Save Darfur
Jess, Talya, and I are in a hotel room outside of D.C. right now. Tomorrow we're going to a rally against the genocide in Darfur. That's why we're here. The National Mall. We're heading early to hit up some Smithsonians, if you know what I mean. Free museums covering the most important events in U.S. history? This dork says "yes please!" Pictures may follow.
Puppy Power!
Wasn't Easter nice? I had a nice Easter visiting Talya and seeing her new puppy. He is difficult to dislike, because he's just so cute. Well, when he's not eating things he shouldn't be or biting you. He's teething, so he enjoys chomping on wrists and fingers. In fact, he seems to just go for your hand instead of the toy you're holding. But, I don't want to paint a negative picture. He is soft and small and often cuddly. And since Talya does not have the technology, here he is:
And a profile shot:
As you can see in the picture, he isn't showing much interest. There's a slight worry that he might be deaf, but we have no way of knowing for sure. Puppies are supposed to be a distracted group. He does have one continued interest though: his own penis. Yes, it seems every day holds new surprises as his snout and crotch mingle again and again.
Disturbing images. Anyway, during the course of the weekend we also got to see V for Vendetta and Thank You For Smoking, both of which were phenomenal. And, I think both are even worth the price of a movie ticket. What's difficult is that you can't really know what will be worth it until you see it, except for, like, Spider-man 3 or something.
In other big news, I got a job at a tea house where I'll serve teas of all kinds. Yesterday I tried a sample of a tea called "Gunpowder," which just begs to be ingested. I start on Monday and I really like the people I'm working for (www.argotea.com) so far.
Last night I saw Jonathan Safran Foer as promised and he was nice and funny and sort of what you'd expect, I suppose. Since my copy of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was in Ohio, I drew a copy on a piece of paper. No, I'm serious. I traced my hand with red marker and filled it in, wrote the name on it, and then surrounded it with yellow. He signed it in an unidentifiable scribble that anyone could argue was fake. Oh well. One thing I'll tell you is that book signings kind of suck, at least at borders. To get a seat you had to have a copy of the book and all of the employees save the leader were in some kind of "I don't know how to answer anything" land. And, the only people who ask questions are the people you'd expect. Like the people who were always right in Poly-Sci class. But, it was JSF, whose first book I now want to read because he was cool.
And Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation (which always makes me want to sing "Teenage Wasteland") will be at the same store in three weeks, so I might go to that, and have my book with me. He's promoting a new book, called "Chew on This: Everything You Don't Want to Know About Fast Food" which seems to be a young adult version of FFN, which is kinda dumb.
You're Entering the No Spin Zone
Morning is a relative term anyway, so no guff. Not that anyone noticed. Most likely, most of you have things to do during the day, things that don't include checking blogs every hour or so. I'm not saying anything incriminating, am I?
Back on track. I renewed my lease and I'm staying in Chicago, at least for the time being. You wouldn't believe how this area heats up once baseball season starts. Noise, fans, souvenirs, scalpers. It's like a hibernating bear has finally awoken and, having been dormant for 5 months, must feast ravenously in an all-consuming quest to... consume. It's exciting, especially because the weather gets warmer every day and because we can sell our parking spaces for $25-30 a pop. It's an unexplainable joy when someone hands you that much cash for standing on the corner and holding a sign. In fact, the worst part of it is when our last (of four) spots gets taken, because that means there is no more money to receive. The only comfort is the unreasonably long baseball season. And the money.
Another exciting thing coming down the road is that Jonathan Safran Foer (the author of The Red Hand Book) will be appearing next week at my local Borders Books Music Movies Café Emporium. I am planning on attending, and perhaps even discovering if "The Red Hand Book" is a widely used title. Signing and reading most likely to follow.
I'd also like to report that I have reached the halfway point in a screenplay I mentioned earlier and I'm extremely pleased with my progress. It is tentatively titled "The Pirate Princess" and is an action/adventure/ romantic/comedy that may or may not turn out to be good. However, it's the first time that my screenwriting has ever felt natural, in the sense that sometimes I couldn't write fast enough to keep up with my mind. Other times, writing scripts in classes, the process was a relatively awkward affair, like the painful moving of a kidney stone. Not to say that my writing is perfect now, certainly not. I've already accidently reread to find sentences like "he darkly looked across the darkening dark room." Ok, I exaggerate, but really, when I've been writing I've mostly been concentrating on getting the image onto the page, with extensive rewriting withheld for the second draft. Because it's easier to be completely creative and completely logical (different sides of the brain) all at once than constantly switching back and forth.
Check out KT for some great travel stories from her invasion of Turkmenistan, full of neither Turks nor Stans, but probably men. The blog revival is upon us! Happy Resurrection Day.
Right Quick
Let's make a deal. Tomorrow morning I will update this blog. Until then, content yourself with the many other blogs and forms of information and entertainment available across the electronic landscape of the Intertron™.
