Cranial Endorectumitis: You figure it out.
I don’t feel like working at the moment because I’m in the throws of a novacaine headache (last one for a few weeks, thank goodness). I’ve tried Motrin, Exedrin and closing my eyes. Now, I’ve resorted to a brownie and a Dr. Pepper to see if that’ll snap it. I had the impression taken for my crown, and have to go back in three weeks for the final. Remember kids, brush your damn teeth. This sucks.
Why didn’t anyone tell me Peter Gabriel released a new album? He did, and it’s been ordered. It’ll show up with my copy of My Neighbor Totoro sometime in December. Thankfully, you can download the whole album to “preview” it. It’s great. It’s not quite worth the decade it’s taken to get out, and he gets one black mark for including the song I Grieve from the City of Angels soundtrack on it. I love the song, but come on, the album averages out to one song per year since Us came out. I know the man’s been busy greying, but jeez. Really, the album’s beautiful. It’s more melancholy than Us. For some reason, it reminds me of the Birdy soundtrack more than anything else, and I can’t really place why.
If you’ve got a fast connection, go get it right now (it’s a 69mb download, so you modem folks are SOL)!
Not everything needs borders and a background color.
My boss took us all to Legal Seafood in Tyson’s for lunch today. It was awesome. Now, you remember me telling you about my allergy to shrimp and later to crab (maybe I didn’t tell you, because I can’t find the post now)? Well, you can add scallops to that list. I got the assorted grill, which was this amazing sample of three grilled scallops, and three small fillets of salmon, arctic char and tuna. I loved it. But now, I have that same headache I had when I got crab at Red Lobster, and am feeling nauseous. Why me?! I love shrimp; I love crab; I love scallops. What’s next, chocolate?!
Another gift from a friend, I got Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, and wow. This is an amazing album. It came out in 1991, but sounds like it could have come out yesterday. It sounds fresh and new, and combines all of my favorite bands. It sounds at times like Phish, Moby, Massive Attack and well, it sounds like everything. A great trippy happy groove album to keep you smiling. Check it out.
Since I bought my PlayStation 2, I’ve bought just one game, Jak and Daxter. I’ve rented half a dozen now, and have found what will probably be the next member of my permanent collection: Madden 2003. Other than some unfortunate choice of music with profanity in it in the menus, the game is great. The franchise mode is still there (I’ve been playing the Madden series since Madden 1995 on my old 486), only improved greatly with trickier trades. My favorite part though is the improved play designer. It’s way too much fun. I created a formation yesterday with five wide receivers, lined up two to the strong side, and three to the right. The options are amazing, and you can practice the play with any offensive and defensive unit you want. It’s great, totally worth the purchase price. I think next I’ll create a whole playbook of I formation plays with four wideouts. Yes, indeed, the fun never ends.
There have been a lot of great shots at the Mirror Project, but this is by far my favorite.
Wow. I never thought fajitas could have such a punch. We went to our local Mexican chain last night before my sister’s play (which I’ll talk about later). I got the lovely and tasty chicken and steak fajitas. Everything was fine until we were on the way back to my parents’ house. The pain in my belt area was like a kick from a small child. It gravitated south until I figured I needed to get back to their house, and more specifically their toilet, a little faster. Needless to say, I was incapacitated for the rest of the evening, and most of this morning. I think I’m better now, but I’m not trying fate. It’s rice and maybe chicken for me tonight.
Now, on to the play. It was the Sterling Playhouse’s One Act Play Festival, with (I think) all the plays written by members of the playhouse. My sister was fine, better than the rest of the people in the play she was in, and I’m being completely objective here. They put these little skits (they definitely didn’t rise to the level of a one-act play) on in a little rotunda outdoors, a decent distance from their audience without any sound amplification. We were in the fourth row, and I had a hard time hearing most of the actors. I won’t even go into the actual material, because it’s better to say nothing at all sometimes. I had three more paragraphs here I just deleted because I’m not feeling mean today. Support your local theater group – they need all the help they can get.
I just finished watching Donnie Darko. I kept thinking of Harvey throughout the film. If you haven’t seen it, go rent the DVD right now. This is an intense moving film. It’s dark, beautifully acted and breathtaking to watch. Jake Gyllenhaal (sorry, I know I botched that, but am too ready for bed to go check the correct spelling) did a marvelous job keeping me guessing throughout. Is he crazy? Is Frank real? What is going on?
I didn’t even really know until I watched some of the deleted scenes; I’m kind of sad that I now know. The movie is better as the journey than the destination. I loved the subtle late-Eighties touches: the music, the clothes (button-fly jeans… oh yes), the references to Back to the Future, the Halloween Costumes (RonaldMania was my favorite). It was so well done, I want to watch it again just for nuance and those little things I missed the first time around.
Back to the Harvey connection. This movie felt like my generation’s Harvery. We have society’s reaction to the mentally ill, and the societal twist. This is Harvery for the cynical Prozac popping Ridalin kids from the Eighties. This is our search for what’s real and true in a world of 30-second issues, fallen idols and missing authority figures. It’s a great film, and one that may keep me up till the wee hours of the morning thinking about it… and don’t watch the deleted scenes if you want to interpret the meaning of the film for yourself.