And The Headphones Climbed Up The Hill

It's monday evening, which means that I have no class today. I do have a bunch of homework, and I have done about half of it, maybe a little bit more. Tomorrow is Game five for the Trail Blazers. Because of the way the last two games shook out in Houston, tomorrow could be the last game of the season. What's nice is that if Portland has to go out this early they at least do it in front of the home crowd. I feel like they will win, which means then they have to go down to Texas and win a game. I will say this now, though, just incase they do lose, and I don't get to go to the Rose Garden any more. I've had a great time working with the team, and the team has had a great season. I will feel like the season ended too soon, if it ends tomorrow. I may even feel like it ended too soon if we lose in the next round. Portland has a chance to be a great team in the future, but they also have been great this year. I think maybe some of the guys are still a little nervous, but its time for them to step up. I feel like I want to go into the locker room pregame on tuesday and let the team know just how great they are at basketball. I think that talentwise they are light years ahead of the Rockets. The difference is that Houston has some vet players that know how to step their game up in the playoffs. I feel like experience is not worth all that much. I think its only worth as much as you make it worth, and the Blazers are making it worth a lot. They are getting intimidated, they are over thinking, they are giving Houston WAY too much respect. If they come out and blow out Houston tomorrow, which is possible, I feel like there is a great chance for them to go down to Houston and tie the series. If they tie the series I don't think they lose game seven at home. But it's also possible that it will all be over tomorrow. I think that I will be happy if we get game seven at home. Win or lose that would be awesome.

I went to a couple of movies this weekend, to change the subject from basketball. Liv and I saw Sunshine Cleaning, and Martin and I saw Observe and Report. Sunshine Cleaning was the better of the two. I thought it was pretty good, but there were some things I didn't understand. There was a character with one arm, and I wasn't really sure what the purpose of that was. I also wasn't exactly sure how the audience was supposed to react to the main character played by Amy Adams. The back story on her was that she was super popular in high school, and was basically worthless after that. In the present of the movie she works as a maid. She switches to a crime scene maid because her high school boyfriend, who she now is having an illicit afair with, says she can make more money that way. What I don't understand is why the writer of the movie feels like that character should be sympathetic. Lots of times there are characters that were AWESOME in high school but failed in the real world. Usually they are set-up as a cautionary tale. Example: Trent McNeely in Can't Hardly Wait. He comes in at the end to tell Mike Dexter that guys like him are a dime a dozen in college. The moral is: don't be a jerk in high school because there is more to life. That's why I don't understand how I'm supposed to feel about Amy Adams' character. Was she popular and nice and got taken advantage of by the real world? or was she popular and a bitch and getting her just desserts from fate? That question goes unanswered, as do many, because I feel like Sunshine Cleaning doesn't want viewers to ask questions and just sit back and enjoy the films slightly quirky characters doing slightly quirky things. I blame Juno for this kind of movie. Short on story, or at least story that makes any kind of logical sense, long on weirdos. Observe and Report? Bad. Here's a question: why does the world need two mall cop movies in the same year? Here's another question: when will Seth Rogen stop being in movies? I don't have answers for either of those questions. Here's what I know about this little gem of a film. There is a sequence where, for basically no reason, Rogen's sidekick mall security guard asks Rogen if he can school him in his way of life. They end up doing lines of coke, smoking weed, beating up skaters, drinking, booting heroine, and finish by opening a safe in a jewelry store. Rogen's partner is also the guy that has been robbing the mall. This is a plot point. Here's my problem. The beginning and the end of the sequence are basically parts stolen from Wet Hot American Summer, but it that movie the long drug montage was a joke, capped off by Micheal Showalter saying how great it is to leave camp if only for an hour. In Observe and Report we are supposed to believe that Rogen and his buddy actually did all the things that they do in the montage. My problem: they don't look like they did a bunch of drugs when they open the safe. There is a sense in this sequence, and in the whole movie, that the people that are responsible for it can't decide if its supposed to be funny. Here's funny: A group of people set out to do something, they start smoking cigarettes, then start drinking, then weed, then coke, then robbery, ending with sticking needles in each other's arms in a house full of tweakers. What makes it funny is that after its all done, we see the characters again, and they obviously didn't do the stuff that we have just seen. What isn't funny is two guys doing drugs and beating up kids. It's what my TV writing teacher Thom Bray would call a joke shadow. That's a good description of Observe and Report, two hours of joke shadows. I left feeling confused, and not in a good way like you might after leaving a movie like Adaptation or Memento.

Right now I am watching two basketball games on the internet. Both are pretty bad, all four teams lost at least once to Portland. I really hope we win tomorrow. Now I am going to try not to think about it for the rest of the day.

So obviously if you watched the Blazer's game you are as disappointed as I am. I really hope that Portland can regroup. The thing that scared me about tonight is that Portland just played bad. How do you turn that around in just a few days. Houston has the upper hand for sure, and its time to start thinking about Tuesday's game being the final home game of the season. I will be sad if that is the case, but all good things must come to an end. Tonight was an interesting experience. Because it is the playoffs the Rose Garden Media area was up to Defcon 4. There were tens times as many people, most of them Chinese thanks to Yao, the commish was in the building, and I ate dinner across the table from Kevin Pritchard.

They opened a whole new section of media seating, and I was put up at the top while all the guys I usually sit with sat down at the bottom. In the middle of the first quarter I moved down to an open sit, and for the whole first I half I sweated thinking someone was going to come and tell me to move back up to the top. It didn't happen, and I ended up sitting in better seats than I have had all year. The media area where everyone usually eats dinner was converted to a press conference room. If you watch the NBA.com videos, or the ESPN footage of the post game press conferences that is where they took place. Pre game David Stern, the NBA commissioner, gave a little press conference. He was in town because Portland was the game he wanted to see. It took him all of two seconds to make his first Hebrew reference. He said he was happy that Portland was back in the playoffs after wandering for so long in the basketball desert. Maybe the highlight of this whole experience. I also go to see Yao's post game as well as all the others that were done. For a few minutes Yao and a Chinese reporter had a conversation in Chinese. I'm sure the reporter, who was from Houston, asked something along the lines of, "how awesome are you and how badly are you going to beat Portland in game two?" Yao probably responded by saying, "I am the greatest basketball player ever, and the Trail Blazers are no match for my Tiger style." There are obviously some perks to being able to have a conversation in front of ten cameras and numerous other recording devices that 90 percent of the people listening and recording can't understand.

My recap is up on the website. Check also for the piece that I wrote about Michael Ruffin that has been run on the center court blog. A win on Tuesday means at least one more game in Portland. That would be nice. I'm not ready for this to be over, both my internship and the basketball season.

One last thing: if Portland ever gets the chance they should swoop up Aaron Brooks. He gave a great interview tonight. He is from Seattle. He went to University of Oregon. He has the attitude that we need, and he has the skills. He was also the only player for Houston that wasn't booed during introductions. Imagine if he were on our team.

Game two is tuesday. Let's hope for something better.

Today is the final day of the regular season of the NBA. Portland plays Denver tonight, in a game that has plenty of playoff implications. Hopefully Houston loses to Dallas so Denver doesn't have to beat Portland. If that happens Portland will likely roll over Denver's role players and clinch home court advantage in the first round. It means we play the Spurs, who are notoriously kick ass in the playoffs especially in odd years. Having said that though we have beaten the Spurs three out of four times this season already. Including a thirty point blowout at home and a twenty something point blow out in San Antonio. I'm looking forward to tonight. If Portland had had a bad season it would be the last time that I would be getting press credentials maybe ever. Because they did well I will get at least two more games, even if they don't get home court in the first round. So thanks Blazers for that.

School is officially in its third week of the term. Its weird having two classes on the same day. It means my day starts at around 11:00 when I leave home to get to campus at noon to play basketball, then I have an hour break when I usually eat lunch, then I have a class at 2:00, forty minutes off, and finally a class at 4:40. I get home around sevenish, or a little later. It will actually be nice when the NBA season ends. I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and work on my fiction. I also have yet to get a chance to really ride my new bike. I rode home from downtown the other day, and that was a workout, but I really need to start riding on a regular basis. I sent in my notice that I would like my old job back at St Johns. I haven't heard anything yet, but its likely that I will get it back. The big upside to that is that I can ride my bike there every day.

I don't really have anything else to really report. As Lizzy mentioned in her blog, Robin Cody is running my fiction workshop this week. He wrote two books, one which I was supposed to read in high school and the other which I was supposed to read in college, that I haven't read. He is an interesting guy. One thing I like about writers is that they are all interesting people. They aren't all crazy like the dude from Californication, but they are at the very least interesting. I'm excited about school being almost done. I'm thinking only two more terms, and then I will be all finished. That is if I can get my thesis finished in the alloted amount of time.

Go BLAZERS! One more win is all we need!  

So its Monday, and that means that most people are heading back to school today because it is the first day of the spring term. I am not most people. I have scheduled my classes so that they are both on tuesday and thursday, and that means that I have four day weekends every week and that I don't have to make my first campus appearance until tomorrow. Today I will probably sit at home, maybe watch Battlestar Gallatica. I have been feeling sickly the last few days. So much so that I skipped out on a highly anticipated trip down into the bowels of the Willamette Valley. As much as I love Portland, it is sometimes nice to get out and see other parts of the state once and a while. I will probably head down to Corvallis this weekend, to make up for missing it last weekend, but its unlikely that I will get all the way down to Eugene.

This is a big week for the Trail Blazers. The Phoenix Suns are showing signs of falling apart, losing to the Kings, which puts the Blazers only three wins away from the Playoffs. Portland could clinch a playoff spot as soon as next friday, if Phoenix continues to win. Since about mid season there has been a sense that Portland was going to be in the playoffs. They've been playing great basketball, and are unbeatable at home. The sense is, though, to not talk about the playoffs as a certintiy just yet. With half a season to go, and a young Blazer team, it made sense that there was a possibility that Portland's first half was a fluke. Now with less than a dozen games left its time to get pumped for the postseason. When Portland played Phoenix on TNT the other night, one of the anchors, Kenny Smith, said that Phoenix wasn't cashing Dallas, the last seed in the west, for the eighth spot in the playoffs, they were chasing the Blazers, seeded seventh when the game started. He cited Portland's youth and total lack of playoff experience as his reasonsing. I asked a few Blazer personel what their take on the situation was: is it better for us to shoot for the eighth spot in the playoffs, rooting for a suns loss against the denver nuggets that would put us one game closer, or shoot for winning the division, rooting for a suns win against the nuggets which would lift us to first in the division. All the Blazer folk said, Suns win us first in division. In Portland the attitude is that we are in the hunt for home court. National Portland gets no respect. The other day Michael Wilbon, a national sports talking head that I kind of like, was putting together his NBA playoff bracket. He had Portland as the eighth seed, saying that because they can't win on the road they will slip as the season closes. Right now Portland is fifth in the west with a road trip that they will at worst split 2-2 coming up. They are two game out of second place in the west. There is no way that Portland falls to the eighth seed, and there is even less way that Portland fails to make the playoffs. My favorite thing in the next few years will be listening to all the sports "analysts" bending over backwards to heap praise on the Trail Blazers. That and to see how crazy the city goes when they make the Playoffs.

I saw I Love You, Man yesterday. It was alright. I laughed. I think someone should do some research on how long it takes for a catch phrase from a commerical to become an acceptable movie title. I can't wait for the movie, Make Seven Up Yours. I can't tell you what to make it about, Judd Apatow, but I can guess that you and your crack team of Hollywood hit makers can come up with something borderline edgy and full of whimsical things like a dog named Anwar Sadat.

Rudy Fernandez from the Suns game that I had to watch on TV because I was sick. The first time I missed a home game that I was creditialed for. It was a sad day.

Today was my final day of having to be on campus this term. I do have to stop by a teacher's office and drop off a final project and a reading journal on tuesday of next week, and I do have a meeting on friday as a wrap up for my internship this term. I have extended my internship for one more quarter, meaning that I have spent the entire school year in the free employ of the Portland Trail Blazers. The regular season ends next month. Hopefully Portland will play in the post season, but nothing is for sure just yet. As far as my involvment in the post season: I haven't asked. I assume that when the time comes I will be informed. I think it would be prudent just to wait and see. The gang in PTown is yet to admit that they are a playoff team, and I don't want to push the envelop. Hopefully I will get credentials for the playoffs. Hopefully. I was downtown today, and I realized that most of my friends have left Portland. Chris is in Korea, Jake and Carly are in 'Nam, Pat is in Seattle, Matt is in Seattle (for the next few days), Bobby is in Corvallis, other people that I used to hang out with are also gone. Its a drag. Sometimes I feel like a loser because I am so commited to living in this city. I want to travel and all that good shit, but more than anything I want to live here. I feel like that makes me unimaginative or something. I know that I am going to travel someday, and I would like to do it later when I am more finacially secure, if that day ever comes. I understand the pull of being somewhere exotic, but it just doesn't effect me. I've been to Europe three times, and I love it, and I want to go back and spend some time there. I just really like being here, even if all my friends are gone.

Yesterday Portland lost to Dallas, and it was a drag. Portland hadn't lost at home since the All-Star break. It was a great run, but they have to put it behind them because if they miss the playoffs after the way they've played this season heads will roll. There's no doubt that missing the playoffs means a failed season. I hoping for a playoff series win, but Portland has to prove they can compete on the road before that happens. Too bad Portland doesn't get to play Minnesota in the playoffs. They've had no trouble beating them four times. I should have a feature coming out on the website sometime soon. I finished a draft yesterday, and sent it to Casey to be looked over. I haven't heard back as of yet, but I'll see him tomorrow, and I'm sure he will let me know what he thinks. I feel like it isn't a lot of stuff that people don't already know, but we'll see what he says. I got some good quotes from Brandon and Nate that I think played right into what I wanted to write about. Its been fun getting to interview players and stuff, and if nothing comes from this internship, at least I will have had some experience talking to famous people. That's always good to have.

Speaking of working and stuff. I am in the process of searching for a summer job. I'm really half assing it right now. I want to do something fun, and I want to do something that doesn't suck. I know those sound like the same thing, something fun obviously doesn't suck you might be saying. I beg to differ. Last summer, and the summer before working for the PPR was fun but it also sucked. Working with kids is totally draining, my bosses were not the greatest, the money was lousy and the job ended too soon. All those things made for a fun job that sucked. I hoping some glamorous high paying job falls into my lap. Those things happen, right?

The kittens are getting bigger. They eat and sleep a lot, but I guess that is what kittens do. I am working on an iMovie of them, but, like many things that I start, I am having trouble finishing it. One thing about this feature, if it comes out. I've seen it all the way to the end. I came up with the idea, I did the interviews and the background research, I drafted the story, and when I get feedback, I will revise it. That has to be good for something. Somebody give me a job!

One more quick Blazer related piece of knowledge. Portland handed the Lakers their ass the other night, as everyone I'm sure is aware. One of the dudes on the Lakers is Jordan Farmar. I really like Jordan Farmar, except for the fact that he is a Laker of course. I really liked him before I found out he was Jewish. Finding out that he was a hebrew brother, with the same amount of Jewish blood as I have, was pretty excellent news. Everyone remembers Tamir Goodman, the Jewish Jordan as dubbed by Sports Illustrated in the early part of this century and then retracted by the same magazine after they realized that dominating a bunch of Talmudic high school students does not an NBA superstar make. I saw a movie about Jewish basketball players, at the Portland Jewish Film Festival no less, and its amazing that a group of people that had such a profound influence on the game are no longer a part of it. Ben from Blazersedge said, when we were talking about it monday pregame, that really the NBA only has room for one minority, and guess which one it went with? Watch the highlights of the Trevor Ariza inspired brawl, and you will see Farmar restraining his UCLA buddy from what would have been a very ill advised hay maker on Brandon Roy. My theory is that if someone were to strike B Roy or LaMarcus Aldridge or really anyone on the Portland roster, the offender would not only have to deal with the team, but with 20 thousand drunk Portlanders who would clear the bleachers to defend their players. There's no way that the fifteen security people would be able to handle all that. Farmar was the peacemaker, he was also the only Laker to see to Rudy who was almost dead under the basket. It was a good day for the Jews if it was a bad day for the Lakers. Here is a link to a Farmar article, and another to a Tamir Goodman where are they now style profile.

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Farmar warming up pregame Monday, unaware of what is coming. Of course if he knew that LA was going to be embarrassed he probably wouldn't have bothered warming up. Kode didn't warm up. Obviously he knew what was coming.
 

Today is Saturday, and it is also the second day that Liv and I have had two brand new kittens. We got the first one yesterday afternoon at the Humane Society after Liv saw some photos online. We had put one of the two kittens that Liv saw on a four hour hold, but someone had beaten us to the other kitten. We adopted the one kitten and met the other one, but we couldn't take her home because of the outstanding hold. Liv did, however, put a back-up hold on the cat just in case whoever had the hold didn't show up or when they did show up didn't adopt the kitty. We took the first cat home, who we have chosen to call Phoebe and I hung out with her for awhile and then went to the Blazer's game. When I got home from the Blazer's game Olivia had gotten the second cat. Whoever had put her, who we have decided to call Iris, on hold, hadn't wanted to adopt her. The Humane Society called Liv, and she raced out to pick her up. At first the kittens, who are sisters and look very similar, were not getting along. Phoebe, who had arrived a good eight hours before her sister, had grow a little bit accustomed to the house being her terrain. Iris came in, and Phoebe was threatened and hiss and batted at her sister. However, a day later they are getting along fine, and sleeping a lot. Iris likes to hide, so when you come over you won't really be able to see her unless you look for her. Phoebe is much more out going, but when Martin and Allison came over a few hours ago she kind of flipped out initially. Overall they are wonderful pets, and very cute.

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This is Phoebe, and that is an electric blanket.

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I just got home after watching the Trail Blazers dispatch the former Sonics, now the Oklahoma City Thunder. Liv and I moved out to North East Portland last Saturday, and we are in the slow process of unpacking all the stuff that we have. One of the things that is different about living out here is taking the bus. I rode the bus downtown yesterday for class, and to the Rose Garden tonight for the basketball game. Both times there were no problems, I only had to wait for a few minutes both times. Tonight when I got out of the game I had to wait for a half hour to catch the bus. The bus we have to catch is a frequent service during the day, meaning it comes once every fifteen minutes, at night frequent service means that it still runs after ten o'clock. There really is no back-up plan if I miss the bus or it isn't running some night after a game. I guess its sleeping at the Rose Garden. Either that or I'm walking twenty some odd blocks to get home. One of the nicest things about the new place is that it is right down the street from one of Portland's beautiful city parks. Matt and I went out there this afternoon and shot some hoops. I really like playing basketball outside. Living downtown made it very hard for me to do that. Now I will really have a chance.

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So apparently last night downtown Portland turned into a little bit of a war zone. I was riding the MAX home last night after the Blazers dispatched the hogwarts house team, otherwise known as the Washington Wizards, and 3rd Ave. near Ash was swarming with Police. A couple of club bound girls were informed by a trio of club bound fellas that there had been a shooting. Shootings in general are not unheard of in Portland, in the six and a half years I have lived here there have probably been twenty, but it had been a long time since there had been one downtown. I woke up this morning, and found this article on OregonLive. Apparently there was some craziness popping off last night. Something I miss both a downtown bus and the MAX after games and end up walking home across the steel bridge. I usually stop by Dante's on Burnside for a moment to say hello to a guy I know that works the door there. Last nights shooting took place just around the corner from there. I had to wait about two minutes for the train last night, and I didn't want to walk because it was snowing, but if I had walked I would have been front and center to some serious action. A few years ago, the first summer I was living in Portland, I used to walk around downtown near the clubs at night. Right near where I used to walk there were like four shootings in one week. Needless to say that I stopped walking around there at night, and those clubs got shut down. I say that to say this: I will miss downtown a lot when I move.

I just got home from the film The Reader, and I think that it is safe to say that I have now seen all the movies that may be in the consideration for the upcoming Academy Awards. Because the nominations have not been released yet, I will not speculate as to which I think are going to win, but I will briefly recap which movies I have seen recently and say what I thought of them.

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Not a lot of new news. First off, I have officially requested to be changed over to the new MFA program starting next fall at PSU. One of the women that I talked to on campus said that as long as I turn in the form it should all be ok. They, the English department, are going to meet up later this term and decide what the standards and such are to be for students in the new program. I was told that the department wants to let all the students know that the new degree is not the old degree plus two classes, which I have to admit I was hoping it was going to be. And once this new standards thing is all ironed out, those people like myself who have chosen to shoulder the extra burden of the Fine Arts will be given a chance to second-think their decisions. I'm pretty sure that I will stick with the program. I've been basically cruising thus far through grad school. I got better grades as an undergrad than I did in high school, and I've gotten better grades in grad school than I did as an undergrad. Hopefully I'll get straight A's in the new MFA program, and write a publishable thesis. Really only one of those two things is likely to happen.