Website of the Week – CarpetsForAirports.com
I happened to come across carpetsforairports.com on AOL’s home page today. It’s a site that is devoted to, of all things, airport carpets. Naturally, I was enthralled. I immediately checked to see if they had the generally unattractive carpet from BHM, my hometown airport. (It’s a pretty ugly carpet, if you’ve never seen it. Ash always comments on how bad the whole airport looks, to give you some idea.)
Luckily, they have it. They have BHM’s TV-static-inspired carpet. I’m not kidding. They have a short biography of the designer (Steven Freeling) and his wacky ways, as well as his untimely, yet Darwin Awards-worthy, demise:
Steven Freeling was one of the brightest and best carpet designers of the early 1980s. His designs broke new ground in their use of 18-foot repeats and Italian-style faux finishing. His innate artistic genius allowed carpet manufacturers to overlook his somewhat eccentric character. Never quite happy with his creations, Freeling labeled even such acknowledged masterworks of his as BGR, “tired”. In an attempt to push the boundaries of carpet design to the maximum he ended up gazing at the static on television screens for hours on end, jotting down the designs he thought he saw amidst the white noise. Soon he began to believe that the television was speaking to him, whispering of patterns undreamed of by man. On July 3rd, 1989, after an uninterrupted 76-hour session in front of the static, something snapped inside Steven Freeling’s brain. He was found naked on his living room floor, his head thrust through the television screen. He had been electrocuted, but not before he had managed to program his dye-injection machines with the pattern for BHM. It remains the strangest of carpets, its pattern a seemingly ever-changing swirl of indistinct shapes perpetually slipping out of focus. Rumours that BHM was installed on top of an old Indian burial ground have been repeatedly denied.
Actually Using My Site
It’s 2011. I hope to actually use my blog more regularly this year. Along with the occasional split-infinitive. In my next post, I’ll probably list my New Year’s Resolutions. Once I get those nailed down. If I get them nailed down. Additionally, if it works out, I’d like to write a movie review every now and then, which I’ve not done in quite some time.
Here’s a quick summary of what my spring will look like, in case you’re interested. If you’re here, let’s just assume you are in fact interested. I start the second of four semesters in pursuit of my MA in Theatre degree at USC. I’m taking modern theatre history, dramatic theory II, and periods & styles of theatre history. I’m not sure what the last one will entail, but I’m excited nonetheless. Also, I will be TA-ing Theatre Appreciation again, which I actually enjoyed doing last semester; I was able to lead class a few times, lecture once, etc. It was good experience, and I hope to have more opportunities this spring.
This post is short, but I’m really hoping to post again soon with some of my resolutions or something. Who knows. I leave you with this photograph of our dog. Because she’s awesome.
Winnie
Happy New Year!
-Neal
Punxsutawney
I’ve been in a hole for the last few months, mostly spending my time with Plautine comedies and Medean scholarship. I haven’t seen the proverbial light of day in weeks. I am finally able to breathe for a moment, before the feces again finds its way to the fan.
Due to aforementioned hole, I have been unable to do anything but read and play Crossfire. If you were part of the collateral damage, I apologize. The days are short, and the nights are long, and this hole is a lonely place. Me and Phil. Phil the Groundhog. I’m hallucinating too. Just as a side-note.
As a preface, if you’re still reading: the next bit is highly prosaic and mostly very boring. Skimming is certainly recommended.
I started grad school (again) at South Carolina in August in their MA in Theatre program. It’s two years. It’s looking like more grad school after this. We shall see.
I definitely like it so far. I’m taking Classical & Neoclassical Theatre History, Analysis & Research, and Directing: The Design Process. Halfway through the first semester, and I haven’t completely lost my mind, so that’s good. I do take my occasional frustration out on my hallucinations. Helps to ameliorate the dark and lonely nights.
I am in a staged reading of Wit in November, and another reading of a new play next semester. Other than that, I don’t know what productions I’ll be involved in this year. I hope to audition for the school’s shows in the spring.
If you’re one of the thousands of loyal fans people who wants more equally invigorating info on my life, please send me text messages and wall posts laced with obscenities and hurtful calumny. But no solecisms. I can’t take it anymore. I just graded 94 undergraduate papers. Please: no more misuse of the semicolon. I just don’t think my heart can take it. So, if you care for my cardiac health, you’ll remember your Strunk & White. Or The Economist. They have a great guide, too.
Tech Frustrations
This is the Garfield comic from yesterday. It was uncannily apropos. This pretty much sums up how I felt with my own occasionally incorrigible technology.
Summer Movie Guide 2010
I don’t know how long they’ve been doing this, but the first one I noticed was last year. Apple releases a “Summer Movie Guide,” a list of movies and when they come out, with links to their trailers on the Apple website. If you like to keep track of what’s coming out and when, this thing is indispensable. In a word: awesome. You can check it out here online. Or, you can just check out the list here. Either way.
The ones I’m really excited about are Iron Man 2 (which I’ve seen), Robin Hood (also seen), MacGruber (yes, I know, but I think it could be funny), Get Him to the Greek, Knight and Day (b/c if Cruise is anywhere near as funny as he was in Tropic Thunder, it’s going to be hilarious), Toy Story 3, Despicable Me, and Inception. I’m curious about Shrek: The Final Chapter, Babies, and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. But, the film that I am most excited about this summer is, of course, Step Up 3D. That could be the best film of the next decade.
[click any image to enlarge]
Tweeting Calories
Good to know..
TweetCalories.com
Figure out how many calories you burn whilst you tweet at TweetCalories.com.
EPIC Garage Sale Live-Tweet
[UPDATE]
Bad news bears: the garage sale was an EPIC failure. You can see below the entrance to the neighborhood where the sale was going to be. And, honestly, that’s about all you need to see.
We walk up, seeing the signs and the balloons and the lemonade stand, and we think, “Oh, wow, okay, this could really be great.” We could not have been more wrong. Let me also start by saying that there were not 15 families. More like 15 people. Total.
First off, the stuff is actually crap. I joked before (below) that it was priceless crap. On the contrary: it’s worthless crap. A lot of it, anyway. There were a few boxes of books and a framed picture or two that weren’t crap. But that was it. Bertrand Russell and a framed picture of Dumbo. There was also an oversized Buzz Lightyear that I would argue was not crap, but that’s open to debate. So, printed word and Disney aside, it was mostly crap.
All in all, the stuff should probably have just been given to charity. Goodwill could use some of it, the crap notwithstanding. And even for the crap Goodwill can probably find some beneficial utilization. There were some notepads, golf clubs, and a TV stand. One man’s crap…
Actually, Ash thought that maybe they should have just given all of it to Goodwill to begin with, the main reason being that this neighborhood was really nice, and these people are probably not hurting for cash.
My response was that they may have done it for the sheer enjoyment and community of the event itself, and we honestly don’t know if they’re going to go ahead and give it all away at the end of the day, anyway. She agreed. #benefitofthedoubt (Yes, that’s a hashtag in a blog post.)
In the end, what can I say? I wanted Darth Vader, and I got a pile of used children’s clothes, some CD cases, and a box full of lightbulbs (not kidding). While not a complete waste of time, I didn’t bring home trillions of dollars worth of obelisks. Sad day. Maybe next time. Whenever that is..
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[ORIGINAL POST]
I don’t know what to expect, but I’m hoping for a whole lot of awesomesauce. There’s a garage sale down the street, and its supposed to include something like 15 houses. Fifteen different families are all selling their priceless crap, and I can’t wait. I hope I find a life-sized Darth Vader or an antique obelisk worth trillions of dollars. Seems like I have fairly reasonable expectations. Get ready. It’s going to be legendary.
Pics will follow below. I’ll start it off with the poster advertising the whole shabang.
Beautiful Day at the Bus Stop
Desktop May 2010
I change my desktop around a lot – wallpapers, dock icons, folders, toolbar apps, etc. Inspired by @dremin, I’ve decided to post a screenshot of my current layout. If you wanna know what any of the apps/etc. are, lemme know. Some of ‘em are pretty sweet. Like the app for the little album art curl up thingy downstage right, which I also learned about via @dremin. My wallpaper changes a lot, but this is one of them from this month.
Without further adieu…
CLICK TO ENLARGE
Oikotropic
In exactly two weeks, 14 days, a fortnight, Ashley and I will be moving from Chicago. We have lived here for two years now, the first two years of our marriage, and it will always have special meaning for us. We’re sad to move away, but we’re also moving on. We will be in Atlanta for the summer (June and July), then we will move again, probably in early August, to start graduate school. I’m pretty stoked.
I’m a nostalgic person. I feel the pull, the lure of old haunts, our street, our favorite restaurants, our friends that we have here. All of this contributes to my rather plaintive mood, but it’s more so the notion that Ash and I are closing a chapter in our life. I say ‘notion,’ and I should probably say ‘fact.’ We are moving on and away, and we are both very excited about it.
Excitement mixed with nostalgia makes for an interesting emotional cocktail. Whenever the final paragraphs in any chapter of my life are being written, I find myself, as probably many do, attempting to freeze time, to hold on to these last few moments in this scene. As it happens, packing up boxes and taking down pictures and covering china in bubble wrap intrude into my wistfulness. And so it goes.
What will I miss? Certainly, I’ll miss the romantic quality that the Big City offers, the lights and the life and the Lake. As much as I’ve grown to understand that I’m a car person, there are times when I’ll miss the train, the long trips at night from rehearsal, easing into a hard plastic seat, staring out at the passing cityscape, the speckled darkness. Odd though it may seem, I’ll even miss walking everywhere. And the snow. I’ll miss the snow.
What won’t I miss? The bone-chillingly cold nights. And the days, for that matter. Many of the things I will miss are, ironically, also things that I won’t miss. I won’t miss the train, because I’ll have my car – same goes for the constant ambulation, strictly speaking. I won’t miss the snow, because I’ll have the warm weather I’m so accustomed to. I won’t miss the Big City, because I’ll have the suburban life in which I grew up, in which I lived the first 22 years of my life.
This city has much that I will both pine for and comfortably wave goodbye to, much of it one and the same.
I’ve loved my experience here. I’ve loved having these two years to grow up a bit with Ash, to be married away from our families. I think it’s been good for us to have this time for ourselves. It has also allowed me to see aspects of myself that I might not have discovered otherwise, or, perhaps, at least not this soon. For that, I am very grateful.
So, here we are. Two weeks away from leaving Chicago, from driving out of Chitown the way we drove in, in a big yellow truck full of our belongings. I hope to be able to take advantage of this last fortnight in a city that will always have meaning for me. But, when it’s all said and done, I’m also very much ready to move away. And to move on.