2004-04-26
Gmail
I'm done with the Spanish and math tests. Now on to the literature paper. Less unpleasant news: I have a new email address. I'm going to add extra characters in a different colour in hopes that publishing the address here won't lead to any spam:J_a_m_e_s_L_u_c_a_s_@_g_m_a_i_l_._c_o_m I'll still be checking the AOL acount for quite a while (probably at least a year).
2004-04-24
Dark Light
So, I was wandering around this fine Internet of ours, and I stumbled upon this of all things. These are the lamps that hung in the airport cafe where Marget and I said our final in-person goodbyes. Its a pity I hate these things, because I will forever remember them. (There are some other, better lights from the same company, which is a a division of Dark.)
2004-04-22
Earth Day
Happy Birthday, Earth! ...maybe. Anyway, its Earth Day 2004, and I celebrated by consuming my 11th free Chocofino (in about as many days) at Starbucks. I'm thinking about going again tonight to make it an even dozen. This one was particularity special in that I got to share the moment with my friend Melissa Gombar, a fellow student in my Spanish class who has a far greater gift for the language than I. (My apologies, but the answer is "no," ye of inquisitive minds; she has a boyfriend; his name is Will.) The coupons expire tonight, so this is the end of the run. I think I will actually miss a couple of the employees there, who have noticed my repeat business...er..."business."
2004-04-19
My Big Break
PRH had a film crew here at the Langdon today to shoot a commercial, and I got cast as the "studious person at the bar in the game room." I sat and read Robinson Crusoe for five minutes. I was then recruited to be an extra in the theatre. They put on HBO, and we saw a bit of the movie Max. Unfortunately, the part we were watching was all Nazi propaganda. I think it was being viewed critically, but that wasn't evident from the little bit I saw out of context. There was a puppet show depicting a Jewish woman seducing an Aryan man. I don't think that shot is going to make it into a commercial for the dorm.
2004-04-18
2004-04-17
The New Film
I saw Kill Bill Vol. 2, which was very well done. I was especially amused to learn that the Bride's name is Beatrix Kiddo. I can't wait for Quentin Tarantino's next film; I suspect that he'll wisely move away from the movie-that-knows-its-a-movie concept, as he pretty well maxed out with this one. I finished Dune while I was waiting for the movie to start. I'm more strongly tempted to read the rest of the books that I thought I would be. It won't be for a while in any case.
2004-04-13
Chicago (after)
The trip to Chicago went well for both Kyle and myself. Transportation worked out okay, although with 6 busses and 3 trains, it was more complicated than I expected. The show was great, and the poncho that was on our front-row seats was most handy in protecting us from mashed banana, half-chewed Capt'n Crunch, and a small bit of paint. Our excellent host Eric Rogers gave us great directions and bought us lunch at a nice little restaurant on the University of Chicago campus called The Medici. It was really great to see Kyle again.
2004-04-11
Chicago (before)
I'm off to the Windy City tomorrow to reunite with my old roommie and see the Blue Man Group's Tubes show. I'm taking a Vangalder Bus back and forth between Madison and Chicago. I won't be back until around midnight. Hopefully there will be much to report on Monday.
2004-04-06
In the mail today:
"April 1, 2004...
Dear Mr. Hepokoski,
I am pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation's 'Introduction to Architecture, A Summer Studio in New York' as a special student (non-matriculated) for the Summer 2004 term....We look forward to having you at Columbia.
Sincerely,
Loes Schiller
Associate Dean"
New York won't know what hit it.
Dear Mr. Hepokoski,
I am pleased to inform you that you have been admitted to the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation's 'Introduction to Architecture, A Summer Studio in New York' as a special student (non-matriculated) for the Summer 2004 term....We look forward to having you at Columbia.
Sincerely,
Loes Schiller
Associate Dean"
New York won't know what hit it.
2004-04-04
Air America
I've been listening to a lot of Air America Radio. Some of the shows are just a little overloaded with angry liberal propaganda, but Al Franken's show (The O'Franken Factor) keeps in light and is pretty darn funny. Another pretty decent show is Unfiltered, where I just heard from the famous blogger Joshua Micah Marshall.
It's streamable, and worth a try. Just know some of it, like The Randi Rhodes Show, comes on too strong.
It's streamable, and worth a try. Just know some of it, like The Randi Rhodes Show, comes on too strong.
2004-04-02
2004-03-27
Do you feel lucky?
I just came back from the first UW HSO film showing. The flick was Dirty Harry, and it was quite good. The movie, like Clint Eastwood's character, was bold, decisive, and unapologetic.
2004-03-25
The School
by Donald Barthelme
Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that ... that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems ... and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don't know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn't the best. We complained about it. So we've got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own little tree to plant, and we've got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing.
It wouldn't have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before the thing with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes -- well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that ... you remember, the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable. It was something you could explain to the kids because of the strike. I mean, none of their parents would let them cross the picket line and they knew there was a strike going on and what it meant. So when things got started up again and we found the snakes they weren't too disturbed.
With the herb gardens it was probably a case of overwatering, and at least now they know not to overwater. The children were very conscientious with the herb gardens and some of them probably ... you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren't looking. Or maybe ... well, I don't like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the white mice had died, and the salamander ... well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags.
Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those numbers, you look at them crooked and they're belly-up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical-fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it.
We weren't even supposed to have a puppy.
We weren't even supposed to have one, it was just a puppy the Murdoch girl found under a Gristede's truck one day and she was afraid the truck would run over it when the driver had finished making his delivery, so she stuck it in her knapsack and brought it to school with her. So we had this puppy. As soon as I saw the puppy I thought, Oh Christ, I bet it will live for about two weeks and then ... And that's what it did. It wasn't supposed to be in the classroom at all, there's some kind of regulation about it, but you can't tell them they can't have a puppy when the puppy is already there, right in front of them, running around on the floor and yap yap yapping. They named it Edgar -- that is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it and yelling, "Here, Edgar! Nice Edgar!". Then they'd laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity. I enjoyed it myself. I don't mind being kidded. They made a little house for it in the supply closet and all that. I don't know what it died of. Distemper, I guess. It probably hadn't had any shots. I got it out of there before the kids got to school. I checked the supply closet each morning, routinely, because I knew that was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian.
And then there was this Korean orphan that the class adopted through the Help the Children program, all the kids brought in a quarter a month, that was the idea. It was an unfortunate thing, the kid's name was Kim and maybe we adopted him too late or something. The cause of death was not stated in the letter we got, they suggested we adopt another child instead and sent us some interesting case histories, but we didn't have the heart. The class took it pretty hard, they began (I think, nobody ever said anything to me directly) to feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the school, particularly. I've seen better and I've seen worse. It was just a run of bad luck. We had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for instance. There were I think two heart attacks and two suicides, one drowning, and four killed together in a car accident. One stroke. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents, or maybe it was heavier that year, it seemed so. And finally the tragedy.
The tragedy occurred when Matthew Wein and Tony Mavrogordo were playing over where they're excavating for the new federal office building. There were all these big wooden beams stacked, you know, at the edge of the excavation. There's a court case coming out of that, the parents are claiming that the beams were poorly stacked. I don't know what's true and what's not. It's been a strange year.
I forgot to mention Billy Brandt's father, who was knifed fatally when he grappled with a masked intruder in his home.
One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don't know, I don't know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn't death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of --
I said, yes, maybe.
They said, we don't like it.
I said, that's sound.
They said, it's a bloody shame!
I said, it is.
They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done? We know you like Helen.
I do like Helen, but I said that I would not.
We've heard so much about it, they said, but we've never seen it.
I said I would be fired and that it was never, or almost never, done as a demonstration. Helen looked out the window.
They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.
I said that they shouldn't be frightened (although I am often frightened) and that there was value everywhere. Helen came and embraced me. I kissed her a few times on the brow. We held each other. The children were excited. Then there was a knock on the door. I opened the door, and the new gerbil walked in. The children cheered wildly.
Well, we had all these children out planting trees, see, because we figured that ... that was part of their education, to see how, you know, the root systems ... and also the sense of responsibility, taking care of things, being individually responsible. You know what I mean. And the trees all died. They were orange trees. I don't know why they died, they just died. Something wrong with the soil possibly or maybe the stuff we got from the nursery wasn't the best. We complained about it. So we've got thirty kids there, each kid had his or her own little tree to plant, and we've got these thirty dead trees. All these kids looking at these little brown sticks, it was depressing.
It wouldn't have been so bad except that just a couple of weeks before the thing with the trees, the snakes all died. But I think that the snakes -- well, the reason that the snakes kicked off was that ... you remember, the boiler was shut off for four days because of the strike, and that was explicable. It was something you could explain to the kids because of the strike. I mean, none of their parents would let them cross the picket line and they knew there was a strike going on and what it meant. So when things got started up again and we found the snakes they weren't too disturbed.
With the herb gardens it was probably a case of overwatering, and at least now they know not to overwater. The children were very conscientious with the herb gardens and some of them probably ... you know, slipped them a little extra water when we weren't looking. Or maybe ... well, I don't like to think about sabotage, although it did occur to us. I mean, it was something that crossed our minds. We were thinking that way probably because before that the gerbils had died, and the white mice had died, and the salamander ... well, now they know not to carry them around in plastic bags.
Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those numbers, you look at them crooked and they're belly-up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical-fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it.
We weren't even supposed to have a puppy.
We weren't even supposed to have one, it was just a puppy the Murdoch girl found under a Gristede's truck one day and she was afraid the truck would run over it when the driver had finished making his delivery, so she stuck it in her knapsack and brought it to school with her. So we had this puppy. As soon as I saw the puppy I thought, Oh Christ, I bet it will live for about two weeks and then ... And that's what it did. It wasn't supposed to be in the classroom at all, there's some kind of regulation about it, but you can't tell them they can't have a puppy when the puppy is already there, right in front of them, running around on the floor and yap yap yapping. They named it Edgar -- that is, they named it after me. They had a lot of fun running after it and yelling, "Here, Edgar! Nice Edgar!". Then they'd laugh like hell. They enjoyed the ambiguity. I enjoyed it myself. I don't mind being kidded. They made a little house for it in the supply closet and all that. I don't know what it died of. Distemper, I guess. It probably hadn't had any shots. I got it out of there before the kids got to school. I checked the supply closet each morning, routinely, because I knew that was going to happen. I gave it to the custodian.
And then there was this Korean orphan that the class adopted through the Help the Children program, all the kids brought in a quarter a month, that was the idea. It was an unfortunate thing, the kid's name was Kim and maybe we adopted him too late or something. The cause of death was not stated in the letter we got, they suggested we adopt another child instead and sent us some interesting case histories, but we didn't have the heart. The class took it pretty hard, they began (I think, nobody ever said anything to me directly) to feel that maybe there was something wrong with the school. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the school, particularly. I've seen better and I've seen worse. It was just a run of bad luck. We had an extraordinary number of parents passing away, for instance. There were I think two heart attacks and two suicides, one drowning, and four killed together in a car accident. One stroke. And we had the usual heavy mortality rate among the grandparents, or maybe it was heavier that year, it seemed so. And finally the tragedy.
The tragedy occurred when Matthew Wein and Tony Mavrogordo were playing over where they're excavating for the new federal office building. There were all these big wooden beams stacked, you know, at the edge of the excavation. There's a court case coming out of that, the parents are claiming that the beams were poorly stacked. I don't know what's true and what's not. It's been a strange year.
I forgot to mention Billy Brandt's father, who was knifed fatally when he grappled with a masked intruder in his home.
One day, we had a discussion in class. They asked me, where did they go? The trees, the salamander, the tropical fish, Edgar, the poppas and mommas, Matthew and Tony, where did they go? And I said, I don't know, I don't know. And they said, who knows? and I said, nobody knows. And they said, is death that which gives meaning to life? And I said, no, life is that which gives meaning to life. Then they said, but isn't death, considered as a fundamental datum, the means by which the taken-for-granted mundanity of the everyday may be transcended in the direction of --
I said, yes, maybe.
They said, we don't like it.
I said, that's sound.
They said, it's a bloody shame!
I said, it is.
They said, will you make love now with Helen (our teaching assistant) so that we can see how it is done? We know you like Helen.
I do like Helen, but I said that I would not.
We've heard so much about it, they said, but we've never seen it.
I said I would be fired and that it was never, or almost never, done as a demonstration. Helen looked out the window.
They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened.
I said that they shouldn't be frightened (although I am often frightened) and that there was value everywhere. Helen came and embraced me. I kissed her a few times on the brow. We held each other. The children were excited. Then there was a knock on the door. I opened the door, and the new gerbil walked in. The children cheered wildly.
2004-03-21
Post-Spring Break Rundown
I'm back in the Mad Town. It was a good break, and I saw a lot of movies:
Matchstick Men - 1.5 stars
Big Trouble - 3.5 stars
Hildalgo - 2 stars
Spellbound - 3 stars
Donnie Darko - 4 stars
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra - 3.5 stars
Big Night - 3.5 stars
Intolerable Cruelty - 3 stars
Magnolia - 3.5 stars
King Solomon's Mines - 1.5 stars
Eternal Sunshine in the Spotless Mind - 3.5 stars
Second Hand Lions - 3 stars
Radio - 2 stars
The Runaway Jury - 1.5 stars
That averages out to a smidgen over three stars, so I guess it was a pretty good week for films.
Matchstick Men - 1.5 stars
Big Trouble - 3.5 stars
Hildalgo - 2 stars
Spellbound - 3 stars
Donnie Darko - 4 stars
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra - 3.5 stars
Big Night - 3.5 stars
Intolerable Cruelty - 3 stars
Magnolia - 3.5 stars
King Solomon's Mines - 1.5 stars
Eternal Sunshine in the Spotless Mind - 3.5 stars
Second Hand Lions - 3 stars
Radio - 2 stars
The Runaway Jury - 1.5 stars
That averages out to a smidgen over three stars, so I guess it was a pretty good week for films.
2004-03-11
Pre-Spring Break Report
I'm taking the Mad-Bus back to the Cities this afternoon. I've finished the last of my pre-break homework, and now I'm packing all the stuff I've gathered into piles around my room. The biggest challenge has been figuring out what I can take home now so that the load will be lighter in the summer. There's a lot of stuff in this little room. I emptied my trash for the first time this semester(!), found a lost sock, and put away a few more artifacts of Marget at which I've been looking all semester without really seeing. I'll be back on the twenty-first.
2004-03-10
Small World
I finished Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days just a moment ago. It is a very quick read and quite a bit of fun, but not the most plausible of books, in terms of its factual correctness, likeliness of events, and consistency of character behavior. It's not the great work that I was expecting, but worth my time nonetheless.
2004-03-09
International Cuisine
PRH is 2 for 2 so far. The International Dumpling night at the Highlander was fabulous, and Oriental Night at the Towers was a close second for Best Cafeteria Food in my college career!
2004-03-08
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