So, it seems that this summer of mine is winding down. In fact, I do believe this will be my last post. It's been a truly great summer, absolutely amazing.
I gotta thank some people. I feel like I'm winning an award.
I wanna thank every single one of you out there who asked me to visit you, who let me crash at your place, and who showed me a good time. Obviously, I could never have done this without all of you. Thanks for the good conversations and long laughs. Although this trip had several fringe benefits (See beautiful sights! Avoid getting a job!) the main reason was to spend time with all of you who have made my life so much better by being my friend. You've all made me a better and happier person. Thanks for the good times. Thanks for the best summer of my life. I really do love each and every one of you.
Thanks to Danny for suggesting using Moveable Type for my weblog. There is no way it would have been updated nearly as often if I was doing it by hand. Thanks to Danny and Aaron for showing me the way to blogging. And, while I'm on a roll, thanks to the people who make Moveable Type. I highly recommend it.
And thanks to everyone who read this weblog. When I first decided to do a blog, I figured it would just be a dull play-by-play of my activities and locations. But it's been so much more than that for me - it's really been a way for me to sort out and understand my own experiences much better. I love that there are people out there reading this, it motivates me to write and somehow the fact that someone out there might read my words makes this process so much more appealing. So for every person out there who read this daily at work, or checked in once a week on Saturdays, or posted a comment, or just told me in some way, shape, or form that you liked this - thanks. I really don't think it would have been what it was without you guys. I must admit I am very curious to see what my final readership turned out to be. I know some of you out there read and never post comments, and that's cool - I love the comments, but I know that this is mostly a one-way street. But just to satisfy my curiousity, I would really appreciate if everyone out there reading this post wrote a little comment back. It can be as simple as your name and "hello." Or as lengthy and drawn out as a yearbook signing. You're a master of your own destiny. And thanks.
And special thank you to my parents. I literally could not have done this without them, there's just no way. First of all, they paid for my gas, which was the best 21st birthday present I could ask for, and so incredibly, unbelievably generous of them. Also, they were there at all times to give me directions over the phone, or find a campsite, or tell me about places I should go and see. They also let me borrow their roadtrip tent and taught me the economic magic of peanut butter and raisin sandwiches. Thanks Mom and Dad. I love you both.
So, after 11018 miles, have I learned anything? Have I discovered my purpose in life? Have I found peace? Truth? Meaning? I think that's the wrong way of looking at it. No, I didn't have any great epiphany in which I sorted out my life instantly. I'm still as strange and confused and lost as everyone else, as much as I've ever been. But I did have a lot of fun, and I've gotten the chance to see things from a different perspective.
What some saw as long boring hours in a car alone, I saw as my time to be alone, to find myself, to be alone with my thoughts and let them drift where they may. I had a blast hanging out with everyone, but I needed some alone time, and the solitary drives provided this. In my car, I could really relax. I didn't need to be funny or inventive or create conversation. My brain and body could rest and take in the beauty of what passed me by and absorb the things I had done in the past few days.
What some saw as a boring day, a day when they were not taking me out to a crazy party or memorable event, I saw as a welcome day of down time. No one out there should be sorry that we sat around and watched movies occasionally. Remember, 2-3 crazy days with me is just that, 2-3 crazy days - for you. But it's 2-3 crazy days out of a pretty much non-stop string of crazy days for me. I may not have as many pictures of sitting around, but I loved my chill days nonetheless.
Of course I also was always up for some fun, even if it was exhausting. Here's a shoutout to everyone who took me to do something I had never done, or something original or funny or crazy. Punk rock concerts. Limo rides. Manhattan clubs. Improv shows. San fran streets. Duluth, baby. 21st birthday parties. Times Square. Five games of bowling in an hour. Golfing (my second time ever!). Too Much Light. Lakes and oceans. Midnight showings of Japanese movies. Countless other events that should not be considered any less appreciated just because I forgot to mention them here.
What some saw as an uncomfortable couch, I saw as "better than the floor."
What you may have seen as just usual hanging out with me, I saw as a photo op. Sure, to you it was just another night sitting around with friends in your living room, but to me, it was an important part of my summer trip. It was strange always being "that guy with the camera," but I'm glad I was - all told, I took over eight hundred pictures this summer. Chances are, you're in some.
What some may have seen as just a simple weblog, I saw as my most intimate and direct way to let my friends know what was going on in my head. I really tried to give the most direct representation of my thoughts on these pages. My parents gave me a paper journal to use to document my trip - and I've only probably written 25 pages in it, because those were the only things I didn't quite feel comfortable writing here - most of the journal is filled with notes for things I wanted to cover online. The vast majority of the time, this was the whole truth and nothing but. This was the closest thing to a window to my mind.
What some may see as a old 93 grey Saturn full of my crap, I saw as my lifeline. DrFunk is a tough-as-nails car. She made it through the whole summer. She made it through deserts and thunderstorms, mountains and cities. And she was the closest thing I had to a home. It's strange to realize that I lived out of my car for a summer - I really did fine with only those things I could fit inside those rusty doors. It really felt good to streamline my possessions, to live on the least possible. It makes me wonder why I need all this extra stuff filling up rooms and closets and shelves . . ..
What some saw as a somewhat dangerous and ill-advised way to spend my summer, and even a bad thing for my career and life ended up being the best thing I could have done for myself. I had the time of my life. And I proved to myself that I can put friendship and happiness above work and success when it really matters. It felt so damn good.
So after all I've been through and thought about and learned, I think I can offer some good, if simple and somewhat obvious advice. I'm not going to try and tell you how to live your life, because Lord knows I haven't figured out how to live mine yet. But remember to have fun, and remember you only do this once. Travelling alone the open road, my windows down, and my left side feeling the wind, this song would echo through my whole body:
"today is the greatest
day I've ever known
can't live for tomorrow,
tomorrow's much too long
I'll burn my eyes out
before I get out
I wanted more
than life could ever grant me
bored by the chore
of saving face
today is the greatest
day I've ever known
can't wait for tomorrow
I might not have that long
I'll tear my heart out
before I get out
pink ribbon scars
that never forget
I tried so hard
to cleanse these regrets
my angel wings
were bruised and restrained
my belly stings
today is
today is
today is
the greatest day
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you
today is the greatest
today is the greatest day
today is the greatest day
that I have ever really known"
I finally fixed both my random image viewer and the image thumbnails. Now you can finally see what you've been missing! Better half-a-summer late than never, I suppose.
I just wanted to say one thing about the movie bloopers. The singing and dancing part isn't complete random idiocy - it was sort of a inside joke (well, not anymore) to my friend Bobby. Bobby goes to film school in Chicago and made a very funny short film called A Walk, Here on Earth, to Remember. I'd point you to a link to check it out, but oh no, Bobby has resisted all of our attempts to digitize his movies and put them online for everyone to enjoy. Jerk. Anyway, at the end of his movie, the main character, who is very punk rock, sings a Britney Spears song in a 8th grade gym while 8th graders dance in the background. I found it funny, hence our own version is a tribute to that genius moment in film history. That does not, however, make me any less of an idiot or a dork.
I was driving home today, and saw a sign for Kamper Kompanion Campgrounds. This is not the first sign I've seen for these campgrounds, apparently it's a chain. Where do I even begin? Why did they change the C's to K's in the first two words? Clearly they realized that they couldn't change the last C to a K, to avoid association with racist idiots from the south. But then why change the first two? Even if we pretend that mispelling words is a brilliant marketing trick, it only works if there is consistency (e.g. kool kids). If they would just left all C's, they would have had that consistency. But no. This rant has honestly been one of the hardest passages to write all summer. My brain is twisting itself all around just trying to get a hold on where the idiocy begins. In the words of Lewis Black, I'd better sink my teeth into some pancakes before they reach around to try and eat my brain.
It's a call to arms! If you are reading this, do me a favor - go to www.deadawakemovie.com, download everything you can find, and share it on Kazaa. Actually, try to download the movie files off Kazaa and then share them. It'd really help take some pressure off our mirrors. See? You can make a difference in this world.
Today I had some free time on my hands, so I decided to go get my hair cut. This was sort of a dissapointment, because I hadn't cut my hair so far this summer and I was kinda hoping I would make it the entire summer before giving it the chop. I was a man of the road this summer, and my hair reflected that. I was beginning to feel a little like Samson - my blond curly locks were the source of my strength. Damn you Deliah! All summer I resisted pressure to cut the hair, despite the obvious shagginess of it. But in the end, it was the warning of a good friend that motivated me - "Just remember - bad mullets happen to good people." I didn't actually have a mullet I don't think, but I was definitely close, a little too close if you know what I mean. I would have had one for sure by the time school started (August 27) and a mullet isn't really the way you want to greet old friends and new teachers. Put your best face forward, they say. And make sure there isn't a party going on out back.
After one summer of shooting, a year of editing (by Danny, the film's writer, producer, and, uh, editor), and $20 bucks later, Dead Awake is finally out. It's really nice to actually see something I've been thinking about for so long. And I'm really pleased with how it turned out. So go ahead and check it out (try mirrors 0 and 5 first) and if you feel inspired, write a review as a comment to this post.
In addition to being available, Dead Awake is also apparently quite popular. Danny posted the web page a few days ago and I think started promoting it yesterday. Today I get a phone call around 11:30AM.
[I check out caller ID, see it's Danny, answer phone]
Me:"Hey, what's up man?"
Danny: "Um . . . do you have any available servers?"
Me: "Huh?"
Apparently, the company that hosts www.deadawakemovie.com had called him earlier that morning warning him that we had used up 4GB of our monthly alloted 5GB download quota earlier this morning. But Danny, true to form, calmly managed the situation. He got his ass moving, pulled the download link from deadawakemovie.com, added two extra mirrors, and closely monitored our download situation. And at the end of the day, it doesn't look like we are going to have to pay any extra fees.
Let me tell you something about Danny. He is one the smartest people I know (and defnitely the most creative), but he couldn't care less about spelling, which you probably know if you read his excellent blog, Danman's Wasted Brain. Throughout the years, his mispellings have been the source of almost endless amusement. A few classics: "forget" became "frogget," "flirtatious" became "flourtasish," and "encounters" became "in counters." But I only recently discovered the most amazing example of misspelling the other day on his personal web profile.. On this site, I actually see the text "Dan Mayer (AKA Daniel Stephan Mayer)" . . . . I'll repeat that because it bears repeating. Dan Mayer (AKA Daniel Stephan Mayer). That's right, he didn't take the time to correctly spell his own middle name. Simply amazing. You're my hero, Dan.
Finally, this is my 51st entry in this blog. I missed announcing the big five oh, but this seems even bigger and better.
The other day Amy and I went to the City Museum. Absolutely amazing. Yes, yes it was amazing in it's structural design and it's raw artistic splendor and it's unbridled creativity. Dinosaur staircase with rotating painted banister poles? Of course. Bus attached to the top of the building? Why not? Let the kids play in a hollowed out airplane! They'll love it! Amy and I played within most of these attractions and more, and I discovered that they were not built with 6'4" slightly claustriphobic men in mind. Nevertheless, we liked it, but the kids - they freaking loved it. It was like every kids dream - a kickass four plus story playground.
But mostly what was amazing was how obviously dangerous the whole place was. Miles and miles of slippery/sharp/rusted/steep/cramped staircases, slides, crawlspaces, tunnels, ladders and more. Kids saw the series of mini-halfpipes, the spiraling gerbil-like tubes, the guardrails made of discarded pointy metal, and all I saw was lawsuit, lawsuit, lawsuit. And what's really insane is that they don't even make you sign a form or anything like ski places do - I didn't even see a sign to the effect of "Play at your own risk. . ."
I remember back to the playgrounds we had when I was growing up, and thinking back, they really were rusty metal deathtraps. But fun like nothing else! Yes, kids got hurt - I tore most of my upper lip off playing tag on a frozen metal dome-like structure - but most of the time we were smart enough and lucky enough to not get hurt too badly, and we turned out ok. Look at the playgrounds now. They're all made out of round, soft, multicolored plastic. They might be safe, but I'll bet a lot of them suck to play on. Somewhere along the way we all started to expect playgrounds to be that way. We started to expect our coffee to come with warnings that it's hot. We expect everything to be made with the stupidest and unluckiest person in mind, while form, function, and fun take a backseat to some braindead paranoid overkill version of safety. As usual, The Onion says it best. I think it's awesome that places like the City Museum still exist - it goes to show that paranoia and litigation haven't yet sucked all the fun out of this country. Go there, it's amazing - and they are open late on Friday/Saturday, so sometime soon we are going to party there. Everyone's invited. . . .
It's the end of the summer, and guess where I am? In the good ole CEC, the Center for Engineering Computing. It's creepy here. Most of the doors are shut and the lights are off. And there is no one, and I mean no one, here besides me, and for good reason. It's summer! But I had really nothing to do today in ole St. Louis, so I decided to work on some web pages. Where else you gonna go but the CEC? Nowhere, that's where. For those who care, there are about thirteen Linux boxes up and running and they are nicely configured. I don't see any XP machines up though.
Actually, there is a guy here kicking me out right now. Gotta run.
I woke up the other morning with a sense of overwhelming terror. My memory of the previous night was the following series of slides:
- Drinking all night with Megan and Friends.
- Coming home.
- Getting ready for bed in the guest bedroom.
- Reading in bed for awhile, then falling asleep.
- Crazy dreams.
- Going to bathroom.
- Crazy dreams.
- Being in Megan's bedroom. Looking more or less at the floor. Megan saying something to me. Fleeing in confusion. Going to the bathroom, then going back to bed.
- Crazy dreams. Crazier dreams.
- Bathroom.
- Slighty weird dreams.
- Waking up.
Now, given the amount of weird dreams I had that night, I didn't really know if the episode in Megan's room had actually happened, or if I had dreamed it as well.
So it was with great fear that I talked to Megan the next day - "I don't really know how to put this. Umm.. . what I in your room last night? Do you remember what I was doing?" Turns out, it was real. She had actually not been sure herself if it was a dream or not, because she, like me, suffers from dreams that are strange yet solidly grounded in reality, often making it difficult to distinguish dreams from life.
This is the second time this has happened to me, the first being the infamous "getting locked out of my apartment in only my underwear and having to spend the night at the neighbors" evening. The circumstances in both cases have been similar. I drink a little too much and go to bed still somewhat drunk. At some point in the night I start walking around half asleep, and then suddenly something jolts me awake (e.g. someone talking to me). After the sudden jolt, I remember everything and feel both awake and sober. But I am left with almost no recollection of the events beforehand.
Together, Megan and I pieced together the events from that night. Thankfully, it ended up being more funny than horribly weird or embarrassing. It seems that large trucks frequent her neighborhood, and while backing up, emit a loud, annoying beep that could be mistaken for an alarm clock to the untrained, or alternately, half-asleep/drunk, ear.
The following is a dramatization pieced together from witness testimony. Actual events may have occured differently.
[Megan turns over in her bed to see Ben in her room, intensely staring at her bedside table]
Megan: "Ben, what are you doing?"
Ben: "..." [hits alarm clock]
Megan: "What are you doing?"
Ben: "The beeping . . . the beeping"
Megan: "What?"
Ben: "The beeping"
Megan: "Eh" [Turns over and goes back to sleep. Ben hits the alarm clock a little more. The truck outside stops beeping. Ben suddenly runs to the bathroom.]
There's nothing scarier than waking up and not knowing exactly what you were doing the night before. If these trends continue, I'm going to need friends and family to tape/chain/strap/glue me to the bed each night.
Anyway. I had the hiccups on and off for most of yesterday, which was less than fun. I kept hiccupping right when I was trying to say something clever or funny, so it kept messing up my timing. But, as per usual, it could always be worse. Megan knows of a girl around here who has been hiccuping for like 7 years. She doesn't hiccup all the time, just every twenty minutes or so. For seven years.
Overhead: "*Hic*. Kill me. *Hic. Kill me."
When you are on a road trip, the scariest thing you can hear over the phone is "You're coming tomorrow?" And I heard it yesterday night. If you need me, I'll be the one on the road winging it.
When I was in NC, I got to expose yet another person (in this case, my girlfriend) to the wonderful and amazing world of punk covers. I love playing punk covers for people. I love watching people slowly figure out what song its supposed to be. For me, it's win/win - either they dig them and I've made someone appreciate punk at least a little, or they hate them, and I get to bask in the glory of the fact that my kind of music can destroy every other kind of music at moment's notice.
This got me thinking a lot about why I like punk covers so much and what makes a good punk cover. Then, randomly, when searching through my old email for an address, I found this exchange, which perfectly captures what I've recently being thinking about. Excuse the profanity, when I wrote this I didn't think I was writing for the public.
AH: "why would a punk band cover faith hill 'breathe'???? thought you might have a clue. "
Me:"Why cover the song 'Breathe?'
Here are your reasons three. . . .
1) Faith hill rocks harder than the most die-hard punk on his best shit-talking, spiky haired day.
2) I can't back that up. Country is pretty fucking lame. But lets admit it, Faith Hill is one pretty woman.
3) I bet they covered because its so lame. It's like, if you can take a song that was pretty good originally and turn it into a good punk song, well ok, thats cool. But if you can turn some candy-ass country western song into a firebreathing punk fest-a-thon of a song, then you are a genius. Maybe this band was just reaching for the stars."
First, I admit that it's pretty lame that I can't think of anything clever for my posts, so I'm recycling old stuff. But I really do think it's interesting that there are things I have said or known and then forgotten that ended up applying to my life. The creepiest example of this happened to me a few years ago. I was in a rough spot of high school, I was pretty low. I don't remember exactly what the issue was. A good freind of mine happened to write me about an unrelated topic (she didn't know about my situation at the time), but she happened to just randomly hit "reply" on a really old email of mine, so my year-message was at the bottom of her unrelated email. Strangely, my message to her was a letter consoling her about some situation, and it completely applied to my own. It was like some weird form of time travel. My past self completely helped fix my current self's problems. How many nuggets of wisdom, belief-changing conversations, and funny stories are hidden away and forgotten in my saved emails?
I got linked from the most clever weblog I know! Look at my link in all its glory.
If anyone out there needs things embroidered, especially bags or underwear, or bags full of underwear, watch this space. The future may hold the solution.
Most interesting fortune I ever got in a fortune cookie: "You have great physical powers and an iron construction." Apparently, I am a big scary robot.
I've got nothing else to offer you at this point.
Help! My hair is shaggy and my clothes are out of style! This sounds like a Makeover Story in the making - I can't believe I even know that show exists. That's what I get for dating a TV junkie.
But it's true - I need a haircut and I am going shopping for clothes soon. Hair styles have always been a hassle (many readers will [painfully] remember me rocking the chilibowl well into my junior year of high school). Clothes used to be simpler: when I was younger, I would keep growing out of clothes, and so each year I would get some new ones, which would keep me up to date, stylishly speaking (actually, usually one or two steps behind, because I shop at cheap stores who are always behind the expensive toocool ones).
But now I don't really grow, so I usually wait until my clothes wear out to get new ones. This effectively makes me a walking fashion time capsule - it's still 1999 according my shorts.
I'm stuck in a bad position on this issue. I hate buying clothes and getting my hair cut and worrying about the way I look, but I'm also not confident enough to really not care at all about how I look. I do care. I'd like to look cool all the time, I just don't have the time, money, or energy. If I could get away with it, I'd live the life of a cartoon character. I'd have hair that never grew and I'd wear the same clothes day in and day out. My hair would stay medium length, long enough to spike but not so long it becomes ridiculous to spike. I'd wear a white t-shirt and jeans. And for the love of all that's holy, I wouldn't have to shave. Or clip my nails. Oh, what I would give to be no-maintenance.
Randomly/nerdily, I successfully updated my FreeBSD system from 4.7 to 4.8 by downloading the source and recompiling all the binaries and then the kernel. It was surprisingly easy thanks to the amazing documention those FreeBSD people provide. FreeBSD makes me happy like an OS shouldn't be able to.
I'd like to take this moment to note that I'm very hurt that a certain someone who's blog is linked from mine hasn't linked mine yet. Apparently, thirteen other blogs were good enough to make the list, but not mine. You'd think he would at least give me some constructive criticism on how to make my blog "list-worthy" but no. Please excuse me while I curl up into a ball and cry.
I recently did my first bit of "cracking/hacking" I guess, although please don't be impressed because it was only possibly illegal and definitely trivial. Basically, I just plugged in my wifi card to my laptop and fired up dstumbler to see if there were any wireless networks around me. And there were a ton. My stars. Many of them without any encryption or protection at all. So naturally, I was curious to see if I could get on one of them.
So I picked the network with the strongest signal that didn't have encryption. It didn't automatically let me on via DHCP, but I did notice that it was a DLink wireless access point. I know the default network setup for those, since I own one, so five minutes later I had manually assigned myself an IP address and set my default gateway and DNS servers. Internet access was mine as well as a overwhelming feeling of victory and cleverness.
I figured this wireless network was one of two kinds, either
a) A purposely open wireless network, designed to give others free access. If so, my presence was no problem.
b) A wireless network carelessly left open. Was my presence illegal?
In any case, being paranoid, I assumed the latter. I was still really excited that I had gotten free internet access until I realized that I wanted to a) check my email
b) write in my weblog and c) chat on aim (well, actually gaim) - but of course I couldn't do any of those, because if I was doing something illegal, doing any of the aforementioned activities would give away some important piece of information concerning my identity. I could see the headlines: "Idiot hacker penetrates network, signs email with actual name, caught hours later."
So "breaking into" the network wasn't everything I thought it wouuld be cracked up to be. But it got me to thinking: what constitutes illegal access to wireless networks? If I just popped in my network card and got internet access without doing anything, would that be illegal? Even if they put no protection up against it? What about what I had, in fact, done? I just assigned myself a place on the network. I didn't specifically break any safeguards. The only thing "protecting" the network I got onto was the fact that the connection wasn't automatically set up by DHCP. I know of an actual hacker who does most of his hacking just using a web browser. He doesn't use holes in programs, he just accesses things carelessly left available to anyone on the internet. How much effort do you have to exert to access something before you are "breaking in"? And how much responsibility lies with those people who leave a system open to the public?
Today it was raining outside. We were restless. Somehow, Bobby and I ended up actually deciding which movie we were going to watch by playing X-men vs. Street Fighter. We would play matches in which each person picked a movie and if they won, that movie would advance. The match-ups were truly battles of titans: Pleasantville vs. The War of the Roses, The Rules of Attraction vs. The Opposite of Sex, and many more. Through a grueling 3-stage tournament, we went from eight contenders to just a single winner (Alien Resurrection). We're "inside kids."
Thanks to Bobby, I've become completed addicted to Johnny Cash's Hurt. The song is good, but the video is extraturbosupermega good.
Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind was fun, as always. It's probably my favorite thing to do in Chicago - if you are in the proverbial Windy City, I highly highly recommend it.
But more fun, and by "fun" I mean "dangerous" (and doesn't "fun" always mean "dangerous" and vice versa?), was pushing Shawn's Alpha Romero convertible down busy Chicago Streets trying to get it to start while avoiding being hit by traffic. In some wierd way, I felt like I was in The Flintstones.
Chicago improv was very very funny tonight, despite the startling lack of Andrew Carlson of Mama's Pot Roast fame. Of course, I didn't actually track down the venue at which he is doing improv (I don't even know if he is still in Chicago), I just went to ImprovOlympics on a random night and expected to see him. He should cater to my improv-related whims.
Overheard:
Improv guy: "Can I get a emotion you felt today at 10 AM?"
Audience Member One: "Hungry!"
Audience Member Two: "Sleepy!"
Audience Member Three: "Boredom!"
Me: "Sex orgy!"
Audience Member behind me: "What?"
That's all for you, Steve-o. For those of you who have no idea what's going on, go here and read Steve's guest post Improv This!. It's just a little bit down the page. Try searching for "improv" if you are lazy. All will be illuminated.
In other news, you know you are in Boystown when the Walgreens has a large display entirely devoted to lube, in quantities up to and including 35 oz. vats of lube with a little soap-like dispenser. Honestly, who needs lube in 35 oz. quantities? I wouldn't even buy a 35 oz. bottle of sunscreen for all my friends to use for a week at the beach. For those of you who can't estimate volumes well, a 35 oz. bottle is roughly 1 foot by 3 inches by 1 inch. Some people are apparently having all the fun.