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August 26, 2003School's out for summer! School's out forever!
I guess I shouldn't have been so grumpy about local middle-school students getting to turn in their homework late. They're taking things even further than that up in San Jose. Teachers at Lynbrook High School are "discouraged" from giving homework over weekends and holidays, and their school days have been truncated on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
I think my tenure at that school would have been exceedingly short.
Posted by patrick at 09:16 AM | Comments (2)
August 22, 2003
The move is done...let the unpacking begin!
Many hands make light the work—and keep our author from having a coronary thrombosis. The comparative ease with which I moved my stuff today wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Sharon Seitz, Rob & Nan Van Hoose, Jennifer Ramos, Kelle Truby, and Mike Barre.
The goods news is that I only had to go without internet access for about twelve hours, and I was too busy during those twelve hours to have been able to log on, even had it been possible. The bad news is that I still felt jittery during the interim. The good news is that I have my very own parking spot. The bad news? I forgot to ask which one it is. The good news is that, having tested my air conditioning, I know for a fact that it’s very efficient. The bad news: I don’t think I can get this place consistently cold enough to make up for my lack of a refrigerator, which only came to my attention upon moving in this morning.
The good news is that I’ll be starting up my sixteenth year of formal education in just over a month. The bad news is that I apparently need it; I mistook the U-Haul truck’s parking break for a clutch and assumed I was dealing with a manual transmission vehicle, which I can’t drive. One of the rental location employees enlightened me as to the nature of my mistake about ten minutes later, but not before I’d called my mom and asked her to drive my stickshift-proficient uncle over. Knowing that there was no way to reach them and call them off, and figuring that the day wasn’t getting any younger, I drove back home in the truck, passing them somewhere in transit.
And to think, they let me teach high school…
Posted by patrick at 11:44 PM | Comments (8)
If you think you're on a mission from God, and you're not the Blues Brothers, you scare me
I’m moving in about seven hours, and should be asleep right now. Still, I just had to weigh in on Alabama’s moronic chief justice before calling it a day. Please leave comments, as I’m especially interested to hear where people stand on this particular issue.
Two years ago, in the middle of the night, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore had a 5,300-pound granite depiction of the Ten Commandments installed in the state judicial building’s rotunda. Now that he’s being called upon by his associate justices and a federal judge to remove this blatant violation of church/state separation, he’s refused, preferring to turn it into the symbol of his own theocentric crusade.
Meanwhile, all sorts of soft-headed folk have assembled at the judicial building to form a circle around the monument, taking leave of their senses and allowing themselves to be arrested for trespassing. They’re styling themselves as defenders of America’s religious freedoms, but I’m not buying it. I get the distinct impression that if we were to replace the current marker with 5,300 pounds of granite that read “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet,” we wouldn’t see many of those ardent Christian champions of religious choice getting arrested in its defense.
This yahoo Moore is going to cost his state $5,000 a day in federally-levied fines if the monument hasn’t been removed by next Thursday, and the fines could double in the second week. I hope Moore and his supporters are prepared to pay those fines on behalf of the state. I don’t imagine residents of Alabama would be too thrilled about thousands of their tax dollars being wasted on Moore’s zealotry and hubris.
“The people of this state elected me chief justice to uphold our Constitution,” Moore said earlier today. “To do my duty, I must acknowledge God. That’s what this case is about.”
I find it curious that Moore’s faith requires over two and a half tons of partisan granite displayed in a public place in order for him to acknowledge it on a personal level. A faith in which the follower cannot imagine the deity in the abstract, and needs a tangible focal point for his worship? Gee, that sounds a lot like idolatry to me—something which God renders verboten in the First Commandments.
Moore unwittingly summed up the argument against his own inanity earlier today, when he said, “No judge can dictate in whom we can believe.”
His obvious hypocrisy and contradiction aside, doesn’t he realize that the separation of church and state is vital in keeping judges from having that power? I don’t think he’d be too pleased if he fell into an alternate universe where Judaism or Buddhism was the federally-mandated religion of the United States. Likewise, although I’m sure he’d be pleased as punch about it, there are plenty of other people who don't want Christianity to be America’s official religion.
Moore, his sheep, and all of similar ilk need to quit their complaining. In a country where our President is sworn in with one hand on a Bible, a country where “In God We Trust” is inscribed on our legal tender, Christians have no right to whine about how the separation of church and state is trampling their religious freedoms. They have a tacitly official endorsement the likes of which no other religion can claim.
Posted by patrick at 01:38 AM | Comments (4)
August 20, 2003
Sid Meier's Pirates!
For anybody who remembers Microprose’s classic Pirates! game from 1987, it’s a good time to be a fan of the franchise.
I first played Pirates! on the Apple IIe back when I was in fifth or sixth grade. Flashy computer games have come and gone, but it’s remained my all-around favorite. I still play it from time to time, even though the graphics and sound are laughably primitive by today’s standards. I’ve often wished I had any level of programming acumen, so that I could revamp the watercolor images that comprise so much of the game’s non-moving visuals; the 250-color ceiling in effect during the game’s most recent re-release (Pirates! Gold, from 1993) has long since been surpassed. Still, the game proves that flashy graphics really are of secondary importance to a game that’s been designed to encourage repeated and varied playability.
Now, some 16 years after Pirates! first turned a bunch of sedentary computer nerds into fearless buccaneers, Sid Meier is giving us what we’ve wanted for years: a sequel. Atari and Firaxis are working on Sid Meier’s Pirates!, which we can expect sometime next year. I’d rather have it right now, but hey—it could be worse. If this were Blizzard’s baby, who knows when it would finally be released?
I've already told my girlfriend. She groaned at the news that she'd be living the lot of women since time immemorial who had to share their men with the sea, but I think the idea of a Pirates! sequel will grow on her. As a grad student, how else am I supposed to keep her arrayed in the finery to which she's grown accustomed unless I pillage Tortuga from time to time?
Posted by patrick at 04:23 AM | Comments (3)
August 17, 2003
Old letters, rediscovered photos, and too damn many boxes...
The preparation for the move continues. I have four days left to pack, but I think I’m in pretty good shape. My books are all boxed, except for the few that I’m in the midst of reading, and I only have about one box worth of tchotchkes left to stow.
I went through a box full of old letters and cards this evening, tossing about half of them. Many of the letters were from people whose existences I had forgotten, frankly, including some European pen-pals with whom I corresponded back in the pre-internet days.
It’s odd to think that the concept of the pen-pal in its most traditional form was done away with by the internet, which makes global communication so simple. Sure, you can IM with anybody in the world now, but it’s just not the same as getting that odd envelope with its foreign stamps and inexplicable address. Even the paper on which my pen-pals wrote was an adventure, as it was utterly unlike the paper to which I was accustomed.
I found a few letters from a friend of mine from college, Amy Tyson. I’ve long since lost track of her, although I might try sending a letter to her family’s last known address in the hopes that they still live there and can pass the letter along. In a letter from March of 1998, she said the following:
Thank you for sharing your poem with me. It is amusing at first, but leaves a sad after-taste. I guess, that’s king of how you are though – patterned to be funny and entertaining, but your background music is a series of sighs and star-wishing.
I wish I could remember the poem in question. In a sense, I don’t think much has changed since then.
Before I get too maudlin, though, I have some very satisfying news to report. When I did “Simpatico” in October of 1999, I played a character in his mid-60s. To make me look more realistic as a man of that age, I was given a fat suit to wear under my costume. I also decided to be a dedicated actor and have my head shaved to resemble male pattern baldness. One night, during a fit of whimsy, I got down on my hands and knees and had pictures taken as every member of the show’s small cast sat atop me like a jockey, one by one—
Hey, the show was about horses. It was thematically apropos. You perv.
Anyhow, while I knew I had received the photographs, I could never find them. I can’t tell you how many times I flipped through my album of show photos, frustrated that photos I knew existed had apparently gone AWOL. I discovered them tonight in an unmarked envelope, buried within the pile of letters and cards I was sorting through. I’ll scan them on my girlfriend’s scanner and post them as soon as possible.
Posted by patrick at 10:17 PM | Comments (1)
August 16, 2003
The Producers...
My girlfriend and I saw "The Producers" at the Pantages in Los Angeles last night. It was a funny enough show, but not the side-splitting epitome of borsch belt humor I’d been led to expect. The first half, in particular, felt as if it could have benefited from a tightening up. It was often, for lack of a better term, self-indulgent and hit-and-miss. The "Springtime for Hitler" sequence was hilarious, but you have to sit through a lot of preparation to reach it.
Also, Martin Short just wasn’t getting the job done for me. The guy turned 53 this year. While he’s not looking long in the tooth, I’m having trouble buying anybody as the naïve innocent once they’ve reached—and passed!—that half-century mark. Let me put it this way: he’s nine years older than Jason Alexander, who way playing the considerably older of the two characters. I realize they wanted name recognition for both of the main characters, but I think Jason Alexander’s pull would have been sufficient for them to go out and cast the best young unknown they could find as their post-Broderick Leo Bloom. Gene Wilder was only 35 when he played Leo Bloom in the 1968 movie from which the musical was taken, and you could go even younger than that—early thirties or late twenties, say.
Speaking of age, while I appreciate the fact that the Pantages is 73 years old, it’s time to concede to the reality that audiences may have grown in height and girth since then and redesign the seating accordingly. According to the Pantages website, "The Pantages, first to last, was designed for maximum audience comfort, with over 40% of the interior space devoted to public areas, lobbies, lounges and restrooms." That sounds great, until you realize that you’re usually not watching the show from a public area, lobby, lounge, or restroom. You’re watching the show from a seat—a seat that, in my case, left my knees wedged up against the back of the seat in front of me.
The "Springtime for Hitler" show-within-the-show was a hoot, as was the nod to "The Mikado" during the Hitler auditions, and the statuesque blonde Swede was nice eye-candy, but "The Producers" as a whole didn’t deserve 12 Tony awards last year. Even taking into account the awards won by specific actors and actresses no longer affiliated with the show, it still walked away with more kudos than were—in my humble opinion—strictly deserved.
Note: Looking at my program from last night, I see that we did have some of the Broadway cast in last night's show--namely, Gary Beach, who won the Featured Actor Tony Award in 2001 for playing the show-within-the-show's flamingly gay director who takes over the Hitler role at the last minute. Okay, so that Tony was deserved. This production also boasts the original Ulla, although we saw her understudy (who rocked pretty hard).
Posted by patrick at 11:46 AM | Comments (2)
August 13, 2003
Now they're going to surrender to their thermometers...
Oh, so the temperature has been around 100 degrees Fareinheit in Paris for days now, and the people are grumpy.
On behalf of all residents of the Inland Empire, and especially those of us in Riverside, let me offer my most sincere and heartfelt condolence:
Boo-freakin'-hoo.
The MSN Weather forecasts don't have Riverside "cooling down" to 96 degrees until two weeks from today, and Gates only knows to what high the weather will spike after that. The French are whinning about Riverside's collective lot in life every damn summer, so I'm having a hard time dredging up much sympathy for them.
Posted by patrick at 01:12 PM | Comments (2)
August 07, 2003
Automotive Vigilante contest winners announced!
It’s time to announce the winners of the first PatrickSeitz.com online contest!
The goal of this contest was to write the perfect note to leave on the windshield of folks (mostly Angelinos, whose cars I encounter while with my girlfriend) who park their massive minivans, trucks and SUVs in spaces marked “compact”. I’ll print up the winning notes and distribute them on the offending vehicles as often as possible—and, I might add, with great glee. The authors of the winning notes will also receive a “Dune” coloring book. It ain’t much, but it will provide them with a lot more entertainment than any of those damn prequels his son and that other guy insist on pumping out. It’s sci-fi heresy, but what can you do?
Ah, yes. The winners. Right. Here they are, in no particular order.
Our first winning entry is from Hope Villanueva:
God hates bad parking jobs.
And so do the rest of us!
Ms. Villanueva’s entry, while short, is rife with significance. She clearly identifies for what wrongdoing the recipient of the note is being chastised, and conveys a sense of global hatred towards the sinner spearheaded by no less a personage than the Almighty. She uses simple enough language that even a member of the nouveau riche (read: Beverly Hillbilly) will get the gist of it. The wording of the entry makes it applicable to poorly-parked vehicles of all sorts, which means I’ll get extra mileage out of it. Ms. Villanueva clearly has a future in the writing of caustic, anonymous notes. She is also my girlfriend, which prompted my decision to have multiple winners so that nobody would cry foul.
Our second winning entry is from Jon Bastian:
Okay, maybe you have a good reason for owning a land-tank that's only useful for wasting far more than your share of gas. That doesn't mean you deserve three parking spaces for it, now does it?
Learn how to park.
Mr. Bastian’s entry is deliciously sneaky. He offers the offender easy forgiveness in the first line, only to yank the rug out from under their feet in the second line. The third line is a stern command which completes the note’s arc from laissez faire parking to unyielding observance of the law. It also alludes to the offender’s unfair use of our natural resources, which will only grow in significance as we continue to slurp ex-dinosaurs out of the ground with alarming speed.
Our third and final winning entry is from Mark Stanfield:
Dear Tank Commander:
I think you have some confusion as to just where your SUV Battle Wagon should be posted. The space in which you currently find your vehicle was an incorrect choice of parking on your part. If you do a simple visual assessment of the parking area, you will come to the conclusion that the size of your SUV far surpasses the dimensions of the parking space. This would lead one to believe that a veritable behemoth of vehicle such as yours belongs somewhere else. Of course in your incompetence and overwhelming inconsideration, you have managed to further deplete the general public from access to parking spaces. In the future, please locate the nearest Army Post, and leave your SUV (Stupid Uber Vehicle) with the rest of the Battalion's Armored Division. Thank you, and please DO NOT come again.
While Mr. Stanfield’s eloquence might fly over the head of many of the entry’s recipients, they should at least get a dull sensation that they’re being talked down to. This will be the note I unleash only under certain conditions. I’ll save this note for offenders whose vehicles sport clever bumper stickers, pretentious (read: metal) alumni license plate frames, or show some other sign of being driven by folks who will understand all the words Mr. Stanfield used.
I’d also like to grant an honorable mention to Chuck, whose entry—“Your Car is big. This space is small. I hate you.”—was perfect in its understated nihilism. Such was Chuck’s nihilism, though, that he saw no point in including his e-mail address with his entry. Too bad, as the ubiquitous stillsuits in the “Dune” coloring book would have given his black crayons a run for their money.
I’ll be printing these three winning entries up shortly. I’ll let you know when they’ve been unleashed. Feel free to participate in similar vigilantism in your town’s parking lots and parking structures. Remember, if you let folks take up multiple parking spots with their oversized cars, the terrorists will have won.
Posted by patrick at 03:35 AM | Comments (0)
Website woes...
Now I remember why I stick to creative writing instead of website design. I decided a few hours ago that it was finally time to convert my entertainment resume from boring old unformatted text into a table, complete with invisible cell borders and links to the groups with whom I've worked.
Little did I know how much tagwork goes into making a table. I'm sure the same table could have been whipped together with Dreamweaver or some other program in a matter of minutes instead of my hours spent elbow-deep in trial and error, but I think my pride of ownership is a bit stronger as a result of all that tedium.
Yup, my resume table is homemade...and you can tell. For reasons unknown, the table begins waaaaaaay down the page, with miles of white (well, grey) space between the top of the page and the first entry in the table. I'm having Mike "Web Guru" Barre look at it for me, because I'm out of ideas.
Posted by patrick at 12:07 AM | Comments (3)
August 04, 2003
Those who can't do, become superintendent!
If you're keen on irony and hate hypocrisy, this will set your teeth a-grinding...
Posted by patrick at 05:40 PM | Comments (1)
Nipple me this, Batman...
According to Dr. Paul Donohue’s nationally-syndicated health column, about one percent of people have an extra nipple (or nipples, plural).
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that these bonus nipples have been evenly sprinkled into the populace at large. Statistically, this means that somebody from my graduating high school class was sporting an extra nipple or two. There were at least one hundred extra nipples at UC Riverside while I was there as an undergrad. Enrollment has gone up since then, so that number will have risen to about 150 when I start up as a graduate student in September. That’s nothing, however, compared to the nearly 2,500 rogue nipples running amok throughout the city of Riverside.
There are at least 60 million spare nipples affixed to the world’s population, and that’s assuming that nobody ever has more than one extra nipple.
Oh, the humanity!
Posted by patrick at 05:18 PM | Comments (2)
New photo...
Click here for the picture of Sig Halbreich (one of the Holocaust survivors about whom I wrote a few months back).
Posted by patrick at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
August 03, 2003
A little Seitz action in the newspaper...
My short piece on the appropriety of alleged rape victim anonymity was published in the Opinions section of this morning's Press-Enterprise! Save for a few added sentences, it's no different from my journal entry on the same subject from July 26. Check it out and let me know through karma points--or, better yet, comments--what you think.
Posted by patrick at 06:39 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2003
Seen here, for the first time anywhere!
To the left is the dazzling artwork that goes with my voiceover sample CD. My friend James Dalby whipped it up for me about three years ago, and when my old computer died about 18 months ago, I figured my artwork had been irretrievably lost. Luckily, James had held onto it. I didn't have a color printer back in the day (or until comparatively recently, to be perfectly frank), so this is the first time it's been put out there as a polychromatic image. The blank space at the top will house my text, just as soon as I get around to schlepping it in there--I've been making do with no-frills CDs and e-mailing folks the website sample links as of late.
James is a great artist, no? I'm not saying his website is behind the times, but the last time he updated it, I was still living in Los Angeles.
Posted by patrick at 11:49 PM | Comments (2)