blogvid

I am so fucking excited about the next batman movie -- Dark Knight. I have to go back to Jurassic park or Batman Returns to even recall a time when i was so excited about a movie. Perhaps the Matrix: Reloaded also came close, but this feels different somehow. There is a childlike excitement that brings me back to the previous sequel in the previous batman movie franchise. Luckily I have been working hard enough that I am constantly too tired for thoughts of movies to enter my mind, otherwise I would go crazy htinking about how awesome this movie is gonna be and how i have to wait until july 2008 for it.

IOMN I saw coffee & cigarettes a few weeks ago. John Turturro wrote and directed it and has apparently been working for several years to get it on the big screen. The Coen Brothers came in and reedited it and gave the film a credibility boost. Anyways, i think its only playing in New York, but who knows LA may be the next stop. the whole thing is highly entertaining, especially since it is a musical starring James Gandolfini. Not the most amazing movie ever made, but definitely worth watching.
IEMMN I saw No Country For Old Men, which was just an amazing piece of work. The Coen Brothers have done it again in a big way. On top of the usual visual awesomitude of Coen Bros. movies, the acting is off the charts good, esp. the guy playing the bad guy. I am not a big suspense movie fan, in that while I enjoy suspenseful movies I do nt seek them out, and, as such, do not see many of them. That being said, I barely breathed during this movie i was so on the dge of my seat. The aforementioned "bad guy" is so fucking creepy. I need to watch this movie again, but it definitely ranks high on my coen list of greatness in the Lebowski, O' Brother, Hudsucker (I have not seen fargo enough as well to accurately place in this scheme) stratosphere.

IOON, I will be in LA for my mom's 60th b-day from Dec. 7 - 9.

parent teacher conferences were last night. my best so far. my spanish was rolling of the tongue -- the spanish teacher who was also doing his conferences in my room even complimented me on my use of the tongue. meeting parents is always an interesting and enlightening experience. 95% of the time to meet the parents and its like "ohhhh that why this kid is like that."
ion, i have slimmed down to 160 lbs. which is totally awesome because now i can find pants my size without getting them hemmed. i know, i know, I sound just like the female archetype and that is okay with me.
back to the school news, my new school is awesome. so far the year has been great. last year I was exhausted by this point and now i feel like i'm just getting started.
i took some students on a field trip yesterday where a nobel laureate and the current chair of the sloan-kettering institute who was formerly the head of the NIH sat down on stage and discussed how they became scientists. this was awesome. unfortunately my students had no idea what a nobel laureate nor what the NIH is. I did not plan tis trip it was thrust upon me the day before. i had no idea what it was all about. our students totally tuned out, which is unfortunate because that was a very rare opportunity.
ok, off to work.

While I was running today I saw a guy shooting up. I had never actually seen this before today. I'm not sure which is stranger-- that I saw a guy shooting up or that it took two years in New York and one yeat in SpaHa to see someone shooting up. Nonetheless, it was disturbing on many levels. I think the juxtaposition of me running and this guy getting high made the experience mose disturbing.
In related news I ran five miles today. I have not run that much in quite some time. When I streched after the run I almost pased out. Awesome.

I went to a bar tonight. I met two guys from Hawaii. One of them was a fire dancer. Fucking New York. There were two amazingly hot asian bartenders. For anyone who is not into asian girls, these were the two to change your mind. being infatuated with two women I barely knew got me to thinking about me and the womens. I am so picky its rediculous. If they are too hot I can barely talk to them. If I like someone give me ten minutes I will fine something to harp on. One day I hope to figure this game out. Actually, I think I have figured it out, I just cannot act appropriately for modern times.

Also, drunkeness is awesome. Spelling, not so awesome.

Before i get to the goings ons and what not, a quick plug. My grandpa wrote a momoir of his experience in WWII. It has been published and is now available on amazon if anyone is interested. I'm not gonna say much, except that it would make an old guy really happy if this was a success (for this type of book). I have read most of it and its good and presents an interesting point of view on the war.

So I have completed my first week of school and I am exhausted. Right now I am okay because I was able to get a full night's rest. Well, kinda. I went to sleep at midnight and woke up at 5:30am, which was unacceptable, and then at 8:00 am, which i also thought was unacceptable but my body thought it totally fine. I had such a ragin' HO that I pondered calling the cialis hotline for 4-hour 'rections. I also soon realized I had to take a dump. This is a rare thing for me, so I was very excited (more so than visibly apparent at the time). I usually have to work to have a movement in the morning. and by "work" i mean drink coffee. AND THEN to make the experience all the more enjoyable my poop created a red halo in the water. NO, I am not bleeding anally, I just ate a bunch of beets two nights ago. My dump yesterday was a spectacular display of light and color. I thought that would be all she wrote, but I got even more mileage out of that ruby red ruffage. Back to school. I was exhausted yesterday and everyday before that. The schools day itself was fine, but once I started to walk home, it became apparent that I was drained. I'm hoping this is just a pahse of adjustment because I cannot afford to be useless after 3pm. Too much work to do and most importantly, fun to be had. Other than that, school is great. my students are oh so pleasant and fun. Some of them are clearly awesome, especially my homeroom, which is super easy to deal with, which is good because I have to see them for HR, science, and advisory. I got a tour of the science lab and almost cried. there is so much stuff. and good stuff too. blew my mind. they opened a cabinet and half of it was full of different ways to teach density. like 10 different approaches to denisty. I had so much trouble getting my students to understand density last year. I was buying all this crap that was good, but nowhere near perfect and it added up to confusion for the students. I mean they knew how to calculate it, but that doesn't really matter since the 8th grade test gives you the formula. what most of my students didn't get was what density represents. hopefully that will be different this time around... though i'm not sure if i will be teaching density at all.

I just listened to the new MIA album Kala and it is pretty awesome. i have to give it a few more close listend before i determine just how awesome it is.

Went to work today for a change of pace. Not sure I am ready to teach on Tuesday but it is what it is. And I don't mean because I want my summer vacay to last longer. It was pretty awesome summer so I cannot complain. I just haven't thought about what to do on the first day of school. I have a bunch of ideas about how I want to run my class after days 1-5, but not much for that first week. Impromptu (i.e. bullshit) is my forte, however, so I think I will be allright. Despite all that my new school is pretty sweet. After one day I feel like there is a good vibe amongst the teachers and the science dept. looks like exactly what I was looking for. Its only one day, however, so who knows how it will all work out.

ION Bowmore makes a fine scotch and I really wish there were new Daily Shows this week.

I have not been impressed by the size of the supposed gargantuan roaches in New York. And the rats for that mater too. And the mice. Our apartment has a small roach problem. Let me rephrase that: a small problem with small roaches. I had never seen such tiny roaches until I lived in this apartment. They mostly hang out by the sink and I spray them with water and soap until they go kaput. We even had (fingers crossed) a small mouse problem. The darn thing was so cute. He was hanging out at night a for couple weeks then he just kinda went away. I'm not gonna lie, the mouse gave me the heebi jeebies for sure, but it was never too bad. Last night all of that changed while watching team USA beat Puerto Rico in the FIBA Americas tournament. Out of the corner of my eye I thought the mouse was back. I turned and realized this was too slow-moving to be a mouse (mice are fucking fast, btw). It was a fucking cocroach. The kind legends are made of. I have seen it once and will forever tell people how fucking huge the roaches in New York are. The mice, eh, but ohmygodthefuckingroaches. Before I could shake my fear and longing for a warm, safe place, the roach scurried away under the entertainment center. Fast forward. I'm in the shower. At this point I am clean, at least, to my satisfaction. After a nice long, leisurely shower I often enjoy a not too long, but indeed leisurely, bath. So I have a seat switch into bath mode, get the temp all warm and cozy-like, and then stopper that shit up. When there is about 2 inches of water in the tub I see it again!!! The roach to end all roaches. On the shower curtain! Ah. If mice could scurry on vertical surfaces I think I would have shit the shower this morning. The shock of seeing this creature invade my life did not last as long this time so I was able to think and act. I unplug the tub and use the stopper to hit the roach into the draining water. He/she/it falls and starts to swim!! Some far reach of my brain tells me I already knew roaches could swim. No time to wiki it so I press on. I push the roach underwater with the stopper. The roach flips over onto its back. It somehow managed to get back on its belly and start swimming again. I push it closer to the drain in hopes of some sweet whirlpool action. His roach stroke is strong. I push him under and closer to the drain. His kicking seems to have stopped and he slowly spirals to what I hope is his final fate. I quickly plug the bath up again just to be sure. And yes, I had my bath. The whole time imagining legions of roaches coming out of the faucet to drain me.

Oh, and in the shower last night I realized I am an idiot as I usually tend to do in the shower. I think the shower has got to be my #1 place for ah ha moments. I am busy pulling out dead pubes from the tangle that is my man area and BAM! Idea. or BAM you are an idiot! My IAAI moment was that we are currently experiencing the month of August not september which would make the time lapsed betwixt my previous post and my anteprevious post a month not two months. Let it be noted that I am an idiot.

I had a weird dream last night. Well first it was kinda normal. I was teaching and i had no lesson plan. I have had this dream tens of times and every time it is quite stress inducing. This one was not so much because it was the first day of school and nothing happens on those days anyways. The setting had hcanged too. It was my new school. As with most real locations in my dreams it looked nothing like the actual place, btu I KNEW exactly where I was. So that was normal. Then I was at some sort of institution of higher learning (this one was non-specific) watching a powerpoint presentation given by a Zach Braff lookalike. The colors on the ppt were all fucked up. I was in the back of the auditorium trying to fix the colors only to make it worse. Then I met up with some peeps: Tim, Matt, some other dude or two (can't remember who right now), Cathy, and Caryn. We went to a whore house run by mexicans. I've seen this whore house in previous dreams, but I have never been inside, until last night. We didn't actually partake in any of the services but we stood there for a bit htinking about it. Ok, actually Tim partook in the services. He asked for a woman with a nice bra. Good choice, Tim. The girls waited outside after seeing the interior. There was more but those details are a little hazy.

Holy crap, almost two months. That may be a new time between posts record for me. I would like to update more often, and I'm not sure why I don't/ Part of the problem is that I think of things to post while I am out and about and then I forget whatever it is or I lost interest. Anyways, I am going to try to make a habit out of it.
Enough about that. Sometimes I think of my life in terms of chapters. If I were writing an autobiography how would I break up my life into chapters and what would they be called. I usually think of it in terms of schooling or by loosely defined phases (ex: the materbating four-times-a-day-every-day phase). Anyways, the schooling thing doesn't really work right now. I mean you could argue I am still in the chapter after Teachers College entitled: "The Teaching Years: Why'm I Lookin' at a Ho?" That designation is too easy. I don't feel like year one of teaching should get its own chapter. I think the better division would be the last two years being one chapter and then starting a new one now. Why a new one now? A few reasons: I will be teaching at a new school; Matt has partially moved out (more on that later); and I now feel like a New Yorker instead of a visitor. I spent a month this summer teaching in upstate New York. Being away from Manhattan made me realize how much I love New York. The weather is and always will be a drag, but otherwise its a pretty awesome place to live. Despite that, there is a large part of me that wants to leave to some far-away place like Brazil or Spain. If this year blows big ones, or even if it is awesome, I may be outta here.
Matt and I just drove from New York to Ontario, California. We left Thursday morning and arrived in Ontarion on SUnday afternoon. Why? Why not? I flew from the Ontario airport that evening to New York to see my mom, who is visiting from CA. We stopped in Chicago, Cheyenne, Wyoming, Las Vegas, and then Ontarion. 15hours, 15 hours, 13 hours, and 4 hours of driving on four consecutive days. We listened to "Ulysses" by James Joyce for the first half of the trip. Yes, about 25 hours of audio book. We only got half way through the book. The story has some nuggets of brilliance (and some novella's worth too), but in the end, we were confused and tired and well, try it yourself and you'll see what I mean.
As I said earlier my moms is visiting. We went to the Guggs yesterday and attempted to visit the MoMA today. One problem: clsoed on tuesdays. We perused the gift shop and design store. I got two watches. Awesomeness. Here is one of them. The other is new and apparently not up on the MoMA website.
Bla bla bla. I wish I had something funny to day. I feel like this is a waste if there is no humor. perhaps next time.

this is pretty cool