02-01-2003 12:17 AM
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In My Bed Upstairs and We Could Still Feel the Bass

Heidi and I saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding tonight, which made us laugh uproariously. We also hit the Upscale Dollar Store, which is so upscale that it has mylar balloons for $1.50. We walked out having show tremendous restraint. Eight purchases, three of which have a vanilla scent of some sort and two of which were travel shoeshine kits.

We ate at Subway, where we had a delightful conversation about pooping. We talked about 30-minute shitters, these people who disappear into the bathroom for eons on end. She posited that people who take a long time to shit are using the time to think and be alone because that is, for some people, the only time they can really sit down to think. I think they’re whacking off.

We discussed the relative merits of an anthropological study of pooping habits, but since anthropologists have to do all that field research, Heidi would have to go poop with people. My basic assumption is that her presence would pretty much change their behavior… who would act the same way if there were someone else in there with you?

It raised the larger question for me, as to whether any serious cultural study can be undertaken by an outsider, since behavior changes when you are being observed, especially by a stranger. I assume that your deviation decreases over time, but I don’t think that data will ever be free of the skewing effect. Heidi’s thought about that a lot, as she’s spent an inordinate amount of time debating between sociology and anthropology, which are pretty damn close to each other with two exceptions: a) sociologists do more quantitative analysis, and anthropologists do more qualitative analysis, but on the same data, and b) the two fields hate each other.

The irony that I got actively engaged in a very academic conversation about anthropology and sociology only through the lens of pooping habits is not lost on me. We also talked about Dutch toilets. I was unaware that the Dutch were so ingenious about looking at their own poop.

Every time I hear Coldplay, I think the lead singer has been listening to someone else. Sometimes he sounds like Bono and sometimes he sounds like Dave Matthews. I can’t make up my mind if I like it.

02-01-2003 07:44 PM
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The Comfort of a Knowledge of a Rise Above the Sky Above

Rebecca and I agreed to do one last exchange of stuff– a year and a half after we broke up. She needed her printer back, so I took her some CDs, an old stereo, and Mr. Printy. I figured that if she wanted the printer, I’d at least ask for a CD that I knew she had. I’m reasonably certain that she had other stuff (she also returned a t-shirt, a pair of boxers, and a stereo that I am not sure was ever mine, but which I accepted), but I didn’t really want to ask for it.

I’m wondering what the statute of limitations on asking for your stuff back after a break-up is. I mean, I’m certainly not peeved that she wanted her printer, and I certainly wasn’t upset to give back the other stuff, which had been occupying shelf space in the basement at LEARN NC. And I was pleased to get my Jump Little Children CD back, because a) I had the case, and empty CD cases drive me nuts, and b) it’s a fine CD.

But I don’t know that I would have ever broached the subject. It seems to me that after a certain point, you just really don’t need the stuff back. But then, she had a CD, and I had a printer. I guess that if it were ignore the breakup statute of limitations or shell out $100 for a new one… well, I would shell out the $100, but I think asking for it back was probably a sensible move.

Rebecca brought her boyfriend Corey to the swap, which we did at LEARN NC (which I thought was an odd place to do it, but that was her recommendation). He seemed like a nice guy. I think she may have known him for a while… he may have been one of the two male friends that I never met in the two years we were together. I felt bad for him though, because I just wouldn’t have wanted to go to one of those stuff swaps. The situation wasn’t awkward. I feel like Rebecca and I have made our peace enough. But when I tried to put myself in his shoes, I just couldn’t envision circumstances where I’d really be all that hot-to-trot to meet my girlfriend’s ex while they exchange the last remnants of their relationship.

I gave Cory a painting of Rebecca that Dan Parrish had done that I’d had in a drawer in my office, figuring that he would probably appreciate it more than I could at this point. I didn’t know if that was cool or not; I can see how it would have made him feel more awkward, but I hope that he puts it up and enjoys it.

02-02-2003 10:45 AM
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Guide You Out of Triple Stage Darkness

Just something I was goofing off with.

I’ve spent the morning thinking about granularity.

I may end doing something horrible to a group of people. It’s a business decision. I don’t know when I became like this.

I have an agreement with Ellen Bush that I will send out three batches of poems. And now that I go to look for poems to send, I can’t find them on any hard drive. Damn it.

02-02-2003 08:42 PM
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The Leave, The Leaving

Pictures from Ginger and Mesha’s visit last week. Obviously very candid shots.

I went to Blem’s house last Monday, and took some pictures of Abby. I never caller her Abby– since Fuzz named the cat “Baby Titty,” that’s pretty much what I call her. TT for short. Blem came over today and we went and looked for houses for sale in the general vicinity. She seemed to really like some of the townhouses being built just across MLK Parkway.

02-04-2003 06:34 PM
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They Say It’s Your Birthday

I’m in a hotel in Greensboro right now, chilling out and getting my IRC fix after the first day of a two-day workshop. I’ll be here until Friday with the workforce development conference. Hotels do seem to toss me into fits of extreme pensiveness, which I will try to drown out with plenty of Internet and TV. I’d like an explanation as to why “Home Improvement” is playing on four channels.

It’s Heidi’s birthday! And I’m not around for it! Boo on me, boo on circumstance, boo on missing her 26th.

02-04-2003 11:33 PM
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Teeth in the Back of Your Mind

I recovered 438 poems tonight from a zip disc that I didn’t even remember making. 438. That’s everything I wrote between 1992 and 1999. And I think I can now account for everything I wrote in the last three years, which is admittedly almost nothing.

I am rediscovering my 22-year-old self, the kind that wrote love poems to no one at all, and was really scared of being alone and not being alone.

ANOTHER SAD YEAR

Loss has come on stilts,
looms between power lines
and treetops, stark figure
atop skinny limbs
intersecting the yellow
lines of the street.

It dodges the stoplights.
It clonks toward you.
You wonder—would it
follow if you cut
through the cars
at street’s edge?

Its feebling shins
splint in the chase.
You slip through
bush and swingset,
hurrying glances
over your shoulder.

Words taste like
cherries in your
throat as you wheeze.

02-05-2003 10:28 PM
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And Instead of Saying All of Your Goodbyes

UNC is playing Duke tonight.

I’ve been reading a lot of junk in newspapers and on ESPN.com this season about Duke/Maryland being one of the best rivalries in college basketball. Bullshit.

I know that Carolina blew chunks last season and certainly hasn’t been brilliant this season (well, maybe right at the start of the season), but there is nothing in basketball that comes close to Duke/Carolina. It’s an amazing rivalry with a buttload of history between two schools that are eleven miles apart and have two totally different cultures.

Carolina is winning at the half. It’s a wonderful thing that no matter how good or how bad either team is in any given season, these games are always intense, always heartbreaking, always supercharged. UNC can go 1-15 in conference play, but if the one win is against Duke, the season had some redeeming qualities. (Of course, that would indicate that Clemson had finally won at the Dean Dome, which is destined to never happen.) And Duke fans will sometimes try to act all superior, but they feel the same way. Watching Carolina win at Cameron Indoor is even better, because to their credit, Duke fans are the best in basketball, and it’s always a pleasure to shut them up.

Can Carolina win? It is the first game against Duke for the freshmen, who carry the team, and no matter what anyone says, the biggest game so far in their careers at UNC. So, go Carolina! Make the Dookies bleed!

Random notes: My hand is tingling like I may have carpal-tunnel to worry about again. I wrote a poem at lunch, something I hadn’t done in… well, months. The last one before this is in this journal, and I’m pretty sure it was summertime. I’m procrastinating, and it may keep me from going into my presentation prepared for tomorrow.

02-07-2003 09:30 AM
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It’s Only You Who Can Tear Me Apart

I fell asleep early last night. It was a pretty uneventful day; I did three sessions at a conference, which ranged from really bad to really good. I ate pizza in my hotel room for dinner because it was snowing and I didn’t feel like navigating the world where no one can drive in the snow. I walked around the mall for a while working on a project. IMing Anthony and talking to Heidi for 20 minutes were the highlights of the day.

Heidi has a job interview today. I hope she gets it, and immediately becomes tethered to the Raleigh/Durham area for a few years. I can’t help it; I have this terrible fear of her leaving the country for a year or two. If I were a bigger person, I would be able to let her go when she needs to. And maybe by the time she needs to, I’ll be better able.

02-07-2003 11:25 PM
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You Were The Sunshine

Finally home! Spent time watching this week’s 24 and the Girl Crush video, which has renewed my love of all things Baku.

02-09-2003 11:27 PM
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Nice Limbo You Have Here

Yesterday was a trainwreck– On the Spot managed to make me frustrated because they didn’t have their stuff together and we ended up wasting a lot of time due to poor planning and not listening. The little time we did have to actually rehearse went smashingly, it was just just infurating to lose an hour to one of the members unable to follow directions for picking me up and not having the common sense to make things go more smoothly. Plus, I missed Bowling for Columbine with Heidi because they didn’t plan their auditions well.

Then I felt ill most of the evening, because we ate at Rudino’s, which may or may not dip all of their foodstuffs in a thin sheath of grease before serving.

Today was kick-ass from the get-go. We woke up and did our Sunday lunch ritual– if you’d told me that I would ever make a ritual out of Taco Bell, I would have said you were daffy. Amos Brown, Leo, and Dave Sherson came over for some Starcraft. I didn’t play a ton, and Heidi and I drove to Chatham Co. to feed Fat Mama, who is lonely while Ruth is in Australia. We took a small tour of the Efird land, which spans 15 acres. I’ve decided that it would be cool to buy an acre or two from them if a) they’d consider selling it to me when b) they get the property settled from the divorce, which could easily be… well, never.

Heidi and I are rearranging my room, and the current configuration has much better feng shue, for certain. We bought a nifty touch-lamp at Wal-Mart for the cube that has found itself acting as a bedside table, and after Japanese steakhouse dinner with Bryan and Kim, we picked up the new printer, which prints beautifully. At least the test page–we don’t have the parallel cable to connect it.

02-10-2003 11:25 PM
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I Was Just Wondering If You’d Come Along

I am ticklish. Very ticklish, unfortunately; the slightest touching, at the right time and in the right place, can send me up the wall. I tend to have the unfortunate habit of falling for girls who like to run their fingers along any of the following places, any of which may make me shreik with tickle-terror: arms, stomach, neck, legs, elbows, head, face, back, shoulders, knees, feet.

Heidi especially likes to just lie there and cover a two-inch radius on my arm with her thumb. It’s a small thing, really. A light touch in a two inch radius on my arm. And it gives me fits.

As Heidi and I began dating, she simply could not be tickled in any way. It just wasn’t possible. But recently I have discovered that by nuzzling loudly on her neck, I can make her as sensitive as I am to tickling.

This is like a goldmine for me. I’m a kid again. And I’m paying her back for months of torture.

It’s on.

02-12-2003 01:49 AM
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Go Home and Spend Your Life Alone With the Stereo

Bryan and I are up late. He’s adding a server to the household configuration, I’m responding to e-mail and PMs. The sweet printer will be up, so I can print some labels and mail the mix I made for Dan Telfer. (I dropped mad ducats at Staples today for the printer cable, some CD labels, and some blank business cards.) We’re spewing random lines from a Pablo Francisco album.

It looks like my hopes of going to business school for the summer, which had previously seemed so remote that I don’t even think I had mentioned them in this journal, will not be dashed. My boss has agreed that the program would have lots of value and that LEARN should foot the $2,000 price tag to develop me! Whoo-hoo! I’ll have a bunch of projects in that four weeks, much of which will be LEARN-oriented, but I’d be lying if I said that I was not planning to apply some of that to DSI.

Speaking of DSI, I’d been wondering why Zach had not been picking up his cell all week. He called just after midnight from a gig in Mexico. He said he got it last Friday and flew down last Sunday, and now he’s spending part of February in Cancun. My heart is bleeding, bleeding for Zach.

…And for other improv friends, two of whom have good casting news and deserve all their happiness (because neither of them expected it, despite the fact that all of their friends did).

Someone whose opinion I really respect (because he’s outspoken, pointed, and often very right) PMed me tonight with a kind compliment, very much out of the blue. It made my night. In a silly way, but it made my night. This reminds me that I should return that karmic favor more often than I do.

02-13-2003 10:28 PM
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Jimmy Stewart Followed Kim to Where Your Portrait Hangs on the Wall

I’ve worked at home the last few days, which was great because I was more productive here than I usually am at the office, despite the fact that there were so many distractions, like TNN showing the A-Team. Bryan was here, sick with a sinus thingie, which made me really want to slack off. But the workload kept me from doing so.

I sent three batches of poems to magazines today, and Ellen delivered the goods on hers as well. Same three magazines. Right on! I hope that she is accepted and it gets her publishing; that she does not have a book is criminal.

Heidi called after class and was sour. I don’t like not being able to cheer her up.

02-14-2003 05:03 PM
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Love, Love… What More is There?

Some people are not having a happy V-day. Assistant Jess is one example:

My hair, too:

But I guess I do all right.

02-15-2003 10:53 PM
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Don’t See the Glass as Half-Empty, See the Half Full of Shit

The Hurricanes had the courtesy to thump the Capitals in their first home game in two weeks… given that there has not been much to look forward to, hockey-wise, I’ll take anything I can get. Hooray for the Canes!

Two nitwits got married on the ice with the most annoying local radio personality alive at their sides. Maybe I am an asshole, but I pretty much think you’re a dick if you can let your wedding be reduced to a radio promotion.

Yeah, that is the mascot in a tuxedo. Lame.

Heidi and I went and saw Frida after the game. I was really impressed by Julie Taymor’s direction. The movie had a wonderful feel to it and I was impressed. Did this movie get left out of the Oscars? And if so, how?

Spent 8 horus today with On the Spot– they had their first show this evening. And, all told, it was not bad. They had trouble in the third beats, the opening games never really connected well with the rest of the piece, and they dropped the ball on some of the games, but they hit some things right on the head and the second Harold of the night had some of the best work they’ve done. They had in the neighborhood fo 40 people, which I thought was outstanding, and they looked like they had fun after getting over the initial nervous shock.

I’ve had an enormous flood of PMs of late, which is weird but very cool. Now I need to go reply to them!

Sorry, Katy Jack, looks like your license plate is taken.

02-16-2003 11:43 PM
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And Don’t Forget to Give Me Back My Black T-Shirt

Quiet day inside. It’s ice-storming, so I never left the house. Heidi and I have spent the day making tacos, watching season one of the Sopranos, making her a mix CD, playing with kitty, doing laundry. Don’t know if I will end up at work tomorrow.

eBay has me in its thrall again; I ended up with a Chicago Cubs jersey from the 80’s and a UNC hockey jersey. Total damage: $50. This two days after I dropped $60 on half.com for Poet’s Market 2003 and Sim City 4. I should cut that shit out for a few weeks.

02-18-2003 06:02 PM
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It’s All Illusion, Anyway

I didn’t feel like I could journal in earnest yesterday, since I managed to not even leave the house. The ice is all melting now, and I was able to leave today. I’ll be back at work tomorrow, which I’m a little bitthankful for but also dreading a little bit. I have enjoyed working from home. I’ve gotten stuff done, too! (Though admittedly, I wrote an article today when I really should have been working on a presentation that’s going to be ultra-lame).

I think the chance to be reflective was neceessary, but I also think I probably squandered it with a lot of thinking about little, inconsequential stuff. If I were prone to invention, I would be rivalling Cosmo Kramer right now with my insignificant, impractical inventions.

I’m packing for Utah and putting together my notebook for that, and installed some forums for Implosion, which I expect to tweak tonight.

02-21-2003 11:40 AM
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Yeah, I’m All Those Things

I swear, I never meant for this to turn into an every-other day journal. I do have thoughts every day.

I’m in Utah. I finally got in about 11:30 local, and ryloc and Joe Beatty met me at the airport. We picked up Larry Ganz and had a beer and chatted. We went to bed when my body thought it was around 4 AM.

I have been so focused on the classes that I’m going to be doing that I have spent the majority of my time over the past two days preparing for it.

Wednesday night, Pop and Taylor came to Raleigh and joined us for the hockey game. I miss being around Taylor… the older he gets, I think the less and less I feel like a brother to him. Which is fair, he’s 9 now and I have not been there so much. It makes me sad… I remember growing up, I had a friend named Emily Sherman and she had a half brother who was 38 when she was 14. I always thought that was creepy as hell, because he was like this alien who shared blood with her. I don’t want to be like that.

02-22-2003 11:16 AM
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You Told Me I Was the Only One

Salt Lake City is absolutely beautiful. There are mountains all around, and not just lame mountains; they are these huge, snow-capped monoliths cradling the city. It’s just started to snow a little down here, so I’m watching the flakes drift down and get kicked around by the wind.

Ryloc just ran outside in his shorts and a t-shirt.

I’m having an absolute blast with KYSOff. I know I didn’t get nearly as much sleep as I could have on Thursday, so I hope that I will be a little more prepared today. Or at least a little more high energy. I got really tired after four hours of teaching yesterday, so I was mad thankful that the group was so high energy for the last two hours.

I taught a beginner workshop for three hours and then the intensive workshop just for KYSOff for three hours. We’ll be doing the same thing today, with a number of the beginners asking if they can come again. I guess they felt like it was valuable.

One of the best feelings was that one guy, who apparently has struggled with the KYSOff workshops for a while, really stepped up the quality of his work yesterday. After the workshop, several KYSOff people mentioned how surprised they were. I take complete credit for the breakthrough! (Though it seems completely reasonable that I was just teaching on the right day, too.)

We worked up to an Armando with KYSOff yesterday in their three-hour workshop, and they performed one last night. Jesse Parent did a monolog about gallows humor, and talked for a few minutes about losing a friend in the Great White concert fire, and how his father was making jokes at his grandfather’s funeral to deal with the pain. It was absolutely touching, and so risky for this group, because it wasn’t funny, it was emotionally naked. And they followed it with a couple of hysterical scenes. I felt like Jesse’s willingness to explore his pain onstage might have been helped along by the workshop, and I was really proud to have that moment come out of my class somehow.

I know it’s lame to gush. But I was really touched by that monolog.

02-24-2003 10:25 PM
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You Were Meant to Live Large

I am home, and pooped. Bryan King has committed to the purchase of the new fishtank which holds roughly 2 billion gallons and will take up like half of the dining room, if he is to be believed.

The last two workshops with KYSOff were excellent. What a wonderful group of people to have stumbled upon. A happy accident if ever there was one.

02-25-2003 09:54 PM
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It’s a Disease and They’re All Green

Sheesh, a fella goes away for a few days and the office quits communicating entirely! We had a shitstorm of retardation in the office while I was gone and it continued well into today, buoyed by my own stupidity and inability to adjust to this time zone when I never fully felt I had adjusted to mountain time anyhow. Boo!

More kind words from Utah, by IM, e-mail, and forum. Yay! I’m so glad that they felt like the experience was worth their time and money. And in turn, it made me thankful for all of the classes and training and useful tips from the IRC. So, hooray for Mullaney, Delaney, Armando, Jane Borden, and Billy Merritt, who I quoted like a madman; and Brian Berrebbi, Ari, Will Hines, and Brian Stack, who definitely had some gems on the IRC that helped me along.

I don’t know why teaching longfrom in Utah was so different from teaching it here, but it was. Maybe I learned more this weekend than they did.

02-27-2003 12:13 PM
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Caught With My Hand in the Till

I don’t know what is so difficult for Wendy’s about the words, “No mayonnaise.”

I detest mayonnaise. I loathe it. I consider it on par with the act of vomiting: absolutely wretched. (And for those of you that know me, you know that I will go to great lengths to avoid vomiting.) When I was younger, a friend would hold me down and hold a spoonful of mayonnaise under my nose to make me convulse with terror and disgust (my only recourse being letting him know I was much smarter than he, which actually seemed like a fair trade to both of us).

I’m in Gastonia, NC today, training twelve teachers in a windowless basement room. I’m tried, I’m having a hard time waking up, and I don’t think anyone is having a lot of fun. I have not slept well since getting back from Utah, and once I get to sleep, I can’t seem to wake up. I think I need a night or two to just crash completely, which I don’t think I will get until after the Dirty South Improv Festival.

But how cool is it that the DSIF is almost here? I’m all about taking Dan Izzo’s class tomorrow and then I’m coaching Lighted Fools from Haverford/Bryn Mawr on Sunday. And there’s shows! And the real kickoff for Implosion! Yay!

02-27-2003 05:28 PM
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It’s an Unqualified Success

Could someone please explain to me the premise of The Truth About Cats and Dogs? Uma Thurman is totally hot and Jeanine Garafalo is totally ugly?

Um, no way.