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By the way, I didn't fall in love yesterday like I'd planned. Haven't so far yet today, either.Today I have done nothing but drink free beers and play poker at Excalibur. I'm up $57 on the day. I'm leaving in a few to check out the fancy new Wynn Resort a few blocks north.Happy birthday to karmaconniption. I look filthy hot today. Man, I miss wearing suits.
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Spent my morning at Excalibur. Walked away $30 richer after having lost all morning then hitting two big hands. Got some choice interviews with the tourists at the table and this british dude, set up an interview with Tony, Poker Director.Then met with Edna Dalton, Poker Director of the Aladdin, and it just so happened her husband Dave was hanging out there on his day off. Dave runs poker for the Bellagio and is THE poker bigwig in Las Vegas. I got a half hour with him :-) I could pretty much say "fuck research" the rest of the week with the info I got from talking to him. Awesome, awesome, awesome.I am only in my room to write up something for class, then I am off to Imperial Palace to take photos of cars (for class) and then to Harrah's to meet up with some friends of Ed and Paul, the guys who own the bar where I spend most of my life in Tampa.Finally, while I am looking sexy in my black pinstripe suit, white oxford, and black tie (it *is* memorial day after all) the 95 degrees outside feel like nothing compared to the humidity in Tampa. Everything here is wonderful so far.I decided while walking through Paris that I was going to fall in love today.
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Note to the slutted-out girls and the clone boys who follow them around the nightclubs here:
What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, unless it's VD. In which case you have to take it home with you.
I am torn between doing a stream of consciousness or a regular journal entry. how about a hybrid?
i have come to the conclusion about why i'm always losing. either i reject the rules, or i refuse to play all together. this explains a great many aspects of my personal life. i.e. refusing to pay cover due to a dogmatic adherence to the principle that people who go to bars that charge cover aren't my kind of people.
on my flight to memphis i sat next to an eight-year-old girl who was so cute and precocious and pretentious that she reminded me in every way of myself at her age. her mother was in the window seat (i always, ALWAYS, take aisle) and adored me, so much that i ate dinner at Corky's at the memphis airport (as i do every time i pass through Memphis, bar none) with the whole family (the father and two younger daughters were in the row behind us).
nice people. i gave them my email address and i gave the girl the title of my favourite book when i was her age, Math For Smarty Pants. She said she'd seen it in the library so i am excited for her. she then told me about how she looked up googol in the dictionary.
seriously, this girl is like a mini-me, except cute.
cabbie was awesome, ran a few red lights for me, i tipped him well.
wandered around the strip for a few hours, drank a few beers, watched people, took notes. tonight, i was told, is the #1 night/weekend of the year for bachelorette parties. which, well, is a weird situation. i mean, you can't really interrupt girls on a bachelorette excursion, except they kept interrupting me, which was fine, but then they were headed to some shitty club that i wasn't interested in and had a $20 cover and i was like no thanks.
though i looked totally hot today, white oxford shirt, untucked, jeans, khaki linen jacket. hot. should have played it for what it was worth. didn't. dogma.
i fell in love with the girl sitting in front of me on the memphis-las vegas flight and wrote a song about her.
the guy next to me was a lawyer from cleveland so we talked about the Indians and Browns and law school and that was fun.
someone downstairs/upstairs/next to me is thumping music. this is a CLASSY STRIP HOTEL PEOPLE, THIS IS NOT THE HARD ROCK OR THE WESTERN INN
gahh
interviews tomorrow, and memorial day. remember.
Almost got kicked out of the casino last night for taking notes, like I always do. Manager rudely informed me I was "cheating." I should note that the individual was British and apparently was taking things out on me in retaliation for the bad hand dealt to him at birth. *snicker*Still lost money, though not much. I did pay very close attention and realized they take twice the rake as a Vegas casino, at half the stakes, plus a dollar toward the jackpot. Those plus a dealer tip equal a nearly impossible win percentage in the long term mathematically. So I probably won't be playing there anymore.I leave for Las Vegas in a few hours, so the next time you hear from me, I'll be there. Wish me luck, kiddos.
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bluecadet was able to make it and we had a grand time, including my performing a song I just wrote last night about how i'm in love with a lesbian. The line "Your friends, like you, are femme. There's no butchery in sight" went over the best. bluecadet inviting me out there. You rock.Throughout my life I have been very critical of Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) but after seeing this on the news this morning, I have a newfound respect and admiration for my fellow Bobcat alum.
http://dembloggers.com/story/2005/5/2
When was the last time a senator CRIED while on the floor?
all my friends have girlfriendsi have a crush on a lesbianlife is grand
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he raised and capped me and on the button i was happy to call as I held bullets. I flopped four aces and tried not to piss all over the floor. he continued to raise and cap my bets. slowplaying wasn't an option. he capped every bet, leaving me all-in and as confident in victory as i have ever been in my years of competition. his Jd2c (a hand no one should even call the blind on) landed a royal.fucking poker. why, again, am i researching this?
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I played the open mic at The Pegasus tonight.It went amazingly well.While bluecadet was unable to attend, I managed to play a few songs that gathered the whole bar's attention. And I think I timed my appearance pretty well; the place was as packed when I was playing as it was the whole night. They particularly liked my cover of TLC's Waterfalls, though, of course, covering that song was first progressed by one mr. steven j. poltz. Anyway, it went over really, really well, and in some conversations with some other people afterward, I was informed that I had an "act" rather than songs, and that with work I could be even better than my hero mr. steven lynch. so that rocked.I told the story of wokeyouup girl and played that, then coffee in your cup (thankfully there were a lot of clarissa explains it all fans in the audience) and the spur-m song, and then waterfalls. It was fun, and my first time on a stage and with the lights and everything went well.I am feeling good about my artistic abilities, for whatever that is worth.If you haven't checked out the new Ryan Adams record Cold Roses yet, you really should. IM me for a link to it if you want to try it out, it's on the server.God, what a great album it is.I feel nice. And $6 pitchers help. And I'm seeing Episode III tomorrow with fairydust007 so I am super excited for that too.Yay for thursdays and the friday mornings that follow them.
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via thechuck_2112memes underneath1. Of all the bands/artists in your cd/record collection, which one do you own the most albums by?Counting Crows2. What was the last song you listened to?"Let it Ride" on the new Ryan Adams record.3. What's in your CD player right now?Cold Roses by Ryan Adams4. What song would you say sums you up?"Everything I Hate" by Smalltown Poets5. Who's your favorite local band?uhh. I don't know any Tampa bands. Zanesville? No idea. Ypsilanti? Sponge. Athens? Red Wanting Blue. Toledo? uhh6. What was the last show you attended?Technically, Otis and the Old School (fake Otis Day & the Knights) but "really" I believe it was Steve Poltz in Cleveland last July. Or did I see Counting Crows and Old 97's after that, in Chicago? Can't remember.8. What's the shittiest band you've ever seen in concert?Spin Doctors. I wanted to shoot myself9. What band do you love musically but hate the members of?Black Crowes10. What is the most musically involved you have ever been?I had a band in high school named New Pattern Shirt. We played, uh, two shows. I'm playing an open mic tomorrow night that I'm very nervous about.11. What show are you looking forward to?none. nobody good comes to Tampa. this place is a black hole for music fans.12. What is your favorite band shirt?counting crows - "a boy who looks like elvis"13. What musician would you like to hang out with for a day?adam duritz. no. doubt. about it.14. What musician would you like to hump for a day?jewel. that's so sad. maybe shirley manson.15. Metal question-Jeans and Leather vs. Cracker Jack clothes?cracker jack? i don't even know what that is.16. Sabbath or solo Ozzy?Solo Ozzy.17. Commodores or solo Lionel Ritchie?like sunday morningi'm easy but i don't looklike lionel ritchie18. Blackjack or solo Michael Bolton?that no-talent assclown18. The Eagles or solo Don Henley?The Eagles.19. The Police or solo Sting?The Police, but solo Sting is still totally sweet.20. Doesn't emo suck?usually21. Name 5 flawless albumsAugust & Everything After - Counting CrowsThe Bottle & Fresh Horses - The RefreshmentsAutomatic for the People - REMNew Miserable Experience - Gin BlossomsSongs from Takeoff to Landing - Garrison Starr22. Did you know that filling out this survey makes you a music geek?duh23. What was the greatest decade for music?1987-1997 (hee)24. How many music-related videos/dvds do you own?two: REM - Road Movie, Gin Blossoms.. whatever that DVD was calledi have a lot of concert videos that aren't really "releases" as much as bootlegs, though. mainly rugburns/steve poltz or jewel25. Do you like Journey?faithfully26. What is your favorite movie soundtrack?Go. absolutely. yes, yes, yes.27. What was your last musical "phase" before you wisened up?i listened to a lot of smooth-brother R&B in high school. 28. What's the crappiest CD/record/etc you've ever bought?holy shit. i have like 500. i'm gonna say, Naughty By Nature - 19 Naughty 329. Do you prefer vinyl or Cd's?CDs, but my LP of Herb Alpert/Tijuana Brass' Whipped Cream & Other Delights is badass30. What is your guilty pleasure CD?Garth Brooks - In PiecesalsoTotal number of books owned:200 or so. most are textbooks i acquired in my years as a prof, i have sold many many many of my other things off on half.com.The last book I bought:i bought a few at the half-price bookstore, but the last "real" books i bought were the new Crichton and Grisham novels. The last book I read:Reading Grisham's new one, but the last book I completed was A Confederacy of Dunces.Five books that mean a lot to me:Henderson the Rain King - BellowCold Sassy Tree - BurnsGood Field, No Hit - DeckerConfederacyTess of the D'Urbervilles - Hardy
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Not as cool as the granny playing ping-pong, but still fun. I can only hope to live long enough to be one of those old folks at Palmerfest myself. If I keep behaving like I did Saturday, that's unlikely to happen. I truly do not remember anything past arriving at the house... from that point to waking up Sunday afternoon is BLACK. At this point, I really don't want to know, and would like to leave whatever happened to the wind, as if I can't remember, it probably wasn't good.
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Mulleted rednecks in black cowboy hatsHands down the pants of lithe brunettesHalf their ageBlue smoke cloud surroundsWhat I cannot believeDon't want to believeWhat am I doing here?1. The job I applied for in Lakeland I didn't get. Boo hoo.2. I had two of the three papers I submitted to NCA accepted. To be honest, I was expecting all three, but they're cracking down, whatever. Two out of three ain't bad.3. Open mic tonight. May or may not actually get up and sing. Might just scope the place out for a night.4. If I can get out of the house. Parked in at the moment.A brunette with big brown eyesBlack sweaterIgnores the chump with no gameAnd checkerboard shirtI'd play tic tac toe on itAnd give her Xs and OsWhat am I doing here?
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That is the coolest photo ever. God bless The Ohio University and Moms' Weekend.Sportscaster Jim Lampley rants about how Kerry won the election -- and how social scientific research says so.I think Jenn is pissed at me, she was not fond of being woken up by huge drills beneath her bedroom. Oh well. It's for the best. And by "the best," I mean, "fiber internet for me."
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Today is the 25th anniversary of the Sunshine Skyway disaster.
The 35 who died:
Michael Curtin, 43, of Apollo Beach | Duane Adderly, 21, of Miami | Louis Lucas, 62, of Birmingham, Ala. | Yvonne Johnson, 22, of Miami | Monisha McGarrah, infant, of Tallahassee | Wanda McGarrah, 24, of Tallahassee | Sharon Dixon, 21, of Miami | Myrtle Brown, 58, of St. Johns, Newfoundland | Willis Brown, 57, of St. Johns, Newfoundland | Phyllis Hudson, 58, of St. Johns, Newfoundland | Aubrey Hudson, 62, of St. Johns, Newfoundland | Horace Lemmons, 47, of Kings Mountain, N.C. | Gerda Hedquist, 92, of Charlotte Harbor | Louise Johnson, 59, Cataula, Ga. | Melborn Russell, 38, of Chicago | Robert Harding, 63, Glen Falls, N.Y. | Alphonso Blidge, 22, of Miami | Marguerite Mathison, 82, of St. Petersburg | Delores Smith, 50, of Pennsville, N.J. | Harry Dietch, 68, of St. Petersburg | Hildred Dietch, 73, of St. Petersburg | John Carlson, 47, of Pinellas Park | Doris Carlson, 42, of Pinellas Park | Tawana McClendon, 20, of Palmetto | Charles Collins, 40, of Tampa | Leslie Coleman, 52, of St. Petersburg | James Pryor, 42, of Seminole | Woodrow Triplett, 33, of Bainbridge, Ga. | Sandra Davis, 35, of Boardman | Lillian Loucks, 69, of Winnipeg, Manitoba | Ann Pondy, 57, of Winnipeg, Manitoba | Brenda Green, 19, of Miami | John Callaway, 19, of Miami | Robert Smith, 37, of Pennsville, N.J. | Lavern Daniels, 20, of Miami
In happier news, I cleaned out the garage today. It looks spectaculler. I am fixing a lamb roast tonight. Wish me luck.
Edit: the lamb roast might be the greatest thing I have ever cooked, ever. Wow, wow, wow. Either I got really lucky or I am a master chef
The trailer for Lion, Witch, & the Wardobe is outCaitlin has had a different guy over three nights in a row. More power to her, I guess, I'm not one to judge. James Earl Jones just called me to verify my fiber install on tuesday. I'm pumped.
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Ellen came through with a big fattie tonightThere's nothing weird at all about smoking a joint with a woman the same age as your mother, on Mother's Day.That was _not_ the Otis Day and the Knights from Animal House. As much as everyone wanted to tell me they were, I am going with it "not" being them. Thus my goal of having seen both Morris Day & the Times and Otis Day & the Knights is unfulfilled. These guys were "Otis & Old School" and I am quite sure they are not the same, despite what people tried to tell me.I have pics, but they are blurry and thus represent my current state of mindwill post tomorrow probably.Morris Day & the Times were awesome. Though watching them in what basically amounted to a garage was strange. Stranger was that they were opening for Gin Blossoms. Stranger still is that most of the crowd left after Morris Day & the Times finished. Gin Blossoms put on a good show, dammit. Small world, Dr. Jones. "Too small for two of us."What am I doing? I mean, really, what am I doing? 52 weekends a year. That's it. And this is how I'm spending them? Drunk and at baseball games? Stoned and watching fake movie bands? I'm four months from being old. I'm not down with letting this happen. I wonder, sometimes, if the ubiquity of the Internet has created a mindset of avoidance. I can write more about that later, but basically it means ... things.What am I doing?
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Click here for a photoessay of my Friday evening
the end.
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Today is the 35th anniversary of the massacre at Kent State.
My father was a senior in high school on May 4th, 1970. He attended Lorain Catholic High School, which is about an hour from Kent. His older brother, my uncle, was a senior at Kent that year, though he was at work that day and thankfully (or, narratively, "sadly") missed the massacre.
Several of my father's friends would end up being drafted a year and a half later, though the 1971 draft lottery did not end up taking anywhere near as many men as the previous years'. Many more of my father's friends were high school seniors enrolled to attend Kent State that fall. (My father was not one of them; he attended a small college in NW Ohio).
Imagine, for a minute, that you are one of those seniors. For thirteen years, you've suffered through a Catholic education that has seared memories and scars into your psyche. For thirteen years, you've navigated the series of nuns whom have sworn their lives to helping you learn, by whatever means necessary. In one month, you graduate. In one month, you escape this world to enter the drunken lovefest that is university.
Except you're headed to the place where four students, kids like you, were just killed by a volley of 65 bullets fired from a distance of over 250 feet.
Only one of the four students killed were actually participating in the protest. In fact, one of the four was a member of the campus ROTC. With the passage of time, we forget that this wasn't a "kill or be killed" scenario. The protesters weren't a danger to the Guardsmen, nor were they assembling illegally. (Yes, a handful of the protesters did throw rocks at the Guardsmen, but remember the distance: 265 feet.)
I know it's a bit different for me because it seems "closer." I know it's a bit different for me because I've been to the space where the shooting occurred. I'm not a doomsayer who says "beware as the neocon imperialists will bring back the draft and we'll all be sent to war" like many of my friends, but I do think that the events of 35 years ago and the four who died as a result are worth reflecting on for just a minute or two:
* Allison Krause
* Jeffrey Glen Miller
* Sandra Lee Scheuer
* William Knox Schroeder
Yeah, this was a blog-ish post and not a journal-y one, but my blog isn't up and running yet (WordPress is fuckin' complicated, man)
I've been playing with google maps a lot lately. I dunno why, it's creepy and fun at the same time. There's some crazy-ass shit out in the Nevada desert.Anyway, google maps sucks, because they don't have some of the hi-res shots that the microsoft site has for places like...http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=10&Z=17&X=2066&Y=22108&W=2&qs=%7czanesville%7cOH%7c...Zanesville, OH. That would be the only Y-bridge (with active traffic) in the world. Originally built in 1814, and rebuilt four times since then.It sounds a lot more exciting than it really is.Update: the MS Urban maps are wayyyyyyyyy closer than google's, too. Check out this shot of my neighborhood pool
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There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... Identity is performatively constituted by the very 'expressions' that are said to be its results. - Judith Butler
I love Judith Butler. I may disagree with her a lot, but what she writes is so brilliant your mouth just gapes open in awe at her transcendence. She's so amazing. I hope to some day be intelligent enough to really "get" what she's talking about.
Last semester, I took my first course in feminist methodology, and was introduced to Butler's work (for the most part, my previous research dealt with public rhetoric and nonsense like that, and having no feminist scholars on the staff of my previous workplace, I was pretty clueless. I was raised to believe I was a feminist, my mother having grown up in Toledo and in Steinem's shadow, but I had no theory background to back up this self-attribution.) Before I had this LJ, I did a lot of writing about gender, and my issues with it. I don't have gender issues personally, but other people have issues with my gender. It's a perception problem. The writing (which I have somewhere, and will put the essays I wrote here if I find them) dealt with the years I've navigated an odd public assumption that people have had since I was in high school. Despite my streak of hypermasculine heterosexuality, a large section of the public believes, upon meeting me, that I'm gay. Once upon a time, this was a problem for me, but around the age of seventeen or so I came to grips with it and laughed it off at the least and took advantage of it at the most.
Yet I'm placed in this section in between; I dress too nice to be a straight guy, but not nicely enough to pass sometimes. I use long sentences and complicated words, but with a deep, robust voice. My previous occupation is almost exclusively staffed by gay men, many of whom to this day refuse to believe I'm straight (to several of their's dismay). Straight folks lift their eyebrow; lesbians glare with distrust. I say with relative assurity that despite my mild-manneredness, I am a silhouette, a cast representation of something, but one that in the right lighting can be both deceptive and threatening.
Regardless of this public (im)perception, I perform me. Tim. I'm fortunate to be someone who really likes me, and continue to float in the in-between despite however long it's been since I last got laid (I quit counting months ago). I still read The Advocate and wear sweater vests and do whatever I'm driven to do, casting whatever public perception of my performative essence might be to the wind.
This all has a point.
Tonight I went looking for a coffee house I'd heard hosts Monday night open mics. I drove up and down Busch Ave. looking for the place, before finding a small building with a bunch of people out front. As I approached the structure, the scent of clove cigarettes confirmed I'd found the coffee shop.
I coughed up six bucks for a bottomless, grabbed the nearest magazine (which happened to be, of course, The Advocate) and took a seat on a sofa near the performance area. It's a cool place, but probably your typical bohemian coffee shop.
I soon realized that, apparently, a necessary quality for a Tampa Bohemian is homosexuality. Every individual in the shop was accompanied by a partner of the same sex. Cool, I thought; as young as the Tampa Bay area might be, it's sadly still Florida, and alternative lifestyles aren't as welcome in public spaces as, say, Ann Arbor or Athens or anywhere else I've lived. (Zanesville notwithstanding.) Yet, despite my choice of reading material, I was in that middle space, marked, with the stigma of a white, straight, male; an icon of the hegemony.
And the lesbians still eyed me suspiciously.
The rest of the night consisted of me slurping down coffee (which was quite good) and listening to the performers (who were quite bad). I decided, after hearing the third atonally-mumbled "song" in a row, that next Monday, I would bring my geetar and rock these people's world.
Then again, as my songs tend to be an outlet for my aforementioned hypermasculine heterosexuality, maybe not.
On a warm weekend in 1996, I was on the campus of Heidelberg college, at my freshman orientation. At a "mixer" in the Down Under, the nonalcoholic bar on campus, I was making my rounds when the deejay announced, "The first person to tell me the artist and song I'm playing right now will win a Heidelberg College baseball cap." I walked over to the deejay and informed him he was spinning "Bittersweet," by Big Head Todd & the Monsters. I was handed a green baseball cap, which immediately became my favourite hat ever, trouncing the previous white, pinstriped Cleveland Indians hat that had been my high school staple and the pink (yes, pink) Notre Dame cap I wore in junior high. I never washed that hat, until five minutes ago, when I glanced at the thick coat of grime that reflected the character that had built up much like the dirt, and tossed it into the washing machine.Foreshadowing, indeed.Happy May Day to all of you communists out there (aka most of my grad school cohorts).There is some odd festival happening down the street. It looks like a family reunion, except I cannot fathom why someone would hold a family reunion out here, where there's hardly any backyard space. Our backyards pretty much run into the swampland, so I guess if you want your nieces and nephews to be gobbled by alligators, that would be a good excuse.Today I packed up my sweaters and sweatshirts, which had gathered on my bedroom floor over the semester, washed them, and placed them into their boxes. I won't be needing them again until about December. *snicker*I really need to do something about my clothes situation. I have about four times the amount of clothes I need. There's really not enough room for the roughly 60+ t-shirts I own, the two dozen dress shirts, ties, suits, et cetera. I don't have to wear those clothes anymore, because I don't wear suits to work anymore. Yet I don't really know what to do with them; after all, I still need to wear suits occasionally, and while I don't buy expensive clothes, I tend to like what I buy enough to want to keep it. I need to find someone with a huge closet who doesn't mind me putting things there. You know how they have those storage garages off every exit on I-75? I need to open a chain of storage closets. Lots of people have reasons to need to put clothes away; they gained weight, lost weight, had a kid and plan another one... I think I am on to something here. Call the venture capitalists.The countdown to fiber internet and 15Mb/sec downloads (which I don't really care about) and 5Mb/sec uploads (which is what I really, really care about) is at eight days. God bless Tampa, Florida.Finally, I've come to the conclusion that there is a significant difference between a LiveJournal and a blog. A lot of what I have to say is blog-ish, so I'll probably be starting that up soon. And there's another, far more anonymous project I will probably tell none of you about, in the works as well. The original project, the one I started this LJ for, is officially kaput (39 out messages; one in message). I don't know what women are looking for, but it clearly isn't what I'm bringing to the table.
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