new video: Nate and Greg (Human Giant video contest)

Hey friends,

I have a new video online for the Human Giant video contest...



Love,
nate

Top Nine Favorite Pixies Songs

Ode to a Dropped Push-Up

Thou still unravish’d pop of icyness,
Thou abandoned bringer of Orange and Cream,
Young child, who canst yet express
The sweet joy with which you teem:
What unfulfilled treat haunts about thy shape,
Of porches or playgrounds, or of both,
In Childhood or the Nights of Summer?
What slippery gloves are these? What clumsy cloth?
What melted puddle? What struggle to escape?
What lips now smack? What a sad bummer.

Internet identities

A friend of mine who is staying with me in my apartment for the week just asked me what I was doing. I replied that I was writing for my blog. She wasn’t sure which one I meant.

It dawns on me that I have acquired several internet identities. By saying that I am writing something for my blog, I could have meant several things, all of which would have been equally plausible:

*the blog on my personal website
*the blog I have on blogspot.com
*the blog that I keep on my MySpace page and update whenever I have comedy news
*the “notes” that I have within the Facebook notes feature
*the video log that I kept during my year abroad
*the bulletin posts on my YouTube channel
*eh...the corrections that I submit to Tila Tequila’s Wikipedia page?

This fragmentation of identity, dear reader, has been observed elsewhere, more astutely and more comprehensively than I am doing here. What I bring to the discussion is the following question:

By keeping so many internet identities, are we trying in vain to preserve ourselves, if only just in part, much like Voldermort with his horxcruxes?

If you do not get the Harry Potter reference, good for you.

(Initially I was trying to formulate some sort of allusion to the Borges story “The Garden of Forking Paths”, but decided against it because it (a) required too much mental energy, (b) struck me as being a bit pretentious, and (c) isn’t actually as relevant a comparison as the Harry Potter one. So while, once again, I applaud you if didn’t get the reference, it still might be in your best interest to go read the first four of five HP books in order to get the comparison I am making.

Either that or just use context to figure it out...Yeah, on second thought, you should definitely just use context.)

The answer to the above question, by the way, is no.

MetroCard bike

This was the second time I’d seen this bike around town, although I guess there could be multiple MetroCard decked out bikes lurking around the city.

I’d like to think that this bike belongs to an eccentric millionaire who completed the decorations by walking to the nearest subway station, purchasing a single ticket, then walking home and carefully applying the ticket with a hot glue gun. I’d like to think that this process was completed with dedication and care over several weeks during a hot and muggy summer. And I’d like to think that after the final MetroCard was applied, the eccentric millionaire stood up, smiled, and rode his masterpiece to a nearby park, preferably one with a fountain and ample space to park a bike.

Five blog entries on a Sunday night

At the beginning of the summer I wrote a blog post saying that I was going to be writing a blog. Although I warned it would be sporadic, over the last period I have been even less consistent than the lowest of the low expectations I had set for myself in this regard.

As penitence, tonight I will be writing five blog entries. This small morsel of repentance is designed to inculcate in my fingers the habit of writing an entry - however trite or tryhardy or short or worthless or jajajaja it may be - more regularly.

This is the first of those five.

The Dark Knight

MOVIE REVIEW TEXTUAL THOUGHT ORGANIZER TO RECORD INITIAL FILM FIRST IMPRESSIONS FOR PERSONAL FUTURE REFERENCE

MOVIE TITLE:
The Dark Knight

THE WAY I INITIALLY TYPED MOVIE TITLE A FEW SECONDS AGO:
The Dark Night

DIRECTOR:
Christopher Nolan

FAMOUS ATHLETE THAT DIRECTOR’S NAME MAKES ME THINK OF:
Nolan Ryan (from Wikipedia: Nolan Ryan played in a major league record 27 seasons. A hard-throwing right-handed pitcher, Ryan threw pitches that were regularly recorded above 100 mph, even past the age of 40. The media tagged him, or more specifically his pitching, as "The Ryan Express", a reference to the 1965 film Von Ryan's Express).

DID IT BEAT SPIDEY?
Yes. The Dark Knight grossed $155.3 million over the opening weekend, breaking the previous record of $151.1 million set by Spider-Man 3 last year.

WHERE I SAW IT:
AMC Empire 25 on 42nd in Times Square

WHEN:
Matinee

FAVORITE PART OF MOVIE GOING EXPERIENCE:
When after a particularly spectacular bat feat a little boy’s voice from somewhere in the packed audience behind me exclaimed in complete sincerity, “Wow!”

FAVORITE PART OF FILM ITSELF:
The short shot from which the above screen still is taken. Even though shown in every trailer I’ve seen, the shot takes on additional weight in the context of the moment it appears in the film.

WHAT THE FILM MADE ME THINK OF:
At some point in my social anthropology studies in college I remember reading about or being told about a tribe somewhere in the world, and I think it was Australia, that did not believe that a dead person should be shown on film. Preliminary attempts to figure out the name of the tribe that I’m thinking or even the particularities of the belief that I’m trying to recall have been unsuccessful. Also possible that I am colliding several memories or imagining this one entirely.

Throughout film, which for the most part swept me away, I would occasionally suspend the suspension of my movie going disbelief and remind myself that Mr. Ledger passed away earlier this year. Then a spectacular bat feat would grab my attention.

I wish I could think of the name of that tribe.

WHAT I PROBABLY SHOULD BE DOING INSTEAD OF WRITING THIS:
Sleeping.

IF YOU SEE ME IN A COFFEE SHOP AND YOU HAVE ALSO SEEN THE DARK KNIGHT AND YOU FEEL LIKE TALKING ABOUT IT, THE SCENE AND TOPIC THAT I WOULD MOST LIKE TO BEGIN THAT DISCUSSION WITH:
The ferry scene and the point made by that scene and the film at large about human nature.

DESIRE TO SEE THE DARK KNIGHT AGAIN?
Yes.

DESIRE TO SEE THE DARK KNIGHT ON I-MAX?
Not really. Unless I’m watching sweeping aerial shots of wildebeests stampeding across the Serengeti with James Earl Jones narrating, I-MAX doesn’t really do it for me.