Sarah Palin

My thoughts on Sarah Palin as Repub. VP candidate:
Pros:
- She is young and vibrant with a baby, defusing the McCain-Is-Old issue.
- Her elder son joined the army on Sept. 11th, 2007.
- She is a woman who is clearly strong. This (1) will draw women who loved the idea of voting for Hilary because she was a woman and (2) defuse the "If you don't vote for Obama, you are closed minded" issue.
- She is from outside Washington. Alaska is about as far out of Washington as you can get.
- She has experience with energy, business and the environment (yes, I disagree with her but she has the experience).
- More conservative than McCain on many issues. Great for the base.
- She looks a bit like Tina Fey, especially with the glasses.
- A fairly hardcore reformer background, helping McCain regain his reformer/ethics image.

Con:
- Potentially the extremely conservative right might wince at a mother of a 4 month old baby with Down syndrome running for the Whitehouse.
- People are going to look a lot closer at the firing of commissioner for not firing ex-brother-in-law issue (although it looks like it has been pretty cleared up)
- Might make McCain look even older when standing next to him.
- Extreme lack of experience.
- I have a hard time trusting the judgment of someone who named her boys Track and Trig.

Don't get me wrong. I am still a bleeding heart liberal who is passionately for Obama. But I am also glad everything got more interesting.

Noir in the Blood

I love noir, specifically L.A. noir. I can't quite put a finger on why. There is something about Los Angeles in the 1930's through 1950's that became the epitome of the American Dream... and then it's destruction. The edge of the country, where Manifest Destiny reached its forced conclusion. A city build around the concept the the car, the manifestation of man's domination over nature and a declaration of total freedom to go anywhere at any moment at 60 miles per hour. The flourishing to defining American invention of the the 20th century (film and the industry that it birthed). Loci of the aircraft industry and the massive growth that World War II brought to the region. A bowl of dry sand forced into being by men of power. A land of artifice and truth.

I could go on and one.

Yes, noir is cartoony. It glamorizes the seedy underbelly. But it is also about the mad desire for redemption.

Without going into details, I found out that it is basically in my blood. My family history reads more convoluted (if less disturbing) than Chinatown. I am not sure if I am comforted or not by that fact.

Be a rock god!

Guitar Praise

Grab the guitar and play along with top Christian bands! Shred those riffs or blast the bass…you add a unique sound to the solid Christian rock. But watch out: if you can't keep up, the artists will take a break and stop the music. Crank it up and try again - you'll soon be rockin' with the best while praising the Lord!

I'm not mocking here. I think this is pretty cool. I wish there were screen shots.

(via Boing Boing)

The Power of The Aaahrrrrrrttsss!

Alphabutt

Serial No. 3817131

Rachel Papo has a wonderful photo essay of girls in the Israeli Army.

From her statement:
At an age when social, sexual, and educational explorations are at their highest point, the life of an eighteen-year-old Israeli girl is interrupted. She is plucked from her home surroundings and placed in a rigorous institution where her individuality is temporarily forced aside in the name of nationalism. During the next two years, immersed in a regimented and masculine environment, she will be transformed from a girl to a woman, within the framework of an army that is engaged in daily war and conflict. She is now a soldier serving her country, in a military camp amidst hundreds like her, yet beneath the uniform there is someone wishing to be noticed, listened to, and understood.

(via Boing Boing)

The Omnivore's One Hundred

From Very Good Taste. Things in bold are things I've eaten.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Black dress

As you learn more about other worlds, you open your self up to more in-jokes.

Rat-tat-tat on a Saturday night

Since making my "Books" posts last week, I've been re-reading some of James Ellroy's essays. Ellroy jacks me up in weird ways. It gets my brain jazzed up on a staccato beat. I buzz into a dark wet place. I observe the world through glasses of sharpened glass. It sends me hardcore into the present. I want to write long liturgies of loving alliteration.

I bought a kabob pita in the Village to eat at home. It leaks its white juices on the subway home. I get weird about it. Self-consciously I try to hide the fact that my brown paper bag is growing a wet spot of tahini.

I have special spot at every subway stop to wait for the train. They lead me right to the stair at my destination. At the Brooklyn bound Q Canal station, the spot is marked. Sometime this summer, as they spread hot tar unto the street above, the tar dripped down. I witnessed it once. Long thing drips of black goo occasionally falling from above. My special spot is no littered with dried tar strips. They look like a pile of giant leeches now.

A girl on the Q grips the center pole. She looks tired and beaten by the night. Not drunk, just close to destroyed by the city.

I am finding it hard to write about things as of late. At least here. The things I am thinking about aren't blog material. They aren't things of which I am ashamed. Far from it. But, even in the abstract, they are personal. To even whisper of them gives too much of myself away. I should write about the past but it holds little interest for me. And even my choice of past events to write about would say too much about my Now.

I am beginning to expect the my view on improv differs from 95% of the improv community. I am also starting to take myself too seriously.

I hold pride in my ability to play devil's advocate. I was once called out on it. Someone close to me said that it showed I had no opinion of my own. Bullshit. I feel strongly enough about things to not want to hold my opinions blindly.

I don't believe people think about language enough. Not other languages, but their own.

I hate shows that are run poorly. It takes so little effort to do it right.

Obama has already tried to sell me a first edition Obama-Biden magnet... twice. I can't imagine how much DNC spam I will get during the convention. I also couldn't give a crap about how many homes McCain has or doesn't have or how he answered the question. If he had answered it and answered wrong, they would be all over him. Let's get some damn discourse back.

I must have the ability to ignore huge portions of my brain/body. I give them little though for 17 months and then, once they get turned back on, I can think of little else.

Slaymation

I wish I could just present this without any disclaimers, but that wouldn't be fair to my more sensitive readers. So I'll just say that this does have a touch of violence.



For more fun, go here.

(via Boing Boing)

Time wasted

I really should be cleaning this afternoon but I'm not. Yet again, I find myself distracted by tiny projects. I do this fairly often. Luckily today as not been spent on the internet but I can't really say it was spent much better.

In other pointless news, my internal temperature seems to be all over the place. I have been either cold or hot all day. Never comfortable. What's up with that, body? Get with the program.

Speaking of my body, my hair is now beyond any control. I don't love it. I am slightly self-conscious about it and my gut reaction is to just shave it. But I promised myself I would let it grow until at least until Jan. 2009. Why? No reason beyond that I haven't grown it out in eons. I know that people will give my shit about it for months to come. But I will refuse to listen.

I can still tame it for short periods of time with lots of gel... but then I sweat and gel drips on my forehead and re-dries and I end up with a crust of shiny right above my eyebrows. That is just not attractive.

I had a very intense dream right after I fell asleep last night. How do I now when it happened? Because I went to sleep at 1am and woke up at 2am. I should have written down the details right then because I remember the dream being awesome but now the details have all drifted away. That's weird when you think about it. 14 hours ago I woke up thinking "Wow! That was amazing! What an experience!" Now it is all gone. Silly brain.

It might be the hair.

Imperial Fleet Week San Fran

Awesome video coverage of Imperial Fleet Week on Current.

(via Boing Boing)

Gambling

I love Las Vegas. I really do. Vegas is exactly what it is and makes no excuses for it. Everything is over the top and huge and insane. Gaudy to the extreme but because it doesn't pretend to be anything else, it works.

Two Mays ago I went there for something, well, extremely nerdy. My Halo 2 clan met there. Yes. My Xbox Live Halo 2 clan. 20 or so people who only knew each other online by names like Ashwalker and AtomcWeggie met in Sin City. They were all adults and I wasn't the oldest person. We didn't play Halo of course, but it is still hard to make it seem like anything other than what it was: Videogame geeks in Vegas. Oh there is beauty in that.

It wasn't even that wild. The strangest moment was playing Blackjack at the cheap tables at 3am with people I knew mainly from just their voices and online forums. It's a weird experience. But it was also one of those moments that made me realize how the internet is pretty darn cool.

Later that night (morning), I made out with some divorcee while at said same table. Not long. But it something I am glad to say I have done.

Misused

I don't have a big temper. I very very rarely yell. I don't throw things. I don't get in fights. "Turn the other cheek and talk shit about them later" tends to be more my style. It takes forever for me to get truly angry. I can be snippy at times, certainly, but as far as rage? No.

Except that, deep down inside me, I have a tiny pebble of white hot fury. It is a singularity of rage and intensity. A point of malice and intent and blind pure rage.

I don't know where it came from. I think I grew it as a child, some how. I hated fighting and yelling and load noises. My mom had to cover my ears in public bathrooms because I hated the scream of a flushing toilet. So I think, like Superman crushing coal into a diamond in Superman III, I took the anger and fear and pain that most people let out in tiny bits and compacted it into a solid object deep in my chest.

It rarely came out... but when it did, it was a complete transformation over me. After being picked out one too many times in middle school I snapped and flew into a berserk whiling dervish of flailing arms and teeth, shocking everyone around me. Later I was told the hippy teachers at the school held back from breaking it up because at first they couldn't process what was happening and then they thought, "Well, about time."

A few years later I was play the classy named Smear the Queer during lunch at junior high. (For those who don't know, Smear the Queer is a ball game where you tackle you ever has the ball. I believe that is the only rule.) I was fine with the rough housing and enjoyed the excitement of it. At one point I was tackled and had the wind knocked out of me. Lying on the ground, unable to move because I could quite breathe, I held no malice to any one. Just part of the game. But then the boy who hit me just laughed and said something callous. (I forget what.) Even to this pain, one way to quickly make me angry is to minimize my pain. I don't fully remember what happened next. Without ever getting my breathe back, I was immediately up on my feet. My friend Josh, who had been at my previous moment of rage, apparently took three steps back and said, "Oh, you don't want to be near this." I was on my attacker in a second, nothing in my head and eyes but hate.

In both cases I cause little or no damage because I was (1) weak and a small and (2) my blows weren't directed. Thank god for small favors.

Since then I have learned to harness it and control it. It never comes out blindly. It is still there and can be called on at a moments notice, as easy as switching on a light. But I know that it is a side of me no one ever sees and it goes against everything how most people see me. I can use it to great effect when I need it. I have used it to stop people doing dangerous behavior (drunks on roof tops, suicidal thoughts/actions, etc). I have broken up bar fights with it. I have used it once in a relationship during a fight/argument that was going in circles, neither of us listening. (That fight was probably the turning point to the end of the relationship and, me switching into that mode for just a second, probably got us to pay attention to each other long enough that we were able to end it without destroying ourselves.) I use it extremely sparingly. It is no longer blind. It is a totally conscious choice. It is no longer a flurry of violence but it is pure anger and rage in my face and eyes and voice. It channels through my arms into my hand and fingers. It is all intent. Whether believable or not it is the "I will do you violence" voice. Pure malice.

There are usually three possible reactions to witnessing this mode. Paralyzed fear. Uncomfortable laughter. Crying. Afterward I usually have to deal with a few weeks of people being scared of me. I don't thing actual fear of physical violence, just fear that they don't know what to expect of me any more. I can't say that I hate that.

I haven't used it in three years. No need. Last night, because I was over sleepy and not thinking straight, I used it as a "bit." I used it in jest. I honestly don't know why. Part of my brain just said, "Hey, this person is ignoring what I am saying. I don't really care, but I wonder what will happen if tap into the pebble." I honestly forgot what sort of response it causes. Luckily it was just uncomfortable laughter.

I apologize to those who were there and specifically to the person it was directed at. It was mean and thoughtless and totally ill considered.

I had forgotten what it felt like to do. I so want to use it on stage now. I wonder what the response would be.

Dreams

The fact is that my subconscious is pretty damn shallow.

I have a very active dream life. I constantly have extremely weird dreams, full of shifting worlds and people, colors and excitement, and, well, sex. A fair amount of sex. Actually I don't know how I compare to other people when it comes to the amount of sex in dreams. It's not like it comes up very often in conversations. "I had sex six times in my dreams." "Really? I only did twice."

When I say sex, I don't just mean Sex. I mean shifting relationships that revolve around sexual attraction. I am counting dreams in which I find myself kissing a good friend as a sex dream.

But I'm on a tangent here. My point is that even though my dreams are weird and crazy it doesn't take Freud to analyze them. They are pretty straight forward. For example, on Friday night I dreamed that my improv team Thank You, Robot was performing on a cruise ship. We were all excited to be basically on a vacation with each other and psyched to be getting paid to do improv. But it was a Disney cruise and we were being forced to do dumbed down improv. (Part of it involved Matt dressing up as Animal from the Muppets and doing stand-up. It sounds a lot funnier than it was.) Later the cruise ship drove across the desert and took us to Iraq were we performed for the troops and had a great show that was super smart. I also spend a large portion of the dream worrying about were one particular girl was.

Simple. TYR had tried to shift our focus on Friday night's show and weren't entirely successful. The audience didn't seem to notice. We all adore each other and are pushing each other. I also watched some Muppet YouTube vids earlier in the day. And I spent some of the day trying to write a short story about the war in Iraq. And I had date coming up with someone I hadn't seen for two weeks. Bim bam boom. Simple.

So it is pretty obvious why I dream about sex. If, during the day, my brain even briefly flitters on the idea of anything romantic with someone, I tend to play it out in my dreams. Which (I am somewhat embarrassed to say) means I have kissed in my dreams 40% of the women I know. I have now made a small portion of my readers feel very awkward. It's not like the next day I see them and suddenly picture the dream (although that does happen). And in my dreams it usually ends at a kiss. Often the kiss is in passing. In my dream I might be with a group of people running from a poisonous gas that will turn us into lemurs and in a break in the action someone will suddenly kiss me for three seconds and then the dream moves on.

I have a fair amount of control over my dreams. I can sometimes nudge myself to dream about specific things if I think about it just before I fall asleep. I am often aware that I am dreaming and can chose to create and control the world. This has backfired at times. One dream which I remember vividly even after 10 years: I was fighting vampires in the house I crew up in. But it was also that Escher etching of the stairs (you know the one... like in the movie Labyrinth... yes, a total dream cliché). I realized I was dreaming so I made my hand into a gun. I pointed it at a vampire and a gun shot rang out. The vampire just laughed and said, "What are you doing? Do you think this is a fucking dream?"

Clean mint.

Notes to self:
• When trying a new flavor of toothpaste, try not to buy the largest tube you can find.
• Crest's "Clean Mint" sound wonderful. However "mint" only refers to the color. "Clean" refers to, I believe, Clorox.
• Floss more often.

Bradbury. On prunes.

(via Boing Boing)

Monkeys. On ice skates.

(via John Robert Wilson)

Clock! Move quicker!

For reasons that are both beyond me and totally within my knowledge I woke up wicked early and just started doing work. This is great and not great.

Great because I am pretty far ahead of schedule on stuff that pays. I have a back log of projects that don't pay and want to spend a large portion of this week on those. I have five or so sketches that need editing, rewrites, cleaning up. The Scott/Whitehouse Experience needs serious time devoted to it. (This is the hardest one since I am so unclear about the direction to tackle it.) I have work t do on the books. Also, it's just nice to be able o do other stuff guilt free.

It's bad today because (1) I really do not want to be tired for this evening and (2) I need stuff to occupy my brain/time until this evening. Grrr.

My 501 UCB class is just a joy and a pleasure. No matter how much we'd all like to pretend this isn't the case, improv classes rise and fall on who is taking the class with you. I would love to say it is all about what you put into it and who the teacher is. And there is some of that. For example, I learned tons in my 201 with Joe Wengert but I didn't have much fun. 201 is notorious for not being fun because it goes from improv being just fun playing to trying to retrain your brain to think differently. That wasn't why it wasn't fun for me. I just didn't like 80% of my class. Not dislike them as improvisers (allow it would be a lie to say that wasn't true). I didn't like them as people. It's hard to trust people on stage when you suspect one of them is a date rapist. (I also didn't trust myself at the time. I also had a swelled ego. Bad bad combo for improv.) But I digress. My current 501 is packed solid with great people.

Last night we did 3 and 2 man Harolds. Most of the class was spent watching and not doing. Often this annoys me. Last night it was a joy to watch so much talent and fun. I would have paid to watch them all perform. (Oh, wait. I did.)

Improv teams often grow out great classes. Sadly, most of this class is already on one or more teams.

I just realized this post is saying a whole lot and isn't really entertaining. I am just filling time. I'll try to find something funny to say later.

Pain Threshold

I've always imagined that I have a fairly high pain threshold. My usually reaction to getting hurt is to just deal with it. When I sliced most of my left thumb pad off with an box-cutter, I was very calm as blood poured down my arm. I get hit and knocked around fairly often and it doesn't seem to phase my that much. I like to think that I could drag my self out off a mountain ala "Touching the Void."

I'm lying to myself.

Last night/this morning I suddenly found my self screaming. I threw my body out of the bed, landing hard on the floor. My brain was blank at what to do. I squirmed around on the floor, banging my head on the side of the bed.

I had a muscle cramp in my calf.

I'm gonna go get lunch now.