Parrot-Speak

I've taken a fancy to talking parrots as of late. Here are a few of my favorite talking parrot clips:

#1.


#2:


#3. (not quite talking, but definitely rocking)

Pseudo-American

Today, I was fitted for a bridesmaid’s dress for one of my best friends’ wedding. The seamstress I went to was in Coolidge Corner in Brookline, MA, which has a very large Russian and Jewish population. My seamstress, who is known by the nickname “Poppy,” is a former fashion designer from Russia. Every review I saw about her online said that she is incredibly curt and could be likened to the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld; needless to say, I was incredibly excited to meet this woman.

I arrived in her small cramped store to be greeted by a heavily accented, “What you want?” I politely explained I had an appointment for a dress fitting and she told me to follow her upstairs and change into the gown. The upstairs was a maze of multicolored garments, most half-finished. I looked around for a changing room, but there wasn’t one. Instead, she had me change in front of her as came behind me with her cold fingers and a measuring tape to take my measurements, without informing me that she was going to do so. I put on the dress and she howls, “Who let you to order this size? This not your size! No dressmaker makes mistakes like this!” My dress is three to six inches too big everywhere and she is appalled. She pins the dress, has me strip in front of her and retakes my measurements (again, without asking). “You no trust the American clothes. Not European girl like you.”

This strikes me as odd - I don’t have an accent; I’m not wearing anything that identifies my nationality. I shake it off as crazy ramblings and ask when I can expect the dress and get a quote on the price. I left the store completely amused by the exchange and hop on the T to go to work. On the ride there, I thought about her European comment. She’s right; I am European. All four of my grandparents are from Ireland. There is not a single drop of my blood that has mixed with any American blood. I’ve never thought of myself as anything but American since my family has been here since the 1940s, but genetically, I’m as Irish as the Irish and European as the Europeans. The average height of a full-grown woman in Europe is over an inch shorter than a woman in the USA. So now, I’m not going to consider myself short – I am the exact average height of a European woman, 5’3”.

Thanks Poppy!

Product Review: Bath & Body Works Foaming Hand Soap

A great Anti Bacterial soap currently on the market is made by Bath & Body Works. The soap is liquid on the inside and weighs about 8.75 oz. The wonderful thing about this product is that it is not just your average hand soap. The soap dispenser appears just as regular hand soap. However, there is a mechanism inside of the dispenser that allows the users to push down on top of the spout and as the users do this the soap dispensper does not release just liquid but instead mechanism inside of the dispenser releases into into a free flowing hand-full of foam. There is then no reason to rinse and lather simultaneously because the foam cancels the lathering portion of the process, rinsing is your decision.

Pros: A soap for the lazy hand washer, Bath and Body Works makes wonderful smelling products, there are a number of different scents that are under the foaming hand wash category.

Cons: I have noticed that this foaming mechanism does not always work--instead you end up with two hands filled with just soap, also be sure to clean the area in which the the soap is dispensed--otherwise you get foam flying everywhere, specifically onto your pants, lower shirt or whatever article of clothing or part of your body that is parallel towards the soap dispenser.

Bath and Body Works Foaming Hand Soaps are sold in the following scents: Black Raspberry Vanilla, Brown Sugar & Fig, Cherry Blossom, Coconut Lime Verbena, Country Apple, Cucumber Melon*, Enchanted Orchid, Exotic Coconut, Fresh Pineapple, Freshwater Cucumber, Japanese Cherry Blossom*, Midnight Pomegranate, Moonlight Path**, Pink Grapefruit, Sea Island Cotton, Sensual Amber, Sparkling Peach, Sweat Pea*, Tropical Passionfruit and Warm Vanilla Sugar

*Favorites
**All-Time-Favorite

You can find Bath and Body Works Foaming Hand Soap at your local Bath and Body Works (the mall). Although there are other knock offs but I prefer the ones made by BABW.

Cost: about $5 per dispenser

Rating: 4/5 for innovation only

Apropos of a Rainy Day part II

Like songs with 'babe' or 'baby' somewhere in the title or the lyrics, I'm always willing to give a song about rain a chance. Here's David Ruffin (great voice, great style, sad drug habit) leading the Temptations through my personal favorite precipitation song, "I Wish it Would Rain."

My Favorite Game

...to play on this blog is to read an article and guess who wrote it. I just went 7/8.

Apropos of a Rainy Day

Two rainy days are on the way and this clip seemed appropriate. Support your local bookstore, drink responsibly, and enjoy the weather.



The Big Sleep (1946)

scan t.v. 24

Here are two sections of an essay I've been working on. The essay is about SCAN TV 24 - the t.v. station at UNH. The club is most often ignored / misunderstood. I would argue unjustly ignored / misunderstood. In the essay, I attempt to capture the true spirit / character of the station as I have found it during my time at UNH. The first section I've posted here describes the typical goings-on at the station. The next section is a kind of introduction to different aspects of the station. These two sections are in no particular order, but I thought they were two fertile sections. Any comments / criticism would be greatly appreciated.
***
It is Tuesday and I have time before class. I stop by SCAN. I open the office door and immediately see filth and disarray but this is somehow welcoming. An empty Sunkist bottle lies horizontal on top of a massive digital server worth a frightening amount of money. An orange drop of liquid falls mute to the shiny surface, the first of what I am sure will be many stains to come. A Snickers wrapper dangles lightly over a nearby keyboard. The chocolate flecks inside have almost certainly found there way to the many crevaces between the lettered keys. “It’s fucking hot in here!” Guthrie Andres, computer genius for the T.V. station explains to me as I make my way into the office. Guthrie is sitting at a nearby computer, his feet resting on top of the PC tower. He is wearing his shirt tied on his head like a shabby turban. I hear the door open. Matt Lubicky, senior SCAN member and advertising mastermind comes in and shows me the latest ad he made for the school newspaper. It has a picture of a bird on it and there's an arrow pointing at the bird with the words "the bird is guilty" added in bold lettering over the arrow. At the bottom of the ad, almost as an afterthought Matt included SCAN's general information. "I like it" I say. The door shuts again and I look up. Sabino San Juan IV enters. Sabino is the General Manager of SCAN. He is brilliant with technology, able to deconstruct and construct any mechanical thing and perhaps most significantly he sincerely believes he is a wolf in a human's body. "Did you see this?" he asks, holding up some piece of computer equipment I will never understand. "It just came in...and...basically...it's really good..." Sabino proceeds to bombard me with technical information, the specifications on whatever he's holding. I just nod, wanting sorely to shift conversation. The T.V. at the front of the room is playing VH1 Classic. Phil Collins sings passionately "take, take me home". Then Nate Lord, SCAN celebrity and senior member walks in and gives his usual shouted greeting, "just the losers I wanted to see…hey, hey boys!!!!!" Nate and I proceed to theatrically make fun of each other for as long as the other people in the room laugh. Jon Waugh, SCAN member of several years and instrumental to the short lived SCANNATION T.V. show slides in behind us holding up a large white tube. “Know what this is, boys???” he eagerly asks to the room. “What’s up Johnny?” we reply. “New Batman poster…it’s got the Joker on it…so good…oh my God, so good” We all admire the poster and then meander about the room. Some of us doing work. Some of us watching videos on youtube. Others talking and not talking.
***
This is the room where I met my best friend, where I edited for eight hours straight and where that kid in the dog collar told me he was a wolf. This is where I learned to accept my eccentricities and become publicly creative. This is where I wasted countless hours and where I am proud to belong – SCAN TV 24.
SCAN TV 24 is the campus television station for the University of New Hampshire. It comprises a studio for filming live television shows which are broadcasted throughout all campus dorms and an office complete with digital server and three computers with professional Final Cut Pro editing software. The club is responsible for the proper handling and maintenance of many thousands of dollars worth of equipment and hardware. It is also home to one of the most diverse and motley groups of UNH students on campus. At SCAN you are sure to find an unlikely tableau - roomfuls of impressive technology juxtaposed with immature, uninhibited and messy fun.
SCAN is open to all and prides itself on its unbiased and diverse membership. Despite this, very few members of the UNH community feel comfortable walking through SCAN’s office door. I didn’t at first, and for good reason. The first time I entered the SCAN office was during my Sophomore year. While timidly viewing the awful raw footage of an unfinished short film I had shot earlier that day, Len Mazzone, resident tech nerd in the group several years back, singled me out solely to mock me. In the middle of a conversation with another SCAN member about how “the majority of UNH students were dumb and obsessed with sports,” Len looked at me and presumably by my “jock-like” grey sweater and jeans combo assessed “that’s kind of like you, isn’t it?” I think the intimidation of SCAN, what’s slightly frightening about it is that there are members in SCAN who aren’t afraid to call you out; who are loud, theatrical, and at times abrasive. What is also slightly frightening is that you generally have to prove yourself in some way before you can crack the social barrier between “UNH student” and “SCAN member”. The initiation varies with the passing years and with the rolling membership, but I know I didn’t feel comfortable in the SCAN office or studio until I dedicated a lot of time to the club and produced a lot of content. Productivity was my in. For other people, it’s holding an executive position. For others, it’s simply knowing a SCAN member.
SCAN is criticized for its output and adored for its uncaring attitude toward its output. You can literally film anything and have it broadcasted on the SCAN TV 24 broadcasting loop. The contents of SCAN’s scratch space (essentially the digital library for all of the saved material on SCAN’s computers), comprises material for actual television shows, commercials, short films, and other miscellaneous bits predominately of a strange and irreverent character. In the scratch space, you will find “SCAN ids," or short commercials for the T.V. station which new general members are required to make before they can advance within the group. The ids are often between 30 seconds and one minute in length and are almost always of an exceptionally random nature. Like the one where lounge music is played over a scene from a dubbed Chinese martial arts film or the one where the sound of manic laughter is played over a slow zoom into a bowl of disgusting leftovers sitting in someone's sink. Also in the scratch space are short films. These come in both the successful and failed varieties. They are largely compiled during the film fest season, toward the end of spring semester when everyone frantically attempts to produce their thirty seconds of fame in the off hours when they should be sleeping and / or writing papers. The range of short films is large and includes five minute experimental animations produced over months and 10 minute embarrassments wherein screenshots of the video game Halo are edited to music taken from someone’s I Tune’s library.

Titus Andronicus

Today I went on to Pitchforkmedia.com (I hold back my love/hate relationship with the site for the purpose of this post) and I noticed that one of the album reviews was of the band Titus Andronicus. Fortunately for them they recieved an 8.5 rating. Which in a world where Pitchfork literally makes or breaks new (indie rock) bands they got the good end of the stick receiving a "Best New Music" award. The reason I post this is because my freshman year I happened to have attended Monmouth University in New Jersey. I was also in a band and I was good friends with a bassist in a band called Library Of Congress. My band played some shows with them. Library of Congress disbanded when my buddy left to go to Washington, the remaining members formed Titus Andronicus. I am proud and almost in shock to say: YOU SHOULD REALLY CHECK THIS BAND OUT! I used to party with them, MAN! So when they are on Conan in two weeks I can say, "Hey I know those guys". But in all seriousness, they are quite amazing.

Pitchfork Review

Myspace Page

DVD Review: Starting Out in the Evening

Directed by Andrew Wagner
Starring Frank Langella, Lauren Ambrose, Lili Taylor
2007

Seized with nostalgia for my days as an English Lit major, I put Starting Out in the Evening on my Netflix list last week. Frank Langella (Superman Returns, The Ninth Gate) plays Leonard Schiller, an octogenarian novelist struggling to finish his latest book when a beautiful grad student (Lauren Ambrose of bit parts on random tv shows fame) suddenly appears to interview him for her thesis/revive his career. Unfortunately, the film had a completely different effect than I had hoped for; rather than making me yearn for those days when I thought a career in literature would be a Utopian existence, I came away convinced that everyone associated with academia is a complete fuck.

Starting Out in the Evening creates a world where having four out of print novels and a modest teaching career is enough to finance a lifetime in a swank Manhattan apartment building with a doorman and a marble foyer. Being a cranky old author also gives you license to have weird, grandfatherly sex with any grad student whose life was changed when she read your book (bonus points if that grad student only wears designer evening wear). Also, in case you were worried about your legacy, everyone remotely associated with you (like your daughter's on again off again boyfriend) will periodically reread your books and remind you how much they respect and admire you. Despite not publishing in decades, you also still get invited to numerous literary events and parties where you can schmooze with other intellectuals, show off your new arm candy, and compare the contents of their floor to ceiling bookcases with your own. Authors can even have major strokes with no lingering side effects except needing to nap more frequently and when your grad student mistress finishes her thesis you'll still be fit enough to tell her off and give her a good slap for wasting your valuable time.

There's no denying Langella delivers a strong performance as Leonard Schiller but he's hardly a sympathetic character (although the frontal nudity was a bold play for vulnerability points) and Lauren Ambrose's tenacious student is scarcely more likeable. Whether she's pressing Schiller to admit the influence of D.H. Lawrence in his work or accusing a hip East Village journalist of going soft on Lou Reed, she comes across as completely insufferable. Their on screen chemistry is almost non-existent and by the end of the film I was bored to indifference, hardly caring that she learns a valuable lesson about life (what I'm not exactly sure) and that he discovers it's never too late to start over again. Unless you have a soft spot for passionless spring/winter romances, you can probably skip this one.

Book Review: The Old Religion by David Mamet

David Mamet is a critically acclaimed novelist, playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for his works like "Glengarry Glen Ross" for which he won a Pulitzer Prize and "American Buffalo". "The Old Religion" is the tale of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory owner who is falsely accused of the rape and murder of a young girl who happened to work at his factory. The book holds nothing back, the events are fully disclosed together with the testimony against Frank--including the one by the man who actually murdered the girl and several of his untrusting, anti-Semitic coworkers. "The Old Religion" takes a look into the psyche of a powerful Jewish man living in the South. It's a story of a man who will do and say anything to try and hide or blanket his Judaism in a world where he is seen as nothing but someone who just doesn't belong. Mamet creates an utterly original novel by showing a man who tries everything to be just an American--but instead his religion is constantly at the forefront. In addition, Frank is imprisoned but later abducted by an angry mob and lynched. Pictures of his corpse were later photographed and sold as postcards across the south for many years. "The Old Religion" seems provcative at it's core but it is really a statement on the still lingering hatred of the unknown in which we call "Minorities" in America.