Philip John Schiavoni

Starring Piloqutinnguaq Weetaluktuk as Hattie

2008-10-29T22:45:23Z

For the last few years I have struggled with my inability to keep a certain five British actresses straight. Be it due to similarity in name or appearance, in my head they tend to merge together into a single, whimsical, five-headed creature. (I call her Semmaly Morthomptonson.) After seeing Synecdoche, New York (disappointing!) last night, and the preceding trailer for this life-affirming geriatric rom-dram, I am more befuddled than ever. As a public service, I am going to attempt to bust apart this cadre of confusion by assigning each of the women a new, somewhat less generic name. I begin with Emma Thompson, as she is their leader.

Previously known as: Emma Thompson (Junior, Nanny McPhee, Stranger Than Fiction)
New name: Archaeopteryx Brown

Previously known as: Emily Watson (Punch-Drunk Love, Angela's Ashes)
New name: Sonja Ellenpage

Previously known as: Samantha Morton (Sweet and Lowdown, Jesus' Son, Morvern Callar)
New name: Piloqutinnguaq Weetaluktuk

Previously known as: Emily Mortimer (Match Point, 30 Rock -- "Careful, my bones!")
New name: Emily Mortimer, Limited Liability Company

Previously known as: Emma Watson (the Harry Potter movies)
New name: Tommy "Tiny" Lister

Scotch and penicillin

2008-09-26T19:23:38Z

In celebration of I AM SEEING THE SILVER JEWS PLAY MUSIC TONIGHT, here is the song "Trains Across the Sea."

Trains Across the Sea (from Starlite Walker by Silver Jews, 1994)

What we have here is arguably the finest Silver Jews song, and inarguably their (insofar as the Jews are a "they") finest-sounding recording. Highlights (including but not limited to some of the ingredients that fuse together to so effectively evoke the "it's been evening all day long" mood of the track, which it retains after 10 years of regular listening):

"In 27 years, I've drunk 50,000 beers"

How young David Berman sounds. His voice has has gotten deeper and more gruff with each subsequent album, but it seems especially youthful here. I guess typically his vocals suggest someone beyond his years, but on this song he sounds, well, 27.

That relentless drum beat, with the snare hit that sounds like someone kicking a box of chains. Like an amplified version of the lightly jangling set of keys hanging from your ignition that makes percussing with your thumbs on the top of your steering wheel so fulfilling.

The pedal steel, coming in at 1:43 to draw train tracks across a dusklit ocean.

"Half-hours on Earth, what are they worth? I don't know."

The piano, which can be separated into two parts: a single pervasive note on the lower end, deep and hollow as a darkening hallway, and the intermittent melodic high notes/chords. Taken together, there is a fullness that initially gives the impression of a more traditional piano-chord-type accompaniment.

The chord progression, which is: C, Fmaj7. There are no real verses or choruses, and there isn't a discernible pattern in the number of bars for which each chord is held. If you are familiar with the song and know these two chords, you can play it intuitively. The logic is: if you are playing a C and feel it's time for a chord change, switch to Fmaj7; if you're on Fmaj7, switch to C.

The weird, bright squink that appears at 2:24, behind the word "half." Is that the pedal steel? I don't know, but it sounds like a time traveler arriving in the song.

Like shrooming at Stonehenge watching Hale-Bopp or winning an Academy Award

2008-07-14T20:19:07Z

Hello, friends and lovers. Today I am making available to you an album I recorded many (like, six) years ago. It is being offered completely free of charge -- the only catch is that it isn't very good. The songs were sloppily played and recorded on a 4-track, though you shouldn't really expect to find any lo-fi, GbVish charm here, due to the fact that there were some half-assed attempts to make everything sound somewhat crisp. The singing is embarrassing and a lot of the lyrics are cringe-worthy, though there are some good lines here and there.

What I like about the album, and the reason I've decided to share it, is that it does sound EXACTLY like my 20-year-old self: impossibly dorky; generally positive and easily excitable; in love. I also feel like the sequencing works really well. Leading off with a brief intro song and following it up with an instrumental feels completely natural (the running order I've been toying with for a newer set of songs begins the same way), and I can only attribute this to the sitcom tradition of placing a lead-in bit of show before the opening credits. Also, most of the songs are fairly catchy, and the whole thing clocks in at under a half-hour, so it isn't a complete chore to listen to, though YMMV.

Oh, Is It Today Already? by The Undershirts

philipschiavoni @ 2008-02-18T14:48:00

2008-02-18T22:49:30Z

Yesterday Andy and I were walking past this cake shop that had some fairly impressive cake designs on display in its front window, and Andy pointed out a cake that was shaped like Oscar the Grouch and said, "Hey look, it's...a garbage man."

(Not the actual cake we saw.)

Executive Heat

2007-09-04T16:54:49Z

It was so hot here over the weekend, guys. Yesterday it literally broke 140 outside. Oh, if only I were joking:

Me after I died of hot:

Let's go Outback tonight, let's pretend we're in Australia.

2007-04-11T01:49:56Z

I recently made a pretty excellent find at this thrift store near my house. It's a framed print of a cartoonish sort of rendering of Orlando and environs. The cool thing about it is the scope of said environs, and the way the following places are put on pretty much the same scale:

a) the building I worked in for a year and a half with skinnyarms and zorklogic
b) Antarctica
c) the Empire State Building
d) my approximate hometown, Titusville (where I went to high school)

Currently on display in the dining room.

An antique song for children's carousels.

2007-02-14T08:06:17Z

In celebration of Bobby "Bobby V" Valentine's birthday, please enjoy this Sparks cover I've recorded. The original is presented as a duet between a girl and a guy who are stranded together on a desert island. Unfortunately the person who was going to do the Jane Wiedlin part on my version backed out, so I just sang all of it myself. Lyrically this works out fine, though I guess the female vocals would serve to prove that the male protagonist is not in fact alone and suffering from delirium and desert-island hallucinations. So feel free to interpret it whichever way you feel is more appropriate on this day of hearts and Cupids and kisses and intercourse.

Lucky Me, Lucky You

Happy Valentimes!

The Fruit-by-the-Foot Strangler

2007-01-22T09:32:10Z

Good morning! There's a new Impatiens song up at Cartwheeling.net -- it's an upbeat, almost Christmasy number entitled Seasonal Affective Disorder. Check it out if that sounds in any way appealing to you.

You've got laughter and brains and I love you so much in your hat.

2007-01-18T23:38:39Z

I like in older movies when people use the word "jerk" to mean kind of a stupid or bumbling person rather than someone who is more malicious and assholeish. Partially because I think it's cute, but also because it's funny to think of the more modern connotation being used in that context. It'd be like, "Did you hear Chris spilled coffee on his laptop this morning? God, that guy's a real prick." I also feel like "butthole" is a more offensive thing to call someone than "asshole" is now. Everyone's heard "asshole" enough to become pretty desensitized to it, and it doesn't really have much more bite than "jerk" anymore (and isn't nearly as fun to say), but it's been so long since I've heard anyone say "butthole" out loud that it actually makes me picture a...butthole.

I really like going to the mall at Christmastime, but I think malls generally feel like Christmas year-round, and I'll almost never pass up an opportunity to go to one.

I like how Dippin' Dots has kind of already fulfilled the prophecy inherent in its tagline, "Ice Cream of the Future," simply by managing to stick around for so long. "Dippin' Dots: Yes, Suprprisingly You'll STILL Be Able to Buy Our Novelty Ice Cream Product from Vendors at Malls and Water Parks Many Years from Now!"

I like that moment after reading something online that included a certain name or term that you highlighted and copied for subsequent Googling, but by the time you're actually finished reading what you were reading and following whatever related links there were to follow you don't have any idea what it was that you copied, and all you're left with is the nagging feeling that you were going to paste something into Google and do a search, and so you do. That moment right before you hit Ctrl-V.

I like grapefruit juice now, strangely. Maybe I don't like it so much as I just like drinking it. I found it pretty much undrinkable until about two months ago when I tried some grapefruit-tangerine juice and really enjoyed it -- the bitterness of grapefruit, but with a much sweeter finish. Now I drink regular grapefruit juice and expect that sweetness in every sip, but it never comes, and the unresolved anticipation is addicting. It's the thrill of the hunt! I'm chasing a flavor dream that refuses to be caught!

What DELIGHTFUL mannerisms you all have!

2006-12-22T20:33:26Z

For my seventh birthday one of the the main things I wanted was the vinyl Littlefoot hand puppet offered by Pizza Hut as part of its Land Before Time kids' meal. Seems like an easy and inexpensive enough thing for a parent to pick up, right? Well, yes, assuming your dad knows exactly which fast food place's kids' meal currently features little promotional dinosaur puppet toys. My mom was relieved to see his car pull into the driveway that night, about an hour later than he normally got home from work. I was relieved to see a box in his hands bearing the old Pizza Hut logo. But why did he also have bags from McDonald's and Burger King?

He told us how he'd had to drive around and wait in lines at different restaurants and buy kids' meals only to find that their toys weren't what I'd asked for. It didn't even occur to me to wonder why he hadn't just asked what toy was included before purchasing each meal -- maybe he didn't remember what Littlefoot and The Land Before Time were called, and just figured he would know it when he saw it -- I was mostly thinking about how his missteps should mean additional presents for me, though I hadn't really had much interest in Oliver & Company musical Christmas ornaments or DC Comics character cup-handle holders before then. After getting ahold of the coveted Littlefoot toy, I used my non-puppeted hand to dig through loose french fries and ketchup packets in search of those other buried treasures. Coming up dry, I casually asked my dad where he'd stashed them, but nothing could have prepared me for the answer.

He threw them out.

What? My visions of sticking a musical Dodger ornament (would he have sung Christmas songs with Billy Joel's voice?) and a hard plastic Wonder Woman inside of Littlefoot and then assisting in the birth of the baby dinosaur's dog-superhero twins were dashed.

It took me a while to understand my dad's motives behind this abortion, but I think I get it now. There is an undeniable joy in getting just that one special thing you want, that light, perfect kiss of pleasure -- small, but with much greater excitement per square inch. He probably also wanted me to see that he knew exactly what to get me and wasn't just trying to cover all his bases. ("Hey, I didn't know what you wanted, so here's a bunch of crap!")

For Christmas this year I decided to get my dad a new hat. He likes to wear baseball caps representing obscure college football teams, usually just because he likes their names or logos. I found a Pepperdine Waves hat that I thought would be perfect. The logo's pretty lame, but I think he'll like the colors and their name (the Waves IS a pretty good name for a football team, and my dad likes the ocean and, well...waves). As the cashier was ringing it up he asked if I wanted to get another hat for 50% off, and I thought that maybe getting two hats would be a good idea, increasing the chances that I would give my dad at least one hat that he would like. But then I thought back to my seventh birthday and decided that just the single Waves cap was definitely the way to go, one small kiss for the top of his head.

Cartwheeling.net, a website of ubiquitous menace.

2006-12-18T06:32:57Z

The Impatiens have a website! Cartwheeling.net. Eventually I'd like to add a lot more stuff, but for now it offers a bunch of mp3s. Scroll down for a few recent live tracks.

Yeah...a little too Raph.

2006-12-07T00:46:43Z

For one whole summer of my life, the summer before I entered first grade, I attended Summer Day Camp, held at what was during the rest of the year a junior high school in Hershey, PA, five days a week while my parents worked. I hated it. More than once I made my mom late for work by refusing to get into the car in the morning. I distinctly remember a day about halfway through the summer when my mom dropped me off outside the gymnasium where the morning's activities would begin, and upon entering the gym lobby I immediately burst into tears and ran back outside, only to find that her car was already gone.

One reason I hated it so much was the lack of pre-made friends. I lived outside of Hershey, and no one I knew from school or my neighborhood went to this day camp. My cousin Kim, who was living with my family at the time, was there, but she fell in with a group of girls on the first day, and I rarely saw her after that. (When I think back on those days living with Kim, one recurrent theme seems to be me wimpering on my own during a time of personal crisis while she skips by, giggling with a friend and oblivious to my suffering.) My brother Thomas went to the camp too, and that's part of the bigger reason why I hated it. Though he had his own personal counselor, I still felt the need to watch over him and (possibly due to my lack of other friends) spend a good deal of time with him, especially during the times when his counselor wasn't around, and this was difficult for me because his autistic behaviors tended to get him made fun of a lot. One thing he liked to do was lie on his stomach on the floor in the middle of the cafeteria, which served as a large, indoor recreation area for the camp during non-lunch hours. When I wasn't able to coax him into getting up, I would usually just lie on the floor beside him and talk to him. Sometimes he would draw a crowd. Once, an older boy and a group of his friends gathered around and the boy pointed at Thomas and announced "Hey, look at this kid, I'll bet this kid's taking a shit," while I cocked my head up toward him from the floor, glaring at him with as much scorn as I could muster, trying to form an expression with my face that communicated "My god, you are dumb." Still, it was pretty hurtful, despite how silly it might sound now. Even though I doubt that Thomas could have cared less about any of this, to me it was all really upsetting.

By the end of the summer I did finally make some friends at the camp. One of them was Mike, who was obsessed with Tim Burton's Batman, having recently seen it in a sneak preview. I guess because he was the only one he knew who had already seen it, he kind of felt like it was his movie. (I saw it as soon as it was officially released, and it was the first PG-13-rated movie I was allowed to see. I went with my friend AJ, his brother, and his mom. Even with the parental guidance, my seven-year-old mind was apparently still not mature enough to handle the sub-R-rated violence, because when I got home I promptly Bat-kicked my mom.) Mike was surprisingly sensitive, and cried a lot. One of the times he cried was when this counselor, Kate, who was diabetic and who we didn't really know that well at all, passed out and had to be taken to the hospital. Mike got pretty weepy and said "Man, I don't know what I'm going to do if she dies. If she dies I'll kill myself."

Another time he cried was when I told him that he was my friend, but not my best friend. My best friend at the camp was Aubrey (still one of my favorite boys' names), a Ghostbusters fanatic who only wanted to play Ghostbusters games and was always warning me "Don't cross the streams!" But still, I never saw any of these people out in the real world or once the summer was over.

The highlight of the whole ordeal for me was this time when the group of "bad" kids - some kids around my age who got in trouble a lot for doing things like climbing the structural poles in the cafeteria in order to touch the ceiling - were blocking the ladder up to the slide and not letting anyone climb up unless they knew the password, which meant that nobody could use the slide. For some reason, when I approached them, they huddled together and each of them agreed "I like Jamie" (it would be another two years before I forsook that girly variant of my name), and I was given access to the gloriously undulating metal slide with all of its tiny dents glistening in the Pennsylvania summer sun. I slid, and oh, did the backs of my legs burn with the thrill of acceptance! Afterwards, my new friends and I lay in the grass and looked up at the sky and pointed out to each other which clouds looked like beautiful swans and which looked like magnificent seahorses. The next day I tried to sit with them at lunch, but Daniel, the biggest of them, was like "I swear to god if you fucking sit next to me I will pour this carton of chocolate milk on your hair."

When asked by any of the kids about Thomas's condition, the typical explanation given by the counselors was "Have you ever seen Rain Man?" and for those who had seen it (most had, surprisingly), I was reponsible for dampening the excitement noticeable in their follow-up questions by answering "No, he can't count toothpicks really fast." It did, however, give me an excuse to talk to this girl Maureen once before the summer ended. She gave me a polite smile and a "That's cool" before running outside to play with the earthball. Maureen was a year older than me, and, with her shoulder-length black hair and black lycra bike shorts with the flourescent pink stripe, she set the precedent for my lasting affinity for tomboys. In an attempt to establish some common ground with her, I asked my mom to buy me a pair of similar bike shorts, with a neon green stripe. Unfortunately, by the time I finally got them, the summer was pretty much over, but it wasn't without a sense of pride that I donned them on the first day of school, feeling like the connection to someone older and more mature who my classmates knew nothing about somehow put me above the rest of them.

Bitches swear that I ghostwrote The Marriage of Figaro.

2006-12-02T23:24:57Z

Two dish-related examples of the backup plan gradually overtaking Plan A:

1) The configurations of rubber-coated prongs dictate that plates and bowls be placed on the dishwasher's bottom rack, while glasses and cups go on the top; however in the event that large pots and Tupperware start to take up too much space on the bottom rack, it is acceptable for a few bowls to be placed up top, between some glasses or covering up a mug or two. Having been forced to resort to this tactic one too many times in a row, I've started just automatically putting bowls on the top rack to begin with. How long before, to make room for these bowls, the bottom rack becomes the default location for drinkware, and nothing means anything anymore?

2) The first silverware Andy and I bought for the new apartment was this package from the 99¢ Only store that contained eight forks, eight spoons, and eight knives. The set was worth all 99 pennies, silverware in the loosest sense of the word. The gentlest application of jelly to toast can bend one of the knives' blades perpendicularly to its handle. Say no more than "Uri Gellar" and the spoons' heads will flop down limply. We put up with this flimsiness for no more than a week before shelling out for a heftier collection from the housewares department of Ross Dress for Less. The new set came with its own tray for easier compartmentalization in your flatware drawer, and the old, weak utensils were relegated to the contact-papered hinterland between the tray and the left side of the drawer.

Though the Rossbox included a lot more than eight of each category of silverware, as well as introducing the subcategories of salad fork and tinyspoon, the total number of quality spoons is apparently not always large enough to last two competetively lazy roommates the entire time between dishwasher loads, and the appearance of the 99¢ store spoons in the sink was generally a good sign that it was time to load that shit up and run it. But lately the knowledge that the sturdy spoons can run out has compelled me to reach for those inferior spoons first, asking myself, "Do I really need to use one of those fancy Ross spoons right now? What will happen when they're all dirty and there is an emergency involving too-frozen ice cream?" Sometimes I still pamper myself though, because it is nice be able to stir your coffee without the nagging fear that the stirring implement could actually be melting into your drink.

Convicts who rent.

2006-08-23T05:58:53Z

Laurafriend made me a thing! LOOK at it!

It's a hand-painted lantern featuring a picture from the back cover of one of the best albums.

Also, I have a new phone (it took that picture of the lantern) and a new phone number: 818-826-3302. Though I'm probably not any more likely to answer this one than I am my old (disconnected) one. Still, an 818 number!

I miss Florida.

A funny little lady and Johnny Leguizamo.

2006-06-03T02:29:22Z

Americans are even more afraid of speaking in public than they are of dying, supposedly. But where is the line between "talking with some people" and and the actual, nightmarish "public speaking" drawn? Does the lack of audience response/interaction in the latter create the distinction? Is it it simply a matter of quantity? For me it occurs when the number of people hearing me say words climbs above maybe two. It could be six or 600, and I would be just as uncomfortable. The threshold seems to be a lot higher for most people. This afternoon (today being my fourth day at my new job), as Nasim was was leaving work for the day she exchanged various goodbyes with the people in my office, saving "Bye James!" (I know, I know) for last. Without thinking, I called out "Bye!" Immediately afterward I decided it would best to try to throw in something more pleasant, because it's hard to make that exclamatory "bye" sound jovial, but before I could finish "Have a nice weekend!" I became very aware of my own voice ringing out over the cubicle walls and falling on the ears of my other coworkers, and I lost my nerve and trailed off quickly, leaving what must have sounded like "HAVanuwuh" hanging in the air. I can only hope that Nasim didn't take this as some wildly unsuccessful attempt at pronouncing her name.

But man, don't you guys just love cubicles?

I only post songs now.

2006-05-27T00:51:36Z

A LiveJournal-only single release:

The Quiet Heart - Self-imposed shut-in-ism/hermitude. I tried not to romanticize it too much.

Popularity - The b-side, a Sparks cover. Since it was just for fun, I decided to set a few ground rules before recording (because everyone knows that making rules is ALWAYS a recipe for fun). 1) No going back and listening to the original for any kind of musical/lyrical reference; it would be done completely from memory. Kind of like how Nicholson Baker wrote a book about John Updike (U and I) without consulting any Updike books. I just figured that any misrememberings on my part could possibly lead to some interesting deviations from the original version--totally faithful covers are generally kind of boring. 2) No MIDI. 3) It had to be completely finished before bedtime.

Well, it ended up being pretty boring anyway, and the vocals are shitty, but whatever. I still like the idea of this "telephone game" method of recording covers. I think it's worth trying again with a different song someday.

I love YouTube.

2006-04-23T22:50:29Z

You Cannot Fart Around with Love

Sing me a story.

2006-03-10T00:25:29Z

A few recentish choons. Enjoy/detest/ignore as you see fit.

Mailboxing - Another one of those "You don't love me so I'm leaving" songs.

Sister, When We're Married - Another one of those "I'm a ten-year-old boy and I'm in love with my twin sister" songs.

The Magic of Eavesdropping - About a guy waiting in a restaurant for his date to show up and passing the time by listening in on other couples' conversations.

P.S. This is where I live now:

philipschiavoni @ 2006-01-22T02:43:00

2006-01-22T22:43:47Z

Andy and I haven't met the people who live in the apartment next to ours yet, but from the sound of it they are:

1) A woman in her late 40's who likes to sing along with what some quick Googling tells me is Michael Bublé's self-titled debut, the only cd she owns. Her favorite song is "Sway," which I don't think I'd ever heard before but is coincidentally my least favorite song by anyone ever.

2) Someone with a "dirty fuckin' onion ass" that the above-mentioned woman will "beat" if this person doesn't "shut up." This person's gender and age are unclear because their voice is completely inaudible from my bedroom.

I went ahead and downloaded that Michael Bublé album and plan on putting it on and leaving it playing fairly loudly the next time I go out somewhere. Oh mysterious, belligerent neighbor, let us speak to each other only with the caramel-smooth voice of Bublé!

BANGIN HOUSE JAMZ VOL 1

2005-12-22T00:53:27Z

Coming to the conclusion that I pretty much without exception love it when songs reference things like kitchens, desks, wallpaper, and other household items or components of houses or apartments, I decided it might be fun to try to come up with a collection of songs of my own about nothing but these things. But where to begin? Inspiration is virtually limitless when you're literally surrounded by potential subject matter! After much internal debate, I rolled over in bed and faced the red, glowing digits of my alarm clock's LED display that seemed to scream for attention. "Yes, Clock," I said, "it was you all along. However, I'm afraid that the more musical rhythmic nature of your analog brethren may be better suited to a song-topic," and the alarm clock was like "Bzzzrrrtttt! Bzzzrrrtttt! Bzzzrrrtttt!" and I was like "Snooze," and it did.

So here is the first installment of what will hopefully be a much larger project tentatively titled Dumbwaiters and Laundry Chutes (or alternately maybe just House Music or Furniture Music), a sort of bombastic, creepy song about clocks—specifically the sound they make that seems to present itself only when everything else is totally quiet.

Clock Rock

Though, as always, the vocals could be much, much better, I guess I'm pretty happy with how it came out. But at the same time I don't know if I can really imagine anyone who isn't me actually listening to it for any kind of pleasure.

As a bonus, because it's that time of the year, here's the hastily-written/recorded song that was going to be my contribution to last year's Racquetball Family Christmas comp, which never materialized. Relief-filled cough at the end courtesy of an authentic Yuletide cold I was in the grips of at the time.

It's Christmastime!

Let me know if those links stop working and you actually want to download either of the songs for some reason.

Coming soon: a song about paperclips w/ arrangement inspired by the fact that the French word for "paperclip" is "trombone," which I read somewhere, and I'm not completely sure how true it is, but it seems like one of most pleasant things a person could think they know.

Dislikes: food that isn't a mashed potato.

2005-10-25T18:23:54Z

Not too long ago I found some old books of mine in a closet at my parents' house, and one title in particular struck me as a good summation of just about everything I liked when I was in second grade. That must be when I got the book, because "Jamie" is written on the inside cover in some scrawly D'Nealian, and Jamie was only my name until I moved to Florida right before third grade and made everyone start calling me Jimmy, and I think second grade was the first year they tried to teach us to write in that awful cursive-preparedness script (seriously, fuck a tail at the end of a lower-case m). Anyway, the book is called I Can Draw Strange Animals, and it provides step-by-step instructions for drawing detailed pictures of such obscure wildlife as...

The gangetic dolphin!

The giant pangolin!

The solenodon!

And perhaps the strangest animal of all...

The deadly MANATEE!!!!

Actually, this book was probably my introduction to manatees. No one really talked about them in Pennsylvania, I guess because you don't see too many that far north. As opposed to down here, where it's like everywhere you look there's a manatee walking around in a Misfits hoodie, changing a tire on the side of the road, or making you a burrito at Chipotle Mexican Grill. Endangered, pah!

The sweat on your lips is the rest of your snack.

2005-09-13T02:59:45Z

Feeling like you need to turn the volume down when a character is yelling so that the loudness doesn't wake up your parents, who are asleep in their room across the hall

:

Reading a book

::

Instinctively reaching for the cruise control lever when you've reached an acceptable speed

:

Riding a bike

Not the tightest of analogies, but it's comprised of two real-life scenarios involving me that have taken place in the last two weeks and that seemed kind of similar. Also, you know how sometimes a fast or exciting song will come on while you're driving and you won't have any choice but to do like 80 in a 55? Well, this urge can also strike when you're listening to music while riding a bike, and trust me when I say that it's better to not try to indulge it, because, man, you can pedal and pedal, and you'll be lucky to break 30 mph, and it still won't feel like you're going fast enough. And also after trying to keep it up for a whole songlength, you will hurt.

*****

Once, coming out of Mr. Teague's Algebra class in eighth grade, on our way to lunch, I'd been making fun of Andy for something, and he responded by calling me a "big wiener," which I thought was pretty funny, but as soon as he said it it was obvious that something clicked in his head and he realized that it was the most perfect and accurate thing anyone could have called me right then. He said it again, and even went up to Troy Buurma and asked him, "Man, isn't Jimmy the biggest wiener you've ever met?" All of which mad me laugh even harder and probably seem even more wienerish. It just recently occurred to me, though, that, even though Andy might not have known it at the time, part of the reason it had seemed like such an apt description must have been my hair. I had kind of a typical early-90s skater cut, parted straight down the middle, except that the sides weren't really shaved high enough, and the longer hair was still just a little too short to push behind my ears. In other words, factoring in my lankiness, I certainly would not have appeared unphallic. It's the same haircut that later on in the year prompted some guy sitting behind me in Typing class to try to get my attention by yelling "Hey, mushroom-headed kid!" I knew he was talking to me, but I couldn't let him know that I knew, so I just stared straight ahead at my computer screen and kept playing Minesweeper.

*****

The light switches for the kitchen and dining room lights in my parents' house are right next to each other (they share a light switch plate), but there is another, single light switch on the other side of the kitchen that controls the same kitchen lights, and so either kitchen switch can be flipped up or down for off or on depending on whether or not the lights are on already, which means that it is possible for all of the kitchen and dining room lights to be on with the dining room's light switch in the up position and just to the right of it the kitchen's switch pointing down, and by placing your index finger vertically between them and rotating counterclockwise you can

*****

I'm sure this isn't nearly as amazing as I'd like to think it is, but exactly half of the places I've lived (chronologically the third, fourth, and sixth out of six, with me currently residing in the third again) can be connected with very little deviation by this fairly uniform zig-zag of major and semi-major roads:

                                6*  |
                                    |
                                    |Clarcona Ocoee
                                    |
                             _______|
                             | OBT
                             |
                             |Lee
                             |
                     ________|
                     | 17-92
                     |
                     |Aloma
                     |
               ______|
               |Semoran
               |
               |University
               |
         ______|
         |Alafaya
         | 4*
         |
         |
         |
         |50
         |
         |
         |
         |
_________|
   95
3*

*****

Tomorrow I'm going to try to make it here during my hour-long lunch break. MapQuest says it's about 26 minutes from downtown, so I should have just enough time to park or drive through and grab a Cherry Bop Fruit Beer Float, and possibly a chicken sandwich and some onion rings!

Mister you got the best answering machine message I EVER heard!

2005-06-07T21:05:17Z

Sometimes it surprises me to think that I actually have quite a bit of experience in the specialty ammunition business.

A friend of my mom's is a police officer who invented a kind of bullet guaranteed to make guns jam, and I guess the idea was that these bullets would be interspersed with actual functioning ones during target practice so that a cop could rehearse what to do if ever his or her firearm were to malfunction in the middle of a high-pressure situation. For several years while I was in high school and college I spent an hour or two each week getting paid to assemble these things. Apparently there was a strong demand, because he sent out lots of big, heavy boxes of them to places all over the country.

I worked in the guy's garage, and most of the time I just drilled holes in the bottom of metal shells where little plastic inserts were to be placed (sometimes by me, sometimes by my boss's wife or someone else) later on. The drilling machine was the picture of efficiency: a harness was attached to a spring-loaded clamp that would hold the shell in place while a good pull on a slot-machine-type lever brought the rotating drill bit down through the metal, and once the clamp was released the shell would fall into a plastic tube leading to a well-positioned bucket. The harness wrapped around the drill operator's waist so that the clamp could be pulled closed simply by leaning slightly back, and a nearby container of easily grabbable undrilled shells meant that the total movement required for the process was minimal. Oh, the hours I spent making fake bullets and perfecting that little dance, reaching and leaning and pulling!

I never actually got to see the finished product in action (inaction). There wasn't much testing involved before sending the shipments out, because making sure all of those bullets effectively jammed guns would have been pretty time-consuming. However I always liked imagining what such testing would have been like: "That one fired BEAUTIFULLY! Dammit, Jimmy, you have failed."

The police officer/bullet-inventor's wife was a German woman, and one winter one of her German nieces came to stay with them for a while. The niece's name was Julia. The New Year fell during the time she was there, and I was pressured by my mom into asking her if she'd want to spend New Year's Eve with my friends and me, despite the fact that we had no definite plans. Somehow we ended up at a party where anyone wearing any color that wasn't black felt very out of place. It was the kind of party where in one room there was a not-very-dressed girl being hoisted by a rope attached to her feet up towards the ceiling and singing happily while people spun her around. We didn't stay very long, and on the ride home I laughed nervously and explained to Julia (her English was very good) that I didn't know the party was going to be like that, but I'm still not sure if she'd actually been uncomfortable there or if she was secretly wishing that she had gotten a chance to swing upside-down on a rope and try not to knock over any of the candles on the floor around her.

Years before that, Julia's older brother Craig had been here visiting the family, and one day Andy and I hung out with him for a few hours. He showed us the websites of some of his favorite metal bands, and I guess he and Andy hit it off, because the next day he showed up at Andy's house wearing rollerblades. Andy had rollerblades too, so they went rollerblading together. At one point they passed by some kids playing basketball, including one shirtless boy who was slightly overweight. Craig laughed under his breath, and when Andy asked what was so funny he said, "In Germany, when you look like that, you keep your shirt on!"

To this day, when I'm dancing at Independent Bar or wherever, sometimes I'll all of a sudden break into the fake-bullet-making dance! All the girls go crazy for it!

I was dancing in the Lebanese Bar.

2005-06-02T19:42:15Z

On Wednesday night I'll be seeing Jonathan Richman at The Social, and this time there shouldn't be any reason I can't stay for the whole thing!

The last time I saw him (and, as far as I know, the last time he played in Orlando) was a little over 5 years ago at the same place, back when it was the infinitely better-named Sapphire Supper Club. Although I was 18 at the time, I had only just recently gotten my driver's license, and just as I was about to leave the house that night my dad decided he didn't like the idea of me driving in downtown traffic alone. This was understandable considering I'd already wrecked my car once, maybe even twice by then. I don't drive so good.

The plan was that he'd drop me off at the Sapphire, go see a movie, and then come back and pick me up. I hadn't seen too many bands play in smaller venues at that point, and I didn't yet know that these things never start when they're supposed to. But when I walked in on what appeared to be some kind of short-film marathon, it was obvious that Jonathan wouldn't be going on anytime soon.

I sat through several shorts, one of which featured a man eating his own belly button lint (this was, if I remember correctly, the entirety of the plot), while an older drunk woman talked to me about getting older and being drunk. Finally, the opening band, The Hate Bombs, came on, and they finished up their set just before the time I'd arranged to meet my dad outside.

Waiting on the sidewalk on Orange Ave, I was more than a little surprised to see Andy's car drive by. (Andy's white Cavalier was unmistakable then, due to the fact that after Halloween he'd removed some large bat stickers from the windows of the Blockbuster where he worked and placed them all over the sides of the car, resulting in occasional cries of "Hey, Batman!" and "It's the Batmobile!" etc.) Then I remembered that he was supposed to be going out with this girl he liked, Bethena, that night, and I figured they must have been going to a club or something. I waved even though I knew they didn't see me.

Dad was nice enough to go get food or something for an hour while I went back inside to see Jonathan play. I still ended up having to leave early, but I did get to hear "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar," so the night ended happily.

For me. Andy on the other hand was having a miserable time, but one that proved hilarious in retrospect. He and Bethena had hung out together before, but I think this was their first actual "date." They went to Cairo, a club I've never been to. Bethena was Lebanese, and, immediately after she and Andy entered the club, she met some dude who was also Lebanese. She danced with him all night long, while Andy sat and watched and pouted.

What makes the whole thing very funny is that, maybe a year later, she MARRIED the guy! So Andy had the bad fortune to go out with this girl on the one night that just happened to be the night she met her future husband! Oh, Andy.

Apatow-rific!

2005-05-23T20:32:43Z

Undeclared comes out on dvd the same month! Yay August.