12-01-2002 03:19 PM
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My Candyland Melted Down to Syrup

This is the first vacation in quite some time that actually feels like a vacation. I’ve done nothing since about Friday. Heidi and I got stuck in traffic in DC, so we were a little late to the Hurricanes/Red Wings game (6-4 Canes after 5 power play goals on five stright power plays… the building was as rocking as it has been since the playoffs last year, and it was a really good night to be a hockey fan). Then we hit THE ZYGOTE, because Jim Woods and Karl Rectanus were in town and wanted to play a show with some pals.

Saturday was one of those lazy days that rules beyond belief. I slept until about 1, got up and frollicked some, started to clean the house a little. Ewald dropped by, visiting NC for the Turkey Day, so we went out and drank beer and shot pool for a little while. When I got home, Heidi and I got dinner and watched a few more episodes of 24. We’re 13 hours through.

I also discovered on TNN the most fascinating piece of Saturday fluff– Slamball. Have you seen this? It’s like basketball, but there are four trampoline zones in front of each rim. Each team has four players on the court at a time, three attackers and a defender (the defenders are largely football players, while the attackers seem to be mostly basketball players). You get three points for a shot from beyond the arc, two for a regular shot, and three points for dunking, as long as your hands are on the rim. It’s absolutely fascinating to watch– this awkwardly graceful mix of streetball and flying. I chuckled when I started watching, but soon I was completely hooked. It’s got to be a killer on the knees, but I want to go play Slamball.

I went to lunch with Heidi’s mom, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew today. It was the first time I had been to any kind of family gathering with her since we had been dating– I’ve met her brother several times over the years, but he was outrageously welcoming and cool. It was one of those moments that really pointed out just how long I have known Heidi, which keep striking me as weird since I feel like I discover her more all the time.

12-03-2002 01:25 AM
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Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chariot

Overextending as usual, I agreed to coach two teams tonight. I was supposed to justwork with On the Spot as they prepare for their performance Wednesday (I am both nervous and very hopeful), but Toba’s Revenge wanted me even for an hour and forty minutes. So, I put 80 miles on the car and did both. Glad I did; two of the best rehearsals I’ve had so far with these teams.

Toba’s needed a boost to get them thinking more about character, so we did a Harold with accents and then a super hero Harold. Had we had time, we would also have done celebrity impersonation Harold and pirate Harold. They really, really wanted to do the pirate Harold. Ah, another time.

But now that they didn’t, I’m quite taken with the idea of a Harold where all the actors are pirates. Not scenes about pirates– that would be lame– but pirates trying to play a straight Harold. I’m afraid the grand production in my head outstrips anything Toba’s will create, as my imagined pirate Harold has a “Springtime for Hitler”-like production value.

The pirate Harold’s sound and movement opening proves problematic when one peg-legged pirate splinters his leg during a particularly active segment. He is running away from bears. He uses the sharp piece of wood to attack one of the bears, but is too caught up in the moment and actually wounds another pirate just beneath the eye. It isn’t funny. Thankfully they do not stop, and the injured pirate successfully makes the accident look like a bit.

One of the pirates says to another in a scene about a husband coming to grips with his wife’s breast cancer, “Me beloved jugs have run dry.” It is a bit. It isn’t funny.

The pirates attempt a trash can jam for one of their group games. But instead of a trash can, they mime a galley. It is mildly funny, because the song ends up being a love song for a tube of mascara, but hints at disgust for the woman wearing it. Pirates and their complex understanding of facade is more fascinating than funny.

The pirates do the best Harold they possibly can, despite their faults, but the groupmind is hindered by thoughts of mutiny, and their object work is hindered by the various hooks for hands and the lack of depth perception on the part of those that have eyepatches. They do a lot of bits. It is not performance-worthy.

After their Harold, the pirates choose not to go out drinking together. It’s almost certain that they will break up, and soon eight other practice groups in town will have a pirate on the roster.

I’m pretty sure that’s what it will be like.

12-03-2002 08:33 PM
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He Cleaned Up. She Took Him Back. He Fucked Up. She Kicked Him Out.

Looks like my pal Lil G will be joining Toba’s Revenge. That’s cool. I think he will like being with them and they will like him being with them.

Bobby Hobgood and I continute to work on the ever-more-ridiculous cooking show presentation on how to deliver effective presentations with technology.

I wrote a glowing recommendation for Katie Roberts to get a scholarship to college. (Not that Katie Roberts, NYC readers. It’s a pretty good improv name, though, huh?) She offered to make me baked goods in exchange. No baked goods necessary.

I’m off to coach On the Spot one more time before their show.

12-04-2002 08:44 PM
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But If I Work All Day on the Blue Sky Mine

North Carolina is lame in the snow, absolutely. It took me three hours to travel four miles. Silly.

On the Spot’s show is postponed, and won’t run until next semester. So, I guess it’s good to get some more time to work with them before they perform, but I know they were getting amped for it, and in some ways, I was too.

I saw a license plate: “MAN UNTD.” I know that it was supposed to be “Man United,” but damned if I could get the phrase “Man Untied” out of my head for like 20 minutes after that.

I fucking hate Christmas commercials. People make me fucking sick at Christmas.

12-09-2002 01:11 AM
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The Time on the Stove

The karmic payback for whining about the slow-moving traffic and the piss-poor judgement of 98% of North Carolina drivers in snow has been five days without electricity. There were a couple of surges close to midnight, just as I was finishing a Christmas mix CD for a fellow IRCer who won’t expect it. I tucked myself in just in time to hear the first of the branches falling, snapping so quickly that they sounded like gunshots (which have been known to happen in Durham, so I honestly didn’t realize it was the trees at first). Then, at the edge of sleep, I heard a particularly loud crash, and opened my eyes just enough to see the blinding white flash through the blinds– the transformer was blowing, and the power was gone.

When I woke Thursday morning, it was a little chilly in the house, and I had no hot water. I drove in to work, and found trees down everywhere: barring the streets, splayed across front lawns, denting hoods and breaking windshields, peeking through rooftops. Power lines hung draped over branches or lay in the middle of the street. I had to try four different routes to get to work, only to find that there was no power there either. (Nor is there now; my office remains dark and probably won’t be back up tomorrow.) And all the trees that remained standing were bowed, crystalline, and sparkling. It looked like nature had stopped to consider itself, and was weeping.

By midday Thursday, Heidi had joined me in my cold house because I have a fireplace. The roads were all but clear, and the ice was melting. But over a million people in the area were without power, so instead of enjoying the day, I began to hunker down to the task of keeping warm. The temperature in my house had dropped down past fifty. No one was selling any firewood anywhere– most of the stores were not open– so I began helping myself to whatever I could find at the edge of the roads in my neighborhood. I pilfered a couple of people’s yard waste bins, figuring that if they were tossing the remains of the trees that had damaged their property by falling so rudely, they wouldn’t mind me burning those remains. It would be some small form of retribution, right?

I spent most of the day Friday doing one of two things: maintaining the fire I had going, or leaving Heidi there while I went out for more wood. Most of what I could find on Thursday was smallish in nature. The thick logs that would have made good fires were mostly cut too long for my fireplace, and I don’t have a chainsaw or even a hacksaw. Other woodlooters were at work as well, so the pickins on the pre-cut wood got pretty slim. I resorted to bringing home whatever branches I could break off with my hands. It was silly in its primitiveness: here I was, wholly unprepared for the task of heating myself, comically clawing at thin branches that were still too alive to burn well, trying to keep a fire going by using the heat from these logs to dry the next, poking at the fire with gloves and a small garden shovel because I didn’t have fireplace tools until Heidi found the last set at a hardware store on Friday afternoon.

In my singlemindedness, so focused on the task at hand, I think I went a little crazy, and I began to feel acutely alone despite Heidi’s presence. I spent a lot of candle-lit time contemplating nothing in particular, and everything at once; it was as if, with my normal life stopped, I had the chance to step outside myself and look at my existence without judgement, without placing value anywhere, just examining from another viewpoint. Heidi got electricity back on Friday afternoon, but I stayed in the thirty-degree house with the faucets dripping to avoid freezing the pipes so that I could keep the cat warm on a night that was supposed to get down to eighteen degrees, and huddled in bed with two sweatshirts and a hockey jersey on, listening for something that would wake me back into my own life.

I slept past noon on Saturday, and had icy dreams, and when I got up, I started a wet-wood fire and settled down to finish The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and got to the part where Joe is the only survivor of an Antarctic winter, and it was as if that little bit of melodrama snapped me back into my own life. I was suddenly appreciative of everything I had examined for a day and half, and thankful for the chance to hibernate and do the thinking. I drove to Heidi’s, took a hot shower, and began to thaw.

12-10-2002 12:25 AM
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An Austrian Nobleman

Got some Christmas mixes made, packaged some half.com sale stuff, and read a little X-Men. It was a quiet day, for the most part. My house has power, finally, as of somewhere around 10:30 AM, but the office still doesn’t. I plan to go in for a while tomorrow to meet with someone, but won’t stay if it’s super-cold. I can finally start getting some work done at home.

Lex is telling LEARN staff that the School of Ed will be looking closely at timesheets. Like she has a damn thing to do with timesheets; she is just being evil, which is pretty ordinary, trying to stir up trouble however she can. In the comics, Lex Luthor wore a Kryptonite ring and eventually it gave him cancer– he had to have the hand removed. I wonder when some vile fate of her own doing will befall our real, live Lex?

12-10-2002 10:09 PM
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Part of This is Parting This

Reinstate Pete Rose.

12-11-2002 05:44 PM
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We Don’t Want to Learn But We Hate What We Don’t Understand

Yesterday was one of those days where nothing seemed to work right in tech-land: servers weren’t sending outgoing mail, students couldn’t take tests in their online courses, we still had no power on Wilson St. I couldn’t sleep last night, fretting on it. In bed at 12, turned the light back in at 2, sought solace in comic books until 4, yawned through work today.

The solutions which evaded us yesterday were pretty simple. Mail was fixed this morning, power restored last night, and the testing problem was so simple that we had to call in a consultant to think of the most elementary step– a lame little secrity fix that we’d applied last week.

I like only one thing about the approaching Christmas season, and I think I’ll miss out on it this year: Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas. Best Christmas special ever. I watch it every other year at the Spencers’ Christmas special party; it is, in fact, the only reason I am really motivated to attend any Christmas function. I have vivid memories of watching Emmet Otter as a youngun on the couch on Museum Dr. in Charlotte, curled up with an afghan and a cup of hot chocolate and my mom. I mentioned last Christmas that I had watched it, and mom just teared up, remembering how happy she was in her 30’s, before her marriage to my father became a stagnant pool, when she was convinced that she had built the house, the family, the life of her childhood dreams.

I’ve downloaded some of the mp3s from Emmet Otter: The Nightmare, who scared me so badly as a child, especially the snake who plays bass and the fish who rides in the back of the car and so rudely spits on the townsfolk, are so much fun to listen to. I guess it appeals to the grinch in me: it’s Christmas music that sounds like Muppets singing Kiss and is about how terrible the people are. With no mention of Christmas.

I know that Emmet Otter is nothing more than a Muppetized “Gift of the Magi,” but to me, it seems like the one true thing about Christmas. Emmitt coaxing ma into the ice slide that Pa had left them, Ma leaving Emmet a note right next to Emmet’s note, and Emmet and Ma singing “Hole in the Washtub.” Just chilling together. Enjoying each other. It’s the best thing about Christmas.

And then there’s Chuck, saying, “I’m HUNGRY.” Chuck rules.

I guess as much as I hate Christmas, there’s a piece of me that still wants to be eight, crying when Emmet and Ma lose the contest.

12-16-2002 11:29 AM
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It’s Always Funny Until Someone Gets Hurt, and Then It’s Just Hilarious

Friday night, the LEARN NC Help Desk made its debut as an improv team. Bill Cochran, Jon Karpinos, Corey Brown and I played, and were joined by CeCe Garcia, who started her tenure as a LEARN NC employee that day at 3 PM. It was her first improv show. She was awesome. Larry Larr the Wizard joined us. I think we have plans to continue performing every so often as the Help Desk. It made me realize how tremendously lucky I have been to hire good kids.

Saturday was a trainwreck named Jorge. Jorge is one of the ex-boyfriends in the Hall. He called a while back and was going to meet his parents in Greenville (he is from Venezuela) and could he stay with Heidi. So he was coming on a night when she was going to be having a party for her ESL students, and he was going to stay.

Long story short: Jorge pretty much expected that Heidi would fall back into his arms when he appeared, and treated her like a real jerk when she didn’t. He made every attempt when he knew I was around to try to do shit like hold her hand, or whisper in her ear, or stroke her hair. And Heidi, who isn’t one to be very forceful, didn’t set real good limits. So hell yeah, I was jealous. What made it worse was that CeCe was at the party, she knew it was tearing me up, and she was having fun with it, talking about “el amor de Jorge.” (I love CeCe to death, but I was gonna punch her in the head. In retrospect, I wanted to punch Jorge in the head, but I had no rational reason for that, since he was not directly doing anything to me, and Heidi’s old enough to set her own boundaries for her ex-boyfriends. So I projected. Pretty mature, huh?)

Heidi and I talked it over, and everything is cool now. As we fell asleep Saturday night (and the whole Jorge ordeal did not end until mid-day Sunday), she admitted to a small lie she had told me Saturday night, one that was so inconsequential that she wasn’t even sure why she told it (and neither was I, since the truth was actually way more comfortable for me). But she couldn’t sleep and didn’t feel very good about it, and I respected that she told me the truth. But little things like that eat me up inside, and have so little to do with anyone but me and my terrible dating history.

I am in a wonderful relationship with a wonderful woman, and I hate the jealous, insecure, little person that I become when I begin to doubt myself, and that’s all it is. I really want to just enjoy this relationship. I really want to let myself.

12-18-2002 09:33 AM
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Soon You’ll Be Much Easier to Capture

Eat my ass, Christmas music on rock stations.

Heidi and I decorated her mother’s tree last night, which made me feel really domestic. The upcoming slew of Christmases with Heidi’s family pretty much cements the fact that we’re very, very much together.

It’s not like you haven’t noticed if you have been reading this journal since August, but I’m always a little dumbfounded when I step back and think about it.

I’m avoiding working on a Godspeed you black emperor! review for salon. Which is, in turn, avoiding doing the work I know I should do today.

12-20-2002 12:24 AM
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Floating Weightless

I decided to take tomorrow off from work, which will give me a perfect record in December– no full work weeks. With the ice storm and the holidays, I’ll manage to feel like a complete slacker, which I pretty much am. Rock on, irresponsibility! Whaaaooooh!

Tara Powell e-mailed me today and asked if I would be interested in reviewing any books. She’s the editor of the Carolina Quarterly, which I had once hoped to publish poetry in. Funny that now I may have a pretty decent shot at publishing reviews of other people’s poetry.

One of the books she gave me is called Monster Zero and all of the poems are about Godzilla. I was pretty sure that it was self-published, but it turns out that it is not, and the guy has published some of the poems individually in some decent, if not awesome, magazines like The Cimmaron Review. Amazing! I’m looking forward to plowing through it; if it’s good, then I’ll be amazed, and if it’s bad, then I’ll be amused. Win/win.

Greg Maddux stays in Atlanta, so if life isn’t perfect, at least it’s not a total let-down. I will hate seeing Tom Glavine in a Mets uniform.

12-23-2002 10:08 AM
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Hold Your Hand and You’d Understand

Hmm, well, I guess my celebration concerning the Braves was ill-timed, and now Kevin Millwood is in Philadelphia.

Spent Saturday night in Thomasville doing Efird Christmas, which consisted of some good food, a cute baby, and my first White Elephant. They called it Chinese Christmas, though of course Heidi could not resist telling them that there’s really nothing Chinese about it. Much of Chinese Christmas concerned goofing with Heidi’s dad, who brought an Elvis CD and was determined to take it home, too. After a post-game swap, I had the CD and had been relieved of the wine rack which would have no doubt added an air of class to my kitchen but would also no doubt have been used to store magazines, so I made sure he went home with Elvis. Heidi may not spend much time with him, but there’s no harm in doing a little brown-nosing with Ric Efird, no?

My sincere hope was that I was not an a-hole at any point throughout the evening, though I cannot be sure that I wasn’t.

Went to a bonfire last night at Jen and Peter O’Bryan’s house out in Pittsboro (seems like I spend more and more time in Chatham County all of the sudden) after their Level 2 show. Their group really worked together and had such a great bonding experience, hanging out with each other on a pretty regular basis.

Now I am working a short shift at LEARN. I hope to waste the rest of the day with Anthony and Rick. Rick came down Friday to see the ZYGOTE show, which ended up being Anthony, Jim Woods, Eric Hunicutt, George Serad, Jeff Foxx, Matt Cunningham, Larry Howard, Jorin Garguilo, Brian Williams, and me.

12-29-2002 12:59 PM
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I’m Not About to Blow It Now For All the Cows

Hmm. I have been strangely unmotivated to write in this journal of late. Then when I tried, my computer crashed mid-entry.

Christmas was wonderful this year, I think because Heidi is so easygoing and her family was so welcoming and completely unfrustrating. It was a good move to avoid my family this year. I was supposed to go with Heidi to her mom’s side of the family’s Christmas in Dillon over the weekend, but they ended up going down early and I stayed here to tech the Arnie Sykes show at ComedyWorx. I think it’s good that I didn’t go– she needed time with her grandfather, who is not doing so well.

My dad joined me, Heidi, and her mom Ruth at Ruth’s house in Chatham County (a house that despite its Chapel Hill street address is nowhere near Chapel Hill) on Christmas Eve, which had the potential to be mad awkward, but was totally delightful. I had given Ruth Apples to Apples for Christmas, so we sat around and played that for a couple of hours and had a great time. It was one of the few times that I can remember my father actually being social with anyone, and he was a complete gentleman.

Anthony and I played in the ComedySportz matinee yesterday and had a good goof-off time. It was Nathan Garrett’s first show, so we just kinda went out there trying to make sure he had a good time.

Spent a lot of time kicking ideas around with Zach Ward… i’m looking forward to the Dirty South Improv festival.

12-31-2002 11:59 AM
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Dropping Like Flies

Dr. Wade thinks my revelation that the picture of Heidi and me was my favorite Xmas gift is, and I quote, “hopeless.”

I got real drunk last night and rearranged and cleaned the living room. I should get into more drunken cleaning fits, as the rest of the house would benefit from such deviant behavior. If I get real drunk, I may be inclined to fix the holes in the wall in my closet that Bryan left when he came over and played with DirectTV.

There is a tree service truck outside my office window that is making me so irate that, if I had a bazooka, I would blow the holy living hell out of it.

Speaking of hell, I started reading the first collected Lucifer.