Day Six

The days are inching on forward towards my departure for NYC, though in this strange vacuum they don't seem to be moving at all. I do imagine myself sometimes as a sort of dust mite, or one of those eye floaties, just sort of bouncing about and gravitating at a frustratingly slow speed towards the 1st of September, when I will jump aboard a plane for the next chapter of my life.

The next chapter of my life...that sounds like I'm approaching my own story as I would a book. Well, what's so wrong with that? I certainly monologue with myself enough on a daily basis that I could be a character in a story, and my life certainly seems to split into neat "chapters" or "eras" on a routine basis. It truly weirds me out when those different eras or chapters begin to mix and mingle - take for instance next week, when I'm supposed to meet up with a couple of my old friends from my freshman year in High School. It will be bizarre to have Californians with me in my beloved City, though something about that seems incredibly appropriate. To be certain, I'll be meeting up with a few Hoosier colleagues as well, and in this fashion this next chapter just continues in the footsteps of all those that came before it.

The 27th of August has appeared. It says so on my iCal. (I had to click it to manually change it from the 26th to the 27th. I do find an unbelievable amount of joy in manually moving the calendar dates forward. Strange how that works.)

I saw Julie and Julia today, which I found to be a surprisingly enjoyable film. Certainly not the best film I've seen this summer, but also definitely not the worst. As always, Meryl Streep was on top of her game, and though Amy Adams was a lovely addition to the screen, I confess my admiration for her does not go past very shallow levels. (To be clear - she is a fine actress. I just have a crush on her.)

It was a goal of mine to write a brief review of every movie/book/thing I have seen/read/done over the course of this summer, though if I'm ever going to come even close to that goal, I'd need to first make a list. So, here goes. Bear with me, as this may be quite the eclectic list.

THE SUMMER OF 2009

FILMS WATCHED FOR THE FIRST TIME:

1. The Breakfast Club

2. Die Hard

3. The Wrestler

4. Fargo

5. Lucky Number Slevin

6. Sweeney Todd

7. Desperado

8. Once Upon a Time in Mexico

9. City of God

10. 12 Monkeys

11. Reservoir Dogs

12. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

13. Shenandoah

14. Music and Lyrics

15. Gigantic

16. The Manchurian Candidate (original)

17. Breakfast at Tiffany's

18. The Fall

19. The Untouchables

20. Gangs of New York

21. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

22. There Will Be Blood

23. Benny and Joon

24. Night of the Living Dead (original)

25. House on Haunted Hill (original)

26. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

27. Quantum of Solace

28. The Usual Suspects

29. Rain Man

30. L.A. Confidential

31. Almost Famous

32. Stand By Me

33. The Cable Guy

34. The Reader

35. He's Just Not That Into You

36. Analyze This

37. Ponyo (online)

38. The Bells Are Ringing

39. Bruno (online)

40. The Graduate

41. Dark City

42. Blade Runner

43. Unforgiven

44. Knowing

45. Crumb

46. Running Scared

MOVIES WATCHED IN THEATERS (IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE, FOLLOWED BY NUMBER OF THEATER VIEWINGS):

1. Inglourious Basterds (3)

2. (500) Days of Summer (4)

3. Up (2)

4. Public Enemies (3)

5. Angels and Demons (2)

6. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (3)

7. The Hurt Locker (2)

8. District 9 (2)

9. Taking Woodstock (2)

10. Moon (2)

11. Away We Go

12. Slumdog Millionaire (2)

13. Julie and Julia

14. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen (2)

15. The Hangover

16. G.I. Joe

BOOKS READ:

1. The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser

2. The Aeneid by Virgil

3. Don Quixote by Cervantes (Currently underway.)

JOURNAL PAGES WRITTEN:

Somewhere between 71 and 80 pages.

CHESS GAMES PLAYED:

160+

COUNTRIES VISITED:

1. Italy

2. Slovenia

3. Croatia

All in all, I can only conclude that this summer has been around for far too long.

I think it's about fucking time I headed to NYC and started something new.

The next five days are going to need to go by fast. Otherwise I might melt in this Floridian abyss.

Day Five

One year later?

Can it really be so far ahead into the future that I have entirely abandoned my original plan to keep a "blog", an online rant rag, a cyber journal full of my daily pontifications, quandaries and life-altering novel ideas...(note the pun on words)? The simple answer is yes, it most certainly can be an entire year later. And it is.

I left last summer with the grudging determination to overcome the heinous isolation and solitude that had nearly broken me the year before (I sound like a surprisingly narcissistic Charles Dickens character gone rogue), that is to say, my freshman year, and surprisingly the time that has passed between my last entry and this one has not only proved that all my goals could be met, and could be outdone.

I won't make any sort of grandiose promises for this blog, or even go on a really intricate and well written prologue about how I'm going to write things that really make much of a difference in anything...but I do hope that I can at least do SOMETHING quasi-productive with this space to write and rant and think. I do keep a journal, and I'm very private about the thoughts that I jot down in there, but I do think this could be a good place to muse about the thoughts that sort of tramp around in my mind throughout the day that I don't have the patience to waste journal pages on. For instance;

I was watching TV the other day (a dangerous thing, I know) and one of those disturbingly self-indulgent religious programs found its way onto my screen. I admit; my morbid fascination kept me glued to this program for a good ten minutes, and got me wondering - who honestly watches a show called "SALVATION", with the title emblazoned in armored steel font on the bottom right hand corner of the screen? An the preacher, if that was what he was, was fantastically electric - pounding his chest, bellowing at this enormous half-moon crowd of thousands, verbally beating them into accepting and being excited about the "Ways of God" and what it was to be a good Christian. With all the bellowing and shouting and bulletproof title fonts I almost expected a Rambo-Christ to come running onto the stage at any moment. I turned to the next channel to have my screen engorged with one of the less original - albeit equally horrifying - offspring of Jerry Springer's golden child proto-show, and all I saw was two women roughly the size of elephants clawing each others shirts off to reveal tattoos and piercings while one fat guy stood sort of in the middle of them (far enough away that they couldn't consume him) with a comical look on his face. The reason it was comical was because he looked pretty damn proud that these two women were fighting over him. I'm all in favor of a guy being fought over, but I won't lie; if I was in his shoes, I'd be pretty fucking scared. Scared of my life. Scared of how I was barely a candy wrapper when the cosmos judged you on how many gods you could feed. Scared of how since I wouldn't appease the gods with my shaved head and sweaty button up shirt, maybe these two sparring maidens would turn and, you know, eat me.

How did we come to this, I wondered, sitting in my Floridian living room and turning off the television. When did the transition from Edward R. Murrow to Jerry Springer occur? I'm not sure.

Anyway.

Let's see if I can keep this blog going.

Oh, and did I mention I love chess?