July 19th, 2002. Friday
 
 

    This morning on the train, there was a girl sitting down, wearing a flowy, black polyester/nylon top with little straps.  She was leaning over to read her book, and sitting just about right under me.  The whole part of the train in front and to the side of her got a really good and close look at her breasts.  it was sort of absurd. I could see what kind of belt she was wearing.  Her belly-button was an innie.  This sort of thing happens a lot on the subway in the summer, but this was the most extreme case I've seen. I wonder how you can live as a woman for so long and still be oblivious to what's going on with your breasts.  Personally, I'd like to think that if I were a woman, I'd know what my breasts were doing at all times.  Also worth mentioning is the fact that her right breast was the first naked breast I'd seen in person in quite a long time now.

    Sitting next to this woman was an older gentleman, reading a book on women's hairstyles. Garrick assumed he was an old barber who wasn't making any money anymore and he decided he needed to keep up with the times, so he decided he had to cut women's hair as well.  He was looking at diagrams of bobbie-pins, and some sort of curling.  Garrick thought this might make a good foundation for a short story.

    So older brother Garrick spent the last few days in town.  He came up to NYC for the Apple expo.  In the three days he was here, he did a significant amount to my computer.  The most impressive of these was a program called Watson.  It's a search engine to end all search engines, as far as I can tell.  If you want to look up a movie, it'll list all the movies in your area, and it will also play the trailers.  It has translation programs, all sorts of reference books, recipes, baseball scores, phone directories, and a buncha other stuff.  Pretty amazing age we live in, no?

    After work last night, I met Garrick and we went to this place called Druids on 10th Ave. and 50th street.  Garrick just wrote a book on how to use Adobe Acrobat 5, and it was a little dinner party for other tech authors.  This seemed like just about the last place I wanted to go.  But a free meal and free drinks were offered, and I certainly can't afford to pass that up.  It was terribly hot and humid, and by the time we got up there I was a sweaty mess.  The party was out in the garden, so it was still hot. I tried standing in front of the air conditioning unit they had set up, which helped a bit.  I tried to be social, standing there while Garrick chatted with some authors.  I watched this very dorky man take many pictures of the scene with his digital camera.  I love my gadgets, and my camera as much as anything, but this little gathering made me sad.  Garrick said since he'd only written one book, he wasn't accepted yet.  I told him "Good."  After a while I just gave up, got a large whiskey on ice, and sat down by myself and watched the people talk.  One guy from BN.com wouldn't shut up, and it was fascinating to watch him talk about what his site does and what they buy.  He was also wearing what can only be described as a short sleeve sweater.  A light blue, textured and ribbed short sleeve sweater, with pleated pants. Really, this gentleman was a nightmare all around.  He looked a little like a short, less-charismatic version of Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

    So after a meal of ziti, cous cous, beef, and paella, I really couldn't take anymore.  I knew people would sit with us, and want to talk with us.  Garrick chatted them up. I ate.  I kept trying to come up with creative things to tell them when they asked me what I did for a living.  But I couldn't come up with much. So I just ate and drank.  bah.
    In the evening, Garrick and I spent a long while watching the first season of the Transformers on DVD. I'd bought this box set a few months ago, and hadn't watched the whole thing. It was really weird, the kind of memories that some of the episodes brought back.  It was also weird that these shows were on about 16-18 years ago.  Anyway, we had considered going to see Reign of Fire, the movie about dragons, but decided against it. I just liked to say "Let's go see that movie about dragons."  That had a nice ring to it.

    The night before we had seen Road to Perdition.  It was pretty good.  It was directed by Sam Mendes, the director of American Beauty, and you could really tell.  There was a shot of Tom Hanks and family sitting at the dinner table that was the exact same shot as the dinner table in American Beauty.  Having the same cinematographer just made this more obvious.  But the movie was beautifully shot.  Also noticeable was how loud every gunshot was.  For a movie about a hit man, there weren't that many guns fired.  Mostly single shots.  The loudness really added to the violence so much more than any additional amount of shooting could, especially since most of the movie was quiet and contemplative.  I thought that was an interesting and really effective sound editing choice.  The only thing I didn't like was that they were actually travelling to a place called "Perdition."  When we sat down in the theater, I said to Garrick, joking in my best dumbass voice "So, like is the 'Road to Perdition' a literal or figurative title?"  So I was quite surprised when Tom Hanks tells his young son that they're going to see a relative in Perdition.  Of course, the whole thing was based on a comic book, so that makes it a little more respectable.  The whole thing was sort of Garth Ennis.  Except less graphically violent.  Anyway, I'd say it was a pretty good movie, with some great shots.

    Plans for the weekend are all up in the air. The Coney Island Siren Festival is tomorrow, and I was all excited to go, but now I doubt I'll go at all.  There are only three or four bands I'd be intereted in seeing, and since there are two stages, two of them are playing at the same time. That'd be Sleater-Kinney and Blonde Redhead. I've seen both of them already though, so it's not a priority. The band I'd be really wanting to see tomorrow is the Shins. I've heard them a lot at Great Lakes, and I've been listening to a lot of their mp3s, and I really like it a lot. The lead singer sounds a lot like Brian Wilson.  Right now, though, it doesn't appear I'll be going. Most likely, I'll be at the beach instead.

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