|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| Like Carl on a second date, I apologize for the length of this post.
I'm writing this as I sit on Southwest Flight 2747, over the wind-swept plains of Oklahoma, having just left Oklahoma City after twelve days of semi-vacation.
Twelve days. At least as many Sonic slushes. Favorite restaurants. Old friends, new friends. Family, my puppy.
All good things, and all good things to leave behind so I have some reason to come back.
Make no mistake: I'm ready to land in Burbank and be back entrenched in the culture of Los Angeles. It's my home now, and one I miss. I will miss OK and my friends and family there, but I'm supposed to. It's what is supposed to happen. It's what makes going back so great, or longing to go back. I couldn't possibly live in OKC; I have no place there. Coming back for a week or two is just long enough to see everyone and not feel like I'm too far out of place. But it happens. My last few nights, after the events of the last weekend, I felt out of place. People were working, busy with their lives, and it's moments like that where you realize that you really don't belong there. When I come back, I'm a visitor. I can hang out with my friends as the guy they don't see anymore, an outside maybe, but I think we mesh a little better than that.
Anyways...
I want to thank everyone for the great time I had, and I wish to apologize to those I didn't get to spend enough time with. It seems that there's never enough time.
Blake's party, and Eischens last Friday, were both great examples. Blake's Party had an awesome attendance: Blake & Linds, Bekah, Jordan, Lauren, Kyle & Terri, Robert & Christy, Mark, Tracy, Carl, Misty, Deb C, Shelley... It was pretty much perfect. (I say pretty much because we missed Michaels' Downes and Grafton, and we expected Kristin and Abbey to show, and to a lesser extent, we all collectively missed Jessica's presence. And in a perfect world, Sid would have been there, and in a slightly more imaginable world, Tall Jordan and Bryan too. And if we're just being perfect, Mark could have had Allison in tow, and Tyler Huskerson would have been icing on the cake.)
But pretty much perfect. In fact, it was just the right amount and mix. It feels more and more natural, more and more like a good fit. Lauren and Jordan and Blake have such an interesting and unique dynamic (no doubt due to lunches at Earls) that they can slam one off the other like pros. A good example is Blake's line to Lauren, "I want to give you a vanilla bath".
Robert and Kyle are great guys with good wives. Another great guy with a great wife is Blake, who threw one hell of a party. His better half, Linds, did a good job of cleaning up the party BEFORE it was over. (I was instructed early on to conserve my plastic cup, as they didn't have enough. Well, I wrote my name on two of them, and all two of them were thrown away before I was done. The fact that Midnight hit and Linds managed to clean up and take away our glasses, done with beer or not, was either good housekeeping or her not-so-sly way of saying "get the hell out"ÂÂÂ, but funny none-the-less.)
Shelley I hadn't seen since New Years, and we had a nice if quiet moment outside together as we reflected on similarities in our lives, albeit only that it seems like she's really unhappy with life and I am really unhappy with life. Deb C, long a friend on Xanga, fit in perfectly with the OKC crowd, probably more so than me. Bekah seems to be finding her footing, which is always a bit hard with us.
Carl is a blast, and the life of every moment he lives. Mark, Tracy, and Misty, I regret to say I didn't feel like I spent enough time with. I could have spent days with each of them. As was, I feel like I barely saw them, let alone had any kind of discussion, even though I did. But they had what I assume was a nice Sonic run together. Tracy looked like a rock star at the party, which shouldn't surprise anyone who knows what beautiful is. Mark is a rock star. And Misty deserves rock star status, if only because we've got more in common than we'd like to admit, and both of us seem stuck in places we can't get out of.
My two cameras I took to the party, stocked up on film, but not on batteries, which were all dead. So I took not a picture. Carl, however, did. And I'm hoping he'll send them my way, the same way Journey sends her their love.
The party also was a tool in what's about to come. I'm, again, abandoning this Xanga. I haven't, as of this writing, decided where I'm going. I have both another new Xanga and Blogger set up, along with a new AIM and E-mail, all with matching online identities. I just haven't decided on Blogger or Xanga...
The reason is multiple.
For one, I never expected to keep "ParadiseCSC" as a screen name. It was one I came up with one spring break, and has an inherit problem: everyone always asks what my middle initial stands for. They're referring to "CSC". "CSC"Â is not my initials, (those would be "CAC"Â); "CSC"Â stands for Continental Sports Channel, the fictitious channel that broadcasts Sports Night.
The other name, "I Lose Myself In the Crowd", comes from the song "Mary's Place" by Bruce Springsteen of the album The Rising. It's a song that I came to associate with my friends, and parties at the House Off Rye and college in general. But the lyric I chose refers to being able to lose oneself in the crowd of ones on party, to effectively be lost in your sea of friends.
Which is what happened Saturday. I was able to "lose myself in the crowd" in that I, as some mentioned, was both quiet and unassuming. The quiet was mostly due to having had surgery and speech was, at lengths, painful. But also due to the fact that I feel like a visitor in my own circle of friends, which is because I AM a visitor, because the circle isn't really mine anymore.
So I feel change of name, of once again establishing a coherent and vertically integrated online identity (in the way I had with "abyssglyder") is in store. Don't worry; you will all know what it is.
Another reason is that inspiration is returning. Not to say I haven't been inspired these last few months; I have, just not in the right ways. I spent the summer and early fall trying to save a failed relationship that never really existed and was never really capable of being saved. But I did so anyways, and it resulted in a sweltering run of emotions that culminated in a terrible, terrible fight. I say terrible if only because things were said to me, about me, that are pretty hard for me to forgive. That they were said to me, as I was fresh from surgery, literally the night after and two days following, only deepened the wounds. That they came from someone I had come to call close was simply salt on the rim.
So I feel like a change is due there, if only to distance myself from a Xanga where I've said things regarding said relationship that I couldn't bear wanting to re-examine. This is maybe why people don't blog about relationships (actually, I don't think that's true, as this blog played no part in the success or failure of said relationship. The success and ultimate failure was due to the fact that I am a great guy who is destined to have his heart broken by girl after girl for ultimately the same, if slightly different, reason: I am left, and always left even though I am still loved. I am simply left because nobody wants me, and if they do, they want me at some other time in thier life. So i am wanted, just never when I should be. I expect that sometime in the future a dozen girls will show up on my porch claiming that NOW is the right time in thier life to love me, and i will sadly have to turn them down because I settled for someone who was ready to want me then.) But the truth is: I'll blog about my life if that's the kind of blog I have set up. And if I start dating someone, (even someone who's my superior at work and could get fired for my blogging) well... if it's an open blog like this xanga was, then I'll post about it. Nothing I posted was deceiving or cruel, false or unkind, out-of-line or out-of-ordinary. This blog was about my life, and that's what I made it.
There's another big reason why I'm leaving this behind. I've been inspired, most recently by reading Chuck Klosterman and by kind words, to write blogs that are more substantial and more wordy (or "wordier" as my spell check says). Blogs like this xanga posts' "Amazed". I've actually written about a dozen different posts, all in various stages of completion, that were "more blog-like" and "less teenage diary", but didn't feel like this was the right arena for them.
My writing is what I do, and if I have a crappy half-assed blog about who I made out with the night before or what I ate for lunch...it's just a reflection of who I am. And my writing is stronger than "today I did this..." Which isn't to say I'm above Xanga; it just means I need to, for a time, have a blog more like what Misty had or what I started doing on my first blogger or what I could have done with this. And probably should have and probably meant to do. I just go caught up with life.
That is, a blog that will certainly tell you what I'm up to, but done so with posts of slightly more sophistication (read: spell check and less teen-emo).
Also, I'm totally and completely inspired by Studio 6o On the Sunset Strip, which I knew I would be, but still... This show will be my reason for living, and my reason for living will be to somehow work my way onto this show. I'm currently working several jobs I don't really like doing, and I'm grown comfortable in being satisfied with that. And I'm not, and being back in OKC and seeing that show drives this home, drives home why I moved out to LA to begin with.
I owe a lot of my writing to the authors and writers I like, as any good writer will say. We are only as good as our favorite pieces by others, and we never better. One of the writers whom I am smitten with (besides Sarah Vowell, who I truly am smitten with in every regard, or Chuck Klosterman, who smittens me), that writer is Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin created Sports Night and The West Wing, the former being my all-time favorite show and the latter being the definitive television show of our lifetime, the perfection any television show hopes to be, and the very pinnacle of the medium. It is the single greatest show in the history of television, and anyone who tells you differently is wrong.
Sorkin's Studio 60 is a blend of his previous shows, to a fault. But I think it's perfect. I think it's exactly what I want it to be, and the dozen people I encourage on here, Myspace, and through texts to watch it agree with me.
And that was one episode.
I've been on the set once, in May. And was knocked out of my proverbial ballpark. I read the pilot months before that, and was stunned breathless. To watch it last night was like... waiting for that first kiss from the girl you've had a crush on since high school, and never made the move on for fear she'd reject you, and then after a nervous night at the bar she takes the rug out from under you with a kiss that just leaves you on cloud nine.
(I should point out that THAT particular example didn't happen this trip, much to my chagrin and regret, but it wasn't for my lack of trying, except it was for my lack of trying, and I'll just wait until next time I'm home to once again wish for the moment to occur, knowing it never will.)
ANYWAYS...
We've now crossed over Albuquerque and New Mexico. I've now downed an orange juice with ice, the only time I ever seem to drink OJ anymore being on planes, and always with ice, because that's really the only way to drink OJ.
I didn't make it to The Library this trip, which is a little too bad. I hit up only two bars, each of them twice, and each of them in the company of beautiful women (Fox & Hound once with Misty, once with Bekah; Belle Isle Brewery twice with Kristin and Michael Downes, whom though I refer to here as a beautiful woman, is really just a handsome lady). I was in Norman for only about 15 minutes last Wednesday.
Not long enough to do much of anything except miss it.
I was able to eat at the vast majority of restaurants I wanted to. (Hideaway twice, Cocina De Mino twice, Earls, Johnny Carinos, Rib Crib, Sonic a least a slush a day, Braums a little too mucc... even Nothing But Noodles and Fridays.)
I saw everyone I pretty much wanted to see (Blake & Linds, Michael, Kristin, Grafton, Jordan, Lauren, Bekah, Misty, Tracy, Carl, Deb C, Mark, Robert & Christy, Kyle & Terri, Rebekah & Adam, Shelley,), though like I said, I did miss seeing a few people (Jessica, Ryan Reaves (!), Abbey, Amanda) that I usually take great joy in seeing.
I spent time with my family, with my puppy, who I am always most sad to leave. If only because, unlike people, she doesn't understand. Or I'd like to think she does, but the looks I get when I'm packing are enough to make me want to stop. "Over a dog!" Jack Nicholson's Melvin Udall sighs in As Good As It Gets...
But now Im leaving OK, leaving this xanga. To return to my home in California and to start a new blog, a new source for my writing prowess and hopefully with the goal in mind to write better and more fluently.
I'm faced with a pretty compromising situation at work, as I'm still on the fence with the person mentioned earlier. That and I hate that job. My other work is gearing up to become more high-paced, but not in a good way, as CD: USA gears up for it's live New Years broadcast. And I don't know if I'm going to or want to be involved.
I came to California to chase a dream; the dream is one I see others living, and I'm still chasing it. But I'm a little closer to catching it, if only because I'm around the block from it.
Anyways, thanks to those that made the last twelve days amazing. From borrowed books and movies, to lunches with friends, to bad movies, to last Saturday's crowd and the people who made it so great.
You'll all know soon enough where I end up, blogwise. It'll probably be Xanga, but you'll know.
Thanks for making blogging fun, thanks for giving me a reason to miss OKC and a reason to leave, thanks for encouraging me and thanks for allowing me to falter a bit as I search for my dream.
My biggest fear is failure, and they say no man is a failure if he has friends. So I guess I'm covered, and have nothing to fear.
Except, you know, being stung through the heart by a stingray's poisonous barb.
Crikey...
Familiar faces around me
Laughter fills the air
Your loving grace surrounds me
Everybody's here
Furniture's out on the front porch
Music's up loud
I dream of you in my arms
I lose myself in the crowd | | |
| Eischens & Blake's Party review forthcoming. (The former was greasy-awesome, the latter was just great-awesome.)
Black Dahlia and Hollywoodland reviews forthcoming. (The former blew, the latter was great.)
MUST DO TOMORROW, MONDAY: Everyone MUST watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. It's on at 9 Central, 10 Pacific. WATCH IT. It's on NBC. Tivo it, DVR it, whatever. Just WATCH IT.
It's going to be the best show of this season. I promise you. You WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.
WATCH IT!
Thanks to everyone I saw this weekend. For those that bailed (Jessica), you missed good times. For those that showed up... thank you.
| | |
| Okay. So add Shelley and Bekah to the lists.
It's shaping up to be a good weekend.
Updates:
I got my stitches out of my gums on Thursday. Doctor said i had four fully grown and insterted wisdom teeth, and that they were four of the largest he's ever pulled.
He could not explain my black eye. Hmmmmm....
Wednesday night i was at Blake, with Lauren, Jordan, Kyle, Terri, Linds... and then it was just Blake and I. Although, for awhile, Lauren was sitting in front of the TV like a 6 year old watching Project Runway, so... it was goodtimes.
After that, i went to Bell Isle Brewery to meet up with Michael Downes before he left town. Also, Kristin and Shaun were there. So... it was good times, but i left smelling like an ashtray.
Its part of why i hate bars in OK. you go out in CA, you don't come home smelling like a nicotine addict. In fact, for about the 4 months when Steph and I were friends, and she smoked, i'd NEVER smell like it. An hour and a half with Michael Downes and i smell like a fireplace. And we all know what Blake keeps in his fireplace.
Thursday was mostly spent with family (i went shopping, got a kick-ass "Magneto Was Right" t-shirt at Hot Topic. Also, got the final pieces for Marvel Legends: Onslaught. And... Greys Anatomy season 2. )
Thursday night i went out with Bekah. Drinks at Fox & Hound.
Today, Friday, promises to be amazing. A great crowd at Eischens. Tomorrow, a stellar crowd at Blake's house.
Yes, i know i've listened to this CD all week. It's because it's amazing. it's because i can't stop. it's because i can't wait for next Thursday.
But this weekend shall rocketh. Forget ACL... you wanna rock & roll all night? You wanna be saluted?
Be at Eischens tonight and at Blake's on Saturday!
Come, sing me a song...
| | |
| Okay, sportsfans. Here's the plan for this weekend:
Friday night - Eischens. Meet at Blake's house at 7:00ish, we'll leave from there at 7:30 to carpool.
If you're not carpooling, meet at Eischens around 8:00ish.
Right now, in attendance, if they don't bail: Carl, Tracy, Mark, Jordan, Blake, Jessica, Heath, Amanda, with Kristin possibly meeting us there. Post-Eischens, party at Lauren's apartment, maybe possibly?
Saturday - Though there has been rumblings of a mixed-grill at the Downes house for the game, it hasn't been confirmed.
CONFIRMED is Blake's party Saturday night. Arrive anytime after 7:30. This means between 7:30 and 8:30. Not, like, midnight.
In attendance, again if they don't bail: Jordan, Blake, Linds, Misty, Mark, Tracy, Carl, Jessica, Heath, Kristin, Kyle, Terri, Lauren, Deb C, Marla (?)...
There might be a Keg. Maybe a barn, maybe a piece of land. Maybe Shawn Clark if the stars have aligned and the gods are listening to my prayers.
There will be much drinking and festivities. Expect Blake to say something racist and absurd and unbelievable... every 10 minutes.
That's the weekend forecast. As always, invite friends to both nights. The more the merrier. If you're reading this, you're invited.
Don't disappoint me this weekend, weekend. | | |
| Tuesday, went to Stillwater. Exhausted myself. No, really, i was exhausted when i left the house. I am weak, and meds have kept me down.
Ate some ribs, enjoyed them, then was in pain. Slept all the way home.
Got home, went to see Misty. Talked about Hogwarts housing, sucky jobs in retail, the appeal of MTV to pre-teens, not having any prospects in love, and faux-falling in love based on blogs and writing. Suffice to say, it was awesome conversation with a truly awesome girl. I have missed her, a lot.
She gave me a book to read i've never heard of, written by a guy i have heard of.. Stephen Colbert. (No, it's not Tek Janson. That would be too awesome for words.)
Came home... took some meds. Felt bad, face hurt. Watched Rescue Me.
Realized somehwere that i want to be Michael Bluth from Arrested Development, but i'm probably closer to Buster or Gob. Or, god help me, Tobias.
Actually, I'm probably George Michael.
No, I'm Michael.
Yes, that's better. Now i can sleep. (I will wake on Wednesday to crash the weekly lunch gathering of Blake, Lauren, and Jordan. Someone text me with the time.)
This is Arrested Development... | | |
|
