a cursory bit of internet research indicates that it's probably just stress, which is lame (not when compared to an avm, no, but) because i'm so bad at destressing... usually, i just stay stressed until school ends (or, i guess, i come down with mono... but that's neither hither nor thither). active destressing is something altogether unfathomable for me.

one thing i've found to be quite nice about work is that it totally structures the time you spend with friends, and makes it precious. since sunday i've hung out--almost systematically--with kamili and beth, amalea, bronnie and kate. amalea and i saw this movie the spirit of the bees, which in some ways is a cousin of pan's labyrinth but operating on a much, much more subtle level (i.e., no one sews their own face shut), with some unbelievably beautiful shots. i then proceeded on sunday evening, right after, to watch stay, this horrible film with Ewan MacGregor and Ryan Gosling (and Naomi Watts and Janeane Garofolo and that dude from who framed roger rabbit? ) and was so incoherent and frayed and meandering that beth, kamili and i had to keep checking in with one another to ensure that none of us were, in fact, hallucinating. then last night, drinks and dinner with kate and bronnie; a blast from the high school past that was at once humorous and totally relaxing. and where normally i'd just be like "hey, that was fun," here i was like "man, it's so great to just be able to be yourself and not have to think about every fucking word that comes out of your mouth lest you accidentally offend a writer or artist or moneyperson... UGH!"

all right. i'm out. i still have to figure out if my co-worker's are reading my blog so i can make more than just innocuous comments about how work has totally changed my life, blah blah BLAH.

peace

hello.

my weekends are getting progressively lazier. yesterday, saturday, i hung out with julia in the morning (she'd stayed over the night before), went to my sister's school play in the afternoon (i kid you not, it was a rock-musical adaptation of shakespeare's richard iii), had some drinks and a futile city-search for trivial pursuit with sam in the evening, and then hit up wogie's with bronnie and simone at night. okay, well, that doesn't sound lazy, but it sure as hell felt it.

today i woke up and met my parents and sister at little poland, where we had lunch between my sister's swimming lesson and her basketball practice at the 14th street y, which is a jewish y(mca?)  and then went to the comic book shop to pick up some titles by a new writer we're going to work with... unfortunately, all i could remember  was his name... not the name of any of his titles, and sadly, it seems that all comic books are always organized by title, and are difficult to find by author. so i gave up and came home. now i remember all of the names (okay, the internet helped me remember) and i'm contemplating going back, despite the defeatism that would inure in me.

something weird is going on with this text box...

anyway, starting soon i'm thinking i might make the blog private. i know, it sounds dorky and paranoid, and i feel like i'm being somewhat self-important, but the other day at work, mackenzie and sana (an editorial assistant) were talking about how our blogs will be found and read if we have them, and i find that extremely limiting, mostly because i can't bitch about work. moreover, the real purpose of this blog (i think anyway) is for me to stay in touch with my friziends, and i don't feel like too much of an asshole saying who gets to read and who doesn't, you know? well, i guess we'll have to wait and see how difficult that whole process is. blah.

okay. that was a singularly boring post. i beg forgiveness.

later.

friday. man. thank the sweet lord jesus.

winding down the final hours before i go home... and maybe go out again. i can't quite figure it out, but around 2:30 today all the steam just went right out of me. i was writing things that a few seconds later i hadn't realized i'd written. what? shouldn't i have to have a few drinks before i get to this stage? apparently not.

anyway. still waiting on my paycheck... theoretically, it's in a fedex envelope somewhere between here and california, from whence it was cut. will it arrive before i go home? who knows?

i had a pretty fun evening last night. after work, i went for a few pints with gaurav, who works in my office... see? i'm making new friends. afterwards i joined molly and julia at benny's burritos, cousin to harry's, for burritos and margaritas, and then we went to molly's girlfriend smolly's apartment to play belle and sebastian songs on the guitar and sing along and mourn the passing of anna nicole, whom i totally didn't recognize in the newspaper this morning. weird.

sadly, i don't think i can muster any sympathy. does it make me a heartless bastard? probably. i'm sure if i wanted to, i could find a picture of her now-motherless daughter and find some tears or what-not. but let's be honest: she was someone who was famous for not really doing anything in particular.

then again, it somehow seems prudent not to be an asshole about the dead. it's 6:45 and i'm still at work. i'll have more to say later.

later.

i'm waiting for something to download from india. you'd think that i'd be satisfied that it takes only ten minutes for a large file to travel 10,000 miles (that works out to 1,000 miles a minute, pretty fast, right?), but no. i'm impatient. 

though i knew it was never going to happen, my last attempt at convincing my boss to send me to san francisco for the comic book convention happening there in early march was officially kiboshed, and that makes me sad. jetblue is having a ridiculous sale, $218 round trip to oakland, and i'd love an excuse to go. although, at that price, i could probably make a case for a three day weekend, or something... leave a thursday night, fly red-eye sunday night? that'd be some hardcore quality time. *sigh*. more like *SIGH*.

why is work so worky, i ask. tuesdays are especially strange, as are fridays, because i'm the only person from editorial in the office. the little cluster of editorial desks is empty, and mine happens to face away from the rest of the office, towards the wall, so it looks like i'm being a pompous asshole and ignoring everybody, when really, i'm just a pompous asshole whose desk faces the wall.

all right. my download is done. my life is gripping. actually, i am about to proofread the balloons on a comic book, and that is kind of gripping. 

later, gators.

hey all. i put the blogger widget on my work desktop last week in the hopes that it would inspire me to write more. ha. the precipitating event was my fears that i was slowly (no, wait, rapidly) turning into a yuppie. i realized these fears on friday morning. i woke up early and went to the gym, since i'm paying for the gym membership through the nose. it was strange. i tried to put a little food in my system beforehand, and made the mistake of going for a kashi bar, which made me feel sick through my entire workout. as i left the gym, showered and ready for work, i realized i was hungry again, but i didn't have any cereal or anything; it was then that i saw the jamba juice. i ordered a wee one with extra vitamins and what-not... it was then, as teh lady behind the counter was handing my my styrofoam cup that it hit me. i had just gone to the gym and was getting a smoothie before going to work. i also had a thermos of coffee in my bag, and i would consume both the coffee and the smoothie at my desk. in front of my imac. 

so, it's pretty much over for me. i think you have to shoot me or something along those lines.

fortunately, i descended from yuppiedom pretty fast. work was stressful on friday (not so much today); my paycheck got misplaced, i got some "constructive criticism" from my boss right after, and had to bite my tongue and say "well, maybe i'd do shit right if you paid me on time." not that i believed that argument; it was a much more infantile impulse. then, at dinner, i had a nice shouting match with my dad over the dishes. yep, it only took me some twelve-odd hours to go from yuppie to teenager. regression is sweet.

all right, well, that'll do for now. i'm trying to make this a habit, but we all know it won't last...

Hello, everyone. I know it's been a long time since my last posting but I figured with a new year I could take another stab at trying to keep this blog going.

I'm in San Francisco now sitting in the basement of the Fisher- Thomas House, using their fancy new voice recognition software. It's a little strange, because I feel like I'm talking like a robot, but I figured this is one of those things you have to get used to.

It's been a really great visit to San Francisco; I don't know if this semester has been harder or easier or more boring, but something about being back here makes me realize how much I miss it here. I keep joking with my friends here that I'm going to move back, but there's not really anything I want to do here. (Well, I guess I would like to teach, but I don't think I'll be doing that, in San Francisco anytime soon). Sarah Tyler wants me to become a 911 dispatcher, an idea which I've considered, and it found both intriguing and terrifying, and ultimately futile...

But who knows? I get the general feeling that anything could happen at any time, and it seems silly to tell myself I won't do something simply because it seems silly. I think part of my problem is that I have trouble separating jobs that would just be jobs and jobs that would lead me into a career. I find I easily fall into a vicious cycle of thought, which includes me worrying about "wasting" any time on a job that is not what I want to really be doing. Which is stupid. Anyone who's read any of David said Sedaris' books knows that jobs totally unrelated to one's career don't necessarily have to be waste of time (although I don't know if I'm as clever as he at turning unbelievably crappy jobs into hilarious stories).

The long and short of it is that once again I'm returning to New York City without a firm plan in mind, and that kind of freaks me out, not in a panicky way, that in a depressed way, which of course makes it even more difficult to get started doing something. Anyway.

When I get back to New York, I do have this temp job waiting for me, so hopefully that will offer enough of a distraction from unemployment. We'll see. I did have a nice moment, with Jessica tonight when I observed that if I was still in New York next Christmas, I would be in my own place, and that is a somewhat reassuring thought.

All right, well this voice dictation stuff is getting a little ridiculous, so I think I better stop. Anyways, thanks for indulging me, and hopefully I'll be a better blogger this year (but don't you guys get your hopes up).

i'm watching game 5 of the national league championship series, rooting for the mets against the cardinals. the mets are kind of blowing at the moment. well, my dad tells me that they're actually not but it feels like they are, by virtue of the fact that they're losing.

i sent out another two or three resumes today. barf. i'm tired of all this shit. i started looking at the los angeles craigslist jobs just for shits and giggles, and found not only jobs that i feel i'm more qualified for, but rents that didn't make me want to cry. okay, so, to be fair, i did spend about twenty minutes looking at rental prices on nyc craigslist, which is never good for the heart. but yeah.

i don't know. i feel stagnant. it's not a new feeling, to be sure, but it's there, and i'm kind of sick of it.

not sick enough to go get a job at starbucks, but you follow me, no?

okay my writing stamina isn't what i'd thought it would be. making up for last night's novel, i suppose.

it's 2:30 am and i'm typing this on my dad's computer because mine's in the shop. ok, really, it's somewhere under fao schwarz at 59th street and 5th avenue, somewhere inside the gargantuan new underground apple store getting its dvd drive fixed. hopefully... the silence of the apple people irks me somewhat.

anyway.

so i guess to begin i should tell you about this movie i saw, last night. (if for some reason you can't see italics, that's the name of the movie: "last night." it is not the time i saw it). i'd heard about this movie ages ago, where exactly i can't quite remember. i seem to remember it pre-dated my move to new york, but there's nothing to really substantiate that. the premise is very very simple: the world ends at midnight on the particular day the story takes place. everybody seems to know why, and there seems to be nothing external that can be done about it, because everyone seems resigned to at least the fact that the world is about to end. its written/directed by this guy don mckellar, who also stars in it, so at times it feels a bit pointy. but among the otherwise unfamiliar co-stars is sandra oh, who almost eerily looks exactly as she does currently in grey's anatomy. the movie begins with her going to pick up some groceries at a raided and decimated grocery store; while she's there, a gang of people ruin her car. because of this she can't get back to her husband with whom she's made a suicide pact. she meets patrick, played by mckellar, who sort of takes it upon himself to find her a car. he's just come from his parent's house, where his mother has cooked a christmas dinner (though it is pointedly not christmas) and all sorts of family issues manage to muck up the end of the world, mostly that patrick has decided to spend the end of the world alone in his apartment instead of with his family.

but i don't really need to explain the whole plot of the movie, because it's the very idea of it that's so creepy and exciting. we all went through the y2k crap, and though we never believed it, i do seem to remember thinking fleeting (or, being 16, not so fleeting) thoughts about what it would be like if everything spun out of control. and i know we all saw the simpson's treehouse of horror from 1999, with the apt "life's a glitch, then you die" episodelette. incidentally, this movie is from 1998, so most likely steeped in all of that culty, hale-bopp related insanity... oh the late nineties...

the coolest parts of the movie were the subtle ways in which life had adapted to the end of the world. "the end" as it is commonly referred to, was known some time before (i think perhaps two months), and, as many people meet for the first time in the film, the polite conversation starter is not "what do you do?" but "what did you do before," because it's assumed that nobody is still working. there's a woman who is uncomfortably thin, who runs throughout the entire picture, announcing how much time is left, to which everyone around responds "shut up!" the local radio station is counting down the 500 best songs ever, with a low, sultry-voiced disc jockey delivering great lines like "we can't make time stop, but we can make it go a little smoother." one of patrick's best friends has turned his kitchen into a kind of shrine to all the things he wants to do before the end, that is, all the people he wants to do. and acts, and locations. it's all scrawled in insane asylum script, and there are various polaroids documenting various achievements. his first scene has him hosting a stunning black girl in his bedroom:

guy: what i was trying to say out there is that you're very beautiful... and that i knew that before.... i just want you to know that i'm not doing this just because you're black.
girl: yes you are. you don't have to lie.
guy: yeah.

my favorite moment in the film (and i hope you'll forgive me, because i'm sure i've given away most of the plot to the extent that none of you will ever have any reason to see it, but let's make sure i don't lose my point here) comes at about fifteen minutes to midnight. for the entire movie, which begins ostensibly at six pm, the sun has been out, and though it's peculiar, it's not prohibitively disturbing, so one sort of lets it go. so, it's fifteen minutes to the end, the two of them are sitting outside and sandra is having an intense conversation with patrick, trying to convince him to join her in her suicide pact (she's been unable to locate her husband). and all of a sudden, so casually, patrick says "it's times like these that i miss night." i don't know, maybe i'm just geeking out here, but... well, it was awesome.

so i finished the movie, and was all ready to go to bed (brushed my teeth and everything) and i look out my bedroom window and for a brief moment i think there's a ufo hovering over washington square park. it only took me another two seconds to realize that it was, indeed, only some sort of crane holding floodlights about a hundred feet in the air. but i could see the park was lit up as well, and decided that, not being really tired, and feeling meaningful after my movie, i'd take a walk around the park.

it's actually a really nice night out. it's been cold the past few days, incrementally and impossibly so, in a way that says almost too happily "winter is coming, suckkkaaa!" i started walking down west fourth, and when i got to the corner of the park, i saw that it was roped off and being guarded by a bunch of twenty-something pas who looked both bothered and important by their job, while at the same time doing absolutely nothing. i couldn't decide whether i was jealous or intrigued or pissed off that i can't walk through my public park because someone's filming some goddamn thing or another. i kept walking on the south side of w4th, and at the corner of macdougal, i saw in front of me on the other corner about fifty people dressed in big puffy down coats. at first they looked like a disastrous group of upper east side women who had all accidentally purchased the same coat, but as i got closer, i saw they were all wearing a lot of makeup, as well as bald caps and what looked like full body unitards. i was thinking i could have asked them what was going on, but i almost preferred thinking that they were just there to be there, and that no big name celebrity had pulled them out at such an ungoldy hour in the cold.

as i kept walking, i received what i would like to go on record as saying more than my fair share of dirty glances from the production staff. okay, sure, it may have occurred to me that perhaps, due to some emergency, like a light falling on the writer or something, they'd need me to bang out a rewrite of a page. but the minute i thought it, i filed it away amongst the other impossible fantasies, like before i go to concerts, always imaginging they'll need some emergency backup singing. you know. fantasies. anyway, they all looked at me like the cool kids in the cool kids club and i was the guy with the retainer and the pocket protector. moreover, they all looked like they were totally ready to jump me if i stepped over the line.

it gave me pause, which is not a term i like using, but it fits here. pause about what the hell i want with a career that treats people like that. not that it's the only one that does--my dad told us some good academia horror stories at dinner tonight--but... i don't know. then i started to do a self-analysis thing that was only going to end in disaster, questions like, "do i want to do this because i like to be in clubs that other people are excluded from." well, as an older sibling, that instinct goes without saying, but when it comes down to it, i feel like i would be happy earning a teacher's salary doing writing... i mean, i have a hard time seeing myself saying no to something that would result in my having money, but i really do believe that i want the thing more than i want everything that comes with it.

on the other hand, it could be cool to have 250 people freezing their nuts off in the middle of the night in washington square park, just so something i wrote down can be put up on a big screen. then again, maybe not.