10.29.2006
Caleb was upset when he read my last post, but then he really should have thought about that before he showed me his testicles.
7:21 PM
10.28.2006
I saw Caleb's testicles today. I also watched three episodes of "The Wonder Years." The two roughly canceled each other out.
10:56 PM
10.27.2006 I'm considering introducing myself as Benjamin from now on. Benjamin Popik just seems to have a more impressive rhythm than Ben Popik. I can't decide. What do you think?
9:41 PM
10.26.2006 So November is apparently National Blog Posting Month, and participants have to post every single day for a whole month!
10.24.2006
I apologize for the inverse relationship between how exciting my life is and how exciting my blog is. (My life is exciting right now).
6:45 PM
Wanna know where all my writing energy is going? It's going here! (Hopefully you'll go there too.)
4:56 PM
10.19.2006 I am so bad at goodbyes--which sounds like an emotional confession about how I have a hard time letting go, but really I mean that I'm shitty at ending conversations.
11:59 PM
10.18.2006
When Ben asked me to write his blog today, I realized I felt under pressure to be clever. Then I thought, "Why should I worry? I'm as clever as he is. I'm his mother, for God's sake." He inherited his cleverness from me (to be fair, from his father, too). And his intelligence. A few years back, when I thought he respected my opinion, I confided in him that his dad and I were among the smartest people he would ever know. He has reminded me of that several times, especially when I'm trying (and failing) to turn on the stupid TV, using all four remotes that connect the TV, cable, DVD and receiver.
10:58 PM
10.17.2006
In the middle of a dark bar conversation with a girl I've never spoken to before, it instantaneously dawned on me how late it had become and I frantically plunged my hands into my pockets to find my phone and make a post. I have yet to meet the girl who melts when I explain the rules of this contest.
11:16 PM
10.16.2006 I feel like my DJ career would probably be limited to cuddle parties.
10.15.2006 I doubt I'll ever grow tired of sleepovers.
7:18 PM
10.14.2006
Raizin just accidentally ate chicken for the first time. He didn't know what it was until i told him. It was awkward.
7:14 PM
10.13.2006
There's a high-quality version on our site, which I highly suggest you watch (and rewatch) instead. There's even one joke thrown in specifically for readers of this site!
3:56 PM
10.12.2006 Below are two excerpts from a recent episode of Love and Radio, an NPR-syndicated storytelling-based radio show I contribute to (started by Nick van der Kolk and our very own Adrienne Mathiowetz!). In this episode, entitled "Secrets," Nick interviews me on a couple different personal subjects, including my porn of choice at age eleven, and secrets that my parents kept from me (see also: 1, 2). I've only included two short snippets, but you should check out the full episodes if you haven't already--they're really fantastic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it Martin Scorcese. Bang, bang, bang.
7:24 PM
10.10.2006 Sometimes I'll see a woman and thinks she's very beautiful, but then I'll realize that she's not actually beautiful, she's just wearing something revealing.
6:44 PM
10.09.2006 I love that one of the possible side-effects of NoDoz is sleeplessness.
Relatedly, my mom told me in an email tonight that she's stayed awake all night twice in her life--which is, incidentally, the number of times I've stayed up all night in the past four days.
10.08.2006 I'd really like to have one of our videos on the frontpage of YouTube. I'm going to see if I can make that happen.
5:13 PM
10.07.2006 Below, for your amusement, are all of the posts I ever saved as drafts and then never went back and finished. A couple of these I still hope to finish.
7/25/2004:
A couple of weeks ago--it may even have been the fourth of July, I don't know--Dave and I were walking down the street, talking about rock climbing. We were walking behind a group of people roughly our age, who were walking at the same speed as us. Actually, they were walking precisely fast enough that it didn't make sense to pass them, and it didn't make sense for us to walk more slowly. So basically, we ended up walking with these people--though we weren't on speaking terms. This situation is always a little awkward.
Dave tried to merge our groups by asking if they knew of anywhere to climb in Wicker Park. There are a lot of parks in the area, so the question wasn't completely unreasonable, but the guy in the group turned around and said, "In Wicker Park? Yeah right!" He then laughed for a moment before adding, "Maybe in 'Wicker Park' the movie starring Josh Hartnett, but not in the real Wicker Park!"
I immediately thought to myself, "What the fuck did he just say?" Was he making fun of us? I assumed he was making fun of us. Whenever I don't understand anyone, I assume they're being mean. I immediately became defensive. I made my hands into fists. I had absolutely no idea what he meant by what he said. But then again, I had no idea that they were actually making 'Wicker Park' the movie, starring Josh Hartnett.
9/24/2004:
Joel and I hit a deer yesterday. Joel was driving, but it was still the closest I've ever come to hitting a deer. It's an inevitability that in the near future I'll do the same myself. I realized this five months ago, and immediately drew-up a calendar of the rest of my life, which I titled "The Deer Calendar." Next to every remaing year of my life (no doubt you wonder how far I numbered) I placed a one-line statement of something that I would have to do if that was the year I hit a deer. Some of the things were positive, like (32) "Drive to the nearest sufficient body of water, catch a fish, eat it.," while others were decidedly less positive (
2/04/2005:
A lot of people have been complimenting my hair lately, so it seemed like a good time to give myself a haircut. Cutting my own hair is an activity--like acting or beach volleyball--which I really enjoy, but am not especially good at. It's very difficult, because: A. You have to use a mirror, so it's hard to properly orient your hands (and accordingly, the scissors). The result of this difficultly is linear patches of too-short hair that are fucking impossible to blend in. The result of that difficulty is typically a buzz cut. I have ended up with many a buzz cut because of fail attempts at wielding scissors.
8/29/2005:
So Adam dropped my laptop, both breaking the power cord and causing somewhere between $188-$995 dollars worth of damage to the computer itself (according to the girl behind the desk at the front of the line that I waited in for two hours today). When I got to the front of the line, I told her that a friend of mine had dropped the computer, to which she replied: "Well, he's not your friend anymore."
7/23/2006:
1. Not many people know this, but about nine months ago I started taking piano lessons. At the time, I was working in a restaurant in Cobble Hill, and every day I passed a window showcasing a large, white piano, and a sign on the door that read "For Lesson, Inquire Within." One afternoon, the piano teacher was outside washing the windows, and without thinking I stopped to ask her about how, exactly, one would go about beginning to learn the piano. I had my first lesson the next day.
2. At the time--as previously stated--I was working for a restaurant down the block from the piano studio. The two buildings are so close, in fact, that one could stand in front of one of the two buildings, and hit the other with a well-aimed rock. Their close proximity was especially nice, because it meant I would be able to schedule my lessons for the half hour immediately before my shift, and accordingly learn to play the piano without any superfluous subway trips. Also, my job was high-paying and regular enough that I was satisfied I would stay there for a long time.
10.06.2006 My most recent epiphany is that I'll probably always feel the same way, regardless of how much I achieve in life. This realization makes me want to work in a bakery.
5:04 PM
10.05.2006
The novelty of the wake-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-find-the-mosquito-that's-been-biting-me-for-hours game is wearing a little thin.
4:13 AM
It's been brought to my attention that people have been abusing the honor system, and assigning false datestamps to cover for days they've forgotten to post.
From now on, anyone found to be cheating will be removed from the competition, and deemed ineligible of winning its blingified grand prize.
For shame, Yo La Tengo Late-Summer Weblog Challenge participants. For shame.
11:31 PM
After nine months of piano lessons, during which I mastered such classics as "The Can-Can" and "When The Saints Go Marching In," I've finally earned the privilege of moving up to two new books of music--a book of Bach for beginners, and another by a composer named Kavelesky. The other day, before my lesson, I went into a music store to buy them.
CLERK: Can I help you? ME: Yes...I'm looking for a book of sheet music by...(looks at writing on hand)...Kabelesky? CLERK: Kavelesky. Do you mean the Kavelsky for Children? ME: Uhh... CLERK: Yeah, that's probably what you're looking for. ME: I don't know, actually... CLERK: Well, is it for a child? ME: Umm... CLERK: Yeah, you mean the Kavelesky for Children.
He was right, of course--I did need the Kavelesky for Children (which is, I might add, a terrible title for a book of music that is exceedingly difficult to play).
5:41 PM
10.02.2006 This week's video that I wish I'd made is...
Sledgehammer! This video--though a little strange--is positively brilliant.
7:26 PM
"Kazakh officials have sought to...assure the West that, contrary to Borat's claims, theirs is not a nation of drunken anti-Semites who treat their women worse than their donkeys. 5:38 PM
10.01.2006 In my estimation, there have been two major traumatic events in the life of Brendan Sullivan:
1.His breakup with college girlfriend Amanda, who was his first serious love, and who immediately after their breakup began dating (and have audible sex with) Brendan's best friend.
The first of these two events occurred before the summer that Brendan and I lived together in Chicago. In fact, The Amanda Situation was a big part of why Brendan moved with me to Chicago in the first place--because if his college friends hadn't all taken turns having sex with his girlfriend, he probably would have done something with them that summer.
The second of these two events occurred at the end of that summer--which was, relatedly, the summer that Brendan met Annie. (Brendan would probably be able to write at length about the first few weeks of his relationship with Annie, but my primary memory of that time period was that both of my best friends ((Brendan and Dave)) fell deeply in love with beautiful red-haired girls, and all of a sudden I had no one to hang out with. Good lord I was bored.)
Anyway, at the end of that summer, Annie decided to move to New York City--and in a spur of the moment decision, Brendan joined her. This was a bold, romantic move on his part, and he proved it by leaving all of his possessions behind in the Chicago apartment, with the intention of coming back and getting them later. Well, the subletters weren't as impressed with Brendan's spontaneity as I was, and in an act of defiance they sold all of Brendan's possessions, including his clothing, his records, his furniture--and most painfully for Brendan, his prized library of books.
I was in Chicago about a month ago for the Pitchfork Music Festival. It was my first time back in Chicago in almost two years, and I couldn't help but visit our old neighborhood haunts. I ate pancakes at the breakfast joint we practically lived in. I bought a book in the used book store where we used to waste our afternoons. I teased the fenced-up, snarling dog we used to consider poisoning. I remembered why we loved Chicago so much.
On my flight back to NYC, where I made the depressing realization that my rent in Chicago was a third of my rent in New York, I distracted myself by taking out the book I'd bought at the used book store the day before. It was an old, but well maintained copy of "Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins. Opening it for the first time, I found the following letter written on the title page:
The first time I saw this, I laughed until tears came from my eyes. And then I rethought the possible existence of God.
11:18 PM
This story is too long. I've completely forgotten what it's about.
EDIT: I'm going to post a shortened version now--because it's a better story--in a few days I'll post the Uncut Collector's Edition (complete with video clips and inset substories).
10:14 PM
I love that one of the possible side-effects of 
