Drama

Lately I've been experiencing situations commonly known as "drama". It's a mixed bag, but a few of the good things to come of it are:

1. Loss of appetite = potential weight loss
2. Creativity up = writing again
3. General warm fuzzies in close proximity to object of affection

The bad things include:

1. Sleepless nights
2. Restlessness and difficulty concentrating
3. Extra sensitivity to harmless comments meant to amuse

I'm a very laid-back person under normal circumstances, so this is rather unfamiliar emotional territory for me. I'm lucky to have friends and family to talk to, but I can see how people in other circumstances can have trouble with this kind of thing. I'll try to be more sympathetic in the future.

Golden age

I've been reading that we're living in a golden age of television at the moment, with more popular series that are also high quality than have been on the air in many years. I wouldn't know, since I rarely watch series TV, but there have been a few things that have caught my interest in the last couple years.

Right now, I'm in the middle of watching the second season of Lost on dvd. I watched most of the first season and lost track near the end, so I gave up on it for a while. Then I borrowed season 1 from Jim, and fell in love all over again. When Julia offered to lend me season 2, I jumped on the chance and I'll be done with it in less than a week. It's that good.

But it's not perfect. The first season really suffered from poor music selection at the end of episodes, where some horrific thing or other was usually glossed over in the last minute with a pleasant guitar strum under slo-mo laughing on the beach. I haven't caught as much of that in season 2, thankfully, but there's also the matter of the pregnant pause. In typical Hollywood fashion, no one can say anything just prior to a commercial break that doesn't cause a complete halt in the conversation for at least five seconds of emoting before the cut to black.

Still, I look back on all those afternoons and evenings of my childhood, when I would watch whatever was on for no reason whatsoever, regardless of quality, and I wish they'd been making material like this at the time. Thanks to dvd, I have the opportunity to catch up on other shows like the Shield, the Wire, and Deadwood. Almost makes me want to get cable again.

Scene from my night

"I don't hold your hope against you," I told her as we stood with our arms around each other in the parking lot.
"I'll call you," she replied.

And just like that, she was gone.

Remembrance

So I hear everybody's posting where they were when the 9/11 attacks happened today. I was at work. I heard the news on a coworker's radio, then turned on mine to listen. There were two television sets in the gym on the first floor of our building. After the first couple hours, we took turns going down to watch. In the days after, I remember news reports saying no one believed the buildings would collapse, but everyone in my office was talking about it as if it was a foregone conclusion. It was just a matter of when. One of my coworkers had been in the Air Force. When I asked him where he thought the president was, he told me without hesitation that he would already be out of the country in flight, so I was surprised when he was in Washington by that evening.

The drive home took me past the DFW airport, and it was immediately obvious there was not a plane in the sky. That was the first time ever I hadn't seen a plane landing while driving that road, and it made me sad.

When I got home, I went to the gas station across the street and filled up. There was a line formed already by 6:00pm. I had cable at the time, so I watched news, flipping from channel to channel until night fell, and then as I laid in bed in the dark, hoping that when I woke up it would all have been a bad dream.

Back in slack

I needed a breather. Buying, moving everything, then getting settled into the new house took a lot out of me. On top of that, my life's been changing in other ways since I turned thirty in May, and I've had a lot to think about.

I went and saw my uncle in Florida two weekends ago. He lives in a retirement community surrounded by golf courses, and I played almost as much golf in three days as I had in my entire life. It was good practice, but when I played again with a coworker yesterday, it was clear that old habits die hard. I need to start going to the driving range.

My right wrist started aching shortly after I got home from Florida, and I chalked it up to all the golf I played, but I'm pretty sure I've got some of that carpal tunnel syndrome that probably doesn't help. I've been playing video games since I was a little kid with an Atari 2600, and last spring I noticed for the first time I was having trouble holding the controller when I was playing my cousin's X-Box because my thumbs were aching. Not a good sign.

The Roky Erickson project is finally seeing a little movement. The Staple! producer left town and gifted me a couple hundred copies of the dvd that I've been letting out as a calling card and conversation starter.

I've been dating a slightly older woman for about a month now. She seems to share some of my sensibilities, while being polar opposite in others. Maybe that's a good mix. Meanwhile, I've been trying to get my head straight over some other relationships in my life, with some success. I'm not much for handwringing anymore, and I've begun using "high school" as an epithet for a way of behavior I used to suffer from, but managed to get over by the time I graduated college.

Other than that, all is well. The Simpsons season 8 just came out on dvd and is probably my favorite of the series. Today is a holiday, the second Monday I've had off in a row. I bought a bunch of new audio equipment and a tripod to supplement my video offerings for rental and production capability. I have to start seriously committing some time to studying for a certification test for work, since my free time there has disappeared of late as I've taken on a new duty that should prove valuable to the firm and my bottom line.

Drop me an email or a comment if I haven't talked to you lately.

The new place.

Home sweet home

We closed on a house yesterday in south Austin, so I am now officially a first-time homeowner. It's pretty exciting, and also a little daunting. I need to get the power turned back on, but things are shaping up pretty nicely.

Royal welcome

I bought a cd of Prince's greatest hits on my birthday last month, since I knew he was a phenomenal guitarist by reputation and I knew so many of his songs, which have gotten a lot more radio play in recent years. I don't know if that's because all his lawsuits were finally finished, but there was a time when I never heard him on the radio a few years ago.

I remembered liking "When Doves Cry" when I was a kid, and of course he did the soundtrack to Batman, which was interesting, and then there was the New Power Generation. His videos with them are the first that come to mind for me, probably because his '80's videos (the only one I actually remember clearly was for "When Doves Cry") were a little dated by my teenage years.

One of the few music videos my mother ever told me she didn't want me watching was "Gett Off", and of course that made it all the more memorable. By that point, Prince had taken his raunchy style to its logical conclusion, just in time to re-embrace Jesus and disappear for a while. I didn't remember just how strange and wonderful that song was until I heard it on this cd, but what struck me the most was how it was pretty much of a piece with the rest of his work, rather than an anomaly.

I can't think of any other pop artist of the time who was so willing to twist and distort his voice for bizarre effect at the top of his career. Just listen to that screech he lets out to begin "Gett Off", followed by some kind of wimpering moan that seems to go on and on. Or the way he uses a computer-like voice filter to drone on at the beginning of "When Doves Cry". Or his strangled scream at the climax of "Little Red Corvette" that follows a vocal run up and down the registers.

That got me to thinking, maybe Prince wasn't so popular in spite of such touches, but because of them. In fact, at least on the pop charts, we have nowhere near the eclecticism of the '80's, and to a lesser extent the '90's before the death of grunge. "American Idol" and the like push a kind of studied perfectionism on the world of pop music that, together with modern digital correction, results in a bland, perfect sound on every song.

Lest I sound too old-fogey-like, I must admit I've liked Kelly Clarkson's new album a lot, despite the fact that it suffers from the above, as well as being way over-played. At least she knows how to pick a good song. It's just too bad there isn't room at the top anymore for the artists really willing to be idiosyncratic and weird in the pursuit of their fame and fortune. Like System of a Down, they have a hit here and there, but they don't get to rule the airwaves like they used to.

Running man

I started a running program on Monday with Runtex, an athletic store chain down here that's pretty popular. One of my coworkers bet me $80, the cost of one month's program, that I couldn't take the class and then finish a 5k run afterward. I think he was just trying to motivate me to get in better shape, and maybe wanted a partner to do the class with since he joined too. I've never been much of a runner, but it will probably do me good, especially since it's difficult for me to work out with weights. Ever since my shoulder injury a few years back, I have to be careful and can't really push myself like I used to.

Speaking of which, we got massages at work yesterday for the first time in months. This guy seems pretty capable and knowledgeable, and even thinks he can help with the shoulder thing. I hope so, as nothing would make me happier.

Time will tell

It's funny how technology can destroy and create trends. Like fashion, sometimes it can even bring them back from the dead. Consider the pocketwatch.

A small device carried in the pocket used to tell time.

Sounds like a cell phone to me. I know maybe one or two people that still wear wrist watches, but nearly everyone I know has a cell phone. Ask them for the time, and that's where they'd check. Don't count on seeing the little chains anytime soon, though.