xtcian

MMIV

12/31/03

You know, you can say what you want about New York City; I certainly do. You can talk about the terrorist alerts, the manhole covers being welded shut, the trash bins and mailboxes being carted away, and being frisked every few blocks. You could also complain about the weather, the occasional puddles of urine, the traffic, the noise, the crass commercialism, and the sheer bother of doing anything near the City.

But there's nothing like New Year's Eve here with like-minded souls. And here I write, still up after three parties, 7:15am and the sun already risen. We talked movies with Ben Feldman, listened to Isabel Rose sing, commiserated with some of my favorite brothers from Carolina, drank Veuve Cliquot, and waxed lit crit with Virginia Heffernan, Dave Samuels, Linda and S. Metcalf clear until the sun rose a new year over Brooklyn. We are so blessed to be among these people in the real world, and I feel blessed to be among you in the virtual one. Have a great 2004, ok?

clockwise from left: me, Dan Goldstein(yeah!), Alex Yong, Ali Farahnakian, Fred Weller, John Lasala and James Beeler

MMIII

12/30/03

I don't know how the rest of you do it, but each year has a certain "flavor" to it. I look back upon certain calendar years with a sort of hyper-awareness that borders on the savantly autistic, which is why I can name the month and date of pretty much every pop song from the early '70s to about 1993.

1982 was blissful, 1985 was cataclysmic, 1992 was dreary, 1995 was a renaissance, 2001 was heart-wrenching... you get the picture. It takes some time, perhaps a few years, for a past year to develop its flavor, but it always comes. 2002 defined itself early for me; it has now become a blank, worried slate dominated by my runaway anxiety and the drugs that helped quell it. 1997 is still percolating.

I have a few things to say about 2003. You do too, so please write them in your own blogs, or use the "comments" button below so I can hear them.

For me, it will be The Year I Got Married. So much of my life, thought and physical labor was wrapped up in the preparation for marriage that it seemed like a game of Chutes and Ladders; I walked into May and suddenly found myself in September. In many respects, our wedding was a watershed moment for me, because I finally understood that my rampant self-loathing, long-cultivated from childhood, wasn't getting me anywhere and was mostly bullshit. That someone like Tessa would marry me, actually go through with it, has given me a confidence that I could never have summoned even with the staff of the Manhattan Project working on it full-time.

Before I kept a public blog here, I kept a private diary in the recesses of my computer, and last week I stumbled upon some entries from early 2000. Frankly, I have never read the words of anyone more dipped in shit. The lachrymose pleadings, the saturnine moans of a person stuck in a hell of his own making, is enough to give you goiters. What's worse is that the writing is sorta bad. I can take a lot of things from my past self, but sub-par writing is not one of them.

Anyway, the next entry was in October (my diary, unlike this blog, was wildly sporadic) and it was like a different human being was typing. Loose, effortless, honest, funny... and with Tessa. It only got better, and our wedding was the culminating ceremony of a true conversion. It made me feel as though everyone gets a second act. Even the reviled are capable of redemption. God, my friends are amazing.

Speaking of which, 2003 made me miss them the most. Apart from days surrounding the wedding, I became acutely aware this year that we are not all living together. Even my post-adolescent fantasies of having a big artist commune, calling upon the different strengths of our coterie (Ann does poetry, Salem tells stories and gets the steak, Sean sings, Lindsay puts on a play, Colin writes the newsletter, Chip provides color commentary, Block keeps our money, Bud bikes to the next village for news, and Michelle tends to his wounds when he runs into a tractor) seem more distant.

Very few of us have children yet, so we are in that holding pattern of being partnered, yet untethered. But I think that thin, gossamer rope is threading itself for many of us, a foghorn in the dark sea mist that says that kids may be forming. I hope so. This is the first year I have thought seriously about being a father, which fills me with 50% ecstasy and 50% freaking out spasmodic oh-my-fucking-god. Mindful of how hapless haploids can be, Tessa and I always begin each sentence on the subject with "Ifwe'reluckyenoughtohavechildren, I think..."

By the way, I usually finish that sentence "...we should move to France."

Which brings me to another way to look at 2003: The Year Everything Stayed the Same and Thus Got Worse. It has gotten to the point where I can't discuss politics anymore, can barely stand to think of it. While we were writing "13th-GEN," Neil and Bill predicted that I would become more conservative as I grew older, and, ten years later, I am pleased (and frustrated) to report that I am ten times the leftist commie anarchist bastard I was at 25.

It seemed for a while, for a brief opalescent flicker, that the Democrats might be able to present a challenge to the Forces of Mordor currently running the country - but each day that seems like more of a distant dream. The media has fallen in lockstep, calling Howard Dean "angry," "a loose cannon," "unprincipled," "too smart" or "short," or worse, "a loser." Americans are dumb, and part of why they're dumb is that they hate people they think are losers. And god knows what blue crack Kerry is smoking - it's like he trying to give the election to Bush.

It doesn't matter anyway. As a progressive liberal, all this wrangling is so much re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I think we all know, in our heart of hearts, that we are stuck with the Republicans not just in 2004, but probably 2008 as well. This is a fatigue-filled defeat that will define this year as well.

There is a bright spot - Massachusetts has set the stage for gay marriage. It's a small victories you have to relish when so much else is so awful.

Small victories are also what we had with the Pink House movie this year. Although we were blindsided by a betrayal already documented on these pages, we had three screenings of the rough cut that went over exceptionally well, given the circumstances. I know we have a movie in there, waiting to leap out. This is the third year of our struggle to see it happen. Please give us 2004, O Lord. We've earned it.

And so have all of you. I hope you say goodbye to 2003 with much fanfare, and like me, tell it not to let the door hit its ass on the way out.

plate o' shrimp $2.95

12/29/03

Okay, I'll bite on the Best Movie of the '80s thing, even though Korporate Kulture™ has pretty much destroyed any chance of us reminiscing without being forced to buy something from The Man. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the Budster, Salem and I had the first '80s party in history. Occurring at the Purple House in Winter 1991, it was the infamous soirée where Salem put his head through all the windows in time with "Love Shack."

We had Rubik's Cubes, a moderately-functioning Colecovision, and Capri Suns spiked with really bad vodka. Don't let anyone tell you differently; we were the first to start that wave, and we were the first to be horrified when all those "80s revival stations" started going on the air. These days, none of us, and that includes Lindsay, would ever be seen at an '80s party. The world of advertising has ruined almost everything we've ever held dear (except for a few secrets, but we shall keep them to ourselves).

You'll notice, of course, that the revival of '80s music was actually only a heavy replay of about 50 songs that we were already sick of. I couldn't fucking stand "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" or "Electric Avenue" when they came out, and I sure as hell can't stand them now. For me, the '80s – at least the tunes on the radio – will be weird you-are-there songs like "Why Me?" by Planet P, "Pressure" by Billy Joel, "Penthouse and Pavement" by Heaven 17, and of course the entire XTC, Smiths, Squeeze, DeMode, and B52s catalogue.

Oh, I also really like "Time and Tide" by Basia.

Anyway, movies follow the same trajectory; there's about 10 of them that make an '80s Night at the Moviehouse, and it's usually "Sixteen Candles," "Pretty in Pink," "Top Gun," "Dirty Dancing" and their ilk. For me, however, there are three movies released in the '80s that made me what I am. They are:

3. Repo Man.

When I first saw this movie, I felt like I'd be thwonked in the head by a piece of plywood – nothing could have been closer to the suburban punk gay goth absurd Monty-Python-Contemplates-Suicide vernacular that I felt in those early days of 1982. I was only 14, but was the first movie that felt like it was made for me and my friends specifically. Featuring a soundtrack that still makes me irrationally happy (Burning Sensations, Circle Jerks, etc.) and a philosophy that made more sense than 2 years of undergraduate study, it makes me sad that this current crop of kids don't have anything similar.

2. Real Genius.

This one had everything that I could ever want: a movie about dorks winning out over evil, brilliant dialogue, a subterranean tunnel underneath a college, a hot-as-hell chick nerd (Michelle Meyrink) and a Studying For The Test Montage to beat them all. This movie has such a great spirit. I fashioned much of "The Pink House" after this movie, but the next one will owe more to...

3. Raising Arizona.

The Coen Brothers created their own world, and let us loose in it. Pretty much every line is classic, every shot is gorgeously rendered, and every performance – Nic Cage, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, William Forsyth and Trey Wilson – rates among the best in each actors' career. How can something be so funny, so twisted, so bizarre and so sweet? I lucked into talking to Frances McDormand a few months ago (she's in the movie as well) and she said that there's no way this film could have been financed today. That, my friends, is why the '80s were so great. Lawn darts could still be thrown, we could drink when we were 19, and movies like these could still be made.

your ad here

12/28/03

Today's blog is cancelled due to illness. I have developed a stomach flu to go along with the regular flu, thus the drugs – combined with four days of not having done anything – are conspiring to keep my thoughts in an icy grip.

Since all of you are so smart, and I'm so sick, can you supply a topic for tomorrow's blog to make it easier? I know that's cheating, but if you could see me, you'd take pity. I look like I've been dragged through a mucous factory by a team of donkeys.

that is all,
ian

la grippe

12/26/03

Being sick is not just a physical ailment, it is an emotional space. You get the same feeling when you play hooky (or otherwise escape) from school; the world has this strange sheen about it that says "you probably shouldn't be seeing all this." I found it impossible to have much fun when I managed to pull off a missed school day. I was too wracked by guilt, and honestly, I wasn't that much of a student, meaning I'd end up even more behind.

But sickness, too, allows the infirmed a glimpse at an alternate reality, one where the beneficence of the world becomes temporarily unavailable. Even a quick walk to the car to fetch a lost belonging becomes a monumental task of abject misery. It's like that scene in "Beetlejuice" where Alec Baldwin steps out the door for 10 seconds, and Geena Davis tells him he was gone for three hours.

I've tried not to mention getting sick in this blog. There's nothing more boring, more worthy of skimming to the pictures, than someone lamenting their virus. Plus, I was really sick last year at the exact same time with similar disclaimers, so it's Beginning to Look a Lot Like (my body has an overwhelming allergy to) Christmas. But today I could barely talk, coughing up reams of horrifying crap, and even writing this sentence is taking all the late-anaphase mitosis I can muster.

I would, however, like to thank the following products:

1. Robitussin PM – Easily the best mind-altering experience you can get without a prescription (or an I.D.), your fine friends at Dextromethorphan hydrobromide ensure a long, peaceful sleep with many surreal yet pleasant dreams. There were many times in Chapel Hill when we thought of abusing tussin when the liquor ran out, and now I'm wondering why we didn't.

2. Afrin Extra Moisturizing – Yes, it's the deal with the Devil, but sometimes he lets you out of the contract after three days. Put simply, this stuff works, and it doesn't turn the surface of your sinuses into the Sudan. Well, not right away, anyway.

3. The Slant Fin Humidifier - My brothers and sister and I grew up under the constant fear of croup, a childhood affliction that closes the bronchial passageways in the middle of the night, choking each of us nearly to death. The way to combat croup was having a vaporizer to disperse water into the air, and thus I equated the sound of a vaporizer with all things comforting and good. I've tried, but I can't fall asleep without the white noise of a crappy vaporizer.

These days, people generally use humidifiers instead, and they're all silent. A good one really works, however, even on these long, dark winter nights when I feel the familiar twinge of the croup in the back of my throat. Of course, I need the bathroom fan on as well, to replicate the sound of the vaporizer.

Man, Tessa should be canonized for all the shit she puts up with.

messy christbus

12/25/03

Every Christmas morning while we were growing up, the first things we'd get would be our stockings, usually full of See's Candy, little Matchbox cars, candy canes... and an orange. The orange always confused me; it seemed like a deeply incongruous piece of Healthy in the middle of an otherwise wretched morass of chocolate and refined sugar. Most of the time, we chucked the orange behind our heads and tore into our presents: a new Colecovision cartridge, maybe the football game that vibrates, or a 1980 Portable Cassette Recorder. It wasn't until one Christmas in 1993, when I was 25 or so, that I asked why we still had oranges in our stockings.

My mom explained that when she was a child, she used to get oranges in her stockings because when her mother was little, Great Grandma Pearl did the same. They were living during the mid-19th century in dusty, ruined, high-altitude flatlands of Eastern Colorado and Utah, and apparently an orange was so coveted, so precious, and so tasty, that it would be one of – if not the - main present for Christmas.

What is cool is not that we still have an orange in our stocking, it's that my mom kept putting it there without even telling us why. In that way, it became more ingrained as a mythology than an explanation, proof that the best traditions spring from means that are never over-intellectualized. Which means this blog kind of ruins it, but that's what the blog is for.

Anyway, my mom usually takes all the oranges from us, grates the rind into a sticky goop, and makes orange rolls from them. Anyone who has consumed one of these things knows it is a treat equal to (or surpassing) the joy of a Coloradoan farmer's child in 1872 getting just the orange. History is meant to improve the human condition, and so it has with my family and fruit.

this blog goes out to my family who wasn't here this year: my Dad and Carole, Sandy, Kent, Melissa, Sean Patrick and Lucas – and all my friends who know they're family too

merry merry!

12/24/03

Wee Fish Ewe A Mare Egrets Moose Panda Hippo Gnu Deer!

we, like Chopes, have gone astray

12/23/03

We were late getting the tree, most of our Christmas music was stolen last year, and I have the flu despite getting the shot - but we are definitely gearing up for a great Yuletide anyway, so sucks to your assmar, world!

Mom and I spent the day at the Crossgates Mall in Albany, and I'd just like to add that when we were kids, there was always parking at the mall, even if it was clear across the asphalt field. This is no longer true. Grown men and women were staking their claims to parking spots at the ass-end of humanity with the kind of fervor last recorded at the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. Fortunately, we were driving the Prius around, so we could zip in and out of tiny spaces while the gas engine was off.

While Mom searched for a bathroom, I got stuck at the entrance to the Wal-Mart, allowing me to see every single human being exiting the store for 20 minutes. "People watching" doesn't come close to describing the activity; it was like a crash course in semi-rural American sociology. I've said it before, I'll say it again: the two truths of middle-American fashion are Slutty and Large. I'm all for the roomy women wearing naught but halter tops, bandana bikinis and ill-fitting jeans, as long as our country is on the way to curbing eating disorders. This particular populace seemed to relish in their flabbiness in a way that contradicts the numbers on anorexia and bulimia, so I confess that I really don't know what's going on in the mind of your average 14-year-old girl from Utica.

Being sick is bad enough, but being sick at the mall is something else. Like a long plane flight, there's something about the atmosphere of a mall that robs your body of moisture. My eyes began to hurt, my skin began to itch, and I craved water, gallons of it. Thank god the Apple Store was there to provide emotional salve (they also have the best bathrooms in America, for those of you playing at home).

The guys at the Verizon Wireless booth got in fisticuffs with a disgruntled patron trying to return a phone that had obviously been dropped down a garbage disposal. Dealing with cell phone dealers at a kiosk is always bad news (those dudes HATE their jobs) but this customer deserved a swift kick in the nuts. We got out of there before we got totally depressed.

Back home, Laurie and George had arrived, joining Michelle, Tessa, Steve and my Mom for dinner. Michelle made some kick-ass lasagna, and then the gals decorated sugar cookies until they were comatose. My task, you ask? I was asked to pluck every hair out of the Christmas Goose. I've never had a goose before, in fact, I don't think any of us have, but Tessa, ever the holiday romanticist, wanted to try it for Christmas. After hearing the horror stories about plucking hairs out of the goose (apparently this is a job that has been doled out to unlucky Christmastime children since the 10th century), I had an epiphany.

As Laurie later said, "this is probably the only Christmas goose in North America that is getting shaved by a Mach 3." And lo, the angel of the lord looked upon it, and it was good.

1st annual ceremonial goose shaving

equivocation

12/22/03

We saw Shattered Glass tonight, the clunkily-rendered biopic of famed prevaricator Stephen Glass, who concocted tons of stories for The New Republic, Rolling Stone, and a few others. It was fascinating for us, since we occasionally wade up to the waist in that journalistic world (Glass' haunts are Washingtonian, while ours are strictly New Yorkian), but mostly because we have just severed ourselves from a liar as equally convincing, ingratiating and ultimately destructive as Glass himself.

The curious part of lying is obvious: "they all find out sooner or later." This works in equal and opposite synergy with "the bigger lie the more believable it is"; thus you find yourself ultimately unable to grasp the scope of what you're stepping in. Surely they can't be lying, you tell yourself, because that would take a myopia that borders on the pre-functional. In other words, babies have a better sense of right and wrong, and of consequence, than your liar friends.

I was never a pathological liar, because I always knew when I was doing it. I was incapable of deluding myself. I didn't stop, however, and spent most of my teens and early 20s spinning various yarns of bullshit, always (like Glass) containing strange anecdotes that seemed so weird and particular that they had to be true. Basically, I lied because I hated who I was, and wanted my life to be more fascinating. I was lucky; I only had to lie until my life actually got as weird and interesting as the lies themselves. Without that odd intervention from reality, I might have never figured it out.

Tessa once said that the only tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous that is impossible to ignore is "rigorous honesty." People who are incapable of telling themselves the truth stay drunk. I always thought that was a fascinating physical manifestation of the Lie Embodied.

It's hard to forgive a liar; there's just something in your mouth that never goes away. Even if you do forgive them, it tends to be an academic pursuit, a sense of "closure" that is intellectually satisfying, but honestly, you don't really want to hang out with them anymore. There are plenty of lies from my late adolescence that I will never admit, because it's just too painful, and I know that they could never be taken in the spirit in which they'd be revealed. Sometimes you really do have to cut yourself a break, forgive your past persona, and move on.

Perhaps marriage is a bit of a tabula rasa for us, a way we can recast ourselves without the detritus and self-loathing of our past lives. Take the best of who we were and agree to wipe the blackboard clean. I wonder if some women actually take comfort in changing their names. Perhaps I should change mine.

I'm sure there will be suggestions.

winter solstice

12/21/03

Like Charlie Brown in a black coat, hands in pockets, looking for a tree.
I've tried, I just can't make it work.
Blistering country full of awful people
Subdued
Frustrated
Angry
Furious
Loathing
Why now? Was there a halcyon and we all missed it?
Orange terror, and my family lives in it
Heartbroken, sick, misunderstood
Could we have been working all this time on something nobody will ever see?
Lesser minds reap untold millions
Cruel, arbitrary
Cruel, arbitrary
career in the toilet
Supercilious
Spurious
Useless
Unfortunate
Lifted the bat, but too tired to swing

But they are only mirages.

They are apparitions created out of your own insouciance, the carefree finality that descends once you've decided to leave a place.

God may punish you by answering your prayers, but he also gives you anything you want once you stop caring.

sugar lake

12/19/03

I've been considering not writing in here for Saturdays, as long as that doesn't make anyone too terribly unhappy. While I appreciate (and am flummoxed by) the great hits I get during the week, it seems as though weekends are a time when everyone takes a break from the internet.

The "weekend mentality" is about as pervasive as the "semester mentality," meaning that you tend to live your life around those arbitrary constructs long after they have any relevance. As a freelancer, Sunday at 11:45pm is just as good time for work as any other. And I confess that I still see my life based on spring semesters, fall semesters and summer, even though I haven't attended class in 13 years.

Speaking of which, my first real girlfriend Tracy celebrated her birthday today. And my oldest Carolina confidante Kendall is reading this and she always wanted me to post a picture of she and Tracy together. So here you go, m'dear!

Kendall is yelling at me, as usual, in 1989

the flux capacitor!

12/18/03

I wanted to make this my 1993 Christmas card, but my erstwhile girlfriend wouldn't let me

I have had nothing but shitty, shitty, shitty cars. Besides a 1971 white Karmann Ghia that I bought with summer job money, I have been on the receiving end of some of the worst vehicles ever created. The best that could said for them is they moved forward when you stepped on the gas pedal, but many of them, alas, didn't even do that.

The Volvo pictured above was given to me for $100 by my brother Kent, and while it surely had its heyday in 1968, by the time I got it, you had to shove screwdrivers into the upholstery to keep the windows from falling inside the doors. The ignition started with a locker key, and occasionally the accelerator pedal would break, and I had to accelerate by pulling speaker wire attached to the idler.

My next car, a white diesel Rabbit, lost both first and second gear, meaning I had to start it by pushing it down a hill. My VW Fox had no door handles and seized on a LA freeway going 75mph. And my last car, a white Mustang convertible, still had vials of spent cocaine burned into the carpet, the top was patched with packing tape, and it gave off the smell of burning hair when it went more than 50 miles per hour.

I mention this because we bought a car yesterday. It is the first new car I have ever had. It is a Toyota Prius, and it fucking ROCKS THE FREE WORLD!!!

We've been obsessing over the Prius since last year's model, so when we read the specs of the 2004 version, we went ahead and put our deposit down and hoped for the best. In the meantime, it became Motor Trends' Car of the Year, which opened a floodgate of interest, and now we're told ours is one of the first in NYC, and there is a 9 to 11-month waiting list. In California, the wait is a year and a half. Needless to say, we feel utterly blessed.

You don't use your car keys like normal; you just need them in your pocket. They wirelessly open the doors and start the engine with the push of a button. The car is so quiet that Tessa accidentally left it running during the entirety of "Return of the King," meaning that any Tolkein fan could have forgone Middle Earth and driven off with the Future. The base price is $19K, and ours came with a wicked video navigation system, a 9-speaker stereo, and an impenetrable anti-theft mechanism (my beloved wife notwithstanding). No, there is no "plugging it in," and it goes as fast as you want.

Anyone with serious cock issues shouldn't buy the Prius; it doesn't rev and jolt out of intersections like most assholes in their Yukons. In fact, the physical feel of driving is so different that it takes some getting used to. At a full stop, the engine shuts off and you can hear whispers. On the highway, you can hear the bass of your favorite songs again. The transmission is so seamless that it almost feels like you're on a mag-lev train, floating above the sand like the car Luke had in "Star Wars."

We were willing to put up with a tiny car, but, like an Escher painting or the plot of House of Leaves, the interior seems to measure bigger than the car's exterior. It's called a "compact," but the room inside - because of the smaller engine and battery - gives you the legroom and storage of a midsize. There's more room in the back seat than the Land Rover, swear to god.

And it gets 60 miles a gallon in the city. In other words, you can drive 720 miles through Manhattan before you need to get more gas. This was why we're doing this: we wanted to Stick It To The Man as hard as we possibly could. Dick Cheney and the Bush family is not getting one more fucking red cent from our oil purchases than we can bear. And since the car is almost zero-emissions, we are ensuring that our grandkids won't have to wear SPF 400 sunscreen when it's cloudy.

Hopefully, we can act as emissaries for this little baby, showing people that you don't have to drive a cramped, slow car shaped like a Advil gelcap in order to get insane mileage. Put your name on the list and help us Kick the Man in the Nuts!

beaten

12/17/03

During the trailer for "Return of the King" tonight, I was overcome with horror - not for the usual reason (trailers suck and give away the ending), but for something much worse.

Y'see, before I wrote "The Pink House," my second screenplay was called "Try to Remember," and was the story of a woman returning to her home in New Orleans, falling in love with a ghost that may - or may not - be haunting her room, discovering a mode of time travel based in something really cool, then setting off on several time trips to save him and their family. She is able to assume her own body in her past ages, and is struggling with a dark secret from childhood. And it's also sort of a comedy. " Something like "Donnie Darko" combined with "Somewhere in Time."

I have been working on this script for about five years, and I was planning on making it a priority assuming all goes well with "The Pink House."

Sounds cool, right? Well, you'll never see it. The trailer I saw tonight was for a movie called "The Butterfly Effect" starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart, and the plot is exactly the same, just the gender roles are reversed. It's so close that if I were an absolute paranoid fuck, I'd think someone had cribbed a copy of my 1998 screenplay. Of course, that's not the way these things work.

I've harped on and on about cognitive resonance in here before, but put in perspective of the movie business it works like this: the second you have a great script idea, another person, unrelated to you in every way, will also have the exact same idea. From that moment, it's a race.

This has happened before, most devastatingly with the movie "Sliding Doors." I had already outlined and pitched a romantic comedy that follows a woman through two alternate paths of reality (even distinguishing the two by haircuts), and then I paused for a couple of years to write a novel about something else. The second I finished my book, I saw the ad for the Gwyneth Paltrow movie, and knew I had fucked myself into a cocked hat.

Tonight was especially hard, since I had poured so much of my heart and random thought processes into the New Orleans script. Five years. I even brought it up to the farm to finish over Christmas. But "The Pink House" has taken so long, and the mountains have been so steep, that some other guy has gone ahead and made the other movie. I don't think it's possible to express what a body blow to the gut this is, I suppose you'll just have to trust me.

I have been beaten twice, badly, by cognitive resonance. I can fucking promise you there will not be a third.

rouge et blue et jaune

12/16/03

This is what I looked like today. I think it's important, if you're keeping a diary, to make sure you note how young you are, how old you've become, how you've changed in a few years, all the minutiae that gets lost when you're up on the balcony shouting at the world all your most precious theories.

When I see old pictures of myself, I never think about what I look like, or where the picture was taken – I always think "what the fuck happened to that shirt? who stole it? did I leave it somewhere? WHERE THE HELL IS THAT GODDAMN SHIRT?!?"

tonight's sunset was rather nice

free free, set them free

12/15/03

Great conversation going on in the "comments" section of yesterday's blog, but my friend Steph reminds me of a larger point, namely, did the eradication of Saddam Hussein actually save hundreds of thousands of lives down the road, and if we don't really know, wasn't it worth it, just in case?

The specific case of Saddam is interesting, since one thing cooler heads said before the war was this: he may be a paranoid, psychotic murderer, but he isn't crazy. Namely, he'll try to get away with a few things (gassing Kurds, invading Kuwait), but he wouldn't actually use nuclear weapons on anybody, fearing his own Mutually-Assured Destruction.

I think his capture has borne this out; there he was, lying in a hole, trying to scratch out an existence. This is one man with a Life Wish. He could have launched missiles at Israel and gone out it a Islamist blaze of martyric glory, he could have sought help with an Al Qaeda or two, he could have even pulled a Hitler and shot himself before the infidels found his bunker. Instead, he sighed, gave up, and promptly submitted himself to a dental exam. There's something very human about his capture, don't you think?

So, to answer the specific question, no, I don't think we saved millions of lives by nabbing this guy. But the question is much more interesting when thrown into the macrocosm – do we, as a nation, have a pre-emptive right to alter the course of what we see as a possible destiny? My own experience is very hawkish; having grown up in an environment full of school beatings, constant humiliation, and friendlessness, I felt as though I worked for every success I had. To me, life had been mostly arbitrary and cruel, and I took every possible chance to ensure that I would survive. I was not about to leave that kind of shit up to fate.

But a dawning exhaustion – and the adoption of my own brand of dime-store Buddhism – has taken the burden of "controlling things" away, and I have never been happier. Sure, I still hurl epithets at God during basketball, and my basement is full of emergency supplies, but I have largely let other things go. It's the only way I could have coupled with another human being, and it's the only way to deal with the rejection and frustration of a life in art.

So, in a bigger picture, the idea of American pre-emption fills me with horror and shame. It's one thing to duck when someone throws a punch, but another to poison somebody who may punch you someday. Being so sanctimoniously sure about how history will unfold – has anybody had such hubris in the entirety of written history? Especially the Bush administration; if these guys are divining the Fates, then it's time to move to Mars.

I just don't think we have a right to control world history. Fate has some lumps to give, and you have to take them. The less you force your control, the more positive things you get back. That is the history of control, from the Roman Empire to our own parents. Control is a short-term comfort, but a long-term disaster. Life is way too brilliant, complicated, beautiful and labyrinthine to assume anything.

hairy and smelly

12/14/03

So the American forces "caught" Saddam Hussein today. Would it be too rude to say "big fucking deal"? The only people I'm happy for are the families stationed in Fort Bragg, or some other small military town in down-east North Carolina, a wife or a son who might be able to breathe 1/9th easier on the off-chance that this event may un-inspire a terrorist or two from taking out one of their husbands or fathers. As for the rest of this sorry spectacle, it's just embarrassing all around.

The worst thing, of course, is that Americans are so stupid that this capture may make them more likely to vote for George W. Bush again. There he was on television, his monkey smiley-face, talking about how the world can finally relax 'cuz "we got 'im." His glee was barely contained. But really, it was Bush and his neo-con cronies that got us into this goddamn war, and now we're supposed to feel all jubilant because he finally found the leader of Iraq after killing 8,850 civilians? He looked like a little kid that wanted credit for cleaning up his own pee.

While we're lost in this momentary haze of drunken giddiness, let's not forget that nabbing this tyrant has not altered why so many of us were against this war. Saddam Hussein not only has no weapons of mass destruction, he not only has no ties to Al Qaeda, he doesn't even have a goddamn lice comb. And don't get started about how he gassed his own people, because we all know there is only one country who has used the most horrific weapon of mass destruction on another, and it ain't Iraq. And if we're all supposed to be glad that this murderous dictator is no longer running a country, then we should get going on the other ones – take a number, the line starts right behind Mugabe and Kim Jong-Il.

Yes, this day has dealt a blow to the Democrats, which is another reason for sorrow. I'm man enough to admit that I cry out in anguish every time something strengthens the power of the Bush Administration. At least I'm coming right out and saying it – other leftist bloggers might dance a foxtrot around the subject. I'll go even one better: doesn't it seem like the timing was just awful good? Right in time for Christmas. I will be stunned if we don't "find" WMD in Iraq in time for the election; not in October, because that would be too obvious. More like September or late July.

Certainly the world is a better place with Saddam locked up, right? Well, a casual observer might think so, but the world is always more complicated. You get always get payback eventually. I wonder how Bush feels about those 15 Afghan kids they blew into little bits last week. I wonder what their payback will be.

our fave sagittarius

12/12/03

my mom circa 1950

This entry is a hearty shout-out to my Mom, who turned 72 today, and doesn't look a day older than, say, 60. If she ever went to the gym like I tell her to, she wouldn't look a day over 56.

There are two stories about my mom that she is sick of, but they totally encapsulate what she is all about. The first one takes place in a "Model A" Ford driving from Utah to California in about 1949. On the long slope down a mountain, the gear stick shift came loose, stranding my mom and her two sisters in the middle of god-knows-where Utah desert. After my aunts screamed that they were all going to be eaten alive, my mom took a bobby pin out of her hair, stuck in the gearbox, shoved the stick shift back in, and spit sand revving the hell out of there. When I was young, driving I-15 through Cedar City, she used to point out the hill where this happened. "We sold the car with the bobby pin still in it," was always the capper.

The other is shorter: while we were living in Iowa, she lost her keys. After three hours of the entire family scouring every part of the house, she found them in the freezer.

I use these two stories, out of the hundreds we know about my mom, because they perfectly illustrate her: inventive, practical, effusive, and charming – with the occasional lapse of consciousness so surreal that it keeps us all in a state of constant bewilderment. She hates that keys-in-the-freezer story, but to me, it was never a bad thing. I know that there was that moment - when she was composing a string quintet in her head, or arranging a children's song for four voices - when she opened the freezer door and threw her keys inside. She was inhabiting a world that has given us so much pleasure, like her symphonic work Sundance, or the Arcadia Quartet, or even that gorgeous version of "Rainbow Day" that every fourth grader knows across America.

Thank god she's not always with us, because we'd miss out on so much. Like I always say, my best friend Chip and my mom are like tortillas; their corporeal forms are just delivery mechanisms for the good stuff.

Here's to you, Mom – long may you forget where you are occasionally. Just please, don't look for your cell phone in the back seat while you're driving.

me and mom at my wedding in August

insist on knowing my bliss

12/11/03

In a headline skewed for maximize snarkiness, Salon.com ran the AP story that Hall and Oates have been deemed "Heroes of Music." Yes, cue groans and guffaws, but I think many of you have forgotten just how awesome Hall & Oates were back in their creative heyday of the early 80s. Forget about "Method of Modern Love" and the other songs from the mid-80s, when Darryl Hall's ego and mullet threatened to destroy American culture. Forget also the comparisons between John Oates and Andrew Ridgeley, the "other half of Wham!" - Oates was a great singer, had amazing backup vocal ideas, and played guitar, whereas Ridgeley just raced cars.

"Private Eyes" had some of the best vocal work on Top 40 radio; "Kiss on My List" had chords that my mom once called "fascinating" while we were driving to the store; "I Can't Go For That" is about the best groove since Stevie Wonder's "That Girl" – and there is just nothing on the radio as unique as the now-overplayed "Maneater" and the forgotten "Family Man." These dudes wrote great pop songs, none of which sounded like the other, and they did it for 12 years.

Perhaps much of the derision lies in John Oates' moustache, which is admittedly pretty terrible. And their album covers ranged from ghastly to horff-inspiring. But American music audiences always suffer from a severe case of What Have You Done for Me Lately, in that they judge every artist by their worst transgressions or recent failures.

As for me, I have the McCartney Rule. Simply stated, it means that the man who wrote "Blackbird," "Drive My Car," "Lady Madonna" and "Hey Jude" doesn't owe anything to anybody. He has done his job. If he puts out forty albums of absolute crap, I don't care, because he made my life infinitely better with his other work. The same goes for any other artist who has given me cause for joy – and for that, "I Can't Go For That" and "Kiss on My List" give Hall & Oates my permanent respect, and sure, why can't they be heroes?

1 second is 24 frames

12/10/03

Operation Get Back Up On That Horse™ began in earnest today, as we took a field trip to Technicolor at their new digs on Leroy Street in Greenwich Village. This is where you take your film, no matter how crappy, distressed or odd it may be, and they froth up magic in their electronic blenders, giving you a gorgeous movie in return. The movie post-production business in NYC has been devastated by the post-WTC attack fallout, but in a way, it has taken all the major players and assembled them under one roof. Kind of like the All-Star NBA team of film finishing.

When people say they made a feature film for $50,000, they're either lying or being semantically creative. The truth is that there are three things your movie must have before any other human being can watch it without rolling their eyes in disgust.

1. Color correction. Say you're shooting a scene with two people talking. To keep it simple, you'd use two over-the-shoulder shots, and a master of both people from the side. Problem is, unless you have two cameras, those shots will be filmed at different times in the day – and in the case with our film, some of them were shot a week later.

(side note: there is one scene in the movie where one of the main characters answers a question that was asked – in real time - a year before. I dare anyone to find it...)

Anyway, the entire palette, color, sun, and film stock might change in the time it takes to set up the next shot, so the sorcerers at Technicolor tweak the image to make them look the same. They can make the sun come out. They can give you a rainstorm. They can change the color of the room. This process happens with every shot in almost every movie you've ever seen, and it is painstaking.

2. Dialogue sweetening. When I showed by brother Kent an early (2002) trailer we made, he liked it, but said, "um, but it doesn't sound like a movie." This was before we spent weeks in the sound studio, pumping the dialogue to 3X the normal volume, and giving it bass, and expansion, and paprika, and tarragon, and whatever the hell else they do to Make it Sound Like a Movie. And yes, this too is done with every line in almost every movie you've ever seen.

3. Optics. This is super-confusing, because "optics" actually refer to any words that are written on screen, like titles, or every time the scene changes in "Law and Order." Without good optics, you have credits rendered in video, and it looks like a 4th grader's handicam science project on papier-mâché volcanoes. (see "comments" on how I screwed this up - future ian)

I swear to god, the second you wander back into the look of Video-Land, you will lose fully 2/5ths of your audience. There is something about the look of video vs. the look of film - even if it is fake - that bears some serious psychoanalysis. Housewives admit a passing concern about the characters on soap operas (video) but will fling themselves off a bridge if anything bad happens to one of the "Friends" (film).

There's a thesis in there somewhere.

There's a book in all of this.

Perhaps I've already written one.

pathos and pathology

12/9/03

Those of you who have been reading this blog know I can go on for hours about how excruciating the making of The Pink House really was. I spent a year re-writing it, lugging scripts around in horizontal rain, and had probably the worst dry-reading of a screenplay since Elizabethan times. Still, I soldiered on, undeterred, powered by ego and buttressed by friendship.

We managed to raise just enough money to shoot the film, hire a couple of great indie stars, and brought hundreds of people together in North Carolina during one of the hottest weeks in history, to spend three weeks torturing ourselves. It was more harrowing than anything in "Project Greenlight," worse by far than "Living in Oblivion." We had a key member of the crew go off his rage medication and nearly killed two extras. Two different thunderstorms washed away the set, and a lightning bolt nearly killed the art department. Our lead actor broke his hand halfway through filming. It was called "The Pink House" and the actual Pink House wouldn't let us inside to shoot. Slowly, one by one, we went crazy.

I know I'm repeating myself. Bear with me.

On the last day of shooting, the typhoon had shut down any outside filming, leaving us with five scenes unfilmed. Soaking wet, with hundreds of crew sheltering themselves under trees and inside cars, Tessa and I rewrote the scenes and shot them that evening. We had to suck it up and keep moving, even though it meant changing the ending of our film.

We finished principal photography at the end of August 2001. On the afternoon of September 10, 2001, we got our film and tapes back, and began to edit in Manhattan. A few hours later, well, whatever. You know what happened. Less people know that Tessa's dad died a week later. In the ensuing chaos, and a hurried Christmas, we couldn't start editing until February of 2002.

Every thing that could have gone wrong with our computers, did. We had to update Final Cut Pro three times. We discovered an entire reel of film had disappeared. We missed the deadlines for Toronto and Sundance. But still, the long (3-hour) edit of the movie was beginning to make us laugh. Somewhere, buried in stone like one of Michelangelo's slaves, there was a pretty great movie hidden.

We ran out of money again, and took to the road to raise more. We had meeting after meeting with millionaires, and even a billionaire, but the world was reeling from the post-Sept. 11 aftermath, and investing in anything artistic, with even the faintest whiff of high risk, was almost non-existent. Again, we came back to New York thanks to benificence of one inspired investor, and carved out a fantastic edit of the movie. We showed it to an anonymous audience, who gave us a positive rating of 90%, almost unheard-of for a rough cut.

Emboldened, we bit the bullet and had a sneak screening of the rough cut to friends and family. Even though I knew there was one big flaw with the movie that needed fixing (more on that some other time), the reception we got was fantastic. I worked a couple of leads for investments afterwards, but then we got the greatest news of all: an angel had been at the screening, and they had come to rescue us. Our financial problems were over. The entire rest of the movie, everything, was now paid for.

In jubilation, we made plans. We set forth to fix a nagging problem with the film, dropped all our leads, and spent the last two months chomping at the bit. We could finish in time for another major festival, get the soundtrack settled, start a marketing campaign, gear up to sell this baby, start our careers as filmmakers in earnest.

We even made friends with our salvation, sharing our lives, sharing our friends. Two months of this pure bliss.

And it was a lie. A cruel, unbelievable, pathological lie. It was a fantasy from the get-go.

Tessa went into mourning, and I retreated into cold-weather hibernation. If it weren't for Celexa and shots of espresso, I would have a foot-long beard and be living in a hole in the ground. It is one thing to do this to a company, or a faceless organization with millions of dollars, but to do this to us, an independent comedy production that already has EVERYTHING against us, was beyond the scope of heartlessness.

We will pick ourselves off the floor again, and start over. Any leads are appreciated, my beloved readers.

As for our betrayal, my lawyer says I can't name names, and I will not divulge the particulars of what happened. But I believe some public accountability must be had. All I want is to put a few pictures on the blog, the faces of those who have worked so hard.

blue jay way

12/9/03

Ever since my involuntary manslaughter of that poor kitty in our barn, I have taken to rescue every animal within my grasp. Yesterday I ventured out into the blizzard to refill the bird feeder so that these little guys can make it through the season.

After staring at them for half an hour, I suddenly realized why birdwatchers spend their entire lives in search of the elusive. There are about 40 different relationships and pecking orders playing themselves out for you in real time. You get favorites, you are enamored of some, but not all, and you hope the littlest of them get fed. You hope the guy gets the girl. You hope nobody makes a huge mess. You hope they keep coming back.

Yes, I'm a little depressed. What about it?

O, Remote Functionality!

12/7/03

Okay, this is what I'd like.

I want to have about five lamps, a small camera, a television set, and my furnace all attached to a central box in my house upstate that is connected to my Mac computer.

I want to sit in Brooklyn and send an email to my Mac upstate that turns on one of the lights, maybe turns off the furnace, or turns the camera on, so I can see what's going on.

Yes, I know about Indigo, which does all this, but it uses X 10 technology, which is not only responsible for those horrible pop-up spy camera ads, but apparently the technology itself can be very unreliable. Just one surge protector in your home can swallow the entire signal, and I've read stories about lights turning on all day for no reason.

There has to be something better. Something with Bluetooth? Something with WiFi 802.11b? I refuse to believe that my Airport can stream high-definition movie trailers across the snowy fields into my barn, but it can't turn on a goddamn light bulb.

Is someone working on this? Is there a solution already in place, but I don't know about it? Certainly you silverorange guys have heard something. Or my brother Steve. I don't ask for much. Just a little attention. And a furnace with an email address.

free to lance

12/5/03

I'd like to know one thing: why the hell does America make it so hard to be a freelancer? This goddamn country does everything it can to keep you from taking your life into your own hands; if you freelance for a living, you have to file income taxes quarterly, you have to pay Freelancing Tax, you don't get any health insurance worth a damn, and most telling of all, if you get jury duty, you have to go - even if you risk losing every gig you've dreamed of having. Say what you want about the unions, but at least they demand that their employees are treated as "citizens" first, and "workers" second. There is no business in the world that can fire you for jury duty, but if you're a freelancer, you can go fuck yourself.

You'd think it was because the Powers That Be want a nice, supplicant, docile populace that goes to their suck-ass job at 9am, trudges home at 5pm, spends money at the mall, and doesn't complain. But that isn't quite true either – big corporations LOVE freelancers because they can pay them nothing, fire them whenever they want to, and deny them health insurance.

I'm so sick of this idea that freelancers spend their entire fruity days guzzling down soy lattés at coffee shops, and don't really count when it comes to America's finest workers. The truth is that freelancers believe in the American Way more than anybody; who else could possess the constant optimism and bootstrap-tugging that allows you to think that you can find your way up the ladder without an evil overlord? Freelancers work WAY harder at their jobs than most people with jobs do.

The life of a freelancer is marked by two things: humiliation and freedom. You are embarrassed constantly if you try to pitch ideas to people without the umbrella of a company. As a freelance journalist, eight out of ten ideas will be summarily rejected with the wave of a hand, one of them will be accepted but never seen by a another human being, and the tenth will pay your rent. Actors (who are freelancers with a better union) frequently lose 39 jobs out of 40.

But the freedom can't be beat. Some people like their boss, probably 10% of you, but the rest? Allow me to tell your boss to "fuck off," since you can't. I have been humbled and in awe of a few people in my working life – I'd lay myself in front of a train for a good editor - but the rest of them were mouth-breathing monkeys with sick affirmation fantasies. To be free of them, to never be told what to do by someone you loathe, to pull three all-nighters in a row, then decompress for a week... it's worth being treated like a second-class citizen. I may face constant rejection, but at least I have my liberty.

pools of sorrow, waves of joy

12/4/03

By the time I was 12 or 13, I did not obsess over the Minnesota Vikings like my schoolmates did, nor did I have a baseball card collection; I didn't know anything about cars, there were no video games to speak of (except Pong), and I was very late to porn. But I did have one obsession that began in my adolescence and still flows through my veins today: The Beatles.

While all the other kids listening to the "Xanadu" soundtrack, Rush, and "Back in Black," I loved the Beatles about as much as 1980 would allow. This was before John was shot, too - I got into them because Kent bought me Revolver (the American version) and I spent hours mesmerized by "She Said She Said" and "Tomorrow Never Knows." Picking through my mom's collection, I found "Rubber Soul," and then, flash-forward two years later, and I've got cassette tapes of the fourteenth take of "Strawberry Fields" with no sign of slowing. Suffice to say, when the Beatles are a category on "Jeopardy," nobody comes close.

It was with an eerie recollection of a childhood breathless enthusiasm that I picked up Let it Be...Naked while at Newbury Comics in Cambridge, and it has recast an entire era of Beatles songs that I'd previously ignored. I always thought "Let it Be" as an album (and a movie) was boring and depressing, and the songs were an odd postscript to a career that should have ended with the last notes of "Her Majesty."

But the new version of "The Long and Winding Road" shows what Paul was up to after all, and it is suddenly a gorgeous little ballad instead of being this fuckin' muzak schmaltz that has been constipating the airwaves for 35 years. "Across the Universe" is also quite lovely, although I still prefer the version on "Past Masters" with all the bird noises and girl backup singers.

So, today I started loading these and other albums from my collection onto the iPod, and it left me with two thoughts:

1. Who the fuck stole all my CDs? I'm missing half my Cocteau Twins collection, all of my Cure is gone, my "Louder Than Bombs" is mangled, and somebody absconded with most of my jazz albums. You know who was the original Napster? ME. Because everywhere I lived, be it the Lodge, or the Purple or Pink Houses, everyone stole my music. Seriously, this is why I use Limewire so much. I already paid for this shit, yo!

2. It's obvious that George Martin was the "Fifth Beatle," and his arrangements are among the most gorgeous and brilliant pieces of music in the modern oeuvre. I've written string quartets for children's music for 15 years, and I still use the strings of "Eleanor Rigby" and "I Am the Walrus" as inspiration. But for the first time, while listening to some of my Beatle demo tapes, I wonder if he always acted in their best interests. "Strawberry Fields" and "Fool on the Hill" have way more nads in their earlier incarnations, and there's a lot of "Sgt. Pepper" that is so cool (like "Mr. Kite" and "Good Morning") that gets drowned in arrangements.

Maybe the lo-fi revolution of the early 90s actually did change my tastes for orchestral rock. God knows I fought it (and I still think Sebadoh is boring) but perhaps we all needed to be stripped of our pretention for a few years in there.

Here's to THAT not lasting.

to-day's lesson

12/3/03

Hi everybody!

Today and went to the shrink. They do that every once in a while now that they are . It helps keep things ship-shape.

Then they went to see at the Soy Luck Club. had the hazelnut latte. It was good.

Then they got from the East Village and took her to see her boyfriend at Blue Ribbon in Brooklyn. and like each other!

Then they went back to and 's place to watch a video of the . They all asked each other when they were going to have kids like . The conversation was inconclusive.

Well, that's all for today!

love,

P.S. picks his nose

ding dong th' bells

12/2/03

The only thing more predictable than my political leanings are the succession of terrible decisions made by the Bush Administration and the 108th Congress, so it should bore everyone to tears that I find this new Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution one of the worst ideas since the Founding Fathers decided to make Negroes into 2/5ths a person.

I swear to god, accepting homosexuals is going to be the last frontier in this country. It took conservatives centuries to begrudgingly give women and blacks the time of day, but their bizarre fear and knee-jerk loathing of homosexuals seems like it will never fade. My extended Mormon family hates gays more than they hate Al Qaeda.

Well, I got news for you: the Federal Marriage Amendment will fail eventually, terrible ideas like that always do. And now that Massachusetts has set the precedent for states to ratify same-sex unions, pretty soon New York will too, then Hawaii, then Oregon, and then YOUR state will be next. You can either choose to accept this now, or go down in history like the raving pontificators of the Confederate Congress.

Massachusetts is only a couple of miles away from our house; from the top of our hill, you can see their trees, and the faint outline of churches where ceremonies can be held. We plan on getting as many gay couples married there as we can, then bringing them over the border to our barn for a party as swingin' as the one we had for our own wedding. We're going to be your One-Stop Queer Marriage Hut™.

The first couple, I hope, will be Tessa's best friend Jason and his partner Tim. Some of the coolest and funniest people I know, they live in Los Angeles for Seasonal Affective Disorder reasons, but as soon as the 180-day time limit has passed, they will hotfoot it to cold-ass Massachusetts, exchange vows, then drive back to our place for a hootenanny. This blog goes out to them, and to all the other gays who are seeing a pinpoint of light at the end of the tunnel.

dit-dit dit-dah dah-dit

Hey kids, and welcome to

SHIT ONLY I CARE ABOUT... volume XVII!!!

Today we're going to be discussing my irrational love for all things wireless. When I was a friendless, bowl-cut, glasses-all-fogged-up 12-year-old with snot running down my face, I got my ham radio license (KA0JXA, to those of you in the Biz) and obsessed over dipoles built in my yard. The thought of transmitting actual blips and blaps over a piece of wire hanging off my roof filled me with satisfaction, and offered precious nanoseconds of respite from my dreary existence behind the 7-foot diesel-covered snowbanks of Eastern Iowa.

I carried this compulsion with walkie-talkies, then cordless phones, then the internet, and NOW, fair friends, I have reached the current pinnacle of wireless technology.

Do I have to say it? Of course, it's 802.11g!

Our Brooklyn apartment is weird, and probably has brick walls (and human bodies) laced in it, so getting a good Airport signal from one end to the other has been a constantly-shifting game of contortionist art. Today, I installed the new Airport Extreme (which always reminds me of Homer's cartoon dog Poochie that recycles..."to the EXTREME!") and spent three hours trying to mount it on plasterboard without taking the entire wall down, then another two hours placing the antenna so Tessa could surf from her office.

Now, having been a rabid wardriver myself, I fully appreciate how important it is to give ne'er-do-wells in the immediate vicinity the chance to piggyback on our internet connection. For months, I left the encryption password off, just to provide a bit of public service and a karmic "thank you" to all those internet connections I've stolen before.

But then someone started downloading the entire Library of Congress Jazz Catalogue, or atmospheric recreations for the Biosphere, or porn - and our service slowed to a funereal crawl. So, reluctantly, I've had to close off our access to the world at large.

Someday, my childhood fantasy of a wireless world, some fantastical system where streams of information are beamed to entire cities at a time from a gargantuan blimp docked in the sky, will come to pass. It would be the redemptive conclusion of my sad dipole in a cold Iowa yard, then Love and Wireless would rule the Earth.

Until then, the fine folks on Berkeley Street will have to make do with the seven other Airport signals they can get from their bedrooms. I recommend "fyrlearese," she seems cool.