July 2004 Archives

I'll have to audioblog from our room, where I'll be trying my hardest to age with rapid succession. Wish me luck!

Why is it that Theory of a Deadman had the best live mix I've heard from a band, ever? I don't care for them. I was not there to see them. But still, I could hear every single syllable out of that man's mouth. This was sometime last year. Since then I've seen one terrible sounding show after another. Vocals are but an afterthought to the rock engineer.

Last night, I had Equalizers floating through my head through the entire concert. If only I could turn the mids down on the guitars! If only I could boost the vocals at 4k. All would be well in the world.

Still, under the muddy mix, Finger Eleven were fantastic. As always.

As always, we gathered around their tour bus like birds of prey. Like teen girls, eagerly awaiting the band's emergence. Others gave up, but not us.

Guitarist extraordinaire, James Black recognized Jeremy from The Robert Cake straight off and we talked that for a bit. He does in fact love Adam Wekarski for his Bruce Campbell-esque lovably bad but good acting styles. He even paraphrased one of his lines, I can't remember which.

Also, he asked about the progress of Orbiting Ethan Oort, which was shocking and obviously something Natalie must have mentioned to him. Then we talked about current movies for half an hour and all the other fans left; bored.

Story-short... He unloaded mega compliments for actually getting out there and DOING things. For just making things happen for ourselves. Because no one else is going to make a movie for us. Then he gave us his personal email address and told us to contact him if we ever need any music for a film. That he'd really like to score a film someday too. It was fucking surreal.

Fucking surreal.

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My father's book is the number one early adopter in their "health, mind and body" section. Number two is Dr. Laura Schlessinger's new book. And my father's book comes out a whole five months after hers!

Upon seeing this, Anthony's mouth went agape. All he said was, "Dad's bigger than Dr. Laura."

Today I see that the book is the number FIVE early adopter for ALL BOOKS on Amazon.com. What's fun, is to go down the list and find all the authors I've heard of or even read. It's also a complete mindfuck.

For instance... McSweeney's Issue 13... it's sitting on my coffee table. It's number nineteen on the list.

#22 - Just a Geek - Wil Wheaton ... I had no idea Wil Wheaton had a book out, now I want to read this.

#64 - The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green - Joshua Braff... Zack Braff's brother's new novel... Garden State mastermind Zack Braff.

This concludes today's mindfuck.

Yes I have a coffee table in my bedroom. I stole it from the living room some time ago.

And yet somehow I got out of bed today when Jeremy asked if I would like to join him for a reptile convention in White Plains.

Actual sign:

REPTILE CONVENTION: USE RIGHT DOORS
COMPUTER CONVENTION: USE LEFT DOORS

Of course my feet wanted to shuffle me into the computer convention, but a computer convention with mad low cash is a waste. And also, that's for geeks, gawd. I came to see some fucking reptiles. Snakes with teeth and poison, not no wussy pentium bullshit.

Entrance fee set me back eight bones, but they stamped a nifty lizard on the inside of my wrist, bringing about immediate and deep tattoo urges. Lizards are cool as shit. Period.

I saw a lot of lizards today. They were all squished into little Gladware-esque containers that were extremely cramped and heartbreaking. The snakes too. The show was kind of a bust for me because of this. Reptiles treated like wholesale merchandise feels too much like looking at... wholesale merchandise. Walking from booth to booth, you can see all the reptile trends. Geckos are SO in right now.

We spent about an hour there... then we went mall-hopping. Today is the third day in a row that I spent several hours in a mall. The fourth mall day this week. That's a whole different story.

My diet book will be the only diet book to include an entire page on dragons. It's all a metaphor, but still... it's there. Dragons.

Then I couldn't fall back to sleep. So I woke up, had some coffee. Took a shower. Then I told my parents that I would indeed go with them to pick blueberries.

Then I fell back asleep.

My parents woke me up and said, "let's go." Half asleep, I couldn't imagine getting out of the bed to pick berries. So even though I actually woke up and got ready to go, I declined.

In my defense, I'm supposed to be getting rest... I've been sick for two weeks.

In the meantime... random notes on random things...

I am going to see Finger Eleven in Hartford on the twenty-first. Until this very moment I had forgotten that they saw our movie... now I'm even more excited. We'll have to find them after the show and discuss this. It's something I want to hear for myself.

A quote about the Eels that I just stumbled across...

"There are two kinds of people: those that understand that Electro Shock Blues is the greatest album ever put together, and idiots."
Dom Passantino, Stylus Magazine

There's a "fan get together" planned by fans of my father's show on the twenty-fourth at the Mohegan Sun casino here in Conn. My whole family is attending, so now it's this huge deal. The hotel is putting us up in two rooms and they've reserved a meeting hall for the event. I'm really awkward with this kind of stuff. Is it bad that I smell another chapter in my book already? Because of art influencing life and all of that.

--another cup of coffee--

We have a Simon and Schuster photo shoot in the city on the twenty-sixth. They're taking "after" photos of the entire family for the book. It's a weird feeling, knowing that these pictures will end up in thousands and thousands of books all across the country. I think I'm breaking out again. I'm not sure if the two are related. Just an observation.

I just bought a plane ticket back down to Florida on the twenty-seventh. The next best thing to living there is visiting... a lot. Airfare is so damn cheap right now. I'll be staying at my brother's apartment in Gainesville though. To all of my friends... I love you, but I'll catch you on the next trip. Airplanes work both ways you know. A little joke... there's already somebody in the guest room anyway. And somebody else in the basement. And somebody's on the couch. The shed has a vacancy, I believe. Also spiders. The shed has spiders.

Anthony is flying down to Florida a week later. We're going to pack his stuff into a truck and drive it back to Connecticut. It's my third trip to Florida since I moved up here. I flew down / drove back up, all three times. Maybe airplanes don't really work both ways after all.

Adam Wekarski: I am going to fill out one of your quizzes for once. As I am very indecisive, my answers should be taken as my answers for this very moment and are subject to change.

thirteen random things you like:

01) coffee
02) books
03) sugarless bubblegum
04) Big Brother 5
05) computers
06) the universe
07) notebooks/journals
08) lizards
09) the unexpected
10) little moments
11) romance
12) unexpected romantic moments
13) finishing something I start

twelve movies:

01) Magnolia
02) Bottle Rocket
03) Garden State (in advance)
04) Punch-Drunk Love
05) All the Real Girls
06) Rushmore
07) Royal Tenenbaums
08) Fight Club
09) Lost in Translation
10) Beetlejuice
11) Jurassic Park
12) Rain Man

eleven good bands/artists:

01) Pete Yorn
02) Eels
03) Bright Eyes
04) The Elected
05) Matt Pond PA
06) The Postal Service
07) Damien Rice
08) OneLineDrawing
09) The Format
10) Charlie Mars
11) Finger Eleven

ten things about you:

01) I have stopped shaving until I absolutely have to.
02) I went down three shoe sizes as I lost weight.
03) I wrote a novel when I was sixteen.
04) I hid my novel in a drawer the year after.
05) I am on my third cup of coffee
06) and I haven't even slept
07) I must be pretty bored, huh?
08) Now I have to go to these tag sales.
09) I have to justify staying awake.
10) I have to work on my diet book tomorrow.

nine friends:

(alphabetical)
01) Adams (cheating)
02) Chris
03) Elise
04) Jeremy
05) My Brother
06) Natalie
07) Natasha
08) Ryan
09) Vanessa
10) YOU (political)

eight favorite foods/drinks:

01) peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
02) salads
03) Diet Pepsi Vanilla
04) any meal cooked in one wok/skillet
05) ATLANTA BREAD

That said... here are two pictures of me. One on my fourth birthday... and one at around the age of six. Sometime after I turned four, I went on Prednisone.

I think I'll just have to end as many chapters as possible with, "...and then I went into the house and ate something." That shows a little character. Repetition is key with something like that though. Around the fifth or sixth time people will get the point. Of course, in the later chapters, a repetition like that would be replaced with, "...and later that night I had another nightmare in which a singular calorie found it's way into my body and I was three hundred pounds again."

This will come back to bite you in the ass if you ever want to write a memoir.

This I know.

Today, I'm looking for anything to trigger any memory. Anything. I've pulled the mammoth box of pictures out of the closet. I guess that's where I should start.

If you have a funny anecdote from my whole weight loss period, leave a comment. Anything is fodder for the book.

I have to pee.

We usually go around warning everyone before we take a shower. Courtesy. Anthony though... Anthony can go around warning everyone, but then take long enough to ensure that you are dying to pee no matter how you felt before he went in.

I have to start planning in advance on this. Much like before going into a three hour movie. You know that you'll have to use the bathroom eventually, and so you force it beforehand.

What I'm saying is, Anthony's showers are epic. I think he's made it to the third act now though. The swashbuckling conclusion.

Me, I'm on the edge of my seat.

I'm trying to work on the diet book again, is what I'm saying.

I have to wonder if digging up the past is the best thing to do at this point in my life. Again, that's not entirely what I mean. I think I mean, putting myself back in the past. Writing in the first person about a time when I did not want to be that person. It's an interesting challenge. I guess it just requires a good mix of the past and the present. A good amount of contrast. Not just to keep the reader alive, but to keep myself motivated. Otherwise writing would just become a dreadful experience.

It's a beautiful day. I have to do something today. I put my beach shorts, a sleeveless shirt on and sat in the sun for a while. This is something else that I am trying to do now. Get a little sun. Then maybe the people on the Food Network board would stop saying that I look unhealthy and sick.

I'm being sarcastic you know? I don't give a shit if people see me on television and think I look pale. I'm getting sun for the people in my real life.

A little joke.

I think everyone has something better to do as long as they make that decision to apply themselves unconditionally.

I slept seventeen hours last night. I think if I sleep seventeen more, I'll wake up a writer again. What I'm saying is, I feel halfway there. Halfway dedicated.

I've decided that I want to move back to Florida. This is really no new decision, it is just something I've kept quiet about because of it's low plausability. But now I've decided that low plausability or not, I have to do something about it.

I realize that most everyone will make an immediate connection of this to Elise. Though she's thrown fuel onto the fire, so to speak, this is something I've wanted either way.

See...

June 4th, 2004 -
Oh... by the way, recently I've decided that Florida was officially "the good old days" for me. Hindsight!

June 2nd, 2004 -
Despite everything, the television shit... I feel my life is very boring at the moment

May 25th, 2004 -
Now I'm cooped up wallowing over wallowing, which is a horrible thing to wallow over.

May 18th, 2004 -
One of two things has happened to me up here in Connecticut. 1. I've become completely and entirely lazy. 2. Everything else has become more tedious and impossible to accomplish.

And so now I'm just trying to figure out the best way to make this happen in the least amount of time. Trying to make this plausible. I'll need a car, an apartment. I'll need to move my stuff, my dog. It's hard to make all of this plausible.

At least my old job offered to take me back without even asking, when I was in town. It would be hard to swallow my pride and come crawling back on that one, but I would.

For now I need to establish a source of income up here. Work a job that I hate in a place that I want to leave to move to Florida where I still won't make enough to pay the bills. I need to start setting goals for myself.

By the way, I had a great time in Florida.

An up to date post tomorrow, I swear... for now, just the pictures.