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3:03 am - Thurs 11/13/03
Filler Material

Filler Material
Mon 11/10/03 (1:15 p.m.)

(For some reason, I'm having a hard time dealing with the fact that it's November; every time I have to write the date, I start writing "October" before correcting myself. It's kind of weird, but I imagine not all that interesting, huh? Anyway...)

I've had the urge for awhile now to do a "wrap up" of my career efforts for the year�How many auditions, how many headshots sent out, etc�but I'm not going to do that.

For one thing, the year is not over yet. I've still got a month-and-a-half in which for things to happen.

For the other, I sort of know what I'd do with a "Career Year In Review" at this point; I'd use it to berate myself for not doing more, and to be disappointed and depressed over how little has happened since I've been out here. And if that's all I'm going to do, I might as well hold off till January.

_________________________

(Just finished putting away laundry. Now I have about 15 minutes before I have to get ready for work.)

I've been thinking about the latest Matrix movie...At one point, even though I was very disappointed by Matrix Reloaded, I just assumed I'd be seeing the last movie. Some sort of "completion thing", I guess.

But a week or so before "Revolution" opened, I had a change of heart. After all, it's not like you get a prize for seeing all three movies; on the contrary, I started feeling like life's too short (And my bank account too small) to spend time and money on a story that should have ended two movies ago. I'd rather go see a movie I might actually enjoy (I think my next movie outing will be either Shattered Glass or Love Actually).

I've been feeling a lot of media-related disappointment lately...

1. NBC cancelled Boomtown after just two episodes this season.

2. Just the preview of Average Joe angered and upset me ("Hey, here's a dating show with a twist, Folks�the guys are ugly! Pretty funny, huh?"). But just so I'm sure what I'm upset about, I'm taping tonite's show.

3. CBS cancelling the "Reagan" movie because conservatives squawked about it. I wasn't going to watch it anyway, whether valentine or character assasination�I could care less about the Reagans--but CBS's cowardice really bothers me. In the future, it could be my movie that gets cancelled or shunted off to some media graveyard because some special interest group decides in advance they don't like it.

4. The Elizabeth Smart/Jessica Lynch movies. Seem exploitative and creepy, in both cases, not to mention crappy movie-making.

5. Leno consistently beats Letterman in the ratings. I find that consistently depressing.

6. In general, the increasingly loud drumbeat in this country that says nothing is worth anything unless it can be exploitated for ratings and money. Which means "lowest common denominator" everything.

Thurs 11/13/03 (1:37 a.m.)

I recently saw a list online of the top ten "cheesiest" movie moments.

Two of them�the end of The Karate Kid and the end of Officer and a Gentleman�are two of my favorite movie moments ever (The end of Officer and a Gentleman worked so well for me that when they did a parody of it on "The Simpsons", I still got a little misty!).

I saw part of that Jessica Lynch interview with Diane Sawyer (They pre-empted Nypd Blue for it, so it was on my VCR when I got home from work Tuesday). She seems like a nice kid (And cute too!). Not a hero, not "Rambo" or "Zena". Just a nice kid who got caught in a war.

I also saw an episode of Average Joe.

As television goes, I found it more entertaining than something like Fear Factor, but that's not saying much. All in all, I agree with my friend Cariboutwo's assessment of the show�I wasn't buying it. And now that I've seen it, I won't need to see it again.

It made me think, once again, about "reality" and entertainment.

I feel pretty much the same way about "reality programs" that I do about wrestling; when I've seen bits of the WWF, or RAW, or whatever-it-is, it's occurred to me that it's "neither fish nor fowl"; if I wanted to watch sports, I'd watch a real competition, while if I wanted to watch choreographed fight scenes, I'd rent a Jackie Chan movie. Wrestling isn't going to give me enough of anything I might want to see.

Blah, blah, blah...I'm boring myself here... "If I want reality, I'll look out my window, and if I want to be manipulated into feeling something for a set of �characters', I'll stick with my favorite scripted entertainments".

Enough about that.

Had a spill on my bike Monday, on the way to work. Basically, I had to hit the brakes hard, and as has happened a few times before, the bike went up on the front wheel, and I went over the handlebars (I assumed this problem had been fixed when I took my bike in for a "tune-up". Apparently, it was not).

In the past, I've been able to get my hands in front of me, but this time, I hit the road face-first (Actually, I think the motion was chest-first, then face-first). Broke my sunglasses, broke my watch, broke the casing on my front headlight, and broke my head.

I was embarrassed and angry more than anything (It's embarrassing to wipe out on your bike. Painful as well, but my first reaction is always to feel embarrassed, and mad at myself for losing control. Then I check to see if the bike's messed up, and then I notice whether I'm hurt or not).

A nice muslim lady came up to me, asking if I was all right. That's when I felt my head, and noticed the start of a small goose-egg around the end of my right eyebrow, and when I pulled my hand away, there was blood (I don't want to over-dramatize this; there was blood, but not that much blood). My chest hurt, and I was momentarily concerned about whether I'd hurt my ribs, but my breathing seemed to be fine, so I assumed I was merely bruised.

I had already been running late for work. I was still closer to home than the bookstore, but once I took stock of my situation, and felt like I was only a little banged up, and the bike seemed to be fine, I decided the only thing to do was to just continue on to work.

At this writing, I'm feeling more messed-up than I was immediately after the accident. In addition to my head and my ribs, my right wrist hurts a little (Especially when I rotate my forearm outwards), my left knee took a bit of a hit, and I basically feel I'm experiencing all the pain of a hard workout with none of the healthful benefits. But I'll live to bike another day.

It rained most of the day here. I'm always of two minds when it rains on my day off; part of me thinks "Oh, that's just perfect. My day off, and it rains...!", while another part of me thinks "Better today than on a work day. I can just stay in, and I don't have to worry about it.

Wow, this is boring, isn't it?

I saw the most awful thing on Leno last night (I watch Letterman at 11:30, but am usually up for NBC's "Up All Night" programming, that shows repeats of Leno and Conan). He was doing his monologue, and he does this riff about white people trying to dance like black people and how stupid that looks. Then he cuts to a clip of that news footage with the guy shooting the lawyer, as the lawyer tries to keep this little tree between him and the gunman, and they've doctored the clip so that it looks like the two guys are doing a little dance.

This is comedy?

(I hope for the sake of Leno's wife and family that if anyone ever tries to kill him, it won't be played for laughs on Comedy Central.)

Well, I know I have more interesting stuff to address than this, but I have a feeling I'm not going to get to it in this entry, so I'm going to bed.

 

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