Journey to the East

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

An Early Season's Greetings (based on a coincidence I noticed in class the other day)

To all the DWs who have changed me—

Darkwing Duck

Dwayne Wayne¹

D. W.

Dinty W. Moore

(yes, and you, Dave Wanczyk, and you, Danny Wolverton)

—to those who have yet to make their mark—

Adobe Dreamweaver²

Drum Workshop

Derek Walcott

—and to those I probably couldn't care less about—

Disney World

Dreamworks

—To all of you I say, "Happy D. W.!"

(Can you guys think of any more?)

¹Not to be confused with this D. W.
²Not to be confused with this D. W.

Monday, October 29, 2007

For All Y'all

For Amanda
For Jon
For T-bone
For Zach
For Drew
Also for Drew?
For me
For the rest of you

Comments welcomed on #4 and that last one.

For our Halloween party on Saturday, I embraced my fate and dressed up like Kevin Smith. This entailed putting on the pair of prescriptionless glasses I bought in Korea. Um, that's all it entailed.

I used to where these for a few weeks whenever I moved to a new place so then I could stop wearing them. It gave me a sort of trial period in which I could get to know people. Then, just when they thought I wasn't worth knowing, I would stop wearing the glasses and suddenly have an inexplicably cool aura about me to tempt those naysayers back. Works every time.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

An Apology

For not posting more. For believing that my posting is important not to me, but to you.

I just finished that week of the semester where all the due dates and appointments and commitments coincide—you know the one. I managed to get through it all right. Actually, I didn't just get through it; I somehow squeezed in karaoke and three movies, a marathon halloween party, parts of at least two World Series games, a restringing and playing of the old guitar, and two trips to Walmart in one day. Plus I read and responded to 19 student papers, wrote an essay of my own for workshop, met with the same 19ish students (some skipped) for half-hour consultations on how to turn messy drafts into acceptable papers, and played some Yahtzee. Seems the only thing I didn't find time for was this blog.

What was the third movie I saw, you ask? It was The Darjeeling Limited. It was about what you would expect from Wes Anderson—zany, retro, inundated with original characters and artifacts—and like The Royal Tenenbaums, it seemed to deal with the intracacies and misfirings of family. In other words it was charming and at times almost touching. As usual, I walked out not quite sure what it all was for beyond being thoroughly entertaining. Honestly, I wouldn't know what to criticize even if I was inclined to.¹

I would recommend all three of the movies I saw this week, but none more than The King of Kong. It was like watching The Office in real life, confirming that shows like that are only funny becasue they are true. Watching the rivalry build between 80s Donkey Kong champion and all-time jerk Billy Mitchell and tries-hard-but always-gets-shafted Steve Weibe was a treat that kept me going throughout a difficult week. Plus there was the folk-singer/transcendental meditator/self-declared video game referee and the video-game-competition-cheater-turned-Billy-Mitchell-toady and the scores of t-nerds,² all completely real people living real-enough lives. It makes you feel good about yourself.

In other news, the past few nights there have been a couple of lady bugs doodling around my room. I've been watching them crawl on the walls and ceiling while I'm reading in my bed, unable to decide if I should be freaked out by bugs in my room or cuted out by their little spots.

¹Check that: I don't understand the profanity. Normally I would accept the existence of excessive profanity in a movie under the stipulation that real people really talk that way—it's a realism thing I guess. But Wes Anderson's movies aren't lifelike at all, or at least don't purport to be, and the profanity isn't even all that realistic. They use f-words where lesser curse words would do (and often where normal words would do), and they rarely if ever serve a comedic purpose, never coming at a beat or in a punchline. They just have no reason I can see, and often, as in the case of this movie, their presence is the sole reason for the R rating. They aren't ever plentiful, as in some movies, so it wouldn't be changing more than three or four lines in an effort to be properly descriptive. I mean, the movies are as literary as anything I've ever seen, so who would fault them for pursuing a little literarity in the language as well? Not that they aren't eloquent—I just wanted something to criticize; it makes me feel more intelligent.
²Total nerds

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Yesterday and Forever

Last night: karaoke with Zach and a near all-nighter to finish an essay. I sang "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" by Billy Joel. Zach sang an admirable "Back in the USSR" by el Beatles.