4.30.2004 I'm putting a piece which I drew during my spring break insomnia festival in a non-majors art show here at Bard. The piece, titled, "Sunset over Carthage," commemorates (quite obviously) the bold military prowess of the Roman army, and my only concern is that the painting's rich, historical depth will be completely lost in a gallery crowded with what I suspect will be the hack works of hack artists painting hallmark portraits of their girlfriends and labeling the rubbish "art."
4.28.2004 I like doing my work in the cafe because then I can complete my personal tasks in the presence of a crowd of people--and if I wear my big headphones, which I most often do when I'm working, no one can tell that I'm listening to the same Kylie Minogue song on repeat. My love for this song is one of my more embarrassing secrets. I imagine it would be more difficult for most people to contain this secret, but unlike most people--who would, in the presence of such a catchy \pop song, break into a fit of head-bobbing and arm waving--there are no natural circumstances in which I dance. Whenever I tell people this, they say, "But what about in the car, when you're by yourself?" And so I started paying a lot of attention to my behavior in the car.
Yesterday afternoon, on the path to the campus center, I passed an attractive, older woman I had never seen before. She smiled at me extremely warmly and said, "So we meet again!" and I, caught completely off guard, sucked a bite of the bagel I'd been eating into my windpipe and began coughing violently.
I feel like I'm perpetually outgrowing myself, and every minute I sort of hate the person I was a minute ago. I try to think positively though, and consider this a sign of my continuous maturation. I'm more sophisticated now then I was just a week ago, and, looking back to last week I think, man, was that guy was obnoxious. This worries me some as a writer and I wonder if there will ever be a time where I don't think everything I write is a big boot full of moss. Edward Albee didn't write Zoo Story until he was thirty, and virtually none of his writing from before then is still around now.
4.26.2004 Last night we shot the violent sequence of "Pain Room," a sketch that is, shot for shot, a dream I had two months ago. While we used fake blood, and while for the most part no one was hurt (Joel hit his head on a shelf bracket, Adam Janos had his face slammed too forcefully into a tabletop), the end result was a room so covered in spattered blood that it could only have been construed as a crime scene. Since it was my shoot, and we didn't finish until after two in the morning, I let the others go home to their girlfriends and drugs while I cleaned up the mess--which entailed, among other things, walking into Bard's security office with a heaping armful of bloodied sheets. In my teeth I held a sharpened meat thermometer, in my left hand a large syringe caked in dried blood. Every single person I passed, even the security guards, seemed absolutely unconcerned. Nights like these--and since I've begun filming sketches, there have been many--make me think that commiting crimes is much easier than often advertised.
4.22.2004 Both my fucking websites are down--including this one. I write this knowing perfectly well that no one can read it. The Olde English website, on the other hand--which, as a cool point of infomation, now shows up on the frontpage of google search results for both Olde English and sketch comedy--refuses to remain standing for more than three days at a time. I thought that 5GB of bandwidth a day would solve that problem, but it turns out that we consume much more bandwidth than I'd thought--easily 10GB-15GB a day, quite often more. This week alone I've received two very similar, though threatening letters from two very different, though appealing bandwidth providers.
4.20.2004 1. The other day at the restaurant I had a girl trailing me. I don't enjoy training people because it's a lot more difficult to be charming with a person standing behind you, and the customers are always curious as to which of us is the trainee. It is annoying when they whisper to me that I am doing an excellent job. However, as I have said in the past, my restaurant hires and fires people on a bi-weekly basis, so there is always at least one person being trained. While polishing silverware, the girl trailing me asked in a whisper, "Is it true they're hiring like twenty new people? How can they do that? Do they just fire everyone?" Within an hour and a half she'd been fired.
2. Just when you thought Olde English couldn't get more exciting, we went out and got a new web address! Just kidding. However, we have switched servers to a new host that offers 5GB of bandwidth a day. I hope that will be enough. It dawns on me as I write this how geeky I've become. I don't want to create the illusion that I was cool in my youth, because I decidedly was not, though in those days I wasn't getting turned on by bandwidth promotions. I really look forward to the day when the Olde English website is updated regularly and professionally by someone who isn't me. That day will come, right? Right? Guys?
3. I've signed up for a sketch writing class at Second City in Chicago, so regardless of whether I have a place to stay, I have a reason to stay. My hope is to use the Olde English website (under construction!) to place out of the introductory courses and maybe into a highly-paid teaching position. Then I'd use my Second City teaching credentials to write myself a fantastic recommendation that might land me a spot on some creative board at HBO, at which point I'd suggest to myself that I seriously consider hiring my comrades (website suspended!) to help me write an Emmy-winning sketch series that will open the door to Hollywood fame and fortune. But anyway, I signed up for a sketch writing class.
4.19.2004 Of all the junk mail I received today about my penis, the following was by far my favorite. The authors of the spam--and I do not feel I am exaggerating when I acknowledge those spirited wordsmiths as authors--have to fill the letters with a lot of normal words (i.e. words that aren't Viagra) so as to fool email programs that aim to filter such trash. And that is how I came across this beautiful poem:
4.18.2004 This is an excerpt from one of my failures. There are very few projects in my life I would consider a complete failure, though this was one of them. And it wasn't for lack of trying. Anyway, here's the excerpt--it's called "TRY."
Adam Janos, discussing a girl I know well: "Yeah, she seems like she has a really dominating personality. She seems like the kind of girl who has her period, and makes all the other girls have it at the same time."
4.15.2004 So apparently the heavier than usual traffic on the Olde English website, coupled with renewed interest in the "Dead Puppies" video by the sensible people at sensibleerection.com, has caused our server to once again buckle over and die. This is the first time that ReadyHosting, our faithful server and home of "unmetered data transfer" (unlimited bandwidth), has failed to offer us "unmetered data transfer" (which sucks for us). We really just don't make the kind of money (we don't make any money) required to properly support a video-based website.
What's worse is that at some point this week, either today or tomorrow, a magazine (I don't think I ever learned which) is publishing an article about CreativeCommons.org--the website that does liscensing--and they're using our website as an example of the material supported by Creative Commons. That probably would have meant major site traffic. It will probably still mean major site traffic, which is sad news for us, but great news for the popularization of the phrase: "If you are the owner of this domain, please open a My Website has been Suspended Support Ticket."
UPDATE: A clarification in my inbox:
If you go to our terms of service, http://www.readyhosting.com/termsofservice.htm, you will see that we offer UNMETERED bandwidth, not unlimited. This means simply, that we do not have monitoring software in place and are actually alerted to these circumstances by other customers complaints as to their domains running poorly.
4.14.2004 I (pretty much) finished the new version of the Olde Englishbiographies page, though I still have to make a few small changes, including writing a proper bio for myself. However, this is the sort of activity I could be doing during class, therefore I won't let it concern me during my leisure time.
4.9.2004 The other day at work, one of my tables--a group of high school boys--recognized me from the internet. This situation was pretty cool for all of us, because I had the pleasure of being glorified by some high school kids I'll never see again ("You're the guy who says one word in 'Dave's Day!' How cool was that?!"), and they had the pleasure of being poorly waited on by a D-list celebrity who couldn't seem to keep their water glasses full. Before they left, they filled out a comment card that read: "Best server ever!" though this statement is apparently implausible, as five minutes later my manager would accuse me of writing it myself.
Keep in mind as you watch the seven minute film that the rules obligated us to incorportate: a. a pastry chef named Spudgy McGonnacle, b. the line: "What's the plan this time, brainiac?" c. a garden-variety garden hose.
4.6.2004 Today I pumped nineteen gallons of gasoline into a fifteen gallon tank. This was an expensive endeavor, which involved stepping into a pool of what was essentially lighter fluid, and cringing as I turned the ignition switch.
4.3.2004 I probably won't be posting for the next thirty-nine hours and forty-three minutes. Though if I do, I imagine it will be with something interesting.
We made a movie in 48 hours.
