something goes missing
08/01/2005 02:30 p.m.
things are starting to feel like they are changing; as they should; only frankie wasn't expecting change to appear so fast.

what happens is that something goes missing. he's not all too sure what it is exactly, but rewind a year, rewind three months, rewind seven weeks and it's there, whatever it is. but today, and everyday here after it is no longer. you see, he's done this entire moving-thing before but somehow it was easier. leaving home allowed him to leave loose ends behind. a box there, a book here, a sock or two... here he has to be sure to take care of everything because there is no one staying here to watch over anything he may leave behind.

so here he is. and he feels like he has so much less time than he needs. he has a class to finish which includes a quiz a test and a final presentation, three proposals to write and submit before he leaves chicago, a computer to get fixed, an apartment to sublease, bills and financial aid to take care of, and a move to organize.

in the meantime frankie's little niche of friends has evaporated across the chicagoland area and they seldom see each other. he hasn't had a night out at a bar in a long time. he hasn't hung out with more than two or three people at a time in a while... and he kind of misses it. he doesn't want this thing, whatever it is, to go slipping from his reach.

comcast is cancelled. his tv and dvd player are unplugged. the contents of his closet lay in piles across his carpet. this thing here is disconnecting, it's unwinding, and reconfiguring. and frankie doesn't know if he is ready to deal with all of it.

two years have gone by way too fast. two years are winding down rather quickly. but then, this is the nature of things. evolution, if you will. you get what you give... and then everything changes. it doesn't matter if you initiate the change or not -- it will happen, in some shape or form we are all destine to graze.

what is worrisome to him as he sits and contemplates this thing gone missing, is that he may not have put all of himself into this place, into these friends, that it may be possible that only a fraction of him actually lived here. it may be possible that he doesn't feel as inspirational here as he has in past ventures...

nonetheless the grazing continues.

frankie goes to hollywood.

on the plus side, if you need a tv and/or a dvd player he's selling his, along with other miscellaneous items from his apartment. act now.

I am currently Stellar
I am listening to counting crows

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visual audio
07/28/2005 04:55 p.m.
Can you name these 10 films without cheating?

As in, don't look anything up on the net... just a little game i wanted to play today, inspired by Andi French's cd track listing game...

*

1. "Adults are like a combination of sadness and phobias. "

2. "Say it. Say, 'You have absolute power.'" -- [as Yoda] "You have absolute power! Eerrp!"

3. "Solitude brought out the worst in me. It gave me time to brood over the nature of things. I wondered how some people could be such a necessary part of one's life one day, and simply vanish the next. Isn't it supposed to last?"

4. "They say, when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that's true. What they don't tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up."

5. "If I could only have one food for the rest of my life? That's easy. Pez. Cherry flavor Pez. There's no doubt about it."

6. [about the Virgin Mary] "I know this is wrong, but do you ever wonder if she just made the whole thing up? I mean, it's a pretty good one. It's not like anyone can ever use virgin birth as an excuse again."

7. "A great numb feeling washes over me as I let go of the past and look forward to the future. Pretend to be a vampire. I don't really need to pretend, because it's who I am, an emotional vampire. I've just come to expect it. Vampires are real. That I was born this way. That I feed off of other people's real emotions. Search for this night's prey. Who will it be?"

8. "Everything inside is eatable, I mean edible, I mean you can eat everything."

9. "First of all, Papa Smurf didn't create Smurfette. Gargamel did. She was sent in as Gargamel's evil spy with the intention of destroying the Smurf village, but the overwhelming goodness of the Smurf way of life transformed her. And as for the whole gang-bang scenario, it just couldn't happen. Smurfs are asexual. They don't even have reproductive organs under those little white pants. That's what's so illogical, you know, about being a Smurf. What's the point of living if you don't have a dick?"

10. "See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?"
I am currently Bemused
I am listening to r.e.m.

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just another day in non-suburbia
07/14/2005 05:05 p.m.
i was going to write three installments of that *awkward pale princess* blog, all about my independence weekend, but i decided to condense and conserve my time. here in a brief synopsis are the remaining *america the beautiful* details...

<< july three >>
steve and i make plans to go down to the lake-front for fireworks. we decide to be like tourists and ride the el train right down into the thick of the independence day chaos. the crowd is an enormous ocean of heads attached to bodies that appear to be seamless. as steve put it, "i can't see the ground in front of me." this is where the taste of chicago meets the fouth of july. by the time the big bangs are ready to bang, the crowd is amped, and huge, and swelling by the concrete lakefront. i ask steve to find one person who looks like they're having a good time. at this time anywhere near the lake, anywhere downtown, cell phone service sucks. it's non-existent. i have three friends biking in from san diego --yes, san diego-- they've been biking for two thousand miles and they are set to arrive in chicago for the fireworks. when the big bangs end steve and i head back towards the city, out of the park, and the crowds are just oceans that take up side streets. we were able to walk down the middle of michigan ave, so wish i had a camera, it was a-mazing. finally i have cell phone service and i return home to mike, mark and noah, three bikers from san diego who, after seeing the fireworks from a street behind the park, enjoyed a meal at our super-futuristic, trendy mcdonald's.

<< july four >>
you can learn a lot from three cross-country bikers. they aren't as stressed as i expected. they're three very chill, very calm, very interesting individuals who seem to be happy with just about anything i can offer them. we fit comfortably into my little studio, with three bikes and four guys. we made it work. and with all they've seen and been through, my life suddenly feels less... everything. my hat goes off to mike, mark, and noah... if for nothing else simply because they are accomplishing a task that i am not sure i could survive. i show them the lake and as much of the city as i can, and by morning they're off on the remainder of their expedition. boston or bust.

you can visit the bikers' website and read their diary @ http://churchofjamaica.org...

... there is the remainder of my three-part blog, minus any angst, minus any dark humor.

<< july nine >>
tonight kat, steve, tom, and myself went out to dinner. for some reason we went to the same restaurant as mentioned in the previous blog. to our surprise our server tonight is the complete antithesis of princess posture. our server tonight is witty, hilarious, and very out-going. it'd take forever to setup his humor here in text form, you'll just have to trust me on this one. he even rounded off our dinner with free dessert... free dessert!!! i'm not even sure the queen drama guild act of our time could fathom the word dessert.

then there was this crazy guy downtown tipping trash cans over and hitting cars that passed him by... he was the embodiment of insanity and all who saw him feared him. these are the people with whom you avoid eye contact.

that's all for now kids. i have seven zillion things on my mind and i have no idea how to sort them out.

::end transmission::

I am currently Fabulous
I am listening to my iPod

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awkward pale princess
07/10/2005 04:17 p.m.
an entry from my july fourth weekend...
this is to be taken as dark & comical (think chuck palahniuk meets lewis black).

i have to ask myself if i'm in the mood to write a blog. i have to ask myself if i have enough of a verbal agenda to deposit here. i have to ask myself if what i am about to write is really worth sharing. you'll be the judge...

<< saturday, july two >>

setup: for those of you who don't know, every summer chicago throws a series of festivals downtown in millennium and grant park. the biggest and most successful of these ventures, which also always leads up to the fourth of july, is the taste of chicago.

originally established by local restaurants and food venders as a way to share the taste of mom and pop food chains from all around the chicagoland area -- it has since been overcome by bigger venders who can afford to pay the higher cost for participation. regardless- it's an immense festival of food, music, crowds and gluttony...

payoff: i meet up with kat and two of her girl-friends downtown. the sun is shining. the crowd is a herd of spectators and spectacle. at the taste you pay seven dollars for eleven tickets and each vender has a limited food list with ticket prices ranging from eight to six to three tickets depending on the type of food and proportion size.

the girls have more tickets than i've seen... it's glorious. i hadn't eaten all day. here at the taste i have a bottle of pink lemonade, two small crab cakes and a bite of kat's thai noodles. for me, this is not a lot at all, not even nearly enough to fill me up - i'm a big boy and i can eat like a boy should, two crab cakes... nothing.

we decide that there has been too much cash spent at the taste and it's getting to be about sunset time, it's cooling-down by the lake and we want to go to a bar and get margaritas... oh yea. we find our way out of the herd and we head over to a restaurant with outdoor seating. we all order our drinks, and i order a burger...

side note: this is our waitress. she looks like a pale, fragile marionette doll, a mime, a ballerina turned queen supreme theatre goddess... this is not only how she looks, it's how she walks, how she presents herself, from her introduction to the following...

climax: we all order our drinks and i order a burger. she looks around the table and all the girls are full from the stuff they ate at the taste. and this awkward pale princess turns to me and says something to the effect of, "you're the only one eating? and i'll bet you ate a ton at the taste..." to which kat comes to my defense as i say, "actually... no, i barely ate anything at the taste..." and she comes back with, "oh well i just figured since your the guy, usually guys are the bottomless pits..."

okay look. you may have some mega huge chip on your shoulder because your the queen drama guild act of your time, and you are sore about the idea that men can eat and eat and eat while you starve yourself to make the kick line, but don't come at me like i'm the fat-kid, like i'm that guy...

i have more than half the image issues you do but you don't see me saying shit like, "wow, i'll bet you were brought to tears walking through the taste realizing all the jolly sugar-fried shit you couldn't enjoy because of your super-no-carb-low-sodium-i-will-not-be-a-fat-actress diet." i didn't say that.

i didn't say, "oh, you're not eating? poor thing."
i didn't say, "you should eat less."
i didn't say, "honey, you're a failure, just eat something."

bottomless pit. please.

falling action: twenty-some-odd minutes later, little miss american dream wannabe with her facial mask of happiness returns with a wet t-shirt. she recites a monologue of self-loathing blaming a so-called incompetent bar tender for finally serving her drinks and then knocking the tray, thus dumping four said beverages all over her costume. sad story.

let's be honest. your vitamin intake is low, your concentration is off, and you're stressed about the audition you had last night. the audition that ended in the back seat of the director's mother's car... don't worry. you looked fabulous.

moments later pretty pale princess serves our drinks. and i swear under her breath i can hear a little voice saying, "i want to be a real girl."

she disappears, like most puppets do, behind curtains with hands up inside them, only to return with a tray a few minutes later. on the tray sits a burger. she walks right past our table. then reappears at our tableside with a, "just kidding..."

real fuckin cute.

not only do i not want to eat this thing, but i want to take her out back, tied down by her marionette strings and i want to shove every last portion of this carb-loaded, deep-fried burger down her ever-so-popular barbie-doll-wannabe bottomless throat. with grease tears on her cheeks i’d say something like, “you look lovely.”

sorry to inconvenience you princess posture, but we asked for separate checks.

i can't believe i left her a tip.

here's a tip. next time don't try so hard.

I am currently Divine
I am listening to jay z

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the reads to comments ratio
07/09/2005 02:29 p.m.
it grabbed my attention today, the amount of times my poetry has been read and the amount of comments i have received and i can't help but feel as if there is a disconnect somewhere, a disconnect that even i am a part of.

my poetry has been read 1,047 times, i have 68 comments. one poem alone has 113 reads with 1 comment. the ratio is poorly misbalanced.

and the problem i think is that there are very few, if any, comments that dare to apply criticisms or suggestions. i'm not the type of person who enjoys constantly reading positive feedback... it's not normal.

so i hereby ask that if you read my poetry, THANK YOU, if you have already taken the time to leave a comment, THANK YOU AGAIN... and if you haven't left a comment, i'd ask that you leave something, a single word, a sound, a curse, tell me you hate it... say something, things function best that way.

and with that said -- i know i too am not the best at commenting every time i read a piece, especially if i feel as though i want to be critical... but i shall try my best to do as i am asking...

::stomach growl:: time for breakfast.

ps --- how did i spend 35 karma points?
I am currently Bored
I am listening to placebo

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cut to you don't have to go home...
06/21/2005 03:20 p.m.
...but you can't stay here.

saturday. june. eighteenth.

the night begins at 11:45pm. after an entire day of lounging around. after a day of non-productiveness. after hours of re-run television. this is when the night begins. you shower, you brush teeth, you style the strip of hair that leads down the center of your head, you throw on a good shirt, pamper yourself in some fragrance, and you're just about ready to head outside.

the majority of chicago bars and nightclubs stay open until 2am, there are a handful of places that extend their hours until 4am. you find these places and you suck the life out of them -- while they simultaneously suck the life out of you, along with a few dollars here and there.

you're at dublins just after midnight. turn your oven up to 450º let it pre-heat and then stand beside it with a beer in your hand. this is how warm it feels inside dublins. move yourself, your beer, and your oven onto a subway train at rush-hour. this is how crowded dublins feels. and you mention the sweat you can feel on your kneecap beneath a layer of levi's.

after a beer you and your friends are ready to go elsewhere. leave the oven behind and open your freezer door. this is how it feels to step outside. even though it's june. even though it's the midwest. even though it's summer.

cut to you on a bus heading north on clark. it isn't yet 2am, there is still time remaining for you to create a stellar evening. if you were an actor, if this were hollywood, if the bus driver were tom cruise, than this would be days of thunder. that's how the bus driver is driving. and you can't help but wonder how the woman sitting across from you can sleep through it.

the woman with seventeen pounds of make-up around each eye. the elderly woman with her head collapsed into her shoulders. the woman across from you with her thigh-highs rolled beneath her knees. the woman whose toes curl all up and around each other. the woman with a bandage on her ankle and worn-out flip-flops. the bus driver; talking to himself, swerving, driving down the center of the street. you can't help but wonder how this woman can sleep, her make-up weighing her face down.

cut to belmont street. you are now walking west, then north, in search of the intersection of addison and ashland.

cut to tai's til 4 -- it's a bar. the cavernous pub burrows back into a small apartment-like building. you feel like you're in joe dahlbeck's basement. you feel like a teen again. the low-hanging drop-ceiling, the wood paneling on the wall, the gold and red shimmery budweiser ad. you are in a friend's basement, almost.

you and your friends stand just beneath the dj booth, just beneath one of the only two enormous speakers in the room. and you feel like you are in a dane cook joke. you wait for kool-aid to bust through the wall.

everyone is dancing but not everyone can dance.

cut to a couple from michigan is talking to you. they tell you that you have great hair. they appear to be a couple but when the guy asks you if you like parliament or prince... as opposed to the britney spears currently playing... you know you're dealing with a man who'd probably rather take you home than any girl in the place. they said your hair was great, not green, the music is a bit loud.

cut to a kid with a camera. he snaps photos and you make small talk about f-stop. you the film student.

at some-multiple-of-minutes past 4am the ceiling lights turn on and it feels like someone's mother just woke up and turned on the basement lights. time to scurry out of backdoors, under blankets, anywhere but where mom and dad can find you. you feel like a teen again.

you emerge back down the cavernous hall towards the front of said bar. by the way it says balls on your chalkboard. and you step outside.

the sky is blue. the sun is about to rise. the big hand and the little hand and the digital numbers on your cell phone are all telling you that it is almost 5am.

the strip of hair that leads down the center of your head, your good shirt, your levi's. you keep all of these on and you jump into a pool of cool water. this is how you feel. every layer of your clothing is soaked in your own perspiration. this is how much you danced. this is how hot you didn’t know you were. until you stopped dancing. you put your hand in your back pocket, it's moist. your undershirt, drenched.

jump into the pool and jump right back out, look down at yourself, this is how you feel at 5am standing on a sidewalk outside of a bar.

cut to the cab ride home. cut to the cab driver entering your credit card number again and again and again. cut to his face when he says your card isn't working. cut to your reaction when he reminds you that your card expires in two months. cut to you thinking, well what does that have to do with today? he brings you to an atm machine.

all you can do when you finally get inside your apartment is strip. and you still feel wet. cut to making a peanut butter sandwich. cut to drinking a glass of water. cut to taking a shower. cut to sleeping.

cut to sleeping.
cut to sleeping.
cut to sleeping.

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the poster child of idiots
06/19/2005 10:32 p.m.
lately i have seen some awkward posts hung around my campus. posters pinned up on bulletin boards in the film building, stamped by the department, and i'm reading them thinking, well what the... who are these people? who does this stuff?

poster ..1::
"are you good at writing movies but suck when it comes to movie titles? have no fear movie-title-inc. is here. the first-ever exclusive movie title service. $10 for a short or documentary (per title) $20 for a feature. satisfactory movie title within 3 days or you don't pay. just email castor at ***********@hotmail.com and send us a brief synopsis of your film."

are you shitting me? i'm thinking, well why even try? why open your mouth? send you a synopsis? now why would i be that dumb? just fork over my idea, like: here little stranger, steal it! take my idea, just give me a title, take my money, take my idea, just give me a TITLE!

poster ..2::
"attention! attention! very skilled artist needed for original and illest comic book on the planet. if you possess the knowledge and creativity for this task (holla back!) only the sickest pencilers need to apply. if interested contact supreme at: ......-........ asap!"

need i say more? i should have stopped reading at 'illest.' i should have stopped! let me tell you something, if you're a student and you need to post a bulletin... use clip art, use funky fonts, but don't use language that makes my right brain hate my left brain, DON'T!

are people really getting this dumb? if you emailed castor, if you thought about emailing castor, if even one miniature section of your brain thought, 'well that sounds like a good idea,' then i want you do me a favor, stick your tongue in an electrical socket. just do it. you deserve worse.

and if you were intrigued by the "illest comic book in the world" and you thought about calling supreme, then you need to do the rest of us a huge favor, um, learn how to tie a noose. and if your second thought was, 'wow, wish i had a cool name like supreme,' then you need to turn around, walk to your bathroom, bend down over the toilet, stick your head in the water, and FLUSH! maybe that way you'll get rid of all that shit stuck between your ears!
I am currently Puzzled

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tv found not guilty of brain molestation
06/16/2005 07:02 p.m.
((posted on 6.14 on myspace))

((sorry, i had to write about it))

ok america, you did it yet again... and i'm going to be hitting myself in the face for weeks over this one. i specifically enjoyed all the aerial shots from helicopters, really emphasized the distance of things, the lengths to which we're willing to go as a nation; how tiny we all really are from way up there in guy-with-camera land.

as i sit here in my humid air-condition-less apartment, sweating like a leather-bound man being whipped in a fiery dungeon, as i sit here i'm intrigued by my television -- this is a rarity, which i'll attribute accordingly to the heat.

so i'm sitting here, amidst my addiction to myspace.com, pathetic.org, & colum.edu (my school site), my addictions are temporarily interrupted by a commercial for dr. phil... ok, look, i'm a sucker sometimes for these self-discovery, over-coming addiction, healer-type shows. this ad was about a troubled teen whose mother wanted help... and so on. ok television-enhanced brainwasher guy... you got my attention. i'll watch.

well well. what a sneaky little prick you are tv mind-eraser guy. you got me to watch dr. phil because you knew that shortly into the intense story line you'd interrupt. you had this trick planted firmly up your sleeves. i should have seen this shit coming.

so mr. tv control freak guy cuts to an aerial shot of a plane crash somewhere in florida, some aircraft of some kind crashed in a residential area, the white puddle of white stuff to the right of your screen is the remaining mess caused by said crash.

then mr. tv juggernaut cuts to another aerial shot somewhere over california. a convoy of black suv's cruise down a highway, and mr. tv voice tells me that a verdict has been reached in the michael jackson case, and that we'll cut back to regularly scheduled programming while we wait for mj to reach the courthouse where the verdict will be read. now back to doctor fill.

see also: rehab.
see also: stimulant.
see also: therapy.

i'm addicted. even myspace is on hold. i left AIM without posting a wicked retahded away message. i'm in limbo. dr. phil's head blabs and blabs and blabs and now i can't decide what i care about more. i'm still sweating, i have yet to shower, and i'm about to find out the fate of the former king of pop. ok america, you did it yet again...

the anticipation is... well, anticipated? i think my brain died. and i'm waiting, and the heads on tv are talking, and we're waiting for the judge to turn the audio on. and it happens. finally.

NOT GUILTY!?!?!?

what the fuck? am i drunk? am i wide awake and hearing this shit?

oj simpson... robert blake... michael jackson... i see where this bullshit is going. i get it. we only convict shop-lifters and martha stewart nowadays. i just can't, i can't... i can not wrap my mind around this. you find the weirdo guilty of something. you had ten chances. ten! not guilty? he’s the self-proclaimed smooth criminal. you find him guilty.

okay, okay. i thought about it. i'm reminding myself of that old proverb about the book and its cover. and i'm trying not to judge. i'm trying really hard not to judge. but c'mon... the man (if you can call him that) is a walking freak show. if the country were a hollywood film michael would be the token creepy guy. (he used to be the token black guy, but things change)

see also: plastic surgery.
see also: witness protection.
see also: identity theft.

since then i've been outside. i shut off the tv, left myspace, left my apartment, and i had time to recoup... now i'll kick back and let late night talk shows mock the mockery out of this entire thing.

but seriously if anyone ever told me that i was molested... i know who i'd point my finger at.

save my brain. save my brain.

I am currently Awestruck

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i want to make violent love to you
06/13/2005 05:00 p.m.
((my current blog cut & pasted from myspace))

i saw this low-budget, no-name film, you may or may not have heard of it, it's called mr. & mrs. smith. yea, i barely escaped without making a mess in my pants. after the film i wanted to make love to something beautiful and then try to kill it... it's THAT good. it's like, so entertaining.

chicago blues fest today with steve and debbie -- see his myspace for a picture from said event -- i dressed appropriately like white trash. i had a radical red trucker cap, a navy blue shirt with sleeves cut off, khaki shorts, and a yellow back pack... and hello, i was at blues fest... so picturesque. i called doogis saveriano to share the music with him and the poor boy is sick with some child-inspired infection, i’m proud however to announce that if he survives he's going to change his life for the better.

i wish i had some political issue that i could rant about here, or some social category to vent about, but this shall not be my typical cynical, downer, gloomy, blog... i’m in a pleasantly relaxed mood.

i’m waiting for the last of four grades from this past semester to be posted on my school's site, we're looking good folks, i’ll post my joy as soon as the fourth and final grade is available... i know, the suspense... is... killing...

i’m in love with ellipses...

on another note, plans are in the works to organize a small film project amongst me and some film/video/chicago friends for the summer. said project may entail a five minute scene from my recently completed dark comedy script. this is overtly exciting. again, i’ll keep you posted if you're interested.

see also: blog title.
see also: my intentions.
see also: libido.

and now i turn the table in your direction...

question for the masses: friends first and sex later, or sex first and friends later, or better yet is there room for friends when sex is involved? discuss.
I am currently Calm

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