matt <3 jack bauer

my roommate matt has a lot of strange quirks, but perhaps the most disturbing is his love of the show 24. now, i've seen 24, and it's a good show. matt doesn't think it is a show--he seems to really believe that jack bauer is an actual federal agent, and he's fighting for america. of course, on some level he knows it isn't real, but that level is frequently ignored for the giddy schoolboy crush matt harbors for jack bauer. not 5 minutes ago, matt described a situation that he has imagined wherein he calls a telephone number established by the show for fans to call in and maybe talk to a star of the show. in this fantasy world, matt gets to talk to kiefer sutherland, becomes friends with him, and matt enters and wins a sweepstakes where he gets to come to the set, and from there the flights of fancy are endless.

i'm sure if it were in any way feasible, matt would marry jack bauer, and live happily ever after.

sweet caroline

today, i caught a movie titled "Beautiful Girls," directed by Ted Demme and starring Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon, and to a lesser extent Uma Thurman. it is the story of working-class guys in suburban Massachusetts the week of their 10 year high school reunion. Timothy Hutton, who i've always thought is an incredible and underrated actor, comes up from New York City, where he plays the piano and lives with his attractive, sweet and well-to-do lawyer girlfriend. the movie is a funny and poignant evaluation of the way men think about women, committment, life, jobs, and such. Natalie Portman is in the movie, playing the 13 year old neighbor of Timothy Hutton's parents. Portman is intelligent far beyond her years, and seems to get Hutton, and there is a Lolita-esque quality of their relationship, but Hutton just admires how smart and cool this kid is. Nothing sordid happens here, but Portman helps Hutton realize how much he cares for his girlfriend. The camraderie is portrayed honestly, as the 20-something fellas exhibit mannerisms and dialogue that rings true. More than anything else, i'd like to thank this movie for reintroducing me to a songs i'd long forgotten: Neil Diamond's "sweet caroline." Of course, when i say "sweet caroline" you know exactly who it is. This song is so representative of Diamond, but what is so great about it is the chorus. i've described it as "beautifully languid," because it is so cheery and reflects a kind of belonging that everyone wants, and when you have it, you clutch it knowing how precious it is. This is the song you sing with your buddies at a bar, lingerieng a bit too long on the 'caroline.' It is a song that reminds you instantly of friends you'll have forever, of being young and having nothing to be responsible for. It imbues the listener with a longing for the days when your life was so simple it startles you. This song reminds me of people i love, and that i'll have them for a long time. This song, simply put, makes me happier than almost any other.

Sweet Caroline, good times never seemed so good.
I've been inclined to believe it never would.

Tartar

today i went to the dentist. unlike most people, i don't have a pathological aversion to the dentist. i don't particularly enjoy an elder gentleman poking sharp metal instruments into my gums, and then acting bemused when they bleed, but it's not so bad. usually, i am playing some song by Queen in my head, and today it was "killer queen." i derive a disproportionate amount of joy from being praised by my dental hygenist on how well i brush and floss. it's kind of sad and pathetic that i aim to impress a 40 year old woman i see once a year, but by all accounts i am a sad and pathetic person.

continuing along this theme of me differing from most people, i don't see what's so damn great about dogs. dogs are like any other animal, except less interesting and they require you to pick up their feces with your hands. if i wanted to live with a useless ball of hair who slobbered all over the place, made loud and incomprehensible sounds, and forced me to clean up after it, i'd live with anna nicole smith. i can't imagine what dog would add to my life, except shave 3 seconds from my allotted "find my slippers" time, but this doesn't help me because: a) i don't have house slippers and b) i wouldn't immediately wear anything that was just in my dog's mouth. ironically enough, and what would this blog be without irony, i used to beg my father for a dog when i was younger. i thought my canine pal would make suburban life infinitely more interesting, what with all the ball throwing, running about with peals of gay laughter, and endless affection we would share with each other. of course, my father refused, and i was mercifully spared all those late night walks and bags of dog crap.

thanks dad, i owe you big.

you're so vain, you probably think this post is about you

among the billions of things i fail to understand is carly simon's song "you're so vain." my main problem with the song is that carly (i call her carly because we're such good friends) claims that the subject of the song is so vain as to assume that the song is actually about him. the nerve of some people. here is the rub: the song IS about him. that's the object of the song: his vanity. to write a song about someone, and then call them vain for thinking that they are the muse is stupid. it's sort of like shakespeare calling julius caesar vain for thinking "julius caesar" is about him. people should see how pointless the lyrics of this song are, and i should be awarded some sort of cash prize for figuring out how absurd it is. something of the area of $100,000,000 sounds just.

Midterms

As a college student, midterms are an unavoidable part of my life. Since I'm a liberal arts students, my week is composed of exams in Russian History since 1917, and Principles of International Politics. Both these classes are intellectually stimulating, and I really like the professors. My politics class is full of game theory, including Nash Equilibriums and Sub-game Perfect Nash Equilibrium. To someone who is actually interested in non-cooperative game theory, it's very interesting, but people who are interested in non-cooperative game theory typically find calculus puzzles interesting, and I'm thankfully not great at math. The point I was initially making was that my exams are not difficult, and are actually in subjects I like, but I detest them all the same. I thought if I took classes I liked, I wouldn 't dread the exams so much. I then realized that I hate tests more than I hate Celine Dion.

On Wednesday afternoon, I'll be very happy.

New York sitcoms

as someone who now lives in manhattan, i try to find out the image outsiders have of life in new york. i think The Economist has a done a fine job through its analysis of sitcoms based in new york.

“Sex and the City” stars four young career women and is ostensibly about the difficulties of finding a man in New York. It has a point. According to an analysis for The Economist, there are 93 men to every 100 women among single New Yorkers aged 20-44. In the country as a whole, and in most other big cities, there are more young single men than young single women. What the programme mostly shows, though, are the joys of chatting, shopping and going out to glamorous places. The six young friends in “Friends” are poorer and don't have quite the right invitations. They hang out together, discuss who is hanging out with whom, then hang out some more. “Seinfeld” is about a self-satisfied comic who occupies himself by being mildly witty about the trivial frustrations of urban living and his eccentric neighbours.

ASSSSCAT

last thursday, i went to a taping for the Upright Citizens Brigade ASSSSCAT show that will air on Bravo this spring. for those that don't know, UCB is an improvisational comedy group and they are very irreverent and very funny. the show i saw featured amy poehler, tina fey, horatio sanz, rachel dratch, andy richter, matt besser, matt walsh, ian roberts, and kevin dorff. it was 2 hours of ceaseless hilarity, and then i stayed for the second show, so it ended up being 4 hours of hilarity. essentially, there are two people who perform impromptu monologues, tina fey and andy richter. the monologues are based on a single word yelled out by the audience. i loved every minute of it. watching improv comedy is like watching complete chaos. people are running around the stage, tapping people out like a tag-team WWF match, and sometimes abruptly terminate sketches. the anarchy on stage is thrilling. as you watch the players swirl around each other, you become enchanted with how manic it all is.

i am definitely going back.