Let's talk about Sloth...
Sloth
I met Sloth about two years ago when I was in my exile in West Linn. I had moved back home and gotten a job at the video store with Joey being my boss. Sloth was friends with some of his friends... so on and so on. We bonded over comic books and movies and his hilariously sad personal life. His family was like some warped version of the Family Guy meets the Osbournes but Sloth's in on the joke. He's seriously the smartest person in his entire family tree and that is sad and incredible at the same time.
Sloth's story is a long one filled with half-starts and near misses, but my story with him mostly centers on him being a pet project a la Clueless where Alicia Silverstone tries to make Brittaney Murphy cool and popular. The only difference is that Sloth was already cool, I just had to let people know this. So I dragged him to comic book shows, midnight movies, and big Shari's sessions, always trying to get him to regale us with his hilarious anecdotes about dating strippers and nearly getting deported from Japan. The thing was that I could never figure out why any girl wouldn't be after this guy. He was talented, sweet, caring, and very funny. He was incapable of spite or bitterness, and he never let himself offend anybody. He wasn't ugly or gangly or scarred... He was Sloth.
Women began pretty much taking advantage of him after awhile. Two certain girls in particular, on two seperate occasions, used his emotions like bouncy balls ricocheting back and forth between liking him and just needing a shoulder to cry on and cuddle with, but at the eleventh hour not wanting anything to do with him. This infuriated me. Here was this amazing friend of mine who just needed a girl with similar interests and personality... enter Kelly.
The story between myself, Sloth, and Kelly is such old news and has been told so many times, that it's never worth repeating again, but I will say that in the end, they became an amazing couple and I'm very happy for them.
Sloth is by far one of those friends who rarely needs gratitude or vilifacation. He'll do something nice for you and then still do you a favor. He'll go above and beyond the request of a copy of a DVD and make you individual menus and sometimes even a cover. He'll remember movies you like and come up with something special that didnt take long to do, but has that whole "its the thought that counts" smell all over it. The thing is? He'll never ask a thing for it or anything. Seriously.
That's Sloth: a friend that can stick with you through anything, and never ask anything of you. He'll always be there to help you and you'll never use him... because he's just too nice of a guy and too fucking cool.
Thanks, man.
Spotlight posting
One of my favorite comic book writers is a guy named Geoff Johns. One of the reasons why Johns has become so popular is his ability to handle large casts of characters and still make each one stand out and have an individual personality. His principle way of doing this in a serial format is having a "spotlight" or "profile" issue of the comic. One entire issue will focus on one villain or supporting character and will allow the audience to learn something about them that couldn't be shown in the actual arc of a multi-issue set of stories due to space or whatnot.
With that aside, I've decided to start doing little "spotlight" posts on the people in my life. This'll pretty much only occur when I have had some experience with them that made me go, "damn, that person is really great." So don't feel like, "hey, you never write about me" or "you wrote about her before me? You've known me forever." I'll try to use nicknames to avoid too much familarity, but y'know what? Fuck it. I'm not going to say anything that isn't true and I'm focusing on the positive, so no one should be offended.
Off we merrily stumble...
songlists
Mix CD #1
1. Postal Service - Such Great Heights
2. Gavin DeGraw - Chariot
3. Dexter Freebish - Prozak
4. Ryan Adams - Rescue Blues
5. Bob Schnieder - Big Blue Sea
6. Remy Zero - Fair
7. Kim Richey - Can't Lose Them All
8. Alexi Murdock - Orange Sky
9. Josh Radin - Winter
10. Counting Crows - Holiday in Spain
11. Frou Frou - It's Good to be in Love
12. Joshua Rouse - Sparrows over Birmingham
13. Malcolm Mclaren - About Her
14. Jack Johnson - Losing Hope
15. Counting Crows - St. Robinson and his Cadillac
16. Shivaree - Goodnight Moon
17. The Who - Baba O'Reily
18. Eve 6 - Think Twice
19. The Cardigans - No Sleep
20. Say Hi to your Mom - But She Beat my High Score
Mix CD #2
1. Everclear - Songs from an American Movie Pt. 1 Intro
2. Reindeer Section - You Are My Joy
3. Mute Math - Control
4. Green Day - Boulevard of Broken Dreams
5. Third Eye Blind - Crystal Baller
6. Live - Out to Dry
7. Homeboy - Adorable
8. Smithereens - A Girl Like You
9. The Getaway People - There She Goes
10. The Wallflowers - Closer to You
11. Something Corporate - Drunk Girl
12. Shawn Mullins - What is Life
13. Mick Jagger - Visions of Paradise
14. Butthole Surfers - Dracula from Houston
15. Everclear - Unemployed Boyfriend
16. Matt Nathanson - Laid
17. Alien Ant Farm - Glow
18. Eels - Fresh Feeling
19. Rise Against - Swing Life Away
20. Kim Richey - A Place Called Home
21. Bob Dylan & Van Morrison - Crazy Love
Yeah... So I've become Mix Tape guy again...
Eclectic and unholy mixes of songs that string together emotion and sentiment and sometimes, just sometimes, actually sound pretty good. Playlists that make people cringe just looking at the titles and others sit there and go, "hey, i know those guys, but i've never heard of..."
Quote from High Fidelity:
"The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules..."
So right...
Declaration...
{Alexander Payne is one of the leading indie directors in Hollywood. His films include Citizen Ruth, Election, and About Schmidt. His style is considered the living description of "brutally honest" and is recognized as uncompromising. This essay originally appeared in Variety and was republished on
www.joblo.com and is used without permission.}
Declaration of Independents
By Alexander Payne
At a meeting of non-aligned nations during the Cold War, Fidel Castro made the dry observation, "In reality there are only two non-aligned nations: the United States and the Soviet Union." I often recall that quote when asked about American independent cinema, for I think on one level the only true independents are Paramount, Sony, Warner Bros., Universal and the rest of the major studios. Say what you want about their imprisonment by corporate edicts and market forces; only they can make whatever they choose, and only they enjoy assured distribution.
Of course, "independent cinema" has come to mean so many things. Endless conferences and publications attempting to get a handle on American independent cinema -- what it is, whether it exists, whether it's dying or thriving -- dance around what for me is the central issue: that the source of the financing is unimportant. Cinema is independent only to the degree that it reflects the voice of one person, the director (in conjunction with his or her hand-picked creative team). Martin Scorsese now makes studio films that cost $100 million, and no one questions his independent credentials. And at Sundance we see low-budget features whose only message is "Hire me."
I want two simple things of our cinema -- that it be comprised of a large percentage of films that reverberate the voices and hearts of the filmmakers, for that is how film is always at its best. Second, I want a cinema that is intelligent, uplifting and human, and that serves -- as good art should -- as a mirror, not as an impossible or fraudulent consumer-oriented projection. After all, what good is a story that does not somehow add another piece to the infinite jigsaw puzzle that is human experience? What good is a story that does not somehow connect people?
As a working American director -- a Hollywood director, no less -- I resent the cleft between what we consider studio movies and independent movies. I want and expect studios to finance personal, risky and political cinema -- as they did in the much-vaunted 1970s -- and I am overjoyed because I no longer think this a naive dream. I think it's starting to happen right now.
For some 25 years we've had American movies but not movies about Americans. For 25 years we've largely been making not films but rather glorified cartoons which can be as easily digested in Omaha as on a bus in Thailand; films whose principal message is, We need your money to keep our stock price up; films that exploit banality and violence as come-ons to the lowest angels of our nature; films based on formula so they can be consumed as readily and predictably as McDonald's hamburgers. We've turned away from the need and utility of art in favor of impersonal product to maximize profits and at the tremendous, tragic expense of our culture. There have been many wonderful exceptions, but I speak of trends.
But look at this great year for movies! We have "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Maria Full of Grace," "Before Sunset," "Fahrenheit 9/11" and the rest of the documentaries in theaters, "Spider-Man 2," "Shrek 2," Tarantino, Alfonso Cuaron doing "Harry Potter." This fall we have David O. Russell, Wes Anderson, Mike Nichols, Steven Soderbergh, Brad Bird's "The Incredibles," Brad Silberling's "Lemony Snicket." Fold in the American distribution of Almodovar, Walter Salles, Zhang Yimou, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. If they don't all turn out to be great films, at least we can discern a strong trend of cinema -- big and commercial as well as small and personal -- aspiring to be human, intelligent, respectful of the audience and director-driven. More big commercial films are being entrusted to stong and thoughtful directors, and more studios are planning their own versions of Fox Searchlight and Focus.
Why now? I see two obvious reasons -- the same that we saw decades ago. First, when the beast is dying, it seeks new blood. Maybe we can't point directly to a "Paint Your Wagon," but when studios offer up increasing numbers of big-budget dirigibles that tank, they look for solutions outside traditional decision-making boxes. And maybe we can't yet point to an "Easy Rider" or a "Midnight Cowboy" as a watershed film, but when "Fahrenheit 9/11" makes whatever it's going to make, or when "Lost in Translation" costs $4 million and makes almost $50 million, well, there are signs that, given creative control, directors -- many of them newer and younger -- might be in the best position to serve the contemporary audience.
Second, of course, the world is going to hell these days. As the saying goes, when small men cast long shadows, the sun is going down. Most likely things are going to get worse before they improve. When confused and troubled, people look to art in general and cinema in particular for context, for clues about who we are and where we've come from and where we might be going. Whether Bush and his corrupt gang are reelected or not -- and especially if they are -- these times ensure increased demand for films with human and political content.
Art is all we have to combat the fearsome, awful animal side of man that today controls events. To portray real people with real problems, real joys, real tears will serve as a positive political force, a force for comfort and possibly for change. With the inhumanity forced upon us by governments and terrorists and corporations, to make a purely human film is today a political act. To make a film about disenfranchised people is a political act. To make a film about love is a political act. To make a film about a single human emotion is today a political act. And bad things happen when good people fail to speak up.
Intelligence and humanity should not be "specialty" items. Imagination, artistry and risk-taking are as essential to big-budget commercial films as they are for the emerging filmmaker. Our studios may now wish to invest in a greater number of less expensive films and enjoy the profits of volume rather than always starving the small and medium films in order to feed the increasingly mercurial "tentpole" beast. And we filmmakers must be disciplined and keep our costs as low as possible in order to deserve the risks that define our finest filmmaking nature.
We have the potential for a new era where studios and filmmakers come together as they have not in a generation, and we have the chance to define a new age in a new century. I hope years from now my optimism will have been warranted, for I know that if our studios identify the signs and act, they have today the exceptional opportunity not merely to co-op "independent"
filmmakers but to assume themselves the mantle of true "independents."
Purism
I've been accused of being a purist. The funny thing is that I had to look that up in order to clarify what I was being accused of.
"pur·ist (pyrst)n.
One who practices or urges strict correctness, especially in the use of words"
It's interesting how this whole thing started... Pretty much I went passive/aggressive apeshit over the new Star Wars DVDs and was calling them a humongus waste of money and time. If anybody wanted to invest in their need to settle for whatever Lucas puts in front of them, then that's their business... Personally, I think it's bullshit, mostly based on the following quote from an interview he did with CNN.com:
"Q: Why did you rework the original trilogy into the special-edition versions in the late 1990s?
LUCAS: To me, the special edition ones are the films I wanted to make. Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It's abandoned or it's ripped out of your hands, and it's thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It's a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, "That's exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I'm going to put it out there." And even most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work now. They've got a new perspective on it, they've got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done. ... I wanted to actually finish the film the way it was meant to be when I was originally doing it. At the beginning, people went, "Don't you like it?" I said, "Well, the film only came out to be 25 or 30 percent of what I wanted it to be." They said, "What are you talking about?" So finally, I stopped saying that, but if you read any interviews for about an eight- or nine-year period there, it was all about how disappointed I was and how unhappy I was and what a dismal experience it was. You know, it's too bad you need to get kind of half a job done and never get to finish it. So this was my chance to finish it.
Q: Why not release both the originals and special editions on DVD?
LUCAS: The special edition, that's the one I wanted out there. The other movie, it's on VHS, if anybody wants it. ... I'm not going to spend the, we're talking millions of dollars here, the money and the time to refurbish that, because to me, it doesn't really exist anymore. It's like this is the movie I wanted it to be, and I'm sorry you saw half a completed film and fell in love with it. But I want it to be the way I want it to be. I'm the one who has to take responsibility for it. I'm the one who has to have everybody throw rocks at me all the time, so at least if they're going to throw rocks at me, they're going to throw rocks at me for something I love rather than something I think is not very good, or at least something I think is not finished. "
Essentially saying that we, as the diehard fans who grew up with a film trilogy that was practically perfect as is, weren't seeing the WHOLE movie and therefore, we can't appreciate it the way HE envisioned. The problem with that theory is that the film is already engrained in society as is. This isn't like Donnie Darko getting released in 2001 and then having a director's cut come out this year. This is like if the Godfather came out with a redux and Robert Duvall was digitally replaced with Colin Farrell. It's not adding a couple of deleted or extended scenes or taking out a voice over. Blade Runner, Brazil, and the Abyss all added to the visual tapestry of their films by doing those things, making them much better movies. They didn't give Ed Harris more hair, or CGI Harrison Ford's car, or make Robert DeNiro three pounds lighter. Lucas, though, thinks that he's the God of his creation (y'know what? I'll give him that) and thinks that since special effects are at a point where he can do the things he wants now when he couldn't then, then by gosh he'll do it.
South Park did an episode on this when Spielberg botched ET a few years back. Their point was, "where does the revisionist mentality stop?" Maybe Lucas never liked using minatures and now that he can CGI the ships, they'll look better. Star Wars pioneered the use of miniatures, but future generations will never get to appreciate that because they'll never have access to the original films because it's too costly. THE FUCKING GUY OWNS ILM! I think he could swing this.
Two final points:
1) Every creative genius needs an editor. The Batman movies proves this. In the first film, Tim Burton was held back by the studio because they didn't want his "vision" to make their film unmarketable. You could say the movie was 75% Burton and 25% WB/Jon Peters. In Batman Returns, since the first movie performed so well, the WB took the reigns off and fuck all if they're still not kicking themselves. Mutant Penguin? Christopher Walken with a mane of white hair? MISSLE LAUNCHING AVIARY ARMY? The same thing happened with Schumacher. They were worried they'd lose money again, so they kept this new guy on a leash. Again, 60% Schumacher, 40% WB/Jon Peters. Made some cash, looked good, everyone had fun. Well, let'm have his fun with part 4. Dear god, I can still see the horror of Batman and Robin when I close my eyes.
My point? Maybe those cuts that were forced for time or continuity or pacing... maybe those limitations imposed on them because of special effects... maybe that all worked in the favor of the film and the director didn't even know it. We know that the film works now and if it didn't... we watch deleted scenes and then bitch and moan and BOOM a new edition with THE ALREADY FILMED scenes added in to add depth. No reshoots, no super-imposed Anakin head on "dude under vader mask" at the end of Jedi. Just edited a little to make it great.
2) The fat fuck is seriously a one hit wonder. Name the great Lucas movies since Star Wars. Go on. Howard the Duck? Radioland Murders? Did anybody ever wonder why he ultimately went back? Maybe, just maybe, he got tired of Spielberg making all of the headway in being one of the most prolific sci-fi pioneers of the 70's and 80's and went, "well, shit! i made star wars, muthafucka!"
Regardless... the mind behind Jar Jar Binks and Greedo shooting first... deserves no more of any of our hard-earned geek money. Go out and discover some new sci-fi instead of watching some watered down (but DIGITALLY REMASTERED!) version of your childhood favorite. What new sci-fi? No clue. I just remember a time before the Matrix when people thought nothing fun could come out of Hollywood for sci-fi fans. Before Pitch Black, before Sky Captain, before X-Men...
You can see where I'm going... Now... Get the fuck away from the shiney silver box...
So here we go again...
I've noticed I start a good chunk of my postings or journal entries with "So..." Just thought that was funny.
So... Alicia and I are pretty much official now. Who's Alicia? Alicia is what happens when you don't believe in your own hype. She was friends with some of my roommates and about a year ago, she dated the roommate that just got moved out before I made my home in the house on Franklin.
She is very, very cool. The thing is she's not cool in all of those, "cool list" sort of ways. That list you make compiled from all of your crushes and never from your actual ex's. Pipedream or experience... the never ending debate.
In this case, I ended up with experience. Here's a girl that had a goal and followed it all of the way, on her own, and came out on top. She put herself through college when she was 16 years old and got a degree in Spanish. Then she went straight on to graduate school for information sciences. In a time when none of my friends, whether still in school, or successfully graduated, are doing anything productive towards their goals (sorry, multiple job interviews dont count) here's a girl thats kicking ass and taking names. And she does it without any arrogance. She's sweet and nice without being naive. She's supportive and caring without being clingy. She's realistic without throwing compassion out the window. The best part? She really likes me. I think that falling for this girl first, pursuing her in a totally passive fashion, on my own terms, and succeeding so successfully is something that I very much needed and the rewards are well worth the years of experience to get here. Who cares if she's not a comic geek or movie freak? We like the same TV shows, she reads tons of actual books, most of which are authors I like, and she's willing to go do practically anything. Our first date was a Hockey game, a french bistro, a dive bar, and Shari's for coffee.
Suffice it to say... if a job would just fall into my lap, things would be going perfectly. We'll see.
Why I hate IM
The human speech pattern is an amazing thing. We, with our ability to communicate with our five senses, have developed conversation to such a degree that subtley, sarcasm, and innuendo have become commonplace among any social discussion. The advent of the internet, however, has seen the evolution of human interaction taken a couple of rather hazardous backsteps. While we are now capable of communicating with anyone in the world, perfect strangers or far off friends, we have managed to someone hide our voices, our personality-projectors, from this form of communication. The textual exchange has no innuendo, or subtley. It certainly doesn't have sarcasm. People readily take offense to casual conversation littered with slight jabs and sarcastic comments as if they were bond. It's incredibly easy to be misunderstood because your voices inflections are absent from the text in every way that counts and, to add insult (no pun intended) to injury, the sentence(s) in question are right there, spelled out on screen to always refer back to and remind the insulted of their anger.
Frankly, the whole thing makes me ill. We've spent decades, centuries, trying to develop forms of humor and sensitivity and subtley... to have it lost on some piece of crap "communication tool" marketed by AOL.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.
Think on it.
Inmates
So i have friends. gah. believe it or not.
i thought, for my own personal edification, i'd write out the way things work in the social structure. that, and i have nothing to do with insomnia, so away we go:
The clique:
Lisa (aka: Deadly, Mona Lisa, Soul Sister): somewhere between big sister and drinking buddy lies this girl. skater, chef, med student, genius. if she doesnt know it, she'll teach it to herself. verbatim quote upon finishing the MCATs early: (highly intoxicated) "I'm not just very smart, i think i'm a genius!"
Jessica (aka: JRobb, Stabs): pure, unadulterated spice. a red-headed, irish Daria.
Brent (aka: Bentley, Supercop): a stand-up guy and a geek with a gun.
Kevin (aka: Spacey, Kitty): way too smart for his own good, but still a decent friend.
Karl (aka: Pimpke): ex-college roommate who didnt end up moving out on me. a rare thing. a first: a quiet guy who is not ashamed of his silence.
The peripherals:
Mike (aka: Sloth): Proof that friendship, real friendship, can overcome any obstacle. A truly decent, funny guy.
Marjorie (aka: Marjie): One of the truly beautiful people. Funny, amazing, and gorgeous. She'll deny all of this, vehemently, so don't bring it up.
Lawrence (aka: The Law): makes Luke Cage look like a pussy.
Joey (aka: Hackensack): the only christian who will talk to me. former co-worker from the video store days. my hetero-lifemate.
Emily (aka: Sparky, Trump Card): british badass with a heart of gold.
Rachelle: Kevin's girlfriend, but still a really good friend and fellow Kevin Smith lover.
Jane (aka: the Cap'n): the kid sister I never wanted, but a very good person and one I count as a close friend.
The Roommates:
Ethan: The denmother, keeping us all in line, putting out the fires and dealing with the landlords. The boss, but he'll never admit it.
Adam: New Yawkah, through and through. Law student and social butterfly, just keep your food out of his reach.
Craig: Handyman, laid back, muthafuckin' chill fella. Just does his thing. No apoligies.
Buddah the Cat: The cat.
Missing in Action:
Will (aka: Short-bus): When you coming home, buddy?
Arun (aka: Rocko): I hate you, y'know that, don't you?
Facts and figures 'bout the geek culture
The Modern Comic Book Fan
Average age: 34
Gender: 87 percent male; 13 percent female
Residence:City — 48 percent
Suburbs — 38 percent
Rural — 14 percent
Education level:College — 45 percent
High school — 33 percent
Junior college — 10 percent
Post graduate — 9 percent
Grade school — 3 percent
Music taste:Classic rock — 27 percent
Metal — 16 percent
Adult contemporary — 8 percent
Country/western — 6 percent
Classical — 4 percent
Rap/hip-hop — 2 percent
Own a computer: 77 percent
Use the Internet: 86 percent
Own a home video game system: 68 percent
And how are they using the internet?
Like a scalpel -- 13%
Hunter/gatherer pattern -- 6%
Looking for news on the Legion -- 10%
Bendis-boarders -- 17%
Just jerking off like everyone else -- 54%
to guilt-ify or not to... damn, i can't create words worth a shit...
Let's face one glaring fact together: I hate feeling guilty. It's in my nature to feel guilty because I'm constantly of two neuorsis: that I'm offensive and that I'm selfish. The thing about the offensive point is that I'm naturally a pretty sensitive guy (helps the intuition thing a lot), and I'd hate to offend someone because I don't like being insulted. Selfish? We're all selfish, so that's stupid to focus on... but I will, anyway.
I have this specific kind of sense of humor and a severe case of the "brutal truth" tendancies. I don't think it's healthy to take yourself too seriously when you're young. We have plenty of time to be an adult when we're adults. Pre-30? Just live and not take everything so seriously. If you're not being demeaning or cruel, or making a point to embarass them in front of an already stressful situation, then there is nothing wrong with taking someone down a few pegs. And when people come to you for advice, patronizing them with the candy-coated truth does nothing but further their problems by feeding them delusion.
Selfish? We're all selfish. I said that earlier. Me, Me, Me. Everything in our lives is about us. Our problems and our fears and our thoughts. That's what makes us self-aware. The trick is to notice the problems in your friends and loved ones even when you're having a bad day or riding on cloud nine. I'm talking about stopping your little power trip and going, "oh man, their day sucked. Hey, how are you doing?" It's all takes. That little moment you take to talk to someone else and ask how they're doing. Focus on them and if they're really as great as you think, they'll take the next moment and focus on you when you're down.
Now, this leads to my point. Guilt. Fuck you and your guilt. I don't feel that emotion. Honestly, it doesn't exist in me like the gamut of emotions missing in a sociopath. I'd feel bad if I hurt you, I avoid situations of mixed morals where I might do something I'll regret, but the vast number of people I know who use guilt as weapon, wheather consiously or unconsiously, can seriously suck it. Knew this person once... Hated being left out. So they'd just ride your ass about it when you did (even if you had just forgotten or were actually thinking about inviting them or whatnot) until you were supposed to learn to never leave them out. Thing is? I'd just mentally cross their name off. Fuck them and their guilt-tripping. It will get them nothing in my world because that currency is worth shit here. If you want to be included, if you want me to respect your feelings, if you want to be taken seriously... Grow the fuck up. Crawl out from the shell, step out of the closet, look me in the eye, and talk to me like a big person.
So many people want to be taken seriously... to be respected... but they have no idea what it takes... what it calls for... for a person to deserve that.
and on a lighter note: Bunnies. Discuss.
quotes to start off with...
Heard on Scrubs:
"Relationships don't work they way they do on television and in the movies. Will they? Won't they? And then they finally do, and they're happy forever. Gimme a break. Nine out of ten of them end because they weren't right for each other to begin with, and half of the ones who get married get divorced anyway, and I'm telling you right now, through all this stuff I have not become a cynic. I haven't. Yes, I do happen to believe that love is mainly about pushing chocolate covered candies and, y'know, in some cultures, a chicken. You can call me a sucker, I don't care, because I do believe in it. Bottom line: it's couples who are truly right for each other wade through the same crap as everybody else, but the big difference is they don't let it take them down. One of those two people will stand up and fight for that relationship every time. If it's right, and they're real lucky, one of them will say something."
So in reality, what can we take from this quote? I mean, here we are thinking two things about love and relationships: that love doesn't exist, so we fake it or that it's a real thing that we are constantly in search of, but never really believe we've ever found.
Another little one liner i've gleaned from the media recently is the tagline for a movie called "Closer." The plot isn't really important, but the tagline in question is, "if you believe in love at first sight, you'll never stop looking." Essentially, it says that if you are a romantic believing in the idea of an instant chemistry, an insane romantic connection, than you'll never give up that search, even when you're in a totally great relationship.
I'm of the mindset that this is all true. Both the quote and the tagline pretty much filer into my perception on what's up with love in my experience. The fact is that I don't think it's possible for me to be satasfied anymore. I've loved one woman and she dumped me without any real cause... that was 6 years ago next month. She's married now and is living that happy homemaker life and I'm typing on internet blogs at 4am about how I can't just relax when I'm in a relationship of any kind.
In the end, there is no resolution this neurosis other than just faking it. Frankly, I've been getting by on an aloof nature and bitter cynicism that people seem to dig as part of my personality. Hey, look! It's Mike. He just needs to get laid, that'll cheer him up. He's never in a good mood. Does he even remember what it's like to have one?
The answer? Nope.
