rew | ff

With all due respect...

Friday, June 11, 2004

Today, for the first time since I started this job, I switched the radio in the shop van away from NPR. I've had it. I can't take any more about Reagan. I understand not wanting to speak ill of the dead. But it's been a week now, and this guy finally, mercifully died at age 93 after a long illness. Nick Berg, at 26, had his head sawn off by terrorists and the video of it posted on the internet for despicable automotive students to laugh at. One was in the news for about 2 days; one continues on every radio and news channel for what may end up being weeks on end. I don't get it.

To me this is an extremely disturbing example of denial on what appears to be a national scale. Phoenix is by no means a barometer for the rest of the country (thank god), but from what I hear the sentiment here does not differ too much from that of New York City. I think this is insane. I was 11 years old when Reagan left office, and I have absolutely no trouble recalling all the problems, controversies and inconsistencies of this presidencies. And I have, as has been noted in this space, an atrocious memory. How are all these 30 and 40 year olds blocking all of this out? How is anyone who isn't rich remembering this man fondly? How on earth can we still, as a country, hold total bullshit like Clinton's affair to be a somehow greater sin than all the shit that Reagan and the Bushes have pulled over their near 16 years of running the country? How the flying fuck can NPR, which surely owes many of its troubles to these administrations, look the other way for a week straight? This is driving me insane.

At this point I am entirely sick of people in general. I'm sure this is symptomatic of living in Phoenix, but I also think I need to get out of this country for a while. I think we in this country are a ridiculous, disgusting group for the most part. Simply based on a typical day at my work and school, I can say that we are dishonest, irresponsible, self-righteous, fat, viscious, uncaring, selfish, greedy, fat, stupid, fat, lazy, and fat. And we clearly don't learn from our mistakes. No wonder the Bush administration is so cynical in its views of the typical American, and seems to think we will all believe whatever it says, no matter how contradictory or blatantly untrue.

Vegas, baby!

Thursday, June 10, 2004

Sean and I got let out of school early today because we got everything done way too quickly. We were practically giddy because it meant we could watch the Lakers / Pistons game, which we had thought we'd only catch highlights of. Plus, it's just nice to have a little free time every once in a while. Anyway, it all got even better when the Pistons totally kicked Kobe's ass. (marv albert voice) Yes!

Sean and Dane are heading to Las Vegas for the weekend tomorrow night. I'm going to be hanging out here and holding the fort down. I plan on lots of sleep, movies, and a re-kindling of an old friendship with a man named Max Payne. I'm not a big video game guy, and haven't used the Playstation for anything but DVDs since I've been down here, but if I'm going to be here alone all weekend, I'm Payning it up, baby. Nothing passes the time as frighteningly quickly as video games.

Also, some dudes are coming by on Sunday to buy some of my 2002 stuff off me, and possibly even buy my car. We'll see. I'm still not sure if selling my car is really all that great of an idea (needing transportation and all), but I need money, too, so it's a distinct possibility. It'd kind of be a shame considering all the work I've done to the thing, but then again, the one sign of maturity I've shown in the last couple of years is an increasingly detached perspective on material things, particularly cars. I still name them, but if they've gotta go, they've gotta go.

Oh yeah, and welcome back Nomar Garciaparra. Not a moment too soon.

Money... it's a drag

Wednesday, June 9, 2004

Happy birthday to Ken Manning, guitar wizard and master mechanic.

I'm behind schedule tonight, and that guy who ate at McDonald's every meal for a month straight is on the Daily Show, so this'll be short. But check it out! Big time bad financial news for both Sean and I today. Apparently I really did overdraft my checking account (I thought I was kidding yesterday), and over 1/3 of my paycheck today went to just paying off the overdraft fees. Meanwhile, Sean got a notice that he hadn't paid his cell phone bill in about three months (whoops), and owes them around $140. Why right arm, why can't you throw 95 mph? If you only could, all our problems would be over. In the meantime, Sean and I both will have to count on our incredibly supportive parents to bail us out once more. How old am I again?

Speaking of throwing things, today the inmates were running the asylum at school and everyone in our building met in an empty room and played dodgeball. Seriously. It was awesome. We were just sitting in class and suddenly and entire group of students burst in and challenged us. Our teacher was like, "What are you waiting for? Get out there and kick some ass!" In some ways I couldn't help but think about all the money we're paying to go to this school and learn stuff, but on the other hand, shit, it's dodgeball we're talking about here. How can you pass that up?

Pay attention to me!

Tuesday, June 8, 2004

I have neglected to mention so far that Sean got a promotion at Toyota on Saturday. This is good for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it greatly increases his chances of getting into the BMW program at school. Also, it means more money. This is good for me, because I'm overdrafted on my checking account again, and Sean owes me big time. Oh yeah.

Actually, there's lots of shit I've forgotten to mention, frankly because it didn't happen to me. Like Dane buying a computer, and then a wireless gateway, which enables me to write this from the couch with no tripwire strung across the room. And Dane's weird and very non-union new pay system at his work, where the amount of his check is proportional to how many cars he deals with per day. Sean wrecking a car at work (exactly a week before his promotion) is another thing I neglected to mention. And then there was the whole deal where someone else broke into our wireless network and changed its name (before my lazy ass set up a password and MAC address filter), prompting me to change the network name, only to have them change it again, to which I responded by finally nailing it down and naming the network "fuck off." Hey, that one involved me... how'd I'd I forget to write that up? Anyway, those two deserve more press time than I've been giving them. But it's kind of like having kids... every night I'm like, "Anything cool happen at work or school today?" and they're like, "Nothin'."

Oooohhh.... Kobe, you'd better hope I'm right (about 4 of us not being able to take you in a street fight) if you ever meet up with me and a group of my friends. If Gabe's right, you're going down. Hard.

P.S. I am totally, ridiculously in love with Norah Jones. Some guys have pictures of their toolboxes as their computer's desktop background (ask me how I know); I have this. Mine's better. And hey, there's even a car in it.

Wish it was Sunday

Monday, June 7, 2004

Automatic transmissions... pretty complicated. Hoo-ah! It's nice to have class with Sean... we'll be a group of our own, and not have to deal with all the assholes, which seem to be particularly prevalent in this class. As Sean remarked upon getting home tonight, "I think I hate at least 90% of our classmates." We saw the infamous and horrendous motorcycle video in which a man is literally cut in half by a bike going 120mph. The rider dies too... there's blood everywhere and you can clearly see the two halves of the guy's body. Awful stuff. The day these people discovered the internet, windows media player and cd burners was a dark one.

Dane's got class over at the new building this week, while Sean and I are still at the old one. I'm not sure if I mentioned before that our school is moving locations to a new, gigantic building in west Phoenix. Actually it "Avondale," which is apparently a suburb. It's supposed to be pretty cool, although Dane doesn't seem too impressed. My main concern is that it is going to take longer to get there from work, and therefore be more time in the heat. Come on, November (or February), hurry the fuck up.

I can't really think of anything else toady. Monday. Sienfeld's on... I'm out.

Defense and pitching win ball games.

Sunday, June 6, 2004

Happy birthday to Keely, by far my favorite native of Pittsfield, MA. Sorry, Turk Wendell. I mean, the sharktooth necklace was cool and all, and I'm sure you've got her beat hands down in the curveball department, but Keely's way cuter.

I've given up on feeling guilty about not doing jack shit on Sundays. It's probably not a bad idea to just lay low. At around 1pm Sean and I made a pathetic attempt to go play frisbee golf, but after about 10 seconds outside decided maybe a trip to Costco was all we could handle. We stocked up on bulk merchandise and went straight back home. The hours just sort of slipped away until it was time to watch the Lakers - Pistons game. None of us care that much about the NBA anymore, and the Pistons even less, but goddamn, FUCK THE LAKERS. Plus the Pistons have Rasheed Wallace now, so there's a Portland connection there. And lo and behold, Detroit won. It would be pretty sweet if somehow the Lakers could be stopped... I'd love to see Karl Malone and Gary Payton get screwed on their attempts to piggyback their way to a championship.

Right now we're watching The Bourne Identity. Again. This is another example of giving in to advertising, as we were planning on watching something else until we saw a preview for The Bourne Supremacy on TV during the game. We are all capitalist pigs, after all.

Tomorrow Sean and I start our first class together, surely the dawn of a new era.

Ronald Reagan? The actor?

Saturday, June 5, 2004

After I got home from work today and was relaxing in Sean's room listening to the Red Sox game, Dane leaned in and said, "Did you hear? George Bush died today." I played along, saying wow, it's a bad day for ex-presidents. Dane was probably thinking something awful had happened to Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton.

Anyway, at work everyone was all upset and kept talking about what a great president Reagan had been. I decided it was best to keep my mouth shut and deflected all inquiries towards me by saying I could barely remember the Reagan administration, I was so young. This is not entirely true, as I ran as Michael Dukakis in a mock election in 6th grade in 1988 (and won in a landslide, thank you very much). But they don't need to know that.

In spite of my usual (and usually fruitless) plans to make the time between work and going out on Saturday night useful, we just lounged around and napped until darkness. We went to that place the waitress from the night before suggested - Casey Moore's - and it was actually really cool, much more of a classic bar-type place than anywhere else we've found in Arizona. I wish we'd known about it last week, as it would have been far superior to the daiquiri bar we ended up at when Vicky was here. Oh well.

It was kind of a mediocre night, as my rapidly aging contacts began giving me shit soon after we got there. I almost switched over to glasses before we left, and I regretted not doing so. At one point I tried to find my way to the bathroom but had to give up halfway there because I couldn't stop blinking. People must have thought I was really drunk or on drugs or something. I'm going to have to tough it out for a couple weeks with the glasses, which sucks because they preclude sunglasses, but I can't afford new lenses right now. Damn the man.

© Long Shot Films 2004