Chapter 128: A & E

Today was a decent day. It had its share of disappointments but it had its share of positives, as well. I definitely feel like it was a very productive/creative day, which is always a plus. It’s also a bit of a surprise, considering the way the day started. It didn’t start in a bad way, by any means. I fell asleep on the couch watching an episode of “The View” around 4am last night, and woke up this morning around 10am. I knew as soon as I woke that I just hadn’t gotten enough sleep, so I came into my bedroom and went back to sleep in my bed until around 2:30pm. I woke up in a bit of a haze and felt very lazy. I was probably up for a half-hour before I actually brushed my teeth and washed my face. I just didn’t really feel like doing anything. Plus, to make matters worse, yesterday when I was leaving work I started to feel a headache coming on and it was still there when I went to sleep last night, as well as when I woke up this morning/afternoon. It’s pretty unusual that I get headaches in the first place, let alone one that lasts so long. I’ve been getting them pretty frequently these past couple weeks, which I think has to do with the illness I had. I believe it was a sinus thing, and these have been sinus headaches. I am back to feeling pretty much completely normal again, even having lost the cough for the most part, and I am hoping this headache issue goes away next. I figured in the time I had before I had to get ready for the Lady Gaga Flash Mob I would try to catch up on some TV from the past week, because I haven’t watched any of it. I have been having trouble keeping up because a couple of new shows have started recording, (like NBC’s brilliant new show, “Parenthood,” and “RuPaul’s Drag Race,”) as well as a few of the old shows I watch returning, (aka, the entire CW schedule, including “Gossip Girl,” “90210” and “Melrose Place.”) Because of this, I have a DVR full of stuff that I haven’t watched. So, I figured I’d devote a little bit of time to that today. Since I woke up so late in the day, it seemed appropriate to have a mid-day type breakfast so I made myself some of those Pizza Roll things and a bowl of Spaghetti-O’s and sat down to an episode of “The View.”

I watched all of the episodes of “The View” from the past week, and found that I hadn’t really missed out on much. It wasn’t that interesting of a week on “The View,” but at least Whoopi Goldberg was back. She was out all last week, and it was still interesting but not near as good without her. Now, I know what you must be thinking – “That’s at least 4 hours in front of the TV.” It is not, though. When it comes to the topical discussion shows, like “The View” or “Chelsea Lately,” I have a tendency to skim through them. Not really skim, per se, but if I don’t have an interest in the guests or the segments they are doing that day, I will just watch the Hot Topics section and then move on. The guests on “The View” this week weren’t all that interesting, so I was able to watch the whole week in a span of about 90 minutes-2 hours. I also watched this week’s episode of “Gossip Girl.” It’s funny because I normally would never leave “Gossip Girl” sitting on the DVR for that long, but I think it was kind of “out of sight, out of mind” for me over the break, so now that it’s back I was still in that frame of mind about it. Now that I’ve actually watched the episode, though, that frame of mind is long gone. This third season of “Gossip Girl” has been very up and down, but they managed to hit on some really interesting ups in this week’s episode and have me pretty excited for next week’s episode. I also watched this week’s “Melrose Place,” which was the last episode for Ashlee Simpson-Wentz and Colin Egglesfield. It’s kind of a shame the way that whole thing went down, because they were fired pretty suddenly and at random, which they have both talked about pretty extensively in interviews and such, and I’m not sure how the show is going to go without them. Ashlee Simpson’s character, Violet, was one of the most interesting parts of the show and they really didn’t tie up her big ball of craziness at all. After having her become an obsessive stalker, revealing that she had been sleeping with her brother before moving to LA and never actually tying up the matter of whether or not she killed her mother, or if that was actually her mother, they really had a million different directions they could have taken her character and it seems like they really wasted her talent on that show. I’m sure me talking about TV shows is terribly fascinating, but I’m going to go ahead and stop it now to move on to other topics before this entire post becomes one giant TV review. Sorry.

So, after a few hours of TV watching and as it was getting a bit later in the day I decided to text Rachel to find out what the plan for the Gaga Flash Mob was this evening. She messaged me back saying that she didn’t think she was going to be able to do it. Apparently her mother needed her to watch her baby sister this evening and was pulling one of those major guilt trips, and she already owed her mother. I can certainly understand that type of situation. I text messaged her back and said it was fine. My headache still hadn’t gone away and I was just feeling kind of a mess this afternoon. As excited as I was about the whole thing, I had already had a strange feeling like something was going to happen to prevent me from taking part, anyway. After my music lessons wound up costing me more than expected, I have found myself running kind of low on funds and was already pretty much needing to cancel on the plans for sushi afterwards, which kind of brought me down on the whole thing already. Plus, I had noticed Rachel’s status updates on Facebook and such hadn’t been very positive and it seemed like she had been having some troubles these past few days. I just had this feeling that she wouldn’t wind up being in a mood to go, anyway. I hadn’t foreseen the whole situation with her mom, but I just had this feeling it wasn’t going to happen. So, when I found out that it wasn’t, I wasn’t overly disappointed or anything. I told Whitney about this a little while later, since she and Nate were planning on coming. I told her that we should still hang out tonight and she didn’t really respond. After a while without a response, I text messaged her again and got a little attitude about her lack of response. Then I felt really bad about having attitude afterwards. I just have this feeling lately about her, Nate and all of my friends that I am just not important enough for them to make time for or make an effort to contact or whatever. I am probably just being over-sensitive, really, but every now and then I allow it to get a little under my skin. As I learned from the book, “How To Make Someone Love You Forever In 90 Minutes Or Less,” I am a Promoter and my key feeling is the feeling of Importance. Unfortunately, this is a feeling that I am severely lacking in my life lately. Don’t get me wrong, I am filled with self-importance, but that is very different from feeling important to the people in my life. Right now, I just don’t feel important to the people in my life, and it sucks. I understand that everybody has their own things going on, but it seems like people would at least want to check in on the people who are their good friends. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know. This is really more of a rant, though, and I am going to stop it before it actually gets to that ranting point.

I decided to try my hand at the whole t-shirt painting thing again this afternoon, and it went considerably better than last time. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I believe, my sister gave me a really good tip on painting on fabric – she said to try drawing the design on cardboard first, then going over it in Sharpie or something dark, then kind of tracing it through the fabric. I decided to give this a shot, and it didn’t work out exactly as planned. Unfortunately, the fabric was thick enough that I couldn’t really see it well enough to trace it. I was able to see it enough to have the basic idea of where each word started and ended and was able to wing it well enough to do the same idea I tried last time and have the text not come out lopsided. Of course, I didn’t actually do the same text as last time, but the same idea of cursive handwriting and glitter. This time, in honor of the Gaga Flash Mob, (this was before I knew we weren’t going,) I did the line from the song “Bad Romance,” where she says, “Walk, walk, fashion, baby…” I did the words Walk, Walk and Baby in metallic silver and the word Fashion in pink, and covered the whole thing with a spritz of glitter, which gave it a really cool sparkle. Like I said, this came out much better than last time. It still isn’t something that could pass off for something actually purchased, but it’s a good second attempt. I’m thinking the next thing I try will be an actual drawing on the shirt with my fabric marker and then painting to fill in the colors. I’m really excited by the whole idea and may try it out tomorrow even. We’ll see how that goes.

The new Goldfrapp record, “Head First” leaked today and while I downloaded it, I decided to listen to some of the older Goldfrapp records. While listening to the album before this new one, “Seventh Tree,” I heard what is probably my favorite song of theirs, “A&E” and felt extremely inspired by it. I know that here in America, we see A&E and think of the television network or what the network stands for, Arts & Entertainment, but over in Europe A&E generally stands for Accident & Emergency. Basically, it is what we know as the ER. This song by Goldfrapp is referencing that. The lyrics, in the literal sense, are basically about being so disappointed by an absentee lover that you go out and do something crazy, and wind up in the A&E. The first chorus of the song says, “I was feeling lonely, feeling blue, feeling like I needed you, like I’m waking up surrounded by me, A&E.” The part that really stuck out to me today was the line, “like I’m waking up surrounded by me.” That line to me is a line about feeling completely alone, so alone that you are surrounded with nothing but yourself. To me, it expresses the feeling of being on an island; like you are the only thing in your world. It is a really powerful statement to me, and one that I can certainly relate to. This spoke to me in a very profound way this evening, and I decided that it was time to break out the camera and try my hand at another photoset. First, I went into the bathroom and experimented with makeup a little bit until I came up with a look that I felt really expressed the concept I was going for. I went a little more over the top than I would on an average day and did silver streaks across my cheeks and really overstated silver and purple combinations around my eyes. It was pretty unusual looking and probably would have looked better had I had some sort of foundation to work with, as well. As it was, though, I really liked the look I came up with. I spent a good little while working on the photoset and experimenting with lighting effects, even making a reflector with cardboard and tin foil, and I felt really proud of what I came up with. It’s still nothing overly professional looking and it is just images of myself, but I really liked the way it turned out. I really think I could do some cooler things as a photographer if I could get some people to model for me, or get somebody else to shoot me with me directing them. I just don’t know who to get to model for me – I have some good-looking friends and such, but it isn’t necessarily about the people being good-looking. It’s about finding people who are the right fit for the concepts I have in mind. This is definitely something I want to look into doing more of, though. I am also thinking of maybe trying to work on some of the photos I have already taken of myself in some sort of photo-editing program. It’s times like this that I really miss having Photoshop, because I look at some of the photos I’ve taken and know that I could do some brilliant things with them in Photoshop. Sadly, it is much more difficult than I thought to find a bootlegged version of Photoshop out there and I can’t really afford the $400 or however much the legit version costs. I’m not sure what I’ll use, but I definitely want to look further into photo-editing software to do some more interesting effects on my photos. I also want to look further into finding people to model for me, although I don’t even know where to begin with that. In any sense, you can check out the photoset on my Flickr account.

As I mentioned before, the new Goldfrapp record leaked today. The album is called “Head First,” and I’ve got to say, I am pretty impressed with it. Goldfrapp has long been on my radar and I have had their last two albums on my iPod for ages but I have never been a huge fan of theirs. The album that was kind of their breakthrough, “Supernature,” has a lot of really strong songs on it, like “Ooh La La,” and “Ride A White Horse,” as well as my favorite, “Lovely To C U,” but has always seemed a little too focused on electronics and synthesizers and general production. It was a good album to listen to and a lot of fun, but was really lacking in great lyrics. The follow-up to that album, “Seventh Tree,” was really stripped down, by comparison, and definitely solved the lyrical issues. I really liked that album much more, but this one kind of had the opposite problem to “Supernature” – it had really strong lyrical concepts and such, but most of it lacked the catchiness and unique melodic and production to really make many of the songs stick with you, aside from a few major exceptions, like the aforementioned “A&E.” I was especially impressed with “Head First” because it really is like a combination of the two previous records – it is the one that finally got it right on both fronts. As far as the sound of this record goes, it is really like a combination of the previous two, as well – it is electronic and very experimental, like “Supernature,” but also keeps with the more rootsy and ethereal vibe of “Seventh Tree.” It is clearly very influenced by 80s music, like Hall & Oates and even some Depeche Mode and The Cure type stuff, but the lyrics tend much more towards the positive than the previous records. The album’s first track, and first single, is a song called “Rocket,” which has a very strong Hall & Oates style influence, and a very spunky, upbeat lyric – “I’ve got a rocket, you’re gonna be on it.” When I initially heard this song a while back it immediately put a smile on my face. It is one of those songs that just kind of make you feel happy. It’s a really fun track. This record has a lot of those, actually. There are only 9 tracks on the album, and they are all really great songs. The entire album is pretty brilliant, so there’s really not a need to name personal favorite tracks, although I will call out two that I particularly love. First of all, the title track of the album, “Head First,” which has a much lighter, more airy sound than much of the rest of the album, and a very catchy chorus of simply, “My whole world and I, my whole world and I, my whole world and I, head first in love.” It is more of a mid-tempo track, but still quite upbeat and just has a really fun, happy sound to it. My favorite track, though, is the second song on the album, called “Believer.” It has a very fun, upbeat pop sound to it and a very positive set of lyrics. The chorus says, “Rushing like the sea, you’ve come back to me and I’m a believer, I’m a believer, I’m a believer in you now.” It is really a beautiful sentiment, basically stating that you have found your trust in and have developed faith in somebody. Like I said, the entire album has this sort of positive, fun vibe to it and I definitely think will make for a great workout soundtrack. I really love this record and highly recommend it to everyone.

I completely forgot until I noticed the time a little bit ago that tonight is Daylight Savings Time. I also didn’t realize that it was the Daylight Savings Time where time skips ahead an hour instead of going back an hour. I like the one where you get an extra hour more, especially considering that this one means that it is now 5:29am instead of 4:29am. Either way, I really should have been in bed a while ago. I actually sat down to start writing this blog a few hours ago, but I allowed myself to get distracted a bit. When I say I allowed myself to get distracted I don’t mean that I was looking at something else here on the computer and got delayed on writing, I mean that I got up and went into the living room and put in a DVD and watched my very favorite movie of all-time, “Shortbus.” It wasn’t so much that I got distracted as it was that I actively stopped what I was doing with the intentions of doing something else. Silly, I know. Still, I was kind of glad I did it. As I mentioned, “Shortbus” is my favorite film of all-time. For those who don’t know, “Shortbus” is the second film from John Cameron-Mitchell, and the follow-up to his absolutely brilliant rock/drag odyssey, “Hedwig & The Angry Inch.” “Shortbus” is the story of a group of people experiencing some form of sexual dysfunction in their lives in Manhattan, and the sex club where they all hang out, called Shortbus. The film’s schtick, or the schtick that was attached to the film, is that there is no simulated sex in the movie – every sex scene that takes place in the film is 100% real. Those sex scenes are pretty abundant, as well, considering much of the film takes place in a sex club, complete with random orgies and people fucking, (gay, straight, bisexual, lesbian – you name it,) in front of groups of people. It is really a fascinating film and one that I highly recommend that everyone see. It can be uncomfortable at points for some people, as I learned when I made it a “movie night” selection with a group of friends a couple years ago, but it really is an amazing piece of work and a film that is relatable and really has an important story to tell. I feel like some of the best stories are the ones that are the least comfortable to see or hear. One of the stories, in particular, that really spoke to me is about a gay man who is in a very loving, committed relationship, but just can’t seem to be happy with his life, so he talks his boyfriend into having a threesome, which leads into a polyamorous relationship, in attempts to replace himself. It is really just a completely fascinating film and, like I said, I really feel like it is something everybody should see. They should just make sure their children aren’t in the room, and that they are prepared to see some pretty graphic sexual situations. If you can keep an open mind about it, you will be completely blown away.

Anyway, since it is nearly 6am now and I need to try to get up at a halfway decent time tomorrow, I should probably get to bed. I just can’t let myself sleep until 2:30pm again tomorrow – otherwise I will have trouble going to sleep tomorrow night and may wind up having trouble getting up Monday morning, and I really can’t afford to oversleep Monday morning. I am not looking forward to Monday morning, honestly. I am keeping my fingers crossed, though, for a week that passes much quicker than the past one did. As far as Sunday goes, I don’t really have any plans for it – I need to do a load of laundry. Since I did so much laundry last week, the only laundry that really needs to be done this weekend is the stuff that I wore throughout this past week. I am going to try my best to do laundry every weekend, so I don’t wind up having to do as much as I did last weekend in the future. I am already pretty sure that it won’t last forever and I’ll wind up letting it go a couple weeks again in the future, but I can at least try to keep it from happening anytime soon. Aside from that, I may try working on doing an actual drawing or design on a t-shirt tomorrow and will likely end up catching up on even more TV from the past week. I don’t really know, and I kind of like the idea of that. It’s a good feeling to just have a day that is pretty much entirely open, where I can do pretty much anything that comes to mind. Whether it winds up being just lying around all day watching TV, or doing some sort of cool creative work like I did today, I am looking forward to whatever tomorrow may bring. I guess the best way to get closer to it is to go to bed now. Good night.