frogcynic

Songs sung at karaoke tonight:

"Last Nite" by The Strokes.
"Tired Of Being Alone" by Al Green
"You Can't Take That Away From Me" (with Sophie) by Frank Sinatra and Natalie Cole
"I Walk The Line" by Johnny Cash
"Hard Day's Night" by The Beatles

All of them rocked (except maybe "I Walk The Line," which I kept coming in a half-measure early on because I'm pretty sure that's how it is in the Joaquin Phoenix version, which I kinda like better).

It was a great night- we all dressed up (and Sophie and Kate looked beautiful, which I was too boorish to mention when I saw them), and I remembered why I don't wear suits all the time, which is because they are hot are summerish nights.

If nothing else ever comes of the comedy stuff, it's certainly cured me of most forms of stagefright, and allowed me no problem with being the center of attention. If that makes me occasionally insufferable, I apologize.

Ways in which they have spelled my name on the receipt at Panera Bread, where I often eat lunch and use the wifi:

"DUNKIN"
"DUNCIN"
"DONKON"
"DOUG"
"ENGLEBERT HUMPERDINK"

Okay, the last one wasn't real.

The end of BEDA. What did I learn?

1. Writing about your life everyday highlights the endless banality of existence. I thought this might have been because I am underemployed at the moment, but really who wants to read entries about the same job over and over? Conclusion: I need to live a crazier life.

2. Law & Order is a good way to pass the time. Seriously, it beats CSI any day. Why, you ask? Because L&O is for people that want to think (or laugh at sensationalist, overblown plotlines ripped from recent headlines), and CSI is for people that want to spend a quarter of the episode salaciously reliving a fictional murder, over and over.

3. I will always wait until the very last minute to do anything, even if it is a meaningless and arbitrary midnight deadline to post to a blog.

4. I look cooler with long hair.

5. I begin a whole lot of sentences with interjections. Chief offenders include "Man," "Anyway," and "Also." I will try to curb this habit with more action verbs.

6. I am 10% emo and 90% pop-culture references. I think we all knew this to begin with.

See you at an undetermined chronological point in the future, which may or may not be tomorrow, internet!

Apparently the Census people called both my cell phone and my house today, about a job possibility- but they don't leave messages, and they didn't leave a number for my dad to give me. They must talk to you on the phone directly, or you will never know that this potential job ever existed.

Your government at work. Ugh. I'll call them tomorrow, and hopefully an "Abbott And Costello" like routine of "no, we have to call you" will not ensue.

Anyway, much novel movement- finally got an idea for where the end needs to go- an enemy that becomes a friend, the idea of new challenges in the future... a sequel? Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Ever since I sang karaoke on Thursday I really want to do it again. But then I get invited to multiple events on facebook this Thursday. (I was invited on facebook. The events are in the real world, not "on facebook," though that would be an interesting place to hold an event. I bet it would be like the movie Tron crossed with the Mall of America). I even have ideas of what to sing, including a hilariously emo pop song that I somehow know all the words to!

Another week, another night at trivia. I need structure, badly I think: tonight I walked the wrong direction entirely to my car, remembering the spot I'd parked the previous week.

I saw a girl I'm facebook friends with at lunch, but she clearly didn't recognize me (I'm gonna say it's the hair), and I'm not big on the "does X remember my name?" lottery. A little while ago I told Benny that I invariably remember X's name while X does not remember mine, and he said that was surprising to learn.

So I thought wow, am I that different now? Am I a memorable personality that fills up a room? Maybe. But in hallways and city streets I feel small.

today was a day. I woke late, went to the gym, did some writing and looked wistfully at pretty girls in Alterra. I sang songs so loud in my car driving that my throat hurts a little. I threw toys around for Finneas. I read some Calvin & Hobbes comics.

I just was, today. The kind of day that seems lacking something- it was about to rain all day, but the sky never opened up. That seemed to suit my mood, though most days actually raining would suit me better.

Thursday night/Friday morning I couldn't really sleep, so at some point around 4AMish I decided I'd watch a documentary on my computer: Dear Zachary: A Letter To A Son About His Father- maybe I'd fall asleep while watching it, I figured. It was just some true-crime thing, right?

Wrong. Dear Zachary was the most emotionally devastating thing I have ever subjected myself to. I've teared up in plenty of films, yeah- I'm escapist and easily manipulated, but this is the first thing that's ever just had me weeping. I'm talking, sobbing, you guys. Multiple tissues.

It's about a man whose best friend was murdered. By his pregnant girlfriend. Hearing this, the film-maker decides to cross the country and interview everyone that his friend ever touched, to show the unborn son who his father was. These interviews are rapidly edited into a 90-minute long rush of emotion.

The murderess flees to Canada and takes advantage of completely retarded extradition policies, and then there's a completely awful and unexpected turn late in the film that should in no way be spoiled for you if you ever want to see it. But it's just an amazing piece of editing and film-making. I can in no way recommend seeing this, but at the same time, I'm incredibly glad to have seen it.

It's just- there's something so powerful about grief. And I'm one of the lucky douchebags to have grieved the most in my life over two grandparents that lived very far away and my cat. To see people rebound from unimaginable things is astounding to me- I got shooshed at the concert last night and had to struggle to not let it affect my mood for a little while.

Dear Zachary reaffirms my faith in people, and life, but also reaffirms my disbelief in a just and caring God. That's the best thing I can say about it, I think. Wow.

Yesterday Kate and I ran up a whole bunch of steps in the new park right by Benny's while singing the theme to Rocky (which is called "Gonna Fly Now" which finally remembered last night at two AM).

Now I am using Kate's computer to blog- i think Kate should start her own project and blog just one day in April (called BODA), but a really long update.

- ran into Dan at a Walgreens.

- was introduced by Dan to my new favorite drink, a "Pot O' Gold," which is Strongbow Cider with a shot of Goldschlager (which, yes, is the girly gold-flake vodka as seen in Superbad)

- hours after blogging about my wish to do so, laid groundwork to host not one but two possible comedy open mics. Cross your fingers.

- saw the pastiche movie Tokyo! which was two thirds super happy funtime awesome and one third odd. I will probably review it on the film blog at a soonish point.

- ate a $4 dinner at the Red Dot

- shot four games of pool (lost three of them)

- finally, sang three songs at karaoke, with declining degrees of results: first I rocked out "All My Loving," then I sort of nailed "Strange Condition" (yeah, I whooped out a good "YORN COMMA PEETE!" when I saw they had it in the book) and then completely brain-farted on the middle of "Suspicious Minds."

Wow, is this early or what?

Anyway, we all know Route To Fame And Fortune #1 is my novel. RTFAF #2? That would be my idea to shoot six episodes of my own tv show about stand up comics and put it on the internet. I figure six is a good, BBC seriesish number, and I have plots sketched out for all of them. Plus, I wrote the pilot already (albeit not in proper script format with centered dialogue and all).

Now all I need are four other comedians/actors willing to work for free, various supporting roles and extras (also unpaid) a camera, a bar willing to let me host an open mic and film various scenes there, and Final Cut Pro (or what have you).

It's fun to dream, anyway. Plus I have so much material written that I never get to use ('cause I rarely do open mics anymore, and when I do it's just ten minutes anyway) that it's easy to filter it into four distinct voices.

Just reread the one volume Bone by Jeff Smith, and I was wondering- Watchmen was always said to be the pinnacle of what the comic medium can do that no other medium can...

But Zack Snyder's Watchmen, while I had many problems with it, sort of showed that parts of it could be done pretty well- that opening scroll more than anything. I mean sure, nearly every panel in Watchmen has an image informed by the text, but I daresay the hypothetical Terry Gilliam HBO twelve-part miniseries would have found a way to make it analogous.

I posit that Bone is a better example of an achievement nigh on unachievable in other forms! What about animation, you say, citing Persepolis as an example? Maybe, I'd respond, but I can't see an animated film nailing the completely seamless tonal integration of Pogo and Lord Of The Rings that Smith perfects as the series goes along, not to mention the length.

I guess my point is that while I give props to Dave Gibbons (who I accidentally called Dan Gibbons in that same post), Watchmen would still be a pretty great text-only novel. Bone is like a combination of Moby Dick and Calvin & Hobbes.

Actually, my point is really that Watchmen can't make me laugh and cry like weird little big-nosed creatures and rat creatures that like quiche.

In other news, The Pirates are 9-6 right now, so bite it, Brewers.

yadda yadda yadda, tonight is trivia night. Plus, I film-blogged once more- chew on that, BEDABO!

mp3 blogging day because I could think of little else:

1. Loney, Dear- "I Am John"

I couldn't figure out the lyrics to this for awhile until I realized the dude was Swedish and had an accent situation. And I have to sing the last bit of the song a whole octave lower, because I don't have that extra Bee Gees kick to my falsetto, not by a long shot. But still, a hypnotizing song.

2. matt pond PA- "People Have A Way"

Pounding piano power-pop. This is what I would write songs like, if I could play the piano and write songs.

3. Andrew Bird- "A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left"

I thought this was just a random phrase that the Bird-man chose for the refrain to this song from his Eggs album- but no, I now know it's what he actually does while he performs! The man's head wobbles like a metronome, way more consistently that David Gray's. It was sort of hypnotizing.

4. Tony Lucca- "Devil Town"

Popularized in the tv show "Friday Night Lights," this is some random dude's cover of a Daniel Johnston song. Daniel Johnston, as inspiring as he is, is in a dead heat with Bob Dylan for the top spot in the "Musicians Whose Work I Enjoy Covers Of Way More" list.

5. Gomez- "Airstream Driver"

This has been stuck in my head so much I just make up my own verses to the same rhythm, all still ending in "Oh, airstream driver." But what is an airstream driver, anyway? Someone who drives cars during those wind-tunnel tests for air resistance?

Mp3s (not .m4a's, so nyah!) are good for seven days. Peace!

was randomly watching a repeat of Law & Order: SVU last night, because no cable is fun. I think I might be an ironic fan of SVU, because it is cuh-razee. It is like a clueless parent that read something once in the paper and then went to town about it.

Witness: the episode I saw last night incorporated, into a single 44-minute story line, the hobo fight video phenomenon, teenage pregnancy rings, castration, and the myspace hoax leading to a teenage girl's suicide story. Plus it found time for Mariska Hargitay to rant to a pregnant teenage girl for a solid two minutes about how awful her future is going to be, and to have Richard Belzer imitate a crazy person and run down the street. Also they had a white rapper suspect that talked and dressed like he was from 1992.

It's such an earnest show, but this episode was so cluelessly insane it was like meta-comedy, or something. Like eventually all the dadaist non-humor humor shows on Adult Swim will eventually turn into this.

I film-blogged again instead. It's up to an even thirty entries in the countdown, which means I am 12% done!

Watching The Fall! No time to blog!

I blogged here instead. Totally counts. I've decided it counts.

New userpic with my sis in it woo!

settle something for me.

short hair:



long hair:



which one? right now, I'm really feeling the long hair. I might get a haircut and not get it all chopped off for once. Not up for debate: my crooked glasses, which I can't afford to replace (with not-crooked glasses for example, or contacts, or lasers) or the goatee in the first picture, which was never a wise idea.

that's pretty much all I got, today, internet- a spot of vanity for ya. there will come a day when I update before around 11:30 with a long, thoughtful discourse about life and love, but it is not this day.

Placeholder blog in case I get home after midnight. Tonight is Tuesday, a night of trivia for a trivial soul.

Worked today in two four hour increments, four hours apart. It was just enough time to realize my feet were tired.

Worked all day today- feel strangely anxious for some reason. I feel like a sentence with an unfinished parenthetical, if that makes any sense. Waiting for something to come back around, but with no idea what.

Does that seem familiar? I finished rereading Tunnel In The Sky by Robert Heinlein for the zillionth time today, and it's about a group of high school seniors that go to another planet for a ten-day survival exercise, but a supernova mucks with the interstellar gateway and they get left for two years. It's one of my favorite novels, and it's all about the way the world doesn't get you, the way maturing is never recognized from within or without. The main character becomes mayor of a makeshift village, but when he gets back he's still a twenty-year-old child in everybody's view, back from some primitive experiment.

I haven't even built villages or been on journeys or faced upheavals, but I feel like I've had to do something to become who I am today- it's just beyond me if it was the right thing, or enough of the important things to make any difference. I've always wanted to be an explorer or on a quest or faced with the collapse of society, because things would instantly become life-moving and epic.

But they won't, not in that sense. And if the world were in upheaval tomorrow, I would still need to find something to eat and go to the bathroom and get cricks in my neck and so on. So here's to the absent epic adventures we won't realize until they're over.