Posts (page 2)
I know that that is a Gillian Welch song, but it is what I am listening to this very moment while I write a quick post about the Wailin' Jennies, so deal with it.
I just got back to Portland from a weekend spent, for no real reason, in Corvallis. Every time I go down there something amazing happens. This time it was at one of the many new chic downtown c-town bars, I guess nobody told people in Corvallis that they weren't classy or upscale. Bobby and Martin and I were bored so we went to this bar called Downward Dog, you know like the yoga position, see Corvallis is no only hip but very humorous. While there I saw my friend Sara, who really lives in Portland but is on an extended vacation from some of her more harmful extracurricular activities, and she was talking to this guy in a huge cowboy hat and boots et al. I figured it was someone Sara knew, she knows all kinds of strange people, and he got up and started talking to me and Martin and Bobby. He was very animated and interested in his chosen topic of conversation. He is in the Air Force, and is soon to be shipped to Korea. In the middle of his epic speech on the many different types of people that are in the Air Force, and what said people do when they are posted to somewhere remote like Korea, I realized that I knew this man. I asked him if he had ever gone to Harding elementary school. Indeed he had. In fact he and I had been in the same fourth and fifth grade classes. Its possible that we were also in the same third grade class. He went to Philomath for middle school and high school, and I haven't seen him since the last day of fifth grade. That was 1995, thirteen years ago. I have a good memory, especially for names and faces, but this one even shocked me a little bit. It turns out he was not there with Sara. He had kind of invaded their group, and I think that my talking to him made it harder for her and her friends to ditch him.
I went to the Blazer's last home game of the season, and I have to say that the chances are good that they will be really good in the next few years. I got to the game at halftime, but what the hell. I hadn't planned on doing anything after class, and a Blazer game is a whole lot better than nothing.
John Luc Goddard has a film called Weekend. I watched it one time, and can say that it is the closest thing to anarchy on film that I have ever seen. I would try to describe it, but it is impossible to explain. Let me just say that if you like French cinema and you really really like things that don't make sense, then watch Weekend. My weekend wasn't really anarchy, not compared to the weekend of my sister, but it definitely involved some things happening, which is also a major theme in Goddard's Weekend.
Liv and I just got finished watching the film Away From Her. It stars Julie Christie. She was nominated for an Oscar, but she lost to the French girl who played Edith Piaf. I have that movie on my queue, but so does apparently everyone else in the world. It is on long wait. Damn you French people. I want to see this movie. But back to the movie that I did see tonight. One thing that stood out for me in this film was how it is an example of how trends work in Hollywood. Even though Away From Her seemed to be kind of indie, I would definitely say that it is effected by Hollywood. The trend that I speak of can be called hip old people movies. The other example of this trend, and I'm not sure if two movies make a trend but still, is The Savages. The major difference between the two films is that in The Savages the main characters are the children of a man who is going senile. Away From Her is about a woman and her husband dealing with the woman's descent into Alzeihmers, which by the way is a word that this programs spell check doesn't recognize. I thought they were both decent movies. I would say that Away From Her was more about the human emotions of people directly dealing with a disease. The Savages was about people trying to avoid dealing with getting old. There were things about The Savages that I liked. The guy who plays Chris Partlow in The Wire, Gbenga Akinnagbe, is in it, and he is pretty much awesome. I really like seeing actors do something that is different than what they are known for. Seeing him in this movie was like seeing Wood Harris on Def Poetry Jam. I also like that the main characters of The Savages were involved with literature. Back to the thing I said earlier about trends in Hollywood. One trend that was sort of shocking that came out last year was films about unwanted pregnancy. There were three, and in all three none of the woman, all of whom didn't want to be pregnant, get abortions. Maybe they got scared by the crazy people that are hanging out right now on PSU campus.
I submitted a story to one of the two lit journals that PSU has not too long ago, and I found out today that I didn't get accepted. I actually didn't find out. A woman in my fiction class told everyone that she had gotten accepted. I assume that they notified everyone at the same time. I wasn't notified, ergo I wasn't accepted. I also ran into one of the two other students in my poetry workshop from last term today on campus. He said that he got an A in the class. Assuming that the other guy also got an A, that would mean that my B+ was the lowest grade overall. OUCH! Not a good day for me. It kind of felt like the day I found out I hadn't been called back for a second audition for "East of the Sun" when I was in sixth grade. That time I almost cried, at school. Man, if that would have happened my life would have been over. Those kids at WVMS would never have forgot that. On the upside, though, I did get a part in that play. Originally I was The North Wind, but my performances in rehearsals was so good that they gave me the part of the MC of the show. I even got to wear a cool shirt. It was also the first and only time I've lisped in public. It was also the beginning of a very auspicious dramatic career, which included parts such as Jack Worthing in Oscar Wilde's masterpiece "The Importance of Being Ernest," and a turn as both the Cowardly Lion and the main character Judson in the musical comedy "The Wizard of Wonderland." So for every cloud there is a silver lining. The real problem for me is that the story I submitted I really liked, and really thought was good. Too bad. Maybe next year.
Yesterday I was using stumble, which is a sweet internet program that is specifically designed to make it impossible to accomplish anything, and I was shown this sweet program called Pandora Radio. The site is part of the Music Genome Project, I'm not sure what that is but I'm sure if you Google it you could figure it out. The site asks you to enter a band name or the name of a song and than it creates a "radio station" made up of that music plus other types of music that the program will think that you like. I listened to it for about two hours last night, I'm listening to it now, and I think that I will be listening to it forever. I think that the best part is that its free and there is unlimited music. One thing about it is weird though. One of the "stations" that I started was fashioned after the Mountain Goats, and the second song was Neutral Milk Hotel. Now what's weird about this is that I LOVE NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL but I've never thought that they were like the Mountain Goats. This computer program was pretty much able to predict my music tastes based on some formula they had created, and they got it right. It is kind of weird to know that what you once thought was something that was impossible to categorize is actually very very easy to categorize. Internet 1, me zero.
Quick update on the PSU Mexicogate scandal. The kid from Michigan has had some trouble with the law in the past relating to drinking. There are some discrepancies between Scott Morrison's story and some of the stories that his groupies, sorry I mean friends, who were with him in Mexico have told the policia. JD, Dominguez, has decided not to speak to reporters until he talks to an attorney. Either that means he is hiding something or that he is going to sue the Oregonian. If it turns out the Michigan guy was lying than so be it, but until that happens I stand by my story.
NCAA update. Blazers, DRAFT MARIO CHALMERS FROM KANSAS. Also they must have read my post, because now they have a whole new set of "NCAA athletes are going pro in something other than sports" ads. There is one were a guy is in an office for the unveiling of a new shoe that is made for him. It turns out the shoe is some sort of business loafer. My favorite part of the ad is that they put his GPA on the back of the shoe: 3.9. FALSE ADVERTISING. No athlete has ever gotten a 3.9. There is a rule about college athletes. They either get 4.0s and are valedictorians, Shane Battier, or the ask their academic counselor if they can take Special Ed classes and graduate in six years. There is no athlete that got all As and then one B. Just doesn't happen. GO TO HELL NCAA.
The title for this post comes courtesy of this article in Slate.
So two weeks ago Portland State University was awarded a spot in the NCAA Tournament. There was plenty of media coverage, and it was beginning to look like the university's choice to over invest in the athletic department was starting to pay off. Even though PSU got blown out by Kansas in the first round, the publicity from just appearing in the tournament is enormous. Then something happened. PSU behaved like PSU. Two of the star players of the team, one of them the player of the year from the Big Sky, went down to Cabo and may or may not have beat the crap out of a guy. They spent some time in jail down in Mexico, and are either back now or on their way back. Its literally all over the papers. There is no better town for ripping apart basketball players than Portland, and no better paper for it than the Oregonian. Just ask Rasheed Wallace.
My fiction writing teacher called me at nine o'clock this morning to ask me if I had anything new that I would like to bring in so the class can workshop it on thursday. I had a feeling something like this might happen, I took this same class as an undergraduate and there was a person in the class that had something to workshop on the first day and this time I thought it might be me, and I was hoping to have some stories to bring in for class, but Spring Break PA '08 means partying and not writing, so I had nothing. Which is unfortunate. Especially because now my teacher nows that I don't have a huge reserve of written work just sitting around waiting to be workshopped. He is going to know that now anything I turn in was probably written the night before and must suck as a rule. DAMN! I was screwed before I even woke up this morning.
