He was a friend of mine

You've all been clamoring for content, so here goes. I'm afraid I'm going to get a little bit Harry Knowles for a minute here.

Over the weekend, I finally saw Brokeback Mountain. I thought that because I'd read and eventually come to terms with the book, I'd be prepared for the film. Nope. Not in the slightest. It destroyed me. I just... well, I guess I just don't know how to deal with the emotions that it contains. And meanwhile, it instantly became the best movie I've seen in 2005, bar none.

"Haunting" is a way overused word in the movie press, but at least this once, it's true. The damn thing has hovered in the back of my head for days now, and I find myself thinking about it at odd moments. American Beauty had the same effect on me, as did Donnie Darko. (Which I got for Christmas, thanks Adam!)

I seriously can't imagine anyone... well, anyone I know, at least, not liking it. Ever fallen in love with someone who didn't love you back? Or, maybe worse, did love you back but somehow you could just never manage to put it together? There's this ache that never really goes away, and it's painful but also in some strange way comforting. "Tis better to have loved and lost," they say, and it's true but in the same sort of way as "may you have an interesting life".

I may have discussed it in this blog before, but it's still a good homework question: why is West Side Story more tragic than its supposed inspiration, Romeo and Juliet? Discuss.

Everyone who I know reads this regularly, needs to go see the film. You might not know it yet, but you do. You'll thank me. In Lincoln, it opens Friday at the Grand.

Make that REALLY frightful

It's been snowing continuously since noon, and shows no signs of letting up. If anything, it's getting heavier. Methinks I sense a work-from-home day tomorrow...

But the fire is so delightful

First snow of the year here tonight. Not much, pretty dry, won't stick around. But still nice.

Was in St Louis this weekend. Saw Wicked, which was a pretty amazing show. Two huge doses of Broadway in the same month! Unusually, even though I'd listened to the soundtrack, there were still some surprises on stage for me. I'd highly recommend it if you ever get the chance.

Tomorrow: house looking!

This weekend: Narnia!

Rent

I just got back from a critics' sneak preview of Rent. I'll be honest: I cried more or less continuously through the last half-hour or so of the film. True, musicals tend to have that effect on me, as I've admitted in this space before. But still. It had the same effect on Adam, who'd never seen the show on stage or listened to the soundtrack.

It's a date movie. Go with someone you love. You won't get lucky afterwards, but you'll feel lucky.

Need sleep

You know you're getting tired when you wash your hands with toothpaste, and don't notice til afterwards.

Equity

So I'm finally, reluctantly, inching my way towards the choppy waters of home ownership. It is by no means a done deal, but there's a decent chance that in 2-3 months time, I'll be buying a house.

This probably isn't the best time to be doing it, coming at the tail end (?) of a huge rise in prices. But I really don't have the luxury of waiting. And since interest rates are due to rise again in the next few months, it's better than waiting.

So far, the biggest adventure has been on the financing end of things. As a recent college graduate with no real debt to speak of, my credit record is clean but very short. Lenders would almost rather have someone with a mountain of debt, because then they know you are willing, able, and accustomed to pay, pay, pay. I got it all accomplished in the end, but a national security clearance would have required less paperwork.

As for what kind of house, and where... really no idea as of yet. Kansas City natives are welcome to submit suggestions. I'll warn you, Johnson County is probably right out. I could barely afford a broom closet down there.

Music and Movies

Whew, almost back to the present!

This weekend was Adam's band's fall concert. It went really well, I think, and the band sounded great. Matt and Steven happened to be down in KC, and got to hear it. Maybe he'll write up a review in his blog (hint, hint).

Also been seeing a ton of movies lately, after a long drought. Tis the season, I guess. Good Night and Good Luck: thoughtful and engrossing, so much so that I swore the theatre smelled like cigarette smoke afterwards. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: Not quite as amazing as the third installation, but still very good, especially towards the end.

Tomorrow night I'm off to see a sneak preview of Rent, a film I've literally been waiting years for. All through my junior high and high school years, it was the show, the one everyone owned, memorized, and quoted at length. Kauffman kids should probably use Holy Grail for a comparison. And they got the original Broadway cast back together for the film. You could say I'm looking forward to it.

Coming soon: Chronicles of Narnia and Brokeback Mountain, not to mention Wicked in St Louis. "It's the most wonderful time of the year..."

What is this, a freak out?

So my company has these trips they send engineers on. Clients hire us to provide temporary, round-the-clock tech support while they're going through a new installation or major upgrade. True, it wouldn't usually be the most effective use of an engineer's time. But their position (and I would tend to agree) is that at some point, all software engineers should have to sit and watch people actually trying to use their software.

The practical upshot of all this is that I spent a week in York, PA working 12-hour night shifts, wandering a gigantic hospital looking for users with problems. After a while, you enter an altered state of consciousness and the hours just fly by. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone on a particularly regular basis. The consequences to your sanity might be... unfortunate.

On the bright side, I know a heck of a lot more about how hospitals actually work than I used to. Which, working at a company that makes software for health care, is probably a good thing. But I probably could have accomplished the same thing on an eight hour shift rotation...

The one good thing about York? It was just a few miles down the road from Hershey. If there's a heaven, I hope it's a lot like Hershey. The whole town smells like chocolate all the time. And at 25 cents a bar, it's dirt cheap. I brought back a couple of cases worth. If you ever find yourself in the Baltimore/Harrisburg area, I would highly recommend the trip.

No, I'm not dead

...I've just had a busy couple of weeks. Sorry if I've let you down. I'll see if I can catch y'all up.

Halloween: Adam and I went to a Halloween party dressed as Katrina and Rita. If that doesn't earn you a direct ticket to hell, I don't know what does. We had hats piled high with clouds, assorted dangling debris, misting fans, Mardi Gras beads, and of course, pitchers of Hurricanes. Won the costume contest, too, though I don't really remember too much after that. I always mix drinks a lot stronger than I intend to. It's a gift.

Birthdays: Mine was pretty uneventful. Cafe Trio is yummy. My parents and my brother both decided to get me wine, apparently without any coordination. And my favorite gift, believe it or not, was the terrycloth bath robe. The kind they give you at really nice hotels and spas. Everyone should own one.

Derrick's birthday up in Lincoln, on the other hand, was pretty darn eventful. First the boy's team wins the ACM regional programming contest, and then he polishes off 21 shots worth before it's even midnight. Last we saw him, he'd passed out on his bathroom floor. My sources tell me he eventually woke up, but I'm waiting for independent verification.

Anyway, congrats to Derrick and his team, and good luck at the internationals in San Antionio.

Mandy's post

Bob and I are visiting Beermann. It is a grand time. Jah is not dead. I love manders. She is pretty much the most exciting thing ever. in my life. I like her....a lot. Some day we are going to have a big fucking dog. I want to give the dog a hard-ass sounding german name. Mandy would probably like to name it Taylor or Gus...something dumb like that. Klaus is a much better name i believe.

Ok, so that was Bob obviously. I don't care what we name our dog, but it will most certainly be a big dog - like a black lab or golden retriever. Beermann took us to a nice Italian restaurant. Then we went to a fun bar - Tanner's - and saw some punks get kicked out. We had some yummy beers. Now we are back at the apartment, and I am about to have a Godiva chocolate shot.

See, Beermann thinks that his life gets boring at times. But this is exciting. He's showing some young kids what KC is all about. He's helping me experience the city, because - who knows - I could live here after May!!! So, to all of you who wanted a blog update, I have helped that dream come true. Good night to all, and to all a good night!

Fest #2

The Kansas City Renaissance Festival.

Or, as I call it, total sensory overload. Sixteen acres. Hundreds of artisans, and as many performers wandering about. A dozen stages with constantly rotating acts and seemingly every high school choir in a four state area. Pubs. Wenches. Sword fights. Let's just say that it's a lot to take in.

A few of you will know what I mean when I say that the festival is organized like Majora's Mask: a schedule that repeats each day, with multiple intersecting storylines that meander across the grounds before finally rejoining at the end of the day. I'm a little embarassed to admit that I'm tempted to get a season pass one of these years, just because it would take multiple visits to follow them all. To make matters worse, it's one of the few places in the world I regularly get hopelessly lost.

They put a lot of effort into these things. They have apprenticeships that go on for months, their costumes must be historically accurate in composition and material, and they have scripts so that they can stay firmly in character at all times, and so forth. A bit obsessive, to be sure, but not inherently moreso than, say, D&D. Remember those kids who were big into drama when you were in high school? It's just them, a bit older but still children.

Favorite find: A solid wood tankard, lined with ceramic inside. They're beautiful and highly functional. That pint of Woodchuck never tasted so good. Ordering

I'll leave you with a few random pictures from the Festival, culled from their vast yet terribly organized website: 1 2 3 4 5

Fest #1: Beer

Oktoberfest. Or rather, Kansas City's slightly warped take on it. The main points were all there, I suppose. Gigantic tents, polka bands, fraulines carrying trays of beer. But past that, it was more like a state fair that happened to have a particularly large beer garden.

I suppose I can't blame them, but they forgot that it really wasn't supposed to be a family-friendly event. It's supposed to be a celebration of BEER, damn it all. Their selection was narrow, overpriced, and extremely mediocre. Empyrean Ales used to throw a far superior fest, god rest their souls. Oh well. Anybody want to go to Free State sometime?

Other assorted highlights:

• Blinking LED steins
• The Darth Vader nutcracker
• Runzas
• Pig races
• Povitica
• Getting completely smashed for the first time in a long while

Current Readings

Stopped in at Barnes and Noble tonight. I'd rather forgotten that they stay open until 11:00 each and every night (including the cafe), making it my kind of place.

Picked up all seven volumes of the Nausicaa manga. It really wasn't much of a leap of faith, between my adoration of the anime and my friends' raves about the comic book. I'm going on vacation next weekend, and I'll need quite a bit of reading material. It should do nicely. Might have to drop it off afterwards at the desk of a comic-obsessed but American-centric coworker...

Also picked up the first two volumes of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. I think that Gaiman is one of the most interesting authors writing today, and he made his name with Sandman. Very broadly speaking, the stories follow Morpheus, the Lord of Dreams, who is somewhere between the protagonist, antagonist, and narrator. Gaiman did the writing, but there was a different artist almost every issue (rather like American Splendor). If you get into graphic novels at all, this one is VERY high on the list.

PS: Added bonus for Final Fantasy fans: Gaiman recently collaborated on a graphic novel with Yoshitaka Amano, most famous as the character designer for nearly all of the FF games. You know that characteristic look of the game's logos, very dark and flowing? Well, imagine a whole book like that. It rocks.

PPS: Turns out he also wrote the English script for Princess Mononoke, meaning that everything in this post is actually related to everything else.

BDO

Someone (and I wish I could remember who) once proposed that a subjective but useful measure of a historical figure's importance is their "fertility", in the sense of the number of other people they inspire. Philosophers are probably fond of this one, for obvious reasons.

I'm surprised that the same criteria isn't more often implied to technology. (Well, it is, but usually subconsciously, not explicitly.) The Internet, yeah, but really all of the most important inventions of the past 500 years or so have been related to communication, transportation, or both. Increasing contact between people is the single most important thing any invention can do, because it spawns still more inventions.

I was pondering this while trying to figure out why the Stargate, an archtypal Big Dumb Object, manages to be such an enduringly popular fictional artifact that you can hang an entire TV series from it. I'm guessing it's just the logical next step along the continuum of communication and transportation - and for extra bonus points, it's both at once. Making it the most useful plot device ever.

Purgatory or Limbo?

Cooling my heels in the Albuquerque airport. It's a good thing my second leg is late, because I would have totally missed my connection otherwise.

When, exactly, did free wireless access become a universal airport feature? Sometime in the last two years since I did a lot of flying, I suppose.

Spending the weekend down at Rusty's in Phoenix. If you've got any messages for him, Tom, Amy, et cetera, et cetera, let me know.

But nobody's home

If my apartment's management merely slipped letters under vacant apartment doors, they'd be absentminded at worst. But it's the fact that they also put letters under the door of the electrical closet that pushes them into the realm of hilarious incompetence.

More Wedded Bliss

Went to (believe it or not) my very first gay wedding today. The bride and the bride were both quite lovely. One was of African descent and the other Irish; as such, there was both handfasting and jumping the broom; the latter ritual turns out to be common to both cultures. Very cool stuff.

The White Crows

(Apologies in advance for the horrible mangling and simplification of science and philosophy and the philosophy of science. Clay may never forgive me.)

So, it's a general principle in science that it's impossible to reason your way from observations to absolute truth; you can disprove, but you can never prove. No theory in all of science is ever beyond question. To take the famous example: you've seen a great many crows in your life. They've all been black. Can you therefore conclude that all crows are black? Of course not.

I think it's pretty much the same story across the hall in philosophy-land. There, you don't worry so much about what can or cannot be observed, but there are still axioms, and they are never beyond reproach, and yadda yadda yadda you get the idea.

What I really wanted to say was that I miss the white crows. You know, the experiences that cause you to completely reevaluate what you think and start over from scratch. It happens all the time when you're young, but these days, I can't think of the last time I saw a white crow. Which is a pity, because it means that the patterns of my thought are staying basically the same. Which sucks. You're either learning or you're dying.

Thought at a wedding

When the bride walks down the aisle, the photographers are invariably snapping away madly at her. But I think they miss an even better image: the look on the groom's face.

Tommy Lee

So I just got done watching the first two episodes of Tommy Lee Goes to College, and while it's always nice to see your alma mater on television, I'm afraid it just doesn't work.

Obviously, it's intended to be a "fish-out-of-water" show, but they just didn't think it through. Tommy Lee is a painfully nonfunctional human being in any situation. Much like Ozzy and Anna Nicole, just following him around on any normal day would be liable to produce scenes of utter absurdity. Putting him in a college setting is just plain confusing, like you'd asked the bear riding a unicycle in a tutu to also escape from an underwater straightjacket while he's at it.

So is it entertaining? Occasionally, vaguely, and seemingly in spite of itself. I'll probably watch it anyway for the "I know that guy!" factor, but I don't expect any Emmys. Other random observations:

• They more or less managed to match the correct exterior and interior shots together, which is kinda impressive, since of course they didn't have to. The major exception being...
• Neihardt? My ass. I wish there'd been a room that huge when I lived there. I could almost believe it was some room I'd never seen, right up until the kegger. Uh huh. Funny how they glossed over the dry campus bit.
• The staff in general, and the professors in particular, come off shockingly well. They obviously managed to ignore the cameras and hullabaloo far more than I'd have expected.
• Did they take any of their own exterior/aerial footage, or did it all come straight from the recruiting office? The campus has never, never looked so good.
• Three full hours of free, primetime, network television commercial is a pretty good deal, but I bet they're not entirely happy about the timing. Classes start next week; by the time people are actually applying for next year, the show'll be long forgotten.
• The show is also a commercial for Tommy Lee's new album, but I wonder if that'll backfire. Above and beyond the unfamiliar equipment and styles, it doesn't seem too wise to depict your star as a man whose drug habits have obliterated any musical talent he might have had.