A Quick Word

Hey folks!  It’s been a long time since I posted an entry, and this coming right after I had a bit of a blog revival going on.  I just wanted to pop on real quick and let you know the blog revival is most assuredly still happening!  I currently have about a dozen entries percolating in me ol’ cranium–from the highbrow to the simple life-update variety–but, as many of you may know, it’s been a hectic time the past month, with lots of changes and whatnot (all good) in many facets of my life.  While I am adjusting (to new house, new commute, new town, new job) writing/ artistic time has taken a back seat to simply existing and figuring things out.  Again, these changes are all good (or at the very least, neutral), but I wanted to explain my silence.  I’ll be back very soon!

Eleventh Sobriety Anniversary

Thursday, April 3rd is my 11th sobriety anniversary.  Those of you who’ve read much of my blog or really anything of mine at all, know that I have written at length on my alcoholism, sobriety and recovery.  Probably more than any other personal subject I’ve written about.  Hey, can you blame me? It’s interesting. 

Anyway, I usually have some fancy blog written up for the occasion, but I may finally be out of good “anniversary” blogs—maybe until another major milestone year (although I’m sure I’ll still randomly write about the topic, despite the fact that I’ve now been sober more than twice as long as I drank…it’s still a damn interesting topic).  But I did want to take this opportunity to link those who may have missed them to last year’s anniversary entries; it was a two-parter in which I recounted, for the first time, the days surrounding April 3rd, 2003—the day I got and stayed sober.  Part one can be read by clicking here, and part two can be read by clicking here.

If you find these entries to be just captivating reading, I encourage you to click on some of the links in my “tag cloud” to the right of your screen—these will take you to all entries that I have “tagged” with that topic.  You can see there are tags for “addiction”, “alcoholism”, and “recovery”, but in addition, lots of other topics!  If, in the unlikely event you love the band Seven Mary Three, well, clicking on that tag for 7m3 is a no-brainer!  Also you can use the search bar right below that delightful picture of me to search every single entry—there are A LOT of them—for anything; for instance, if you’re wondering if I’ve ever mentioned you, search your name!

Anyway, I like being sober, it’s tons of fun :)

The Light From Everywhere

A long time ago, what must be over 10 years ago now, I was a man just recovering from alcoholism—a long bout of sickness— and the first few weeks and months were filled with a special kind of freedom.  But aside from all the weighty big topics that came up in such a time, I also was just able to start discovering the internet. It had been there during my drinking but it wasn’t something I had much interest in or capacity to utilize. My very first blog was on some sort of AOL blogging community.  I loved everything about it. I loved that I could write was on my mind, and write whatever I wanted to say, however I wanted to say it, and some people would actually read it! This is back before everyone was doing it (and way before everybody stopped doing it!) But of course, basically still nobody was reading. Anyway, one of the first entries I ever wrote was called “The light from everywhere, the light from nowhere”. It had just snowed the first snow of the year, which must have been 2004. I was in love with a woman at that point in time who was a pain in the ass, but I was in love with her anyway. That night, as the snow was coming down, I drove her home to where she lived on the side of a mountain, and in the cold snowy wind, we shared a kiss on her doorstep. I wrote a lovely blog entry about it on that AOL website, which has long since been erased by the great internet gods. I wish I could remember most of it, or  that I had saved it somewhere, because I know even now it was a doozy.  I talked about that ambient light which those of us who live in wintry states are very familiar with, which seems to slowly take over the nighttime in the first few hours after a snowfall, seemingly coming from nowhere and everywhere all at once.  And then I made an analogy between this light, which I had just seen that night for the first time in my sobriety, and the slow sneaky way that love overtakes a person. It was a really great piece of writing. Well, I am a 10 years older old fart now, and a little more cynical. Still happy as a clam, but I kind of hate snow, and I don’t plan on falling in love anytime soon. I often think of that blog entry when I see the light from everywhere. Tonight, as a big nor’easter blew into Philadelphia, I had already done all the outside things I needed to do for the day, and was just planning on settling in for the night, putting on my sweatpants and maybe putting in my DVD of “Picnic at Hanging Rock”, and eating some rice and drinking some diet soda. But as I got up to go to the bathroom and walked past the front door, I saw the light from everywhere and the light from nowhere, and I was drawn outside. I can’t re-create for you the magic of that first blog entry 10 years ago, but I did take some video, and I was feeling pretty good about the world:

Get Out of the Kitchen

In the few years since I’ve begun riding a bike for pleasure, I have found a curious thing to hold true: if you want to experience deafening, post-apocalypse-like solitude, there is no place quite like small town or suburban streets in the middle of summer.

Let me state this again: when it gets hot out, the streets of your local neighborhood are always empty.  Eerily so.

OK so, people don’t like the heat, so what?  That’s certainly fine with me.  Go wherever you want and like whatever you want; I’m always glad everyone doesn’t like the same stuff I like (you’d all be making me wait in line for shit)!  But as I was riding my bike around a sweltering small town today, glorying in the sweat on the inside of my cap and the buzzing of relentless insects and the lively way sound has of travelling through active, hot air, I couldn’t help but ponder the many conversations I’ve had with people about their aversion to heat.

I’m pretty into summer, and most people aren’t, so I’ve had lots of these conversations.

Very close to 100% of people give a form of this argument for an anti-summer stance:

At least in the winter, you can go somewhere and warm up, maybe throw a blanket over yourself.  In the summer, sometimes you just get real hot and there’s nothing you can do about it. Give me a blanket any day!

What a load of steaming bullshit.  It is certainly possible that you think that way, and if so, may I suggest that you’re a wanker?  You mean to tell me the foremost thing you base your human happiness on is your level of physical comfort in relation to the atmospheric temperature?  How dreadfully boring, how devoid of active thought or action, how painfully insipid of a way to think about your life.  So, more than anything, you just want to be comfortable, eh?

You know, in many instances, comfort is a synonym for complacency.  That means not giving a shit.

(I have a few readers in parts of the world that are not “four season” areas; this rant applies very little to them)

Curling up under a blanket, while certainly a nice escape from the death season which is Winter, is certainly no valid recompense for losing the ability to partake in just about any meaningful outdoor activity (please, if you’re contemplating commenting about snowboarding, making snowmen, snowball fights, etc, please read this old entry of mine, and then take a flying leap).  It is inherent in the very reasons you give for liking “cold over hot” that these activities revolve around escaping from life, withdrawing from action, focusing on comfort and the absence of the cold from your living room, rather than anything that is celebratory, life-affirming, or satisfying of your human curiosity.

I reject your argument about blankets, fireplaces, and Christmas.  It is invalid.  You don’t like cold more than you like heat.  You like comfort more than you like living.

Hot Dog Soup

About once a month, somebody “accuses” me of having an “opinion about everything”.  Some people actually find this to be a negative trait!  While I suppose having constant opinions coming out of one’s mouth might, over time, seem “negative” or “cynical”, what is the opposite?!  Certainly not “optimistic”, it’s just…unopinionated, which I can’t imagine is very different than uneducated.  Or at the very least, uninterested or lacking any substantial level of curiosity about the world around you.  And to me, a lack of curiosity is just about as unattractive of a personality trait as you can have.

“The blog”, as a general phenomenon is sadly going the way of the dodo.  The lion’s share of the content on the internet is now filtered through three or four different social network sites, with instant sharing, commenting, “liking”, where all the people you know are already congregated.  Taking the time to create and maintain your own blog, and then trying to convince everyone to leave the comforts of the social networking site to actually read your blog, is now more trouble than it’s worth for most people.  Myself included.  My blog output has been pathetic for over a year now.  But that might be partially because when I drop a blog bomb on you, like this or this, it goes largely unnoticed and uncommented on.  You people don’t deserve my blog.  Regardless, I mourn the end of the blog era, when, briefly, a bunch of everyday folks fancied themselves writers.  It was fun.  Now we’re all just statusers.

I’m scared by how fast technology is evolving.  I know, I know: what a very typical thing to say.  Everyone who has tons of opinions has that opinion.  But do you know about Moore’s law? If not, you should click on that link and read that article.  Moore’s Law is not a theory anymore; this is how the world is working now, and it is truly ghastly imagining what things will be like even five years from now.  Microchips in our brains is not a joke anymore.  I dare say it is something that will be happening soon.  And hey, look, I’m not afraid of change.  I’m afraid of change happening faster than we can adapt to it or control it.  There were thousands of years from when we invented the wheel to when we came up with the car.  It’s been 80 years since we invented television, and now we’re about to control them by waving our hands in the air.  And that progress is only going to keep speeding up, according to Moore’s Law.

I’d eat Hot Dog Soup, if it existed.

Here’s my buddy Kyle’s top ten movies of 2011 list.  Click or…I don’t know.  Something bad will happen to you.  Ever seen “The Monkey’s Paw”?  Yeah, bad shit like that.

The Final Note

Summer has finally, at long, long last come to Erie, and a happier man, I could not be.  As everyone knows, heat is my wheelhouse.  I feel alive, caffeinated, abuzz with ideas, inspiration, energy and hormones.  The world is absolutely mine.

Summer has always been my most creative season.  I realize I’m not an “artist” of any stripe, per se.  An amateur creative writer would best describe me, I suppose, although I like to think I simply live a creative life, from doodling while I watch TV to giving people nicknames.  I’ve come to a point in my life where I’m perfectly content with the fact that I will never be famous for any of the creative arts (I’m simply not good enough at anything), but I like to keep doing things anyway, because a body’s got to do something with all this time, no?

For just about as long as I can remember, I have taken great joy in the act of creation, from words to drawings (bad as they may be) to short films and photography.  I remember in my teens, I spent almost a whole year simply putting words together by twos, on reams and reams of white lined notebook paper (for instance, copper elephant, democratic pants, shoeshine sunrise, garden car, and on and on, thousands of them).  I did this for no other reason than it brought me joy.  I have dozens of other examples like this from my life.

Which brings me to my point.  Despite numerous attempts to deny it to myself, Notes From the Fire is not only no longer bringing me joy, but I believe it to be sapping my creative energies.  I no longer write anything for fun and excitement, but instead to get “views” on my blog.  I no longer write what I most intensely want to write about, but what is “safe” enough for the blog, but “personal” enough to maintain it’s tone.  I also have made myself feel compelled to post with a certain frequency, thereby often resulting in diminished quality and repititious horseshit.  I know that all these problems are simply results of my own mindset regarding The Notes, but I have tried repeatedly to change this mindset, to no avail.  In short, the blog rules me mentally and is crushing me creatively.

I need some time to once again find what it’s like to write for oneself, or for a future audience—and not for immediate consumption.  In addition, I’m feeling my creative juices pulling me in interesting ways, away from simply the written word and into visual arts.  Right now, I really feel like taking some pictures with actual film, having them developed, and collaging them…some sort of themed collage, perhaps.  That sounds fun.  Maybe I’ll do it in my attic and even throw paint at it or something.  But I’m going to do it for myself and nobody’s going to see it, at least not for awhile (and it will probably be no good anyway, but I’ll have a ton of fun doing it).

Don’t worry, I’m not taking The Notes down.  This website will always be here.  Feel free to peruse old entries; I’ll still reply to comments you make on them.  Also, you can always check out my Netflix queue on here.  :)

Something tells me I’ll be back sooner than I imagine, but on a different site and perhaps in a different format.  Or the break will do me wonders and I’ll be back at The Notes sometime.  Who knows?  There are no rules, and now that it’s summer, I’m going to be proving that as much as possible.  For instance, right now it’s 4am, I haven’t slept yet, and as soon as the sun comes up, I’m going to ride my bike all over this town and take lovely pictures all damn day, because I can.

However, you won’t see them on Notes From the Fire.

Don’t worry though, they’ll still be on Facebook.  I haven’t lost my mind!

Thanks to all of you for reading and making Notes From the Fire a lovely, rewarding experience for me!

Notes From the Fire is currently on a 4 or 5 day blog hiatus, to allow Mr. Notes to spend quality time with his mother, who is visiting.  Please refer all your business to my friend Duane.  Thank you very much.  Also, I didn’t take this picture but I love it:

You Would Not Survive a Vacation Like This

So.  That was a pretty insane trip home (and lots of other places).  I’m not even sure where to begin.  This may end up being a ridiculously long and disjointed blog entry.  I apologize in advance.  If it ends up not being extremely long and disjointed, I will come back and delete this intro, and you will never read it.

First, I should like to thank my family (Dad, Mom, Sister) for their various forms of hospitality and much-needed displays of unconditional love.  Yay human spirit and the familial bond!  I feel pretty damn good about my family.  You guys rule!  And thank you to all my friends who made me feel as if I never moved away.  I am blessed beyond belief with deep, intense, loyal friendships!  In addition, a big frowny face to those who I had to miss on this trip (most notably, loyal blog reader and renowned Muse, Cory.  Little does she know, my next trip home is going to be so all about her, she will have to call the cops on me. And the truly lovely Mercedes, whom I am unabashedly smitten with.   Also, on-again-off-again blog reader Tiff, who I had *promised* a certain something to…well, next time, ok???).  I was stretched a little thin to do and see everything and everyone I wanted, but it was fairly satisfying nonetheless.

My Zany Itinerary

Let me just show you the zaniness of where I’ve been the last week and a half.  I am going to include tomorrow, as I go to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a work seminar.  Here’s where I was, for the most part, the last ten days:

3/25: Erie, PA/ Carlisle, PA
3/26: Carlisle, PA/ Asbury Pary, NJ
3/27: Mantua, NJ
3/28: Brooklyn, NY/ Newark, NJ
3/29: Manhattan, NY/ Mantua, NJ
3/30: Mantua, NJ/ Carlisle, PA
3/31: Carlisle, PA
4/1: Carlisle, PA
4/2: Carlisle, PA/ Erie, PA
4/3: Erie, PA
4/4: Pittsburgh, PA
4/5: Pittsburgh, PA/ Erie, PA

And I aint even tired yet.  Bring. It. On.

My Newville Tour

Early on in my trip, I had a little extra time to kill early in the morning, and I drove into Newville (the small town I grew up in) and walked around the town for the first time in many years (I have been there plenty as of late, but not actually walked around).  I took some pictures of major landmarks in my life, also making sure to get a few pictures of some of the places that have played large parts in some of my blog entries.  Here is a bit of a pictorial tour of Newville:

My first house, 66 Big Spring Avenue. My bedroom was the top two windows on the right of the picture.

The big enchilada….the childhood home.  Most famously portrayed in this blog entry right here.

I have been trying to upload the famous picture of my mother and I admiring my grandmother’s garden, but I am having some trouble, so here is a link to that picture on Facebook. And here is a picture of that back yard area today:

One of my most popular blog entries ever was “The Fruit that Ate Itself“, about me being bullied in a local church yard.  I snapped some pics of that area in current day:

The church yard itself.

The line of trees is where the dreaded swingset and slide had been.

The Senior Center where the "fight" ended. Those are the bushes I flew through in the climactic moment.

If you’ve read my blog entry “Down the Rabbit Hole“, you may be interested to see this cellar door on one of my childhood neighbor’s homes:

OK, so just a few more pics here, but not related to any previous blog, just some Seth-historic stuff:

The very spot where I got on a school bus for the very first time.

This was my corner when I was a crossign guard.

Friendies

I had almost too much fun with friendies to try to sum things up here.  I’ll hit some highlights:

I surprised Kate with my presence not once but twice, and she lost.  her.  shit. each time.  First, Michael and I surprised her at her house:

It was also on this visit that this picture of Michael happened:

A few days later, I was strolling through Carlisle wasting a few minutes before picking up another friend, when I came across Kate and her family at the local eatery The Green Room.  As I was leaving them I took this pic of Kate, her husband Matt, and their son Dylan:

Let me just take this moment to say, as I was strolling around Carlisle that night, I was struck by just how freaking cool of a town it is.  Those of you who still live there, please do not take it for granted.  First, it is totally adorable.  And such a great pedestrian town!  And for a relatively small town in central Pennsylvania, it is arts-friendly.  Open mic nights, free music, poetry readings, public displays of photography, and on and on, are quite common.  The area known as the square and the surrounding blocks are humming with a vibrant intellectual life (not to mention some fantastic cuisine).  Please partake of what the gem of a town has to offer!

My brief time with Burke was spent in some fairly intense conversation that may, in fact, make me think about my life differently.  Oh, and Johnny Depp is a fucking sellout.

I spent some truly hilarious time with Jenny.  Jenny is quickly becoming a Major Friend.  (if her name is unfamiliar to you, this was the last woman to be an “official girlfriend”…and if my hunch is true– that I am a lifetime bachelor– she may go down in the history books as the last woman to be an official Seth girlfriend…what a distinction!).  Anyway, I sure do love this woman.  She has the special ability to make me laugh until I am worried about my health…without saying anything. She has a non-verbal humor akin to Kramer.  She can just look at me and I lose my shit.  Here we are, loving life:

Of course, you know I saw Michael, and it resulted in a moment of hilarity that I am pretty sure you “had to be there” for, but we decided that Merle Haggard had at one point recorded the “classic” song “You’re Gonna Make Daddy Fart (and Momma Aint Gonna Be Happy)”.  I still laugh when I type that.

Mary and I had one helluva time trying to find parking in downtown Harrisburg—notable because it’s usually not THAT hard.  Sure, those few blocks in the very center of town are tough, but we were unable to find ANY spots on the street ANYWHERE.  When we finally did park (in a garage) we ended up just hanging around Strawberry Square , when in fact we had intended to go to the Susquehanna Art Museum. I’m still not sure in the least how this distraction occurred, but we had a blast.  But the major news from this venture is that Mary has OK’d some photographs of herself!  You may or may not know that pictures of Mary are quite rare.  She just hates pictures of herself, and of course I love taking pictures of people, so this is a friction.  Plus, she really is one of the most exquisite women in existence, so I always feel as though the world in general is being deprived of some joy by the absence of Mary pictures.  When I take a Mary picture, I have to show her, wheneupon she then either insists on immediate deletion, OKs the picture for my own personal collection but not anyone else’s eyes, or (the most rare) OKs a picture for online distribution.  So here, lucky world, are 4 new Mary pictures:

That's the back of Mary's head in the lower right.

Staying at Dad’s

It is with much chagrin that I realize I did not take a single picture of my papa and me on this trip. *sad face*  Nonetheless, I must say, spending time with my dad just gets more and more pleasant as the two of us age.  It never stops surprising me how we continue to grow into friends (while he retains his essential papa-ness).  He is one cool dude and we somehow never run out of things to talk about.

This also marked the first time in recent memory that I have stayed at Dad’s for multiple days without my sister also being there.  In this sense it was entirely unique.  The last time I stayed at my dad’s by myself for more than one night was way back when I was still drinking and on-again, off-again living there.  So this was new, and really, really great.  In a lot of ways, it felt like a true homecoming, learning how that house and I interact when I’m a grown-up, and sober, and left all alone with it.  Turns out we get along just fine.  And I sleep magnificently in my old bedroom.  But it’s tough getting used to that shower again.

Hey Rosetta!

I’m gonna really have to shrink down the Hey Rosetta! story, or I’ll be here all day.  So, in summary:

Here are pictures from Paul and I’s show in Asbury Park, NJ.  It was a fantastic time, both Paul-wise (Paul, thanks for helping me see that not all my close friends have to be women!) and band-wise.  Really, one of the more satisfying concert-going experiences I’ve had.

Then, I made an audible call and went to see them by myself twice more over the next three days, in New York City (more on NYC later).  Long story short, I ended up basically knowing the band.  But they started talking to me. I suppose when you are a band that is really famous and successful in Canada, and then you come to the states and are playing bars where most of the people are ignoring you, and there is a short fat guy with gray hair jumping around and screaming your lyrics, when he shows up to your NEXT show in a different state, it is worth taking note.  So as I was taking this picture of the chalk board advertising their show in Brooklyn, a few of the band members were walking out of the bar and saw me and introduced themselves.

Because shows like this entail a lot of waiting around (if you insist, like I do, on front row) in small bars with no “backstage” area for bands, as well as lots of changing-out of gear between bands (not to mention trips to very small bathrooms), the two shows in New York would prove extremely fertile ground for me talking to the band.  This went way beyond my previous “thank you, your music has meant so much to me” that I’ve been able to give other bands.  This was basically a getting-to-know-you situation.  Specifically cellist Romesh Thavanathan, lead guitarist Adam Hogan, and violinist Kinley Dowling spoke quite a bit to me and I was definitely on a first-name basis with them by the end of my second New York show, and I’d had a chance to speak to every member of this six-piece band.  Certainly, this was fairly incredible, but also….in some ways, not as great as you’d think.  Parts of this experience were awkward.  I may blog more about this at some point, just because it was pretty intriguing (ever have your favorite band watch you as they are playing?)  But don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.  It was an amazing experience.  Here is a video I took of “Red Song” at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, followed by a few select pictures of the New York shows:

I also managed to snag handwritten setlists off the stage two of the three nights.  Here are scans of the setlists:

So now, for the benefit of probably just myself and maybe Paul, here is some Hey Rosetta! setlist discussion:  on the first setlist shown, Bandages was skipped.  On the second shown (from my thrid concert, Manhattan) ‘Bandages’ and ‘Red Heart’ were swapped in position (as were the two songs where a swap is indicated, ‘Yer Spring’ and ‘Welcome’…and talk about a way to open a show!  “Lions For Scottie” into “Welcome”!)  Here are all three setlists for shows I went to this tour:

Asbury Park, NJ

1.  New Goodbye
2.  Yer Spring
3.  New Glass
4.  Bricks
5.  Another Pilot
6.  There’s an Arc
7.  Seeds
8.  Red Heart

Brooklyn, NY
(reconstructed via this photograph)

1.  New Goodbye
2.  Yer Spring
3.  New Glass
4.  Bricks
5.  Another Pilot
6.  There’s an Arc
7.  Welcome
8.  Red Song
9.  We Made a Pact
10.  Seeds
11.  Red Heart
12. A Thousand Suns*

*’Bandages’ is on the setlist in the 12 spot, but ‘A Thousand Suns’ was played.

Manhattan, NY

1.  Lions For Scottie
2.  Welcome
3.  Yer Spring
4.  New Glass
5.  Yer Fall
6.  There’s an Arc
7.  I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
8.  Holy Shit
9.  New Sum
10.  Seeds
11.  New Goodbye

Encore:

1.  Bandages
2.  Red Heart

And now, for the record, the sum total of Hey Rosetta! songs I’ve seen, including the two acoustic shows I saw last year:

1.  Red Heart–5 times
2.  Bricks–4 times
3.  I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time–3 times
4.  Lions for Scottie–3 times
5.  Bandages–3 times
6.  New Goodbye–3 times
7.  Yer Spring–3 times
8.  New Glass–3 times
9.  There’s an Arc–3 times
10.  Seeds–3 times
11.  Seventeen–2 times
12.  Red Song–2 times
13.  We Made a Pact–2 times
14.  Another Pilot–2 times
15.  Welcome–2 times
16.  A Thousand Suns–1 time
17.  Yer Fall–1 time
18.  Holy Shit–1 time
19.  New Sum–1 time

Mom’s/ Sisters

So my mom now lives with my sister, which makes visiting everybody much easier!  It was quite nice to see everybody all at once!  In the same breath, however, I must admit it made me feel as though I did a poor job of paying ample attention to everyone.  When you are seeing a gaggle of loved ones all at once for the first time in a long time, it can be a strain to give equal time.  I think specifically of the nephews, who I love uncontrollably but whom I was not able to give the sort of attention they are accustomed to receiving from me.  When it came down to it, my mom and my sister were the center of my focus (not to mention the antics of Pumpkin Latte).  Don’t get me wrong, I had a lovely time!  I guess I’m just feeling some guilt, cause those boys worked up a good amount of anticipation for my arrival and I almost certainly dissapointed.  That being said, the time with Momma and Sis was marvelous. LOTS of laughs, and a new momma/ son tradition: I claim her and I are going to do the Jumble together, and then I end up freaking out over how amazing she is at it, while I add absolutely nothing to the process (she really is amazing at the Jumble).  Also, I “T”d my sister, which always rules.  A brief but incredibly heartwarming time.  Some select pics:

Sister and Pumpkin Latte, as she was taking their picture

Sis, Me, Mom

New York

The New York trip is another thing I shall have to gloss over, or I’ll be writing this blog entry until next week.  I did what I typically do: I drive right into the city, pay a thousand dollars to park, and just walk around.  I usually have very little plan other than one or two fairly simple goals.  This trip’s goals: see sunrise from inside Central Park, and buy a New York Times from a newsstand and read the whole thing from inside a midtown Manhattan Starbucks during the morning commute hours.  I’m not sure why I wanted to do these things, but once the goals were in my mind, I could not seem to let them go.  I accomplished both, and although being in Central Park during sunrise was magical, it was not easy to get any great pictures of the event, due to the vast amount of:

a) Tall trees, and
b) skyscrapers

These things blocked the view of the actual sunrise rather effectively, but feeling the world come alive from within the park was quite joyous.  Here is the best picture I got of the sunrise:

I spent almost two hours in the Starbucks, enjoying my latte and an incredible issue of the NYT.  I suppose for a moment I felt as hip as I’ve always suspected I am.  It was a quality time.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around, taking pictures, eating, even napping briefly in the tranquil section of Central Park known as the Woodlands.  I also visited, for the first time, the Central Park Zoo, which was a lovely treat.  Here is some video I took of the Sea Lions being fed (and putting on a little show) followed by some pictures:

Sunset, Brooklyn

Me in Central Park

Some Things I Learned

1.  8 months is not long enough to forget how to get around (but it IS long enough to cause some occasional navigation confusion)

2.  When you are a single man in your 30s who moves away from everyone he knows and doesn’t visit home for 8 months, a surprising amount of people from all demographics will just straight-up ask you about your sex life.  This is fodder for an entire blog entry at some point that will be in the form of a “rant”.  FYI, nobody need worry about my sex life, mkay?

3.  You may think where you live is boring, but leave it for a little while and then come back; you may just find it’s really cool.

4.  There are really hot ladies everywhere.

5.  Don’t tell people you got fat.  You may think it will make your fatness less awkward, but it makes it moreso.

6.  Things change.  Buildings get knocked down, businesses change their name, streets get re-directed.  Accept these things as a natural course of existence. (reminds me of a Hey Rosetta! song:  “The schools that we went to have all been closed./ And all of my teachers are dead, I suppose.”)

7.  You can walk further than you think you can.

8.  If you move and your sports allegiances change a little bit, you can just kinda keep that to yourself on your first few visits home.

9.  As you leave places you have stayed for just a day or two, remember to gather all your various “chargers”.  We have a lot of chargers in this day and age.

10.  Family and friends really are the best things in the world, even if saying so sounds cheesy and cliche.  Fuck it, it’s true!

I Almost Forgot…

Today is my 8 year sobriety anniversary!  The original purpose of this vacation was for me to have off and see my loved ones leading up to the big day.  (I just have to complete my anniversary tradition of watching “Dark Days” on the anniversary itself)  So…yay me!  But also…yay you!  Thanks everybody for putting up with my horribleness when I was horrible, and then helping me live such a satisfying and fantastic life in my sobriety!  What a treat, to be able to celebrate the week leading up to it in the way I did.  And how neat is it that I almost forgot today was the day???  That must mean life is pretty good.  I love you, everybody!

Dispatch from Home

Hello folks!!! As you may or may not have heard, I am writing you from the ol’ homestead of central Pennsylvania (and New Jersey and maybe New York or Philadelphia, at some point).  I didn’t give any forewarning on this develppment, as I desperately wanted to avoid having an “appointment” vacation, where I make so many plans with people I no longer seem to posses free will.  I want to visit home but also have an actual vacation.  I mean…I work real hard.

Anyway, you won’t (probably) be hearing from me much in the interim, although before I left Erie I set up a few blogs to post automatically (mostly the recurring blogs with days in their names…Monday’s Song, etc) so we won’t feel my absence entirely.  I just wanted to put that out there in case you happen to know I’m in the middle of a 5 hour drive and an Audio Poem posts, you know I’m not doing that shit from my car!

I had a perfect day yesterday, seeing my dad in the morning, some terrific friends (Michael and Kate) in the afternoon, and then having a near-flawless road trip with Paul to see a mind-blowing Hey Rosetta!  (not to mention getting to meet Paul’s precious brand-new son, Parker).  Paul: we somehow seem to have more to talk about with each other than we did as younger men, plus we laugh even more.  What a rare quaility.  You’re a gem, sir.

I’m off to New Jersey now (I know…I was just there yesterday, but I promise, it’s not the same town) to see my mother, my sister, my nephews, and Pumpkin Latte. 

Also, it’s really sunny, and 42 degrees (right now that feels like 70!)

And just wait till you see the pictures I’ve been getting!

A Blog Stats E-mail that WordPress Sent Me

(WordPress sent me this in an e-mail and at the end it asked it I’d like it posted.  I said sure, why not?)

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A helper monkey made this abstract painting, inspired by your stats.

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 21,100 times in 2010. That’s about 51 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 305 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 535 posts. There were 404 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 216mb. That’s about 1 pictures per day.

The busiest day of the year was October 14th with 194 views. The most popular post that day was You Don’t Like Winter.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, mail.yahoo.com, sz0012.wc.mail.comcast.net, netdf.com, and touch.facebook.com.

Some visitors came searching from internet search engines, mostly for chantix diary, notesfromthefire.wordpress.com, 7m3 out for blood, hurt locker, and notes from the fire seth.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

You Don’t Like Winter October 2010
6 comments

2

My 100 Favorite Bands…IN ORDER January 2010
28 comments

3

Christmas Eve in Rehab December 2010
24 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

4

No Steps Forward, Two Steps Back December 2010
18 comments

5

The blog post where I mention everyone I know who already has an existing “tag” on my blog, so I can tag them again and insert a useful or ridiculous link to them. October 2010
21 comments

Hey, want some great and free music?  Check out my friend Duane’s blog right here; you can actually download (not just stream) some of his songs for totally free!  Thanks Duane!

The blog post where I mention everyone I know who already has an existing “tag” on my blog, so I can tag them again and insert a useful or ridiculous link to them.

1.  Oh hi, billhanna.  I see you ‘liked’ goatees on Facebook yesterday.  Our adversarial relationship about facial hair will continue to the grave.  THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

  2.  Anyone who knows Tasha, check out the link, she just got a radical new haircut!  I love it!

3.  I have quite few friends who are talented musicians—one of them is the great Bootney Lee (real name Ryan Straub).  I double-dare you to click on the link and check his music out.

4.  Guess who I’m going to see next month, as the three of us meet up in central New York for a Hey Rosetta! show???  Well that would be none other than my life-long buddies Paul and Davey!  (he’s Chris Davey, but we call him Davey).  This is going to be exceptional as it’s been a few years since we were together, all 3 of us.  And did I mention it’s a Hey Rosetta show???  I still haven’t seen them live–the shows I was supposed to go to awhile back had to be skipped because life is like that.  I am uber pumped for this!

5.  It has been way too long since I tagged my friend Amanda.  I mean that just like it sounds, too. 

6.  You know who rules?  My mom!  She just quit smoking!!! Raise the roof!

7.  I’m still tickled pink about the Doctor Strange drinking glass that Tony Magni gave me as a going away present when I moved to Erie.  Thanks Tony! 

8.  My friend Denise has a very under-appreciated photo blog.  Click to link to check it out!!!  She’s way talented!

9.  The lovely Sarah P. has just had a baby! Huzzah!  She doesn’t have any sort of online presence so I’ve linked to a picture of Big Ben, which is in England, which is where I met her!

10.  My dad is one cool mofo.  What’s my evidence?  Every single day I become more and more like him, and I am most definitely one cool mofo.  Dad, we are some cool dudes!

11.  I tag Ron all  the damn time, I aint saying anything about him!

12.  Big days for my buddy Burke, who has just started going back to school while also remaining a steadfast David Hasselhoff fan.  Kudos, wanker!

13.  I could probably talk about Mary all day, but I’m pretty sure she’d friend-disown me.  She dislikes scrutiny.

14.  My dear, dear friend Michael (that’s a lady named Michael) sent me the most lovely letter in the mail yesterday.  She sure is a freaking great friend!!  It was quite touching, it brought a tear to my eye.  Everyone should have a friend like Michael!

15.  California buddy Kyle is finally off the unemployment and working at a bank!!! Yay Kyle!  Now:  no more excuses for sneaking into movies, you heathen!

16.  My freaking cool-as-shit sister just got a job working at a law firm!  What what!  Dellingers can do anything!!!  Click the link to read her badass blog!

17.  Also in the world of talented musician friends of mine:  Duane, who records under the name DreamlandNoise.  Click the link for just a small sampling of his superb “space funk”.

18.  What to say about my girl Cory? She recently moved back to central PA, like, RIGHT after I left it.  *frown face*  She’s just the shiznit in every way, and is quite a talented artist.  I’ve linked to some of her art but you might not be able to see it if you’re not FB friends with her.  Which would be your loss.

Hey folks.  Just wanted to quickly point out a tiny but handy new feature I’ve added here on Notes From the Fire.  If you look to the right of the screen, above my picture, you’ll see a drop=down with selections of “categories”.  These are like the “tags” that are always present in that tag cloud over there, but just a tad different.  They are basically more specific than the tags; for instance, there is a “My Poetry” category and a “Other People’s Poetry” category, whereas there is only a “poetry” tag.  Likewise, you can click on the “Chantix Diary” or “Erie Journal” categories, whereas with tags they would have just gone under “Erie” or “Addiction” or whatever I felt tagging it as that day.  It may seem a little confusing, but play around with it a bit.  I swear it makes sense and will eventually make finding an older post you may want to read much, much easier.

So, as I had mentioned a little while ago, I haven’t really been a “good” blogger lately, at least, not by my definition.  However, for the time being, I am embracing not writing anything serious or profound right now.  However, I have worked out a daily schedule of stuff I am going to post for awhile (that most of you will absolutely not care about), but it will serve to keep the blog active and keep me thinking about it.  I don’t foresee this lasting much more than a month; as winter weather moves in, I’ll be indoors much more and certainly writing more.  Anyway, here’s the schedule for the next little bit:

Monday: A YouTube video of a song I love, along with the lyrics to that song; a new artist will be featured each time.
Tuesday: A reprint of one of the old blogs about each place I’ve lived
Wednesday: A photograph I took that day.
Thursday: A “Seth’s Favorite Poem”—poems by people other than me that I really love.
Friday: A poll
Saturday:  Something Ron Said Once
Sunday:  Audio Poem

The Wilderness Downtown

I feel like quite a failure as a blogger as of late.  I haven’t really done much new stuff at all since I moved to Erie; maybe 5 or 6 good blogs of new material (aside from the Erie journals) and a few poems; the rest have just been re-hashed or cheap re-packagings of old work.

The fact of the matter is, this is primarily because I spend a lot less time in my apartment than I used to, and even less time at the computer (for instance, I am almost never actually on Facebook–I just check it obsessively from my phone) and during my limited time at home, I’ve just not been spending it writing.  Winter is fast approaching though, so new, exciting blogs should be coming soon!!  In the meantime, I’m going to keep posting cheap re-hashes and the occasional list of crap, and I’m not going to feel bad about it anymore!

Real quick though, while I’m thinking about it, I’ve got yet another music thing I need to rave about, but I think just about all of you can get behind this.  Perhaps you’ve heard of a band called The Arcade Fire?  (if not, now you have)  They have a new album out, and it is just superb.  Anyway, I’m not here to try to get you to listen to it.  I’m here to get you to check out one of the coolest online things ever, and it revolves around a song called “We Used to Wait” on their new album The Suburbs, which is a concept album all about–you guessed it–the suburbs.

I’m not gonna tell you too much about it, please just trust me, all of you.  Go to www.thewildernessdowntown.com.  It is going to tell you that it will not work if you are not running Google Chrome, which is true, but listen: download it.  There’s a real simple, easy link to download it right on the main page, and it only takes about 30 seconds, and you can get rid of it really easy later if you want.

Once you’re running Google Chrome, go back to the website.  It will ask you to enter the street address you grew up at.  Do it, precisely.  This doesn’t work like a charm for everyone, but it works really well more often than not.  Then, sit back and watch “We Used to Wait” unfold just for you.  I’m pretty sure, when it’s over, you’ll want to hear more Arcade Fire.

How about some lists of things because I’m bored?

All lists are ranked, not random

My 5 favorite television news personalities:

1.  Sam Donaldson
2. Katie Couric
3. Andersen Cooper (who used to be number one but is slipping fast!)
4. Bob Novak
5. Diane Sawyer

My 5 favorite golf clubs to use:

1.  Pitching Wedge
2. 5 Wood
3. 7 Iron
4. 3 Wood
5. 9 Iron

My 5 favorite streets in Carlisle:

1. North St.
2. Hanover St.
3. Walnut St.
4. South St.
5. Louther St.

My 5 favorite NPR shows:

1. A Prairie Home Companion
2. Hearing Voices
3. Fresh Air
4. Soundcheck
5. Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me…

My favorite Seinfeld characters:

1.  George
2.  Elaine
3.  Jerry
4.  Puddy
5.  Uncle Leo

My 5 favorite types of columns:

1.  Tuscan
2.  Solomonic
3. Ionic
4. Corinthian
5. Doric

Top 5 countries I NEVER want to visit:

1.  North Korea
2.  India
3.  Turkey
4.  Bolivia
5.  Cuba

My five favorite flavors for lattes:

1.  Caramel
2.  English Toffee
3.  Pumpkin
4.  Marshmallow
5.  Hazelnut

Top five newly off-myspace blogs:

1.  Scattered is a Pattern
2. Scattered is a Pattern
3. Scattered is a Pattern
4. Scattered is a Pattern
5. Scattered is a Pattern

My 5 favorite incense scents:

1. Nag Champa
2. Dragon’s Blood
3. Sandalwood
4. Jasmine
5. Patchouli

My 5 favorite physicists:

1. Ramsey
2. Salpeter
3. Einstein
4. Sagan
5. deGrasse Tyson

Blogging the Night Away

Last night, my friend Kyle got drunk on rum, watched movies, and fucked around on the internet, blogging his thoughts on what he was seeing/doing.  It looked like marvelous self-indulgent fun, so of course I’m doing it now! (except I’ll be drinking generic diet Dr. Pepper and various coffee products instead of rum!)

Tonight is a “Seth-time” night–I shut out the outside world and treat my apartment and everything in it like an amusement park.  It’s not very often I get to fully enjoy all this crap I’ve got in here!  Most of you will not be the least bit interested by this blog post, so I apologize in advance, but it’s gonna be fun for me, so take a flying leap!  Also, I’ll be editing it throughout the night and adding to it, so check back!

7:30pm: I’m halfway through “Citizen Ruth”, the first movie by Alexander Payne (of “Election”, “About Schmidt” and “Sideways” fame).  Kyle himself chose this movie for me by randomly picking a number (237) and then I counted to that number in my personal DVD collection.  “Citizen Ruth” is a dark comedy about the hilarious issues of abortion, addiction, the religious right, and moral certitude.  I know, hilarious, right?!  But it IS, somehow, and also very, very issue oriented.  I haven’t watched it for probably a year, and am now reminded of why I bought it.  As a rule, I very much dislike Laura Dern (what with her association with David Lynch), but in “Citizen Ruth”, Dern does an AMAZING job portraying this very tortured woman (she’s addicted to huffing paint) who’s had 4 kids taken from her and is being pressured to abort her current fetus, when she becomes a national poster woman for anti-abortion…and then the poster woman for choice…and back and forth and back and forth, all the while Dern continues to skirt the line between intense emotion and light-heartedness…as much as I dislike her, she deserved an Oscar nom for this.

Here’s a scene from the movie that perfectly illustrates how it is played both tragic and comic simultaneously:

7:45pm: Cracking open the first Diet Dr. Thunder (wal-mart brand) of the night.  I really do love this shit.  I don’t buy it for economic reasons.  I actually prefer it to the real deal now.  I have cans tonight, but I usually have 2 liters.  Wal-Mart was actually OUT of the 2 liters last night!

7:47pm: Ruth Stoops (Laura Dern) who is about to enter an abortion clinic but is waiting for some protesters to leave, just said “I wish I could take a dump.”

8:02pm: Just took the trash out.  Why do I always insist in doing this in just my socks, when I know full well that the stone parking lot hurts my feet?  I’ve always had very sensitive feet.

8:04pm: Just cracked open the newest Time magazine.  What is this stuff about New Jersey residents protesting Gaddafi?  This seems weird.  I’m gonna get to the bottom of this.

8:07pm: The anti-abortion woman who is attempting to win Ruth to their position just accused Ruth of being addicted to “smelling drugs”.

8:12pm: Perusing the latest TV Guide (that’s right, I get TV Guide) to see if I want to put on the TV or another movie after “Citizen Ruth” is over.  PBS’s History Detectives is looking pretty good.  Anyone ever seen that show?  It’s sooooooo intriguing!  But that is really the only thing coming on a 9:00 that seems worth my time.

8:14pm: Oh man!!!  Burt Reynolds makes his hilarious entry into “Citizen Ruth”!  Gotta love this character!

8:35pm: Just read about this curious phenomenon in Time:  Putpockets.

8:36pm: Flirting on Facebook.

8:54pm: Eating a can of Hormel chili.  Interesting story about me and chili:  about 2 years ago, my friend Mary and I were eating at the restaurant Chili’s.  I was very, very hungry, and was talking about having an appetizer of some kind, at which point Mary says I might as well have some chili, since I always eat chili.  I was astounded!  Sure, I’ve eaten chili in my life, but I’ve never been a chili “fan”, or, as far as I can remember, ever eaten chili in front of Mary before that moment.  I protested, but she insisted that I always ate chili.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, almost immediately after that night, I DID become a big fan of chili, and now I usually have one or two cans in my apartment at all times.  This, of course, always looks to Mary as though she were right all along!  I can in no way convince her that I was not a chili fan before that night!  Also: on my second can of Diet Dr. Thunder.

9:00pm: I’ve opted to watch History Detectives.

9:13pm: That chili was delish!!  And this episode of History Detectives is boring!  (enough WWII already, History Detectives!).  I’m going to step out of the apartment briefly to take some pictures of Carlisle at night.

10:00pm: Back from taking pictures.  Didn’t get a lot of good shots, but I should have: it’s “big trash day”, when people can put couches and refrigerators and all kinds of big stuff out on the sidewalk to be taken away.  However, my limited-ability camera made capturing anything great very difficult.  here are my favorites:

10:16pm: It is apparently impossible to not have these words snake around the pictures.  No matter how hard I try, they won’t simply appear BELOW the pictures.  Consider that my rant for the evening.  Now:  I’m well aware of how this sounds, but I’m now going to put on my vinyl copy of Godspeed You Black Emperor’s album Yanqui U.X.O., light some incense, and read some poetry.  This is going to rule.  Looks like the poet of the night is…Robert Creeley, who rules. Also, when the song “Motherfucker=Redeemer” plays, I am going to play air guitar on a golf club (which I guess is actually golf club guitar) during the 10-minute crescendo.

10:27pm: Texting Joni, who just sprained her wrist.

10:34pm: Internet and cable TV go down, not changing my plans at all, but preventing me from keeping you all updated for a second!

10:44pm: Play air guitar on a golf club, as promised, during the crescendo to “Motherfucker=Redeemer”.  If you have a spare 20 minutes and some patience, you can listen to the song here.  But that is only part one of the song.

11:25pm: Am astounded by one of these Creeley poems I must have always missed:

The Answer
by Robert Creeley

Will we speak to each other
making the grass bend as if
a wind were before us, will our

way be graceful, as
substantial as the movement
of something moving so gently.

We break things in pieces like
walls we break ourselves into
hearing them fall just to hear it.

11:33pm: Making a marshamallow latte.  There’s no actual marshmallows involved; I have marshmallow Torani syrup.  It’s just like a caramel latte except it tastes like marshmallow.  It’s fantastic!  And it sucks typing marshmallow that many times!  Also, smoking another one of these cigars I bought for the birth of Paul’s daughter…uh-oh.  Am I starting to like cigars?

11:48pm: Texting Sarah about music, and still texting Joni, but now about waffles.  Putting Radiohead’s Kid A on the turntable.  This is one of my only vinyls where I can notice the difference in sound quality on the vinyl.

Midnight: Holy shit, “National Anthem” on Kid A is making me move!  Currently dancing around my living room, singing into a golf club…keep moving the needle back again and again…this song has got me stuck in it’s groove!

12:20am: I’ve made a commitment to essentially stage a fake concert here in my living room to the entire Kid A album.  I’m getting sweaty and this latte isn’t helping!  “Idioteque” is blowing my mind and it’s getting difficult to not make the record skip!

12:54: Marshmallow latte #2.  I might not go to bed tonight.  Been awhile since I saw a sunrise…hmmmm…???  I’m gonna let Pandora radio play my Post-Rock station and read some of the Stephen King book I started today, Lisey’s Story.

1:10am: I’ve tried starting this King book a few times now over the last six months, and I just cannot get into it.  Is it, perhaps, that this is the one millionth book King has written about a writer?  This is feeling a bit worn to me.  Plus, the last King book I read before this one, Duma Key (which was about a PAINTER!) felt exactly like this book at the beginning; it seems I’m reading the same book twice–and Duma Key was barely scary at all!  I’m afraid to let myself spend that long (these are loooooong books) on a non-scary, mediocre book again.  But I shall try.  Back to the book!

1:35am: Am totally ambushed by a MySpace Instant Message (that’s right, I was on MySpace!) by one of my friends who insists they have a hilarious YouTube video to show me.  I relent, and they are right, it is hilarious!  See for yourself:

1:38am: E-mailing back and forth with Joni trying to decide on what her new hairstyle will be…I vote for number 1 or number 4.  I think number 1 will be especially amazing on her…it fits her face perfectly.  Do you think I can utilize every single one of my existing blog tags in this single entry?  Probably not, but the tags are getting ridiculous!

1:45am: I just gave Kyle and opportunity to select my next movie for me through the random number system again, but he dropped the ball and signed off Facebook, and Mary jumped at the chance.  She chose number 267 (weird, since earlier Kyle chose 237), and that movie is “Dragonslayer”!  Badass.  This is an old-school movie about…well…killing dragons, back when special effects were still mainly stop-motion and models.  But that doesn’t take away from this movie at all.  It is still VERY creepy in places.  This is another one I haven’t seen in a long time.  Makes me remember my childhood.  For some reason it seems I watched this alot when I was little.  I remember it influencing my “play”…it really sparked my imagination!

1:54am: Bowl of Boo Berry cereal and a diet Dr. Thunder.

2:13am: Between Mary and Kyle, I am having my ass Facebooked off!  Also wondering whatever happened to Peter MacNicol’s film career?  He’s the bomb in “Dragonslayer”, and then he was in…”Sophie’s Choice”, I believe?…I suppose he’s had some success in TV though.  Oh man, MacNicol is entering the dragon’s cave for the first time…this is so tense!

2:50am: Oh man I forgot about this little monster that jumps out of the hole in the cave!  It scared the crap out of me!  It’s a fierce baby dragon!

2:55am: All the lights out and some incense going for the big fight scene.  I might pee my pants!

3:02am: OMG there’s that fucking dragon.  That fucking dragon is popping up right behind Peter MacNicol…you can see it’s reflection in the pool of water.  Now you can see the steam from it’s breath!  This dragon ain’t nothing to fuck with!

3:23am: So ends “Dragonslayer”…so glad Mary picked that one!  And it seems that now just about everyone is asleep…and yet I am wide awake, perhaps owing to my marshmallow lattes.  I’m going to go cut my hair.

3:37am: Mid-cut:

3:45am: Haircut complete.  That’s right, I can give myself a haircut in under ten minutes!  Finished haircut:

Yes, it's true, I look like ass here. I blame it on my overhead flourescent light.

3:55am: Next up, I’m going to rock out a little bit more…I had so much fun earlier jumping around my living room!  This time, it’s gonna be Modest Mouse’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. Then after that, it’s been decided (by Kyle again, by random number) that I’ll be watching the film “Matchstick Men.”  OK…let the Modest Mouse begin!

4:32am: Nobody can sing like Isaac Brock, lead singer of Modest Mouse.  Now, I’m not saying he’s a good singer–far from it.  In fact, most of the time, he barely sings at all.  It’s more a an in-key snarl.  But nobody else does it. Alot of the time, he actually laughs the words.  he laugh-sings words!  WTF?  It’s amazing and crazy.  Totally sweaty from jumping around my living room pretending to be Isaac Brock.

4:44am: I have elected to skip “Matchstick Men”, as “Needful Things” is on Starz, and I’ve not seen it before.  Also, I have elected to watch this movie while laying down in an attempt to sleep eventually, even though I am not tired yet, and I don’t have to be up for anything tomorrow, now seems as good a time as any to hit the reset button, although I’ll probably become engrossed in the movie and be up until 6 anyway.  I hope somebody out there got some form of entertainment out of the endless blog.  Good night.

Some Sort of Contest Thing Which Must Be Some Kind of Honor

My buddy Joel, who writes a tremendous and wonderfully creative blog over at Write. Click. Cook. Listen, recently nominated me for some sort of blog award which, after I looked into it, seems to not really be an award, but some dude’s way of getting alot of people to look at his blog.  Regardless of it’s legitimacy, I’m honored that Joel chose to nominate me, as Joel is a very smart man and his blog is the bee’s knees.

However, since I have chosen to acknowledge the award, I am obligated to follow it’s somewhat strange rule of nominating five more people (which would seem to defeat the purpose to generating only the best nominations, and instead create a theoretically never-ending loop of diminishing returns).  Luckily, I know some people with incredible blogs, so they, too, should be pseudo-honored, and I am happy to do so.

1.  My sister Adrienne has a great blog, Yada Yada Yada, wherein she explores the humorous, poignant, and irreverent aspects of her home and family life, along with concise observations from everyday existence.

2.  My California-based internet homeslice Kyle dashes off some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever read over at Power Fantastic Blogs.  Ranging in topic from the life of a chronically jilted, love-lorn man, to self-assured political commentary, to opinionated film and media comment, Kyle is right down my alley, and is a better writer than he admits to himself.

3.  Jersey/Philly-based Angela‘s blog, Deus ex Machina, chronicles her experience in art school as well as some of her more obsessive interests, from evolution to memes to feedback loops.  This one’s a thinker, but wholly accessible.

4. Newly transplanted to NEW YORK CITY!, Teri writes about media and culture–and how they interact–at her almost-academic but entirely fun blog questioning…

5. April (still blogging at MySpace, so I’m not sure if everyone can see it) writes intensely personal entries which contain insight into not only her life, but everyone’s lives.  Her honesty and openness provide great jumping-off points for pondering issues about oneself.

All my nominess, if you are interested in participating in this almost-contest, see the rules here.

Shameless Plug

My friend Kyle posted his movies seen off the “1,001 Movies You Must See before You Die” over at his Power Fantastic Blogs.  Check it out.  Also, just check out the blog, he’s hilarious!