August 5th, 2002. Monday
Various interactions this weekend, mostly with various ladies. Just coincidence, and nothing spectacular. On Thursday night, I had dinner with Jen K, whom I had not seen in quite some time. I met her and her boyfriend at the 12th St. Bar and Grill. I've noticed in the last few weeks while trying to plan a rendezvous with Jen K that she and her boyfriend are completely, 100% inseparable. I like her boyfriend a lot, and he's a good guy, but it's just really weird that they've become one of those couples. Everytime I would suggest a day, she said she said ok, and she'd check to make sure her boyfriend could make it that night. It wasn't even a "Ok, let me see if he wants to come," it was a "I can't go without him." I just feel like I can't be as forthcoming and comfortable with her when it's not just her I'm talking to. This is nothing against him or them. I'm just not good friends with him. Another pattern I see lately in my behaviour is that I really don't like hanging out in groups of people anymore at all. Lately whenever I got out with one person, it's great, but when there are as few as three or four people, I can't stand anybody. The combination of people makes them all insufferable to me. Ok, insufferable is a little much. But I don't have fun. Anyway, the dinner with Jen K and friend was more pleasant than I'd expected, though the Tuscan bread used to make my sandwich did damage the roof of my mouth a bit.
Friday, I was alone at work, and had to cover for the two girls who were out. That was unpleasant. After work, James and I went back to Brooklyn and planned on barbecuing, but the weather prevented that. It was another of those spectacular summer thunderstorms. Insanely loud thundercracks directly over our heads. We stood out front and watched for quite a while. It was quite a show. We played some mildly satisfying guitar in my room for a while, then Jed, James and I went down to Great Lakes. I'd been drinking pretty steadily since getting home around seven, but had stopped around 9, and we didn't go out until about 10:30, so by that point I had phased from a little buzzed to just tired. I had no fun at all, and felt sick for most of our stay. Jed got talking to these atrocious girls at the end of the bar, and I wanted none of that, so I just left. As soon as I got out the door I noticed that I'd been having serious stomach pains and barely made it home.
Saturday was spent mostly cleaning the apartment so Jed and Dylan could show it to prospective roommates. My neighbor Miss Charming Melodee was also moving out that day, a development that I must admit held my interest. I talked with her a bit, and her mom made me feel even worse about not finding an apartment yet when she said I'd better hurry because I was running out of time. I had to remind myself that it was only the third day of August. In the evening, Jed and I were sitting on the stoop trying to find something to do that night, as Miss Charming Melodee was packing up the last of her stuff. Her now-former roommate Rachel was out there to bid her adieu, and I talked with her a bit after she left. Rachel is a remarkably good judge of character. She's pretty good at figuring out how people think. Or at least, she's good at figuring out how I think. Almost everytime I talk to her, it always strikes me how astute her off-handed observations can be. She also says a lot of things like "You just seem to really like to talk about things that have to deal with you." That isn't that impressive, obviously, but there are a lot of other little things that I find very interesting. It's a shame I'm not interested in her, because we have a lot in common.
Jed and I went to the bar Boat in Carroll Gardens, which was mostly a bust. We came home, cooked something to eat, and called it a night.
On Sunday, I got a call from Rodzilla while I was getting lunch. I called her back, and she immediately asked "Why are you being a jerk?" I'd been anticipating this conversation, and was hoping to avoid it. She'd called me on Friday and I neglected to call her back. And she said I'd been weird to her over the phone the last few times we talked. I'm just really pissed off at her, and I'm not 100% sure why. Though I have an idea. The thing is, I'm really not sure what I'm getting out of our relationship right now. She's leaving for Boston in ten days, and I don't know if I want to see her before she leaves. What really pisses me off is that when I voice my problems, her response is always so condescending and/or dismissive that it engrages me. Part of me thinks I'll regret it if I don't see her at all, but part of me doesn't even care. I feel somehow wronged, and I can't figure out if it's justified or not. And I really don't want it to be one of those things where I get pissed off, then apologize later. And again, I don't know if any of it's justified. Though I suspect it is. I suppose we'll see each other before she leaves though, if only so that nothing gets left unsaid, and I don't have to think about it anymore. I wouldn't have even thought about any of this if she hadn't called, but now i'm just in a shitty mood about it.Anyway, I must've ridden my bike for a dozen miles yesterday, I was so utterly and thoroughly bored. I loaded some new music onto my mp3 player and rode all over Park Slope. I'm pleased with the recent addition of Beulah to my musical landscape. I'd downloaded a lot of their songs months ago, but never really listened to them. They were playing on random on my computer on Friday, and it turns out I love their music. A more melodic and less weird Neutral Milk Hotel.
The only mildly amusing parts of the day were when Jed and Dylan interviewed prospective new roommates. Particularly hilarious were the conversations that would take place as soon as the prospective roommates were out the door. Mostly just obscene suggestions and plans. A couple of very attractive girls came over, and we are optimistic that they may actually move in.So while I was watching the end of Field of Dreams on cable last night, upstairs neighbor Morning came down and wanted to see if anybody wanted to go see Signs, the new M. Night Shyamalan movie. So I says sure. I'd been curious about it anyway. While I can't say how good of a movie it was from a screenwriting and story perspective, I must say I can't ever remember being that consistently creeped out at a movie, ever. The first time you see a shadowy figure standing on a rooftop, it just scared the pants off you. The whole theatre screamed. What was so great about it was that almost all the creping out was done by suggestion. He really knows how to shoot a movie like this. There was one shot, where one of the characters is walking out of the basment into the boarded up house, and sparse light is flooding in. It's shot from the bottom of the stairs, and after the guy gets up the stairs and turns off camera, he just holds the shot for a good half minute. Or at least it seemed that way. The way the rest of the movie was shown, that shot seemed to last forever. It was so suspenseful. I also thought the music was a great touch. It was done in a really cheesy, dramatic fashion, like old sci-fi movies, with trumpets blaring at every surprising scene. As good as the movie was, Morning and I both found it ultimately unsatisfying. He spends the whole movie suggesting and barely showing you anything, and in the last five minutes, he just says "Ok, here it is." I don't know how he could have made it any better. He kind of painted himself into a corner with the whole alien thing, and by the end he turned it from a "The Others" kind of spectacular creep-fest into a something entirely different. I guess it was supposed to be about Mel Gibson's faith. He played a reverend who left the church after his wife was killed. But if that was what the movie was ultimately about, it didn't come through too well. Still, I'd highly recommend it. It was really cold in the theatre, which made the chills even worse.
In the evening, I talked to Kathy until about two in the moring. She made me feel a bit better. I had a disconcerting dream segment about Rodzilla, and I woke up feeling rather upset.
I go through my weblogs pretty consistently, and it's been a while since I detailed some disturbing referrals. I misspelled "crusing" on one entry, about gay guys cruising in Prospect Park, and I get at least two hits a day from a Google search by someone looking for "gay crusing." Other somewhat disturbing searches in the last few days have been:
"electro, simulator + gay"
"gay men pooping"
"fucking horses" (this comes up disturbingly frequently)
"+San Francisco +Uterus +watching +picture" (I have no idea)
"weird breasts"
"shit in the garden + vomit"The really sad thing is that when I see 90% of the searches, I know exactly which entry they point to.
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Past Aggravations and Regrets
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