:: Quiche of the Day ::

:: 2.24.2002 ::

I woke up Thursday nearly out of clean clothes, desperatly needing to clip my fingernails and with no knowledge of how either happened. My hectic, no-time-for-fingernails week really started on Sunday and was over by Wednesday, but it seemed oh-so-much longer. I met a number of semi-famous people, finished a bunch of projects and basically kicked it like the cool kat I am. From that point on I didn't have quite as much to do, but I still kept busy (mostly trying to get my laundry done). Hey, hows about I tell y'all tomorrow? It seems far too late to recount the harrowing adventures of this lone desperado. And this lone desperado needs his lone desersleep.
:: Aaron Humphrey 2:37 AM reply [+] ::
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Now that Valentine's Day has safely passed, I don't have to listen to my roommates Ed and Grant complain about what a stupid holiday it is. However, thanks to The Marvels of The Internet, you still have the opportunity! Grant seems to think that love = fast food. What kind of anti-corporate revolutionay is he? A poor one, I guess. Poor in the monetary sense (cents! ha!), that is. If you wanna continue feeling bad about food joints, go here, here or even here! If you want to continue in blissful, complacent ignorance . . . don't, I guess.
News flash! Sleep is bad for you! College kids rejoice thanks to science! Technology rules!
Comics also rule. I imagine that the Alternative Press Expo held last weekend did quite a bit of ruling. I dunno. I didn't go. I should have. Oh well. Good news is that it's only three and a half months until FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!! Just so you know. Right now only the big publishers have got info up on the free comic book day website, but oni press is also gonna have free books avaliable then, and hopefully other alt-publishers will, too. Just so you know. You really don't have an excuse not to go.
Seems like I really had something else to talk about tonight. Hmm. Guess we'll never know. Everyone here is obsessed with that hi-tech Tony Hawk game, but I likes my gaming old-school or not at all. Good for me, since I've got a screen play to read, a novel to finish, and a text book to slog through this weekend. Glad those guys found out that stuff about sleep.
:: Aaron Humphrey 12:14 AM reply [+] ::
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Thursday nite I went to a preview showing of Interstate 60, a new movie written and directed by Bob Gale, who co-wrote the Back to the Future movies (and apperently just finished a stint writing Daredevil for Marvel Comics!). It was a decent film. Used up all its cuss words in the first 15 minutes (in a Micheal J. Fox cameo, no less!), so it's certianly getting either an R rating or the razor blade, but other than that it played mostly like a PG movie. Here's the tasty, high concept plot: college kid with basically no real character flaws doesn't know what to do with life so he embarks on bizzare, episodic road-trip down a mystical highway. Here's a shorter descrption of it: fluff. Took me a while to warm up to that idea, but once I did, the movie ended up being pretty funny and kept me watching. It was too straight-forward and good-natured to be made by anyone under 35, though.
Yee Olde Santa Anna winds are blowing like nobody's business today. I can actually see my my reflection plusating and bending in the windows next to my desk as the wind slams into them. Not a comforting image. Today's the kind of day they invented capes for. If only I had one.
Saturday night rocks my room esta noche. Got some new comix (Bone, Allison Dare, BPRD and Akiko for you folks playing along at home), watched some Jackie Chan (Police Story 2) and ate cheesecake (chocolate with whipped cream). Grant bought a copy of that Tony Hawk game (number 3) that all the kiddies crave, so you know that saw some serious console action. Good times. Great oldies.
I'm gonna try to keep the updates rollin' out here reguarly for a while. If you sign my guestbook, I'm sure I'll feel better about it.
:: Aaron Humphrey 1:04 AM reply [+] ::
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Went to open mic nite at the local coffee shoppe tonight. Had a pretty good, culturally-enriching time. One guy sang covers, but everyone else played their own (mostly emo-punk) stuff. And there was an accordion, which was played by the only girl performer there! There was also a one drink minimum, but no one played that. I didn't have any money to get something hot, so I picked me up a root beer in one of those fancy brown bottles. As a result I ended up walking back to the dorm afterward with what was very obviously a bottle of beer, though its "root" content may not have been obvious to the casual viewer. I felt oh-so-college. Or maybe oh-so-high-school? I don't know. I never really went to those parties. When I come back home, everyone else has wacky "and there were these guys who were sooo drunk" stories to share, but poor Aaron on the Substance Free Floor just gets to say "I don't go to those parties." Maybe I should. I feel like I'm missing out. I really have no desire to drink (my parents, reading this breath a sigh of relief), but it seems like I should at least get to laugh at some other people getting drunk. I mean, everyone else is doing it . . .
I'm reading The Poisonwood Bible, which is the longest, non-comic, non-text book I've read in months I think. Sad, but not cry your eye out sad, fortunately. I really like it and say "yay books!" but most of the other kids in my class are like, "eh, book." I'm such a dork. I actually like doing work, I think. I really thought I got a lot out of the big old honors science class which apparently everyone hated. But then again, it's a lot easier to say you hate something than you thought it was cool, so maybe just a few, really loud people hated it (true), and everyone else thought it was ok but kept quiet (probably false). Oh well; so I'm a dork. I mean, I just used a semicolon in that last sentence; for crying out loud! Here's further proof: in my editing class today the prof. was explaining how we could back up our projects on tinny little floppy disks, and then the system could use that little bit of data to reassemble all of our huge audio, video, etc. files on a different computer! Our of the blue, and I swear I was not even trying to be a smart aleck about this, I exclaimed, "Just like DNA!" Well slap some glasses on me and call me Poindexter; I totally thought that was the coolest, most obvious analogy ever, and wondered why the professor hadn't thought of it himself. I found out why when the whole classroom went silent. My lame attempt to regain some non-nerd like dignity was, "Well, you know, 'cause it's like the building block for the project?" I think all my brain's resources were too busy trying to figure out why I had brought up DNA in the first place to be able to access any useful social skills. I mean, I can go days, weeks even without even thinking about cellular biology! I'm sure I'd be a better person if I did, but, well, it's just seems so square!
Roommate update:
If Grant's page has been updated in the last couple of days, send him an e-mail and tell him to go to bed instead of updating. He's doing post-production for Blue Me, and suddenly I think he regrets laughing at me for when I had to get up at four in the morning to film it. Because now he's coming home at four in the morning from trying to make our DNA-like editing system just do something right. That's what he gets for having no problems editing his visual storytelling projects while I was coming back from editing at the same time normal people are having breakfast. Aside from our Aikido class, I think I've seen him for less than one hour total in the last four days. Feel his pain. I know I do.
And after you've done that, go feel Ed's page. He promises me that it's updated. I know he's been yelling things like "no! why won't you work!" pretty constantly the last few days. He reassured me that it wasn't me he was mad at, so I guess it must have been his computer. They seem to have squared things up now, though, so go take a look!
Christina will yell at me if I don't mention her.
:: Aaron Humphrey 1:15 AM reply [+] ::
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The other day in class my editing professor reminded us to always back-up our work, no matter how good our system was, because "computers screw. That's what they do." Well, they do other things, too. Different computers can do different things, but they all have one unfortunate thing in common: they all are really good at screwing up. I was typing on my usually stable lap-top not five minutes ago, when out of no-where my computer mysteriously crashes and I lose all my work. Why? I don't know. Maybe I hit the stupid key. All I know is that I really want to hit something, that's for sure.
I also want to go to bed. So, while I can assure you that I had an insightful and rather witty entry ready to post tonight, you're never going to get to see it. Neither am I. But if you could see it, it would look like a more insightful, wittier version of this:
Usually comic books aren't the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the biggest disaster to strike the U.S. in recent memory. Or maybe they are. I don't know. If you can tell me why they are the first thing that comes to mind (in 300 words or less!), and convince me that you're right, I'll send you one of my prized vinyl albums from 1977. This is not the kind of thing I offer lightly.
Now that that's out of the way, it's story time!
Last Sunday I made my bi-monthly-or-so visit to the comic book store, and picked up, among other things, a copy of "September 11th 2001: Artists Respond," the latest in a number of 9-11 tribute/benefit books put out by a number of different publishers. I hadn't really bothered to look at any of the pervious books dealing with the subject, I guess because I figured they'd be an over-wrought, one-note kind of deal. You know, like the news. Hey, sometimes I like it when I'm wrong. Artists Respond is a collection of 1 - 4 page pieces all written and drawn by more comic book creators than I care to count, and turned out to be filled with genuine intelligence, emotion, and craftsmanship. The varied perspectives and styles of storytelling were refreshing and gave the book a thoughtful feeling to it. As someone who kind of shut out the whole big deal after a few weeks, I found this collection of comics to be helpful and achingly relevant. Really, you owe it to yourself to check this, or one of the other tribute books out. All the proceeds to go help those affected by the attack, so you really don’t have an excuse.
:: Aaron Humphrey 1:06 AM reply [+] ::
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