The Graduate
I took my sister back to the airport and said goodbye. I hit yoga. Then I watched The Graduate for free on On-Demand.
What a good movie… a good, good movie.
Archive for January, 2010
Journey to Old Town
I took my sister and Tim to old town today for some Mexican food with Jeremy and Jodi. We started off with some margaritas, and then hurt ourselves with way-too-much food that I’m much less used to eating these days.
We walked to the Natural History Museum to see if there’d be any good imax flicks playing. A girl named Rachel was working at the front desk, but I pretended that I’d never met her before and that I was unaware she had some kind of history with my friend Ben Standage during his stay in America (instead of England, or Canada). I presented some margarita-induced charm to her, but I wasn’t very good at it, and she didn’t really care for it. And somewhere in the conversation, I think she pointed at the “closed” sign that was being turned at the front door.
Along the way, I stopped to look at a group of statues that had some kind of southwestern significance (?), but I chose to focus on a statue of Mother Mary and Baby Jesus prancing along on a donkey in the midst of murderous Spanish conquistadors while bearing an expression of approval.
Real Life
We had a family gathering at the house to celebrate my sister’s stay in ABQ for a few days. Tim, my sister’s boyfriend, flew in to join the family bash today. Everyone brought their dogs along with things like chips ‘n dip.
My camera went missing for about 10 minutes, then I found this picture on the camera when I got it back:
Mum made pork loin for dinner. I often get curious about what new company may experience at our dinner table. There’s never really a stable conversation exchanged about usual life-things; mostly a lot of gags based on previous jokes. I don’t even know if our interaction is funny or even understandable to outsiders.
After dinner, Mum and I had a conversation about her encounter with a spiritual medium when she was a teenager, and how most of the medium’s predictions about her life came true. I asked her if she thought it was an overall positive or negative experience. She said that at first she thought it was silly, then later was a little freaked out about it, and came to think it was evil. Intrigued, I told her about past semi-psychic experiences I’ve had where some of my dreams contained events which later came true, which seemed to be positive for me.
These are the conversations I like to have with my mum.
L’écoulement de vie
Today Joel stopped by on impulse. I ate food in front of him at Whole Foods, and insisted that he’d try my raspberry kombucha. He hated it and said it tasted just like vinegar. Then he introduced a less-popular conversation about Hitler; that some of his art is actually pretty fantastic.
After self-centered mealtime, we drove to an area of town where the fog was rolling in pretty thick.
Later, I went to yoga. It’s been pretty crowded lately, to the point where I’m slapping the hand of the person next to me while doing some of the movements. It makes for a less focused yogic experience.
A group of us hung out at Dustin’s tonight. I brought a fat bottle of wine, Julia and Noel came over, and attention drifted from random conversation to music-inspired thought streams. The night ended with a hippy drum circle jam session that may have not seemed so cool without wine.
Your Favorite Movies Tell You About You
I picked up my sister from the airport today. I haven’t seen her for a while. I was finally able to give her the DVD that I got her for Christmas, a movie called Chaos Theory with Ryan Reynolds. She has a thing for Ryan Reynolds because he’s “cute” and “funny”… This time, however, he plays quite an unremarkable square, and this movie was a little less funny than a usual Ryan Reynolds flick, having intense dramatic dilemmas, cry scenes, etc.
This movie does contain a theme that is held by some of my favorite movies of all time; the character experiences a revelation, epiphany, or paradigm shift, that throws his mundane reality out of wack, sometimes painful, but resulting in an awakening. Sort of like:
Fight Club
Vanilla Sky
American Beauty
Office Space
There’s something subconsciously appealing to becoming a person with nothing left to lose. I think it’s a collapse we’re all afraid to experience, whether or not we expect the resulting outcome of rebirth and liberation. Lust for comfort suffocates the soul. The world knows by now that there are a wide array of minds and personality types encapsulated in each human being, yet we are put through a mediocre school system that indirectly teaches that uniqueness is unacceptable, and that having a goal to live a banal domestic life amongst a 40-hours-per-week office job is 100% acceptable.
Of course there are apparent downsides to not following the professional corporate work approach. Money can be hard to come by. But what I’ve observed is that money has ways of flying out the door, no matter how much you’re making, and money has ways of coming, no matter what you’re doing.
“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making plans.” -John Lennon
This is a video where a 14-year-old snagged an interview from John Lennon in his hotel room almost 40 years ago.
Moment of Highest Tension
This is usually the time of year where the cold is somehow not that cold anymore, despite dreadful numerical readings on the thermometer. It is during this part of the season when I often consider buying a new jacket for the last time.
Tonight I met up with Tommy and Dustin to hang out, talk band and discuss the drummer situation. Cabernet was present, so as time progressed, the conversation sort of metamorphosed into unrelated offensive humor, a bit of unsettling man-gossip, and then to metaphysical theories on paranormal phenomena.
Sometimes while I’m absorbed in these types of conversations, I tune in to what I’m verbalizing and try to seek out the line between profundity and ignorance. If I decide on profundity, I then try to find the line between wonderment and arrogance.
The line of truth does not always immediately present itself. When I reach no conclusion on what the source of my words are based, and hence a way to comfortably and confidently proceed with the topic, my physiology may change, a sweat drop may form. Then, amongst the moment of highest tension and fear of being found out or questioned, I wave my hands around in the air, relax, and say: “Hey, hey guys? WWJD.” And everything is perfect again.
Still going to cool-bars.
Birthdays seem to have multiple celebrations in my family, so they’re more like birthweeks.
Today Erin threw a surprise party for Josh and a group of us played pool at a cool-people bar, where the prime selection of women and men appear to be manifestations of an MTV reality show cast. It’s always better for me to leave these types of bars before coming down from a beer buzz. Otherwise a part of me buys into the illusion that I don’t belong on this planet.
What I found particularly interesting is how the server girl came to our table multiple times through the night, and would ask everybody individually if they needed anything, skipping me each time; no eye contact, not even a glance. I traded seats with somebody, same result. I thought maybe it could be that she liked me or something, but then I remembered that male/female interactions don’t really work that way after elementary school.
Drums-Bass Jam Time
Tommy and I have been jamming bass and drums off and on since July… maybe, max, five times to write some non-coma stuff.
While we figure out what we’re going to do about Coma and the drummer situation, we’re jamming whatever, however, whenever… forever?
Here’s a video of Tommy following my lead as the loud-muff bass player that I enjoy becoming. Never mind the mistakes. Just picture yourself lifting weights while listening.
Pizza Blister
Today was Josh’s birthday, so I went over to join the mini-party. As you can see, Erin burned the pizza. For about an hour I smelled the aroma filling the apartment. I thought she just had the oven on some kind of slow-cook mode. The fun part was when she poked the black crispy cheese bubble, and smoke shot out like a steam whistle. The pizza let out a dying scream. Then I ate some because I was starving.
