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December 31, 2005Happy New Year!
Happy New Year, everybody! 2005 was very good to me in practically every regard, and I'm excited to see what 2006 will bring.
Whether your own 2005 was great or merely so-so, I hope 2006 has you excited about the possibilities that a brand new year affords you--possibilities that are within reach any old time, truth be known, but which we forget about in the hustle and the bustle as the months fly by.
And if that didn't make sense, blame the champagne.
(And may Notre Dame win the Tostitos Bowl tomorrow. Assuming they're playing, and assuming it's tomorrow. If not, again, blame the champagne.)
Posted by patrick at 11:36 PM | Comments (1)
December 30, 2005
Impudent children, indeed...
I ran into this a few weeks ago, but didn't get around to posting it until just now. It's from Joseph Campbell's 1961 article (or speech--I don't remember in which incarnation it originally appeared) "The Impact of Science on Myth":
"With our old mythologically founded taboos unsettled by our own modern sciences, there is everywhere in the civilized world a rapidly rising incidence of vice and crime, mental disorders, suicides and dope addictions, shattered homes, impudent children, violence, murder, and despair."
Can I even tell you how much I love that impudent children made the list?
I'll put up some other Campbell quotes later, when I have the gumption to track them down anew. There was one in particular about the idea that sensory organs serve to limit, to filter out, sensory info in order to let us live sane, structured, live-long-enough-to-mate lives--ultimately, that they're designed to limit our intake, not let us know everything that's going on around us. Heady stuff.
Posted by patrick at 04:07 PM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2005
Putting the "I" in "ill"...
So...I was supposed to fly down to Guadalahara this morning and spend a few days there with Ashley and her family, but that didn't happen.
Instead, I got sick last night. Really, really sick. Sick to the point where lying on the tile bathroom floor seems like a logical and comforting option. Sick to the point where you tell those around you not to let you die, and you mean it. I spent most of today in bed, drifting in an out of consciousness, hallucinating/dreaming that everybody was waiting for me to stumble outside so Ragnorak could commence.
I think I'm through the worst of it (knock on wood). Liquids are actually staying down now, and my temperature was an even 101 degrees when we last checked. I'm totally empty, and Cheese-Its sound good, but I'm not going to risk it.
This hasn't been my month for health. I came down with a cold on December 9th, and just as I was finally getting over that, I got hit with this. Caught it from Ashley, who had it a few days ago. Only fair, I suppose, since she caught my cold when she was helping me move into my new apartment.
Posted by patrick at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
December 27, 2005
I've got a bone to pick with TV...
I was reading a little bit of Kobo Abe's "The Box Man" a few minutes ago, and the protagonist talks about how he used to be addicted to news. On the TV, via radio, in the newspaper--take your pick. He talks about how he eventually gave it up, and how it wasn't all that hard.
That got me to thinking about TV. I own a TV, as living without one would render my DVD player pretty moot, but I haven't lived in a house with a fully-functioning TV for over two years now--and truth be told, I don't miss it. Even when I was living at home those two years while I was teaching high school, most of what I watched was news programming or political punditry on MSNBC. And I never really had a taste for sitcoms.
No more TV, you guys. Seriously. FOX strangled "Firefly" (which I finally caught on DVD) in the crib, and you're never, ever going to get caught up with what the hell's happening on "Lost". No more crass reality TV. No more wife-swapping or plastic surgery or harem-"Survivor" or any of that crap.
Read a book. Take a foreign language class at your local JC. Go on a walk with no practical destination--no running of errands on the walk. Just go.
TV is the sugar coating with which the networks wrap their commercials. And folks across the globe are paying for the opportunity to watch said commercials with half-hour and hour-long chunks of their lives that they'll never get back.
J'accuse, Monsieur Television. J'accuse.
This isn't to suggest that I don't ever waste time. I can idle away an afternoon with the best of them. But there's something about TV and so many people's unwittingly terminal-stage relationship that makes me feel tired and sad. Like that old Celtic legend where the animals and people are sitting in a cave, listening in rapt attention as the wind blows through an enchanted harp's sole remaining string. The hero sunders the string and the animals and people attack him, enraged, because the enchantment has been broken and they've realized all at once that they've been dead for years.
Of course, anime and video games are my bread and butter. Feel free to point out my obvious hypocrisy. :)
Posted by patrick at 12:07 AM | Comments (1)
December 24, 2005
It's official...
I never have to go back to my old apartment again. Ever.
Many, many thanks to Jon and Ray for agreeing to deal with the stuff that remains. And a big, spittle-tastic raspbery to the Salvation Army, who couldn't be bothered to tell me ahead of time that their drivers won't move items down stairs due to liability issues. One of the guys in charge of the Perris Salvation Army district called to apologize and find out what had happened, in reply to an irate e-mail I fired off a few days ago. The guy was confused, as they don't have a problem with their guys hauling stuff down stairs in the 951.
Which is great and all...but I'm out North Hollywood way. Y'know...hence the North Hollywood address on my donation form.
In any event, I couldn't be happier that that sordid chapter in my living-space history has come to a close. I'm going to give my new apartment a big ol' hug, just as soon as I figure out how...
Posted by patrick at 05:46 PM | Comments (0)
December 23, 2005
Now I have the Governator's stamped autograph...
I picked up my MFA diploma a few days back. Now I need to figure out where I packed my undergraduate diploma so I can cannibalize the frame...
Posted by patrick at 11:50 AM | Comments (1)
What're them fat women yelling about?
Ashley and I had a very operatic 48 hours last Saturday and Sunday--two operas in as many days. It was great fun.
First up was a Saturday matinee performance of "Parsifal". I didn't realize that Placido Domingo was slated to perform the title character until he got on the PA a few minutes before the show to explain (rather apologetically) that he was too sick to do it that afternoon. I also didn't realize that "Parsifal" was going to be a five-hour experience until the second act ended with so much left unresolved and we were getting up for our second intermission.
We had rescheduled our tickets from an earlier weekend. In the process, we got moved up to the fifth row from the stage. Our seats were awesome--too awesome, perhaps, for that particular staging of that particular opera in that there simply wasn't much to see. They gave it a very "modern" feel--odd, austere costumes, minimal/abstract props and set pieces, and barely any discernable emotion in the characters' body language and blocking.
One of my friends from my group voice class days was singing in the chorus, but I couldn't spot him on stage. In his own defense, he did warn us all in his e-mail that it'd be tough finding him. What he failed to mention was that he’d be wearing this wicker-basket burkha getup--told you it was modern. Finding him wouldn't have been "tough" so much as a damn miracle. Still, I'm proud as punch of him.
The singing and the music were great, but I felt like it really dropped the ball as a visual spectacle. And I do think that people ignore that facet of mounting an opera at their own peril. In a way, "Parsifal" reminded me a lot of Noh theater. But I was in the mood for Kabuki.
I got my opera-as-Kabuki fix the next afternoon, with the much more traditionally-staged "Tosca". And our seats, while not as close as the afternoon before, were better for it. As Ashley pointed out, if we were sitting in the middle of that row, we’d have the best seats in the house for being able to see everything all at once.
They got on the horn to announce that Samuel Ramey wouldn't be singing Scarpia. That bummed me out, as I'd been specifically looking forward to his performance. I've seen him twice--once in concert, and once playing leads in a "Gianni Schicchi" / "Duke Bluebeard's Castle" double-header.
(Amazingly enough, I only left one letter out of "Gianni Schicchi" when I typed it above.)
Ramey's understudy had a fine voice and all, but he wasn't nearly evil enough. And he was a bit on the quiet side--any time he had to sing against anybody else (especially Tosca) he'd get lost in the shuffle.
Posted by patrick at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2005
Loving my new place...
My girlfriend Ashley kicks some major, major ass.
I hardly ever get sick for more than a single day at a stretch, so of course I got hammered with a major cold right on the eve of my moving day. Ashley and I managed to get me moved and settled in over the weekend, but I'll make no pretentions that the division of labor was anywhere near 50/50.
Too weak to be much good at loading and unloading the truck, too mentally boojumed to know or care where to position the furniture in my new digs, I was--to put not too delicate a point on it--damned useless. The move was practically a one-woman show.
Thanks, sweetie. I literally couldn't have done it without you. :)
There are two car-loads of stuff yet to be schlepped over from the old apartment, but as I discovered last night when I drove over there to get some of it, I'm still too sick to be at all effective on that front. Luckily, the place is mine through January 1, so I have some time. I wasn't too jazzed about the overlap at first, but the way things are going, I'm thankful for the buffer.
Speaking of the old place, when I went over last night, the parking lot was flooded. No surprise, that--except that there'd been no rain. I parked on the curb and headed in, discovering the source of the water.
You see, in a dazzling display of laissez-faire landlordship, the manager and on-site maintainance man decided to let nature take its course in the pool once the weather got too cold for swimming. Over the last month, the water level dropped by half and the water turned murky green as all manner of muck set up shop in its chlorine-free depths.
It seems that they were pumping the putrid, green water out of the pool and into the parking lot, where the ineffective drainage system was giving it one last chance to sit stagnant.
Thank you for giving me the ghetto send-off, guys. You shouldn't have. Really.
I've also scheduled a Salvation Army pick-up time next week, at which point a lot of what's still in there will be gone. It's nothing I need or have room for anymore, and the good karma is as welcome as the handy-dandy tax write-off.
Posted by patrick at 06:04 PM | Comments (4)
December 08, 2005
Slacking and packing...
I've got this quirk (read: failing) when it comes to keeping track of time. I just don't have a head for it. I wear my watch when I go out, and I'm pretty good about putting events and such on my calendar, but if I don't take a moment and give it some thought, things are liable to sneak up on me.
Like my impending move, for example.
It occurred to me only this afternoon that I might want to start getting my mail and utilities switched over. I hopped online and got them taken care of, but it does look like I'm going to have to change DSL service providers--losing my current e-mail address in the process.
If I were tech-savvy, I'd just do my e-mail through this site. Maybe I'll bug Mike to see how one does that.
I spent most of the day boxing, bagging, and tossing sundry possessions of mine. The floor is starting to reappear, so I must be at least halfway done with the packing.
This move is going to be a lot less stressful than my last one. That time, everything was really rushed. I found out mid-December that I had directing work waiting for me, and less than a week and a half later, I had found a place and was mostly moved in. The overlap between my current lease and my new place is a bit of a pain financially, but at least I'll have an adequate buffer. Mainly, it means I only have to move the stuff I'm actually keeping; I can schlep my donated items down to the local Out of the Closet at my leisure.
In other news, I ran into a former student of mine (and a few former cast members of mine) at the Borders in Riverside. He realized it was me only after handing me the CD I'd just mentioned aloud, and we had a simultaneous "Whoa--it's you!" moment. One of the girls is still at Notre Dame, which means she must have been a freshman that year we did "A Midsummer Night's Dream". I feel like I've been gone so long. It's odd to think that there are still students there who might have encountered "Mr. Seitz". So much has happened to me both professionally and personally since I left ND. Was it only three years ago?
Anyhow, enough navel-gazing for one entry.
The holiday shopping is going fair-to-middlin'. I'm doing as much of it as I can online, but I won't be able to avoid the malls completely. Example: I have to go down to EB Games to hock my DVDs and buy a PS2 game for somebody--the perfect plan, unless he goes O. Henry on me and sells his PS2 to buy me a DVD rack. I'm hoping this trade-in trip leads to more store credit and less anal brigandage, as my last attempt at this was something of a fiscal fiasco.
"Fiscal fiasco"...I like the sound of that.
Say "San Francisco's fiscal fiasco" ten times fast.
Apropos of nothing, "Memoirs of a Geisha" opens Friday. There's a lot of flack coming from all sides as to the casting of Chinese Ziyi Zhang as the movie's titular Japanese heroine. But, damn, if you're going to stir up Sino-Japanese tensions, I can't think of a prettier actress with whom to do it.
Keep casting her, Hollywood. I don't care how improbable the role. You cast Ziyi Zhang as Martha Washington in a film, I'll go see it. Joan of Arc, Sojourner Truth, Caesar Borgia...you name the role, I'll wholeheartedly endorse her playing it.
Posted by patrick at 02:07 AM | Comments (1)
December 01, 2005
Behold...
The culling continues. I've set aside about 175 books so far for donation, and figure to hit an even 200 before the madness abates.
Posted by patrick at 12:07 AM | Comments (1)