11.25.2006 I can never remember the name of that weird movie where Matthew Broderick rescues all those airplane-flying chimpanzees--though I reference it often.
12:38 AM
11.24.2006 Dear Anna Mojallali,
It's about time you Google-searched yourself! And if only you'd done it before Thursday, November 30th, you could have found out about Olde English's free show at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theatre!
Oh Anna, if only you'd known! We're performing all of your favorite Olde English live sketches--including our brand-new "Letters to Our Future-Selves" sketch--plus we're showing brand-new edits of your favorite video sketches! I can't believe you missed it!
I like that I have prepared stock images for my next three birthdays--as well as for the very real possibilities of me becoming an alcoholic, a stock broker, or a rastafarian.
5:09 PM
11.21.2006 Today a pair of police officers pulled me over (while I was riding my bike, mind you), and the female of the two asked me if I knew why they were pulling me over. In an attempt to charm them, and possibly avoid a getting a ticket, I smiled my most dashing smile and responded, "Was I being too handsome?" to which the unflinching officer responded, "Definitely not."
10:20 PM
11.20.2006 I'm going to be with my family on my birthday this year--which is probably a good thing, because it means I won't have to sit around waiting for my surprise party to begin. I've had one surprise party in my life (ten years ago exactly), and it fucking spoiled me. Now I expect one every year. And it's not that I think I deserve one, it's just that I'm paranoid.
Every year my friends talk openly about plans they've made for the night of my birthday--as if they don't know it's my birthday!--and every year I just play along coolly. "Oh, you're going to a concert Wednesday?" I say, stifling a laugh. "That'll be fun!" Then I wait til they leave the room and I laugh out loud to myself. How stupid do they think I am!? Incidentally, I do feel pretty stupid celebrating my birthday by myself.
11:10 PM
11.19.2006 On Wednesday, I'll be 25 years old!
I'm totally gonna celebrate by renting a car without an additional, per-day underage surcharge! WOO!
11:19 PM
11.17.2006 Today, on our way home from Toronto, we went to Niagra Falls! I dared Adam to go over the falls in a wooden barrel--and he totally did it! It was radical! I had to buy him like a really expensive steak dinner, but it was TOTALLY worth it.
11:38 PM
11.16.2006 Canadians call Canadian geese Canadian geese! Crazy!
I suppose our equivalent is American cheese. Less crazy.
4:06 PM
1. At some point in the future, the motion for "what time is it?" won't be a tap of the left wrist, but the mimed opening of a cell phone.
2. On the subject of cell phones, I'm looking forward to the implementation of word recognition technology that will result in voicemails being automatically transcribed and therefore readable in the form of text messages.
3. In spite of all of my joking about having a fear of commitment, I think I actually do have a fear of commitment. I'm sure that sounds ridiculous, but for some reason this hadn't really dawned on me. I really need to stop being my own therapist.
7:02 PM
I post this trailer not because I want to see the movie (I don't even know if I can handle a movie about marriage), but because the song in the trailer is one of my favorite songs of all time, and I really enjoy the symmetry of falling in love with a song in a trailer of a movie about falling in love.
11.05.2006 Very few people know this, but I generally shower in the dark. What I love about showering in the dark is the sensory deprivation of being blind juxtaposed with the sensory bombardment of showering. What I don't love about showering in the dark is that I end up shampooing my hair with skin moisturizer.
9:40 PM
11.03.2006 Adam Janos, who refuses to sit still, has moved to Argentina where he busys himself teaching the locals to speak English. A few weeks ago he sent me an email asking me to send him a blog post for his students to decipher--which I thought it was a great idea, so I responded promptly in my usual fashion (of letting his email sit idly in my inbox for a week). After a week passed he emailed me again, and that time I think I did reply--just not with the post he'd asked for. Several days later, when he sent me a third email--which is, these days, how many emails it takes to get me to do anything--I finally obliged him by sending him the following post:
I put things on my walls, and more and more my room is beginning to feel like my own. In addition to my own fancy room in a big old house, I have a fancy cat named Marcello who sleeps outside my door and sits in a tree near where I park and waits for me to get home. Because I don't get home until well after dark, and because the ground is covered in leaves, every single night of the fucking week he sends me into an irrational panic. I can never make out his dark figure, I can never see him coming--all I can hear are the hurried footsteps of something chasing after me in the dark. This is a portion of my daily routine for which I have to mentally prepare myself. Damn you, horror movies.
When I was a child and afraid of ghosts, I would rationalize away my fears by repeating to myself that my family and I were our house's first occupants, and accordingly there was no way our house could be haunted. Except now I live in a house that is two-hundred years old. I even have a picture of its occupants in 1860-something, standing in the front yard looking very serious. I imagine they had to hold that pose for a great while. I mention the fact that I live on an Indian burial ground not because I mean to imply that I believe in ghosts, which I don't, but because I wanted to demonstrate how much I've matured. I would have spent the first ten years of my life crying myself to sleep had I grown up in this house. Now I cry myself to sleep quite sparingly, and only then because I'm seriously allergic to Marcello.
A few days later, he sent me the following transcript, which I love:
hey ben,
i taught picnic lightning and it was a thorough joy. i wish you could've been there to see it. oh man.
me: so do you guys understand? them: the cat is scary. me: sort of. it's like this: ben has a room in a house. them: fancy? me: fancy means elegant. them: ah. me: so he puts things on his wall, so it is HIS room. them: yes. feels more like his home. me: exactly. now, when he gets home well after dark... so, much later than dark. the sun goes down, and then much time passes, then he comes home. and the cat - them: marcello... me: correct, marcello. marcello is sitting in the tree. and he's waiting. and the ground is covered in leaves... them: leaves? me: green things on the trees. them: ah. it is autumn. me: right. the ground is covered in leaves, so marcello makes noise when he chases him. them: chase? me: comes behind him. them: like follow? me: like follow, but with the intention of catching. the police chase the robbers. them: okay. me: so marcello chases ben to the house, and ben is scared. scared because he does not know what marcello is. them: it could be a ghost. or a robber. me: right.
(then we go to the next paragraph...that was when shit got real crazy. i had to draw two houses on the board... one with perfect doors and windows and a small stick figure ben. then i drew one with cracked windows and stick figures buried underneath the house and a picture of stick-figures from 1860-something. next to that house i put a BIG stick figure ben. Then, I circled SMALL Ben and drew an arrow to the scary house and explained that this ben would've cried...)
me: the new ben only cries because of marcello. them: ohhhhh.... it's ironic! marcello scares him and also makes him cry with allergies! but he is the cat!
and thus they understood. without getting too snooty about the definition of irony, i was very pleased.
Also, weirdly enough, this morning I also ran into Noah on the street. I think I was more pleased to meet him than he was to meet me.
I'll post the GMA clip as soon as I get a copy (I was going to record it, but didn't end up doing it. Even though I knew I was going to be on TV at 8am this morning, I still slept until 10).
8:58 PM
