You've no doubt noticed the "about me" button in the sidebar. That used to point to a separate page hosted under this blog's URL (thanks to BlogSpot Plus), but I'm having issues with FTP access and can't update that page. So I've deleted it. The button now points to the November 2002 archive, where I've moved all of the posts formerly found at the old page.

All of this is to say that I've done some updates on the "100 things" post. Find it here.

While going through old documents on my laptop, I found this transcript of an AOL-facilitated chat I had with one of my brothers last June or so:

bass clef john: sorry i missed your call the other day
bone: no, it's ok. i was having a drama moment, but it passed. just move-related BS.
bass clef john: my band was in the middle of our mini-tour and my phone service was sketchy at times
bone: how was the tour?
bass clef john: really fun despite almost always teetering on the edge of failure
bone: isn't that a description of life in a lot of ways?

I just heard an old John Waters interview (with Terry Gross) on NPR. The best part is when she asks him about his favorite Christmas movie and he talks about the film Christmas Evil:

JOHN WATERS: It's about a lonely man that one day while shaving, with shaving cream on his face realizes that he looks like Santa Claus. So he gets a job in a toy factory and starts spying on children, he gets a little book and starts writing down "good little boy, bad little girl." He starts crossdressing as Claus and passes. As Christmas gets nearer creepy-crawls around people's roofs, and finally takes the plunge on Christmas Eve and goes down a chimney. Gets caught, stuck, irate parents start screaming, he panics, grabs a razor-sharp ornament off of the Christmas tree, cuts the parent's throat and runs. And then there's a gang, a mob of parents trying to get him, but all the children in the community believe he's real and form a protective ring around him, and then he takes off on the sleigh, getting away with murder. It's an amazing movie.

TERRY GROSS: Is it a comedy or a horror film?

JOHN WATERS: For me, it's a religious film.

Meme of Four

Waveflux handed me the meme baton, so I'm running with it.

Four jobs you've had in your life: Janitor/maintenance worker, church choir director, public school music teacher, conductor of a gay men's chorus.

Four movies you could watch over and over: South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut; Ghost World; Napoleon Dynamite; The Seventh Seal

Four places you've lived (as opposed to merely visited, as in two questions hence): Chula Vista, CA; McMinnville, OR; Fort Lauderdale, FL; Hollywood, CA

Four TV shows you love to watch: The only recent TV show I've seen is the new Battlestar, and I'm not even sure that would count for this question since I've only seen the episodes on DVD. So I'll write about the four TV shows I'd love to watch if only they existed: "The Daily Show Starring Noam Chomsky," "Desperate Houseboys," "Full-Contact eXtreme Urban Camping" on ESPN2, "Court TV Presents: The Tom Delay Trial"

Four places you've been on vacation: San Francisco, CA; Key West, FL; San Diego, CA (while living in Florida); Seattle, WA

Four websites you visit daily: MonkeyFilter, MetaFilter, Common Dreams; Eschaton

Four of your favorite foods: Pad thai, sushi, pizza, ice cream

Four places you'd rather be: In bed. At the Getty. At the San Diego Zoo. Sweden.

Four people who shall be mocked should they not complete this: Space Kitty. Misty. Tom. Heather.

Goddamnit.

I was really looking forward to the sunsetting of some of HR 3162's more vile provisions (I refuse to call that thing the "USA PATRIOT Act"). It's nice to think that Democrats will be able to benefit from the extension by getting some civil liberties protections written into the act, and now that some members of the minority party have apparently found their testes it seems more likely to happen now than I would have guessed a year ago.

That being said, what will probably happen is that the Republican leadership will use the extra time to put pressure the Republican senators who are currently opposing the White House on this issue, in an attepmt to get them to change their minds.

Bleah.

As happy as I would like to be as a result of today's ANWR vote, that joy is tempered by the latest round of budget cuts. I'm pretty offended by that vote. $40 billion dollars won't even make a dent in a projected deficit of $1.6 trillion, and yet this is all money that is needed now for Medicare and student loans. That being said, I can see why Republicans would like to see less people able to afford college... it ensures a large pool of people willing to take lucrative jobs in the manufacturing sector.

Speaking of manufacturing, I've been having a lot of fun making "Cheney-as-cyborg" jokes these past few days. The following conversation took place with Space Kitty today:

BONE: What's with those helicopters? They're flying pretty damned low.
SPACE KITTY: Oh, those are military transports. They're probably bringing Cheney spare parts.
BONE: Heh. To his undisclosed location!
SPACE KITTY: To the bunker!
BONE: Hey, if Cheney is a cyborg... what's with those heart attacks? I have a hard time believing that, after all of those cybernetic improvements, he still has a human heart.
SPACE KITTY: Hmm. I think it's probably just "scheduled downtime for system maintenance."
BONE: That makes sense. So, CNN reports that Cheney's had a "heart attack," when really a bunch of military scientists are retrofitting his exoskeleton?
SPACE KITTY: That and updating the "budget-cutting software," yes.
BONE: Rad.

I'm not dead yet

The move went well, and I love my new neighborhood in Hollywood.

The best thing about living here: I will never have to get in my car again unless I'm driving to work. I am within walking distance of grocery stores, little Russian markets, multiple fantastic restaurants (I can walk four minutes and drink an actual margarita that is on fire), an amazing comic book store, several music stores, and so forth. Amoeba is accessible by bicycle.

I am in heaven.

This is the best thing about shopping for tools at a neighborhood hardware store in West Hollywood:

BONE: I'm getting ready to hang some pictures, so I'm looking for a magnetic stud finder.

MALE STORE EMPLOYEE: Oh honey... aren't we all?

The most famous line from Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit is "Hell is other people."

I assume he was living in my apartment building when he wrote that.

OK, backtracking here: I'm moving to Hollywood. The daily commute from Pasadena to Beverly Hills destroys a little piece of my soul each time I get in the car, and by getting closer to work I can retain a little bit of sanity. A lease was signed last week, and today I went over there to start measuring walls and try to determine the answers to such weighty questions as, "how many couches will I need?" and "Can I fit four bookcases on that wall in the bedroom?"

When I signed the lease, I noted the appliances that were included in the apartment: a refrigerator and an oven. Nowhere in that document does it say anything about "a batshit insane woman who will have a screaming psychotic episode when a new resident of the building inadvertantly parks in her sacred parking spot."

Yet, here we are. I apologized, but she would not let it go. From the way that she was yelling, an observer would think that I had torn her arm off and beaten a small pet to death with it.

So I ignored her rant as I re-parked my car, and went about my day. She's going to have some entertainment value.

Do you ever get the feeling that you're a character in a novel by Kafka?

I had a wonderful conducting portfolio tape, painstakingly compiled from recordings taken over the course of my career. This tape was to be my ticket into grad school... indeed, when I did a quick round of auditions in late 2003, I sent the portfolio in to one school and was offered a graduate assistantship based on the tape and my CV alone, without even having to personally audition.

Note the past tense in the previous paragraph's opening sentence. The master tape was destroyed in the move to CA.

The tapes with the raw footage from which the portfolio was compiled were apparently misplaced by my ex while we were selling the house and she was taking the last of her stuff out. (Less likely scenario: she threw them out)

The loss of that tape represents the loss of the last shred of tangible evidence that I've worked as hard as I have for the past several years.

Tune in tomorrow, when I will have turned into a cockroach.