Call of the Desert

Tomorrow I leave for Arizona. I'm ecstatic for numerous reasons, which will now be listed in order of appearance:

1. I get to see my family, which I've grown to realize, after talking to many people, is one of the most normal and loving families ever. I could say that I love them, but it has grown beyond that.

2. I get to see my high school and college friends, the people who I feel most comfortable around and who know how to get down.

3. I have consecutive days off, a phenomenon that has not occurred since the beginning of April. Yea, all right.

4. I get to leave Chicago for a little while. I love this city to death, but like any relationship, breaks are good. We'll make out like high school nerds when I get back.

5. Even though I never want to live there again, I get to see Arizona. Revisiting the miles of desert and concrete I grew up in is comforting.

Back in a few. Stay gold, Ponyboy.

BLOQUE PARTY

This post is a little late, but whatever. Last Friday was the Optimus block party, a yearly event where over 1,000 people from advertising and post-production houses mingle outside of the Optimus building amidst a flood of beer, food, music and glow necklaces.



Most of my night was spent restocking hundreds of cases of beer and ice. I'd never seen this much beer or rapid consumption in my life. By the end of the night I never wanted to open another case of beer in my life. Luckily for the last 3 hours of the night I manned the photo booth, scanning photos into a laptop.

Best story of the night: an intern catches a guy stealing beer

Guy: Oh man, I'm sorry. I just want to get a buzz.

Intern: You know you're stealing Kaliber.

Guy: Yea?

Intern: That's a non-alcoholic beer.

Guy: Ah shit! (removes all beer from backpack)

Nut cheeks

It was Jill's birthday on Monday so we celebrated at a quasi-biker bar called Twisted Spoke. This is just a preview of the awesomeness that is going to go down on August 19th when we have our joint b-day party, CSI:Miami themed of course.

Coals to the furnace!

I've been out of school more than a year now, and in a month I will have been in Chicago for a year.

I am obsessed with creation. I feel the need to constantly create, to make music or write or perform or shoot. Even if I am the only one who every hears or reads what I do, creating satisfies me. It makes me feel like I'm working towards some abstruse goal.

Even though I have worked on a lot of projects so far in Chicago, I feel like I haven't done enough. I think a lot of this stems from my participation in projects that aren't my own. I enjoy(ed) working on friends' projects but I need to produce work that is not dictated or restricted by others.

So here are my goals for the next year in Chicago:
1. Write more.
2. Say no more often when asked to participate in other people's projects.
3. Focus my efforts on one or two projects at a time.
4. Quit wasting my time on the internet/procrastinating in general
5. Finish everything.
6. Suckerpunch the world.

Geiser of magic

Today at Optimus I discovered a new phenomenon that is apparently sweeping the country. If you drop around 13 mentos into a 2 liter bottle of diet coke, the soda erupts like a whale's blowhole. Thank God for science.

Surrogate bitch

Kat is in France vacationing with her sister so Jill and I are the replacement caretakers of Swiffer the cat. Without Kat, Swiffer seems to have become lonely and more irritable. Case and point: as Swiffer rested on my bed I reached over her to grab my credit card statement. This apparently was not acceptable to her and she mauled my arm in a flash of drunken punk rock rage.

I retaliated the only way I could without resorting to physical violence: I dripped water on her head and she flipped out and ran away.

Some places are like people

During a typical day at Optimus I have to run tapes to various ad agencies and other post-houses around downtown Chicago. Most of them are in large skyscrapers with extravagent lobbies. I've always thought large office buildings have a bizarre atmosphere to them, but this is the strangest one I've found yet.

It is a gigantic empty marble space with high cielings and no adornments, only a few scattered groups of leather chairs. The detail that makes this lobby especially grotesque is the silence. Outside the cross streets of Grand Avenue and State Street buzz with activity typical to the downtown of a large city. Once you step inside this lobby and the door shuts you are suddenly surrounded by near-complete silence. I would not be surprised if someone who works or worked in this building went crazy one day and screamed just to kill the soundlessness for a moment.

And I applaud them.

The "west" side

I went out to a party last night on the west side of town where my friend Ted lives. The party got super crowded and at one point my backpack was stolen and then later recovered by Ted. Someone had taken it, realized there was nothing of value in it, and stuffed the bag and contents in the corner of a room behind a couch. Super.

And now a highlight of the night: I call this series of pictures, "The Same Glasses as Worn by Five Different People Who May or May Not Own the Same Pair of Glasses."

American-do

We made it. Another year free from British bondage. Now here's a bar graph to help you determine which part of your body is most likely to be injured by fireworks. Watch your trunks and others.

Pride and discrimination

This past weekend was gay pride weekend and since I live in the center of Boystown my neighborhood was crazy, especially for the Gay Pride Parade. I missed the parade because I had class but walked through the aftermath when I got home.



A mess of trash lines the sidewalks after the parade. Come on boys and girls, let's be gay for cleanliness too.



Something bad happened to this tree. It looks like it's trying to discard a comically oversized prophylactic.



I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the gay anarchists as they marched down the street.



Of course, the weekend wouldn't be complete without some religious nut proselytizing to "save" homosexuals. I wonder if they teach timing and good taste in Sunday school.

Slinking back into the whole from which it came

Tonight is the last night of the Our Fallen Spacemen show at the Second City Skybox theater. The house waits in quiet expectation.

After the show there will be a big fun party at Matt's apartment. I'm almost looking forward to the party more than the show. Not saying anything bad about the show. It's a good show, and I had a lot of fun with it last week. I just think being together for a celebration will be a good release for all of us. Putting this show together really seemed to stress us out. Hopefully everyone from the group will show up, because I want to drink with them and look at their pretty faces.

Books

I just finished reading Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and now I need to find a new book to read. I hate doing this because it's such a long commitment for me (it usually takes me a month to read a book because I only read on my train rides) and I don't want to choose a shitty book (I also never stop reading a book even if I don't like it because I want to know how things turn out).

So tonight while I was trying to think of what to read next I realized that I made some really poor reading choices to go with my state of being when I first arrived. From September to November, my infant months in Chicago, I felt very awkward and depressed a lot. Correspondingly, I read Lolita and Americana, both very well written novels but not what I'd call uplifting hey there keep yer spirits up let's make it through this media (I also spent some time reading The Artist's Way, a book that is supposed to inspire you creatively). From December to February, I started to gain more confidence, meet more people, and feel like I was fitting in more. Books during that time: Breakfast of Champions, Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Choke. Again, not pure uplifters, but not dark either. March-present, I've been super busy, very happy with the work I'm doing, and have made a lot of very good friends. Reading: Love in the Time of Cholera and Midnight's Children. They speak for themselves.

I also bought an almanac that I take with me to the john to learn facts.

Grass?

Someone put "Caution Wet Paint" around a section of grass on my block today. I'm not really sure how this works. Maybe they had laid down new grass, but why this wet paint shit? Why not just rope off the grass? Everyone knows you didn't paint the grass, so a warning about wet paint isn't going to deter me from walking on it. Now maybe if the tape said "Caution Earth Goblins Living Under Grass Will Kill" I'd pay attention. Just tell it like it is.

Family appropriate fun

Saturday

My parents and sister came to the Our Fallen Spacemen show. It went over really well. Lots of good energy. Right after the show my family and I raced over to Navy Pier to see the fireworks. I would have to say that was the highligh of my weekend. It brought me back to my childhood and taking vacations with my family to visit my grandparents in California for the 4th of July. It was a great night.


Sunday

I went to the Field Museum with the family today. We rocked it hard and fast.

The Farmily

My family is in town for the weekend to see the Our Fallen Spacemen show. We hung out in the hotel for a bit and then went to a really good Italian restaurant for dinner. I love my famiy. We have a very weird dynamic where we are always poking fun at each other. Sometimes we go too far, but for the most part it's kosher.

Until the knives come out. . .

This is how we drink wine in OUR apartment!

Suck it.

Sloday

The title explains it all. Now that summer is here, things are pretty slow at Optimus. However we now have 8 interns working per day, so there are a shitload of people and a miniscule amount of work. With so many people I now have time to do cooler stuff than washing the dishes or running tapes around the city. For instance, today I sat down with an assistant editor and learned the basics of an Avid (an editing system that most professional editors use to cut). Yea, suck that Marriott. I'd never learn that from you. Bitches.

Sad, lonely machines

While I was making some copies at work yesterday I noticed a giant machine with this sign on it. I really pity this sucker. Maybe he's really just a caring machine who's been forced into this role of cold non-emotion and all he wants to do is love. You, sign placers, you don't know if he can't comfort. Maybe you're just projecting your own emotional state by placing this sign on him. All he wants to do is love. And you took that away from him. You bastards. You bastards. . .

LSAT

Today Kat took the LSAT, so last night Jill and I made some signs of encouragement to inspire her before the test. I tried to inspire her with her power over religious icons. The way I see it Jill and I did everything in our power to help her. If she fails the test, the blame rests solely on her shoulders.

Other than stickin' it to God's coiffure things are much better since my last post. Sleep has increased ten-fold, I have a few promising job opportunities, and I have a lot more free time to work on my own projects. And I got an AC window unit for the summer. Shit yea.

Where I reach, outward, through my mouth

I'm tired lately. A lot. That's why I haven't posted anything new in the past few weeks. And now I'm attempting a half-ass post at 1 in the morning. Too much stuff going on right now, and not enough hours in the day.

So now I am flanked by the hamsters of time. And I, a black and white swath, am aware of all three tenses and can do nothing to adjust.

That's my short quasi-philosophical late night rant. And now here's a period.

The march of time, not the internet

So here is another long post for the past three weeks. I've been super busy/tired a lot. I was unable to sleep one Sunday night a few weeks ago and since then I've been overwhelmingly exhausted. But now I return to blogging. Magical.

So at the end of March Our Fallen Spacemen went out to Tucson to perform at the SICK festival at U of A. The show went over really well with the crowd. My partents and a few friends from Tucson and Phoenix came to the show, which made it extra rockin'. After the show there was a big party at a bar. After the party we went to get some Los Betos and some guy tried to pick a fight with me, which is why I chose this picture to represent the trip. John came running in to Los Betos all dressed up and filtered some of the tension. Thank you, sweet knight.



On Easter Sunday we threw a little Easter Sader party at my apartment. People brought a crapload of food and we ate and decorated Easter eggs. Here Sierra leads the group in some kind of prayer about Jesus or some Indian thing. I don't know. I wasn't paying attention.



This is the winner of the Easter egg decorations: A cracked out stripper starved for attention.



Two weeks ago I started an internship at a post-production compny called Optimus. So far it's been really good. Everyone who works there is really nice and it's just satisfying to be kind of working in my field (my duties include stocking fridges and going on lunch runs, which is why I say "kind of").



This is the freight elevator in the Optimus building. It's really cool looking, but whenever I ride it I feel like it's either going to break and send me plummetting to my death, or a giant sewer monster will emerge and rape me with his swampy dong.

HEY LET'S TANGLE

This is how my brain feels about life right now.

Good things

So let me tell you about a few things. First, I've been really busy shooting and editing video for the show next week. But it will kick ass.

Second, I got an internship at a post-production company! Hopefully this will lead to a job and/or hot intern orgies.

And third (in reference to the picture), something that reminds me how glad I am I moved to Chicago: walking home from the train at 11:30 PM through a soft snowfall as I listen to Sufjan Stevens' "The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades is Out to Get Us!" I didn't even need the music, but it helped.

My Life is a Tater Tot

This morning at work I had one of those flashes of realization where you think "This is my life right now?" During the morning shifts my manager lets us go to the employee cafeteria to grab some breakfast. I've fallen into the habit of grabbing a small amount of coffe to help me wake up (before working at the Marriott, I never drank straight up coffee). I usually get a bagel and cream cheese to add a little flavor. However this morning they were out of bagels so I ordered a side of tater tots.

After sprinkling some sugar in the coffee and finding a place to sit I looked down at my breakfast and the realization hit me. I think it happened mostly because my meal looked so sad. It wasn't a bad thing; I just stepped back from my work routine for the first time in a while and noticed what I was doing. If I had told the me at the beginning of college that in four years I would be sitting in the employee cafeteria in the Chicago Downtown Marriott staring at a styrofoam bowl of tater tots and a cup of watery coffee, I think the me in college would have felt a little freaked out and hopeless. But looking at it today, I just kind of passed it off and went "Yea, this is your life right now, motherfucker. So drink your coffee, wake up, and enjoy some tater tots."

Oh, this city.

Over the weekend I went to a friend's pre-St. Patrick's Day party on the west side of town. I've discovered that I'm exploring a lot of the city by going to parties. A lot of times the parties are in different parts of the city that I would never think to visit, but when I do I find things that I like, such as this little structure. I think it was part of a library. Hopefully when it warms up I'll be more inspired to actually do more exploring on my own and figure out the good places to go. For now I guess I'm just forced to party and sight-see. Ho-hum.

One thing that put a damper on the night: although my apartment was a mere 3 miles away, it took me an hour and a half to get home. I waited at the train station for 45 minutes until one finally showed up. BALL SAC.

Genies

We (Our Fallen Spacemen) are now in the midst of creating a new show for a performance we have at the end of the month in Arizona. This past weekend was completely consumed by shooting video for the show, including a series of stills featuring two genies who must learn to get along in this big bad world. Of course, once everything was shot and I captured all of the footage, my computer decided to stop recognizing my hard drive. If it didn't cost so much I'd kick the shit out of my computer.

Proof that I live with girls. . .

. . .and am slowly being turned into one. My roommate Jill bought me this pillow tonight. I plan on proudly displaying it on my bed. Two things that have happened as a result of this gift:

1) I never thought I would, but I own something that is both pink and black.

and

2) I am now high maintenance because the pillows on your bed don't lie.

More proof of my descent into the feminine to come. . .

Haircut

The other day I got a haircut. When I talked to my mom that day I told her I didn't like it, and she asked me to take a picture of it and send it to her. It was the first time I'd ever gotten a haircut at Greatclips, and I don't think I'll go back. Unless I feel like looking like an asshole.

Sidenote: I'm still surprised by how V shaped my face is (my glasses distort things a bit).

The past month

Ok. So it's been a long time since I've made a real post (about a month), so I decided to cover the highlights of the month in one giant post. SO. . .


At the beginning of January I was part of a sketch show at an annual sketch festival here in Chicago called Sketchfest. The group is called Our Fallen Spacemen, and is comprimised mostly of Comedy Corner alumni. I did most of the video work for the show. This is backstage before the performance. The show went great, and now we're in the process of writing and putting together material for future shows. Of course, I will shamelessly plug those shows when the time is right.



A few weeks ago at work I discovered that if you hit the function keys on the computers text pops up occasionally. Sometimes it's for auto-completing messages to guests and other times it's for logging off of computers. However, on one computer the F6 key made this message pop up. Mike (whoever he (or she) is)) is apparently held in god-like status by these computers. So great is Mike that one cannot converse with his being. I feel like I found a pirate map, something that was buried long ago for future generations to discover. What if when you talk to Mike he melts your brain and you die? All those poor uninformed souls will banter to their doom, but I, I know the truth, and I shall not perish!



One thing that's been on my mind is the way our cat Swiffer takes a shit. She has this square litter box that is big enough for her to walk around in and shit comfortably, but she chooses to perch on the edge like a bird. It's actually a pretty impressive balancing act. For once I applaud the cat for innovatively making waste expulsion a challenge, worthy of Double Dare. Snap snap, Swiffer.



One nice thing about working at the front desk of the Marriott is that every week they bring in fresh flowers. As forced as it is, having them is a nice reminder of the outside world, especially when the arrangements are as pretty as this one. So I've discovered two things from work: 1) the displacement of nature is not always a bad thing, and 2) Marriott brings out the queer in me.



This past weekend was the Marriott yearly party. It was a grand, weird time. The food was really good (and free) and hanging out with my co-workers was fun. However, I did have my face smashed into a giant girl's boobs for about a minute (trust me, it was awkward) and the music was pretty bad. No, it was horrendous. I never want to hear a song with prearranged dance moves ever again.



The copy machine went crazy today when I tried to make copies. I was minding my own business when it starting flashing this at me. I turned it off and turned it back on again, and instead got a message that there was a paper jam. I don't know what the whole JOO thing was about. Maybe secret Jews broke into the Marriott and are trying to convert people in discreet, menial ways. So you want some of this? In the words of Duke Nukem, come get some.

It's been a while

So I've been really busy lately and have neglected to update this blog in a while, so I'm doing a half-assed update this morning in hopes that I will remember to do a better one later today or tomorrow. Most of my time had been taken up by preparing for the Our Fallen Spacemen show at the Chicago Sketchfest. I was doing all the video work for the show, which as most of you know chews up time like a dog who thinks his foot is another dog. But the show's over now and I'm back to working and taking classes. Life is good, and I'll share it with everyone soon enough. Hooray!

Oh, and this picture has nothing to do with anything. I took it back in early December when it was freezing cold. It's not that cold now. So eat it.