Kings & Angels

***EDIT: There was an order to these photos, telling the story of my trip to LA - but they got out of order when I posted them, and also now they look like crap. And some of them are sideways. I don't know how/care to fix them. Enjoy!

Thursday Taste Lesson

So I guess Wednesdays are Tony has nothing to post Wednesdays, works for me.
Tough run lately. AT&T is boning me royally, my phone is completely broken and worthless and they won't replace it. AND if I want a new one I have to pay full price PLUS some dumb 75 dollar fee. Sweet. Car's been in the shop all week, I've been driving a Forester loaner. Work was canceled last night, my internet was out almost all of today, backing me up with about 20 hours of work. So here I am blogging! Hooray! The highlight of my week so far has been a giant turtle I saw crossing the street.


So on to your first taste lesson. First up - television. I am going to recommend a show which just started it's fourth season. Friday Night Lights. I know, it looks like a dumb high school drama football show - and it is. Beyond that, this show is excellent. If you've never seen it you wouldn't know that they don't take the typical approach to making television. Tons of hand-held shots, long takes and ad-libbing. Almost every shot was the first take and there is no blocking. The (surprisingly talented) actors are allowed to move around and inflect as they see fit. This bold move gives the show a different, more realistic feel. The writing that is there is excellent, the characters are more nuanced than you'd expect from a show like this and the story lines are Americana melodrama. I can't recommend this show highly enough. I have been waiting way too long for the fourth season due to some programming hell the show went through and I couldn't be more excited. I am watching The Wire on DVD right now, and to be honest, I like FNL better. The Wire feels a little emporer's-new-clothes to me. Maybe I'll sing a different tune once I've finished it. Anyway, watch FNL - thank me later.

Second up today - music.



I might have mentioned this band before. Red Clay River. I caught them opening for Tim Barry and have been listening to them way too much since. They are from West Virginia, I don't just say that for trivial background. They wear it proudly. They are a smoky mix of Tom Waits and Modest Mouse and hillbilly country. They make funky, rollicking music for the holler and show an impressive ability to craft pretty, wistful big-sky-and-open-car-window tunes. I enjoy them thoroughly, you should too.

It always was my biggest fear to die without changing a Goddamned thing

As I ramp up my job quest, I am thinking about what I will be doing. I always had this idea that I would never do some bullshit job. I would never work in a cubicle or worry about accounts or reports or any of those seemingly endless office jobs that accomplish nothing. Well that idealism is butting up against realism. I am still looking for a job that will require use of my brain, and not make me want to die every single day. I am sure there will be concessions. Every day we concede a little more. One day we're wearing a tie and singing happy birthday to some fat typist in our office and looking forward to a grocery store bought ice cream cake in the strange smelling communal office fridge. Shit.

Does it really matter what we do as a job? Is it really part of our life like that? Or is it just a vehicle to other kinds of happiness? Does it matter what I do from 9-5 of every day of my goddamned life? Or can I just use that money to set up model trains or collect coins or whatever the hell else middle aged men hobby at. Can I be happy being the secretly tattoed accounts manager at some whatever business? Living my real life in the evenings and weekends? Or will it eat my soul. chomp chomp chomp.

Alas.

Looks like I'll be getting a new car in the near future. Suggestions? Another concession. I used to drive these 'bombs.' I loved them, I loved having a car that made me happy. I would drive around just to drive, smoking cigarettes, changing CDs, brooding, laughing, dating - living what I wanted to be my life in these ridiculous cars. Then I kinda grew up. Small concessions here and there. I drive a "new car" now. At least it is fun to drive, fast and exciting. Maybe that's done too. Maybe my next car will be a Nissan Sentra. I don't like it. I know it is childish and immature, but I love my car. I hate my car, but I love my car. Maybe I can just switch from loving performance to loving practicality and fuel mileage. Ugh, I don't want to grow up.

Whoops

So that didn't last long. My goal of writing frequently went by the wayside.

Oh well.

Last night I wrote for real. Pen and paper. I finished another book and just wanted to put some stuff down. Ended up staying awake past six am filling up about 3/4 of one of my fancy and rarely used Field Notes notebooks.

I've yet to go back and read it, but I don't have high hopes for some witching hour bedroom scribbles. I found it's much more difficult to be be clever writing in analog. You really have to plan what you're going to say if you want to be cute. Just writing it as it comes leaves out the turns of phrase and well thought out metaphors. It all just comes spewing out on the paper.


Still looking for a new job. No real solid leads yet. I go back and forth being excited and terrified at the prospect of having to go to work. I've worked from home for so long now, I wonder how I'll take it. I think I can do it. I think I am ready. At first it will be novel, having coworkers and commuting and bringing a lunch or going to grab one with my 'team'. The regular paychecks, benefits and vacation time won't be novel, just awesome.
The wake up times and running late and business wardrobe won't be novel. They'll be a pain in my ass I've had the luxury of avoiding for a while.

But it's time. I need a "real job" - I need more money and taxes taken out and benefits.

So I've been thinking about starting a section of this blog or a whole new blog where I can be structured and funny and mean. It will be called Good Advice from a Bad Person. I'll answer advice letters with stupid acronym names like Dear Abby or Savage Love. I just don't know how to go about getting people to write me letters to be advised upon. Feel free, they don't have to be real, because my advice sure as shit won't be.

Join the Bush Club

I am straddling a dangerous precipice. On one side - the boring, grassy valley of banal; the other a chaotic drop into the rocks and cliches of melodrama.

I guess that first sentence pantsed me and showed off my penchant for the melodramatic.

I guess all blogs are one or the other. Some boring laundry list of dumb stuff people really don't care to read or the preteen angst of a whiny girl. So far I think I've done both! "Blog about it!" is now the burn of choice bandied about by my friends. Can't say I don't deserve it.

I am really resisting the urge to bitch about how AT&T has righteously wronged me, or how the legal system is currently failing me. I can tell you the blogs that I enjoy are just usually making fun of stuff. Right in my wheel house.

Yeah that didn't segue into me making fun of something as well as I would have hoped.



Some days I wake up on my couch and look at my dustbunny floor and remember my dinner last night of a string cheese and 3 musketeer bar - mostly because the wrappers are right there among the area rugs and ikea furniture, I think - I have arrived! Arrived at a fairly appropriate station considering what I've done to get here. Is this the staving artist of today? No it's the willingly malnutritioned underachiever of today.
I'm done with being an underachiever, I don't think I'll ever overachieve, but that's mostly a product of my healthy (read over) confidence. I am ready to achieve! What that means exactly, is still open to interpretation. Will I get a job that utilizes my talents? Or at least a job that doesn't atrophy my brain and allow or even inspire me to pursue creative outlets on the side? That's the next step. The one I have already begun. I am looking for jobs and reading and writing and hoping.

Let's do this.

We all got it coming, kid.

Photo credit: http://www.lomography.com/homes/digouturblueeyes

Everything always looks so dark in nighttime fisheye pictures. Right over my shoulder is some gaping maw black abyss. How metaphorical!

I've been ramping up the reading lately. Getting me stoked to write something on my own. These somewhat poorly written faux memoirs are right up my alley. I can somewhat poorly write a faux memoir! Exclamation points abound. Only one was completely sarcastic.

I am officially looking for a job. I am doubtful I can find one that matches the freedom of my current job's pantslessness, hopeful that I can improve on the financial standing of a Chuck E. Cheese manager.

Time to put on my big boy pants and do this. I don't want to fall asleep watching DVD reruns of futurama and wake up 10 years in the future singing a Talking Heads song. I am still confident I can get a job that won't steal my soul. I'm not talking about some namby pamby touchy feely nonprofit job either, that's not my bag. I just want something that makes me feel productive and utilized. I am a man with skills! A skilled man! I don't want to be an account manager or alphabetizer. Also, rich would be nice.