nother "movie?"

i don't know what this is. but i just made it.

sometimes when i sleep walk, i sleep edit.

predictions for a 2009

i firmly believe that 2009 will be the greatest and most exciting year of my life thus far in terms of me. because it's just got to be. it's got to be the greatest and most exciting year of my life thus far in terms of me ... it's got to. it's got to.

and i have here ... in my hand ... as we speak ... scientific evidence - documents - that prove that i am right.

the mayans believed that the earth would end in 2012. and for a lot of people, it will.

likewise: as long as i'm the only person believing that 2009 will be the greatest and most exciting year of my life thus far, and as long as every time people believe that something's gonna happen a certain year at least one of those people gets what they were believing in. THEN, it follows, that, for me: 2009 will be the greatest and most exciting year of my life thus far for me. 2009: the year everything really started to happen

houston's george bush intercontinental airport

before i forget to write it down, let me tell you: last week, on my way home for christmas, i had a two-hour layover in houston's george bush intercontinental airport that felt like a two-hour glimpse of purgatory. i had nothing to do and didn't feel like sitting and reading. i decided i'd find a place to drink a beer and watch the news.
i walked all over the stupid place (all over terminal c of the stupid place anyway) constantly having to step to the side to allow long golf carts loaded with obese/elderly people to pass. i walked past three stores that sold "western wear," one that sold fake native american artwork, a statue depicting an eight foot bronze george h.w. bush flinging a sportcoat over his shoulder like some sort of model in a j.c. penney shopping catalog, an interfaith chapel, a fox news channel newsstand (even they didn't have a TV), and about twenty-five vending machines. the whole place smelled like somebody just broke wind.
the only place with beer, that i saw, was this place called blue bayou or something like that. a louisiana-themed restaurant lost somewhere in texas. it was overcrowded with dumb-looking people and had zero televisions. so i gave up hope of finding a beer. another thing that i saw that pissed me off was this souvenir shop that had t-shirts, shot glasses, mugs, and other knickknacks that read, "don't mess with texas!" i cannot stand this slogan. such bullshit! the gall of this state trying to bully me!
and, to me, the slogan is ridiculous for two reasons; the first being: i can't imagine being bored and saying, "hey, let's go 'mess with' a state. let's prank call illinois or tie wyoming's shoelaces together! no, you know what state we haven't messed with in awhile? texas!" and then i'd go 'toilet paper' texas and the local sheriff would cut my feet off or something.
that's the other thing: this saying caught on because of texas's reputation for dishing out unreasonably harsh, and many times deadly, sentences for all types of crimes. texas puts more prisoners to death than any other state in the country. i want to drink out of a shot glass that celebrates that. yeehaw.

more about my apache friend

i almost forgot. one of the funniest things that happened during my visit with my new apache friend is that when he was telling me this story about how he and his chubby wife never actually got married but they've been together for 25 years so they're legally considered married, he stopped in the middle of a sentence and said "oh i have that same shirt only mine's a sweatshirt." and i was wearing the weirdest shirt i own. it's this shirt that molly gave me. it says "israel" but it's spelled out in drawings of camels and umbrellas and jews. and i almost NEVER wear it outside of my apartment because a) i've never been to israel; b) i don't want to seem like i'm mocking israelis; c) i don't want to give palestinians an excuse to attack me; and d) it's a weird shade of grey.

more weirdness at the laundromat

i did laundry again today. i threw my load in the washer and went to get a soda pop from the vending machine. a man next to the machine said "how were your holidays?" he said it in english. typically, spanish is the only language spoken in my laundromat. except for the weird days when the asian couple is on duty. jose, the regular guy on duty, speaks a little english, but other than that, all the patrons speak spanish, the radio sings in spanish, and the tv talks about soccer in spanish. sometimes the tv talks about game shows in spanish. and it takes breaks every now and then to try and convince me to buy mcdonald's hamburgers, also in spanish.

so when i heard this man ask me "how were your holidays," i figured he was a friendly patron, looking for a short conversation, eager to show off his handle on the english language. i obliged and told him the holidays were great, asked how his were. he sighed and began a story about seeing a car with Texas plates parked in front of his mother's trailer on christmas day. i quickly realized this wasn't a friendly laundromat patron but a wandering drunk, looking for someone, anyone, to tell stories to. i have no problem with that. as an amateur/part-time wandering drunk, i sort of felt a kinship with him. so i listened as my new friend told me about how he pulled a knife on the stranger who answered the door of his mother's trailer on christmas day. "who the fuck are you, motherfucker, you want to go? let's go!" and so on and so forth as the stranger tried to convince my new friend that they were brothers. the mother broke up the fight and vouched for the stranger. he was my new friend's brother. my new friend demanded the stranger laugh. "my brother used to laugh just like woody woodpecker" my new friend explained. and so the stranger laughed and they knew they were brothers.

i listened to a lot of stories and i learned a lot about my new friend. i learned about his wife and their sex life. i learned about his daughter and step-daughter. i learned that my friend is not mexican, but apache indian. i learned that when you're an apache, it's important to be tough. he told me, "that's why i get in so many fights. i don't blink." he demonstrated and we stared at each other with out blinking. he said "guys look at me and tell me to blink and i say 'i'm an indian. you blink first.'" we were still staring at each other and hadn't blinked in thirty seconds or so. i couldn't tell if he was just telling a story of he was challenging me and waiting for me to blink. so i gave him an exaggerated blink and laughed. he didn't laugh back.

he told me he had a steel plate in his chin and he knocked loudly on it to prove it to me. "how'd you get that?" i asked. "i fell out of a two-story window!" he answered as if i had not been paying attention. he showed me a scar on his cheek that he got when someone stabbed him with a beer bottle. his front tooth was broken in half from another fight.

he had just gotten out of the hospital this morning. he showed me his wristband to prove it. "why were you in the hospital?" he told me his daughter's boyfriend had kicked him "down there" and it gave him a hernia but he asked the doctor if he could still perform like a man and the doctor said he could but it's important that he's careful and that he massages the hernia beforehand.

then he told me more about his chubby wife and more about how they enjoy sexing each other. he is very skinny and she is pretty fat and one time they were sexing and she was on top. their daughter picked the lock of their bedroom with a butter knife. "where's my dad?" she asked because she couldn't see him under the chubby wife. he squeezed his hand out from under the chubby wife and waved, "i'm down here."
he watched me as i chuckled and sipped my soda pop. i was racking my brain for ways to get out of the conversation. i couldn't come up with anything. i had nothing to do but wait for my laundry to finish. i looked back at him to find him watching me. he looked sad that i didn't have any dirty stories to share with him, to top the stories about his chubby wife.

"come out here," my apache friend demanded of me. i followed him to the doorway. he pointed to an RV parked outside and told me that one time, the man who lived in the RV came around and "was taking shit." he was saying crude things to my apache friend's chubby wife. so my apache friend grabbed a broom and hit the man with it several times. the guys from the boxing club above the laundromat had my apache friend's back, "because i clean up and sweep around there and stuff for them sometimes for extra money," he explained to me.

then he told me more about his wife. he told me she was chubby. he told me she was on top of him in bed and their daughter walked in and couldn't see him. he told me his daughter's boyfriend had kicked him in the balls and given him a hernia. he told me he got out of the hospital this morning.

i was trapped in a loop of his damaged brain. whether it was the booze, or the two-story fall, or the beer bottle to the head, or the kick to the gonads, i'll never know. but i couldn't stand the thought of listening to those stories another three or four times before my clothes were done drying. i had done my part. i had given him an audience for something like twenty minutes or thereabouts.

so, i told him i had to go check on my clothes. he said, "yeah, i'm gonna get another drink." i think that was his way of saying, "we'll meet back here once we've completed our respective tasks." but i grabbed a seat and buried my face in a book. when he came back in, i refused to look up from the book. i saw his feet shuffle past me and i sensed his disappointment. i heard him say to some other patron, "how were your holidays?" and the guy didn't respond. i felt bad for my apache friend. i still feel bad.

mcdonalds breakfast: not just for fat people

a few days ago, i had my first mcdonald's breakfast since i-don't-know-when (as they say). i fell asleep at my good friend kienan's house and when i woke up, his girl friend memily said she was picking up mcdonald's breakfast for kienan and asked if i'd like anything. i went with the standard egg mcmuffin with sausage (i think that's what it's called) that i used to get.

it tasted just fine.

today, i got off work at 9am. i was hungry. i just got back in town last night and i don't have any food in the apartment. "why not mickey d's again?" suggested my brain. "okay" said my body. then my brain remembered this one time, not so long ago, when my good friend, trent, advised that i try the mcgriddle. trent's a doctor (practically) so i try to do everything he says to do (i'm kind of a healthnut). so today i went with the sausage egg & cheese mcgriddle. as i was waiting in the drive-thru, a live version of "hunger strike" by temple of the dog came on the radio. that song always makes me think of my good friend trent. when i got home, i switched on the tv. the history channel was on. they were showing a thing about theodore roosevelt. the name of the show was "TR: an american lion." T and R are the initials of my good friend trent. trent is an american lion.

i can't begin to describe how tasty the mcgriddle was. the sweet pancake outside fought with the meaty/cheesey/eggy inside and resulted in an experience i will not soon forget. my mouth was confused and excited. like how i felt the first time i saw boobs in a movie.

hardy hardy hardy har

this is my new way to laugh. i invented it! just now. in the shower. it is literally, the best thing since sliced bread. LITERALLY! i drew that picture to promote my new funny way of laughing. i personally believe it's going to catch on like wildfire. LITERALLY!

next time you laugh, just try "hardy hardy hardy har." it's funny. and contagious!

worse than ED

in a startling blow to both the evolutionary theory and the existence of god, two british doctors have found that some people have uncontrollable sneezing fits whenever they think of sex. "how could god or any logic account for this?!" shouted one american boy, upon discovery of this BBC article. no answer was given.

i, for one, will no longer being saying, "bless you" when suspicious looking characters sneeze near me. rather, i plan to offer a sidelong glance and mutter "perv" under my breath.

maybe as this study develops, the traditional "bless you" will transition to a more appropriate "get your mind out of the gutter" or at least, the already popular, "get a room!"

payback time

after centuries of being terrorized by cats, a few brave mice said enough was enough. we've all seen the way mice and cats bicker in such famed television series as Tom and Jerry, and Tom and Jerry Kids, and others. in a one-on-one battle of wits, the little mouse is able to out-maneuver the rage-fueled (some might expect amphetamine-fueled) feline. however, in a place like an animal shelter (housing nearly 100 cats), those poor mice don't stand a chance.
... That is, until now.

mice in toronto showed a majestic display of unity and ingenuity by joining forces to start a fire, taking out nearly one hundred murderous cats. unfortunately, three dogs and some rats were also killed. but like the old adage says, "you want to make an omelette, you've gotta kill three dogs and some rats." read more about the cat fire here.

the name game!

i'm not a person who does this regularly, i'll start by saying that. but tonight, i "googled" myself. i'm not proud of it. i just wanted to see what would happen. mainly, i wanted to see if this blog would show up.

so i did it and i was pretty annoyed by the results. one of the first links was to facebook-not my page but someone with the same name (same spelling). another of the top links was to aol videos (which i've never used) but they linked to some videos of mine on youtube. i'm okay with that. i want people to see my videos. my only complaint is this lame bullcrap:some knob with the same name as mine is out there making emo-bullcrap-vids! ...now, "to each his own" and all that and "what's in a name" and all that ... but this shows up when you type MY name into google.
suppose some old friend thinks of me. and suppose (s)he has heard that i just finished film school. and suppose (s)he tries to see what i'm up to these days. and then suppose (s)he thinks THIS is what i'm doing with my masters degree; making angsty "public service announcements" with some 14yr old.
by the way, this "announcement" is in no way a public service. it's just a series of shots of an angry headless boy, intercut with text claiming "50% of marriages end in divorce" and "50% of teens from divorced families suffer psychological problems." my research shows that about 41% of first marriages end in divorce and nearly 100% of teens from any family suffer psychological problems.
i'm not saying it's not torture having your parents split up. i'm sure it's a rough ticket. but c'mon, kid. PSA's should be positive things like "read to your kids" or "stay in school." not "i'm pissed off because everybody's divorced."
a less negative (less annoying) approach would be something like "marriage is a lifelong commitment" or some junk like that. as it is now, the message i get from the video is "don't have kids because they'll just grow up to be whiny little spazzes who make videos designed for teens, with divorced parents, to wallow in their own anger."

ANYWAYS, i now feel like i'm in a race against time to become a successful video-maker-guy, thus solidifying the name "nic michaels" as mine and mine alone.

stowaways!

today i was at a coffee shop. not the one i work at. a different one, right by my apartment, where i can sit in peace and work on my script (so LA). anyways, i was at this coffee shop and suddenly noticed a tiny ant on my hand. it reminded me of college. i lived in this house that was lousy with these tiny red ants. they were all over everything, presumably because the house was made of wood (do ants like wood?).
the tiny red ants were especially all over everything when i lived in this one bedroom that had these wooden cubbies that we slept in. the room was big enough for four people and had these four cubby holes. one for each roommate. it seems pretty weird, thinking about it now. but at the time, it was beautifully logical (and structurally sound).
anyways, you'd find these tiny ants crawling all over your stuff. like, sometimes, you'd go to the library, open up your book, and these tiny red ants would climb out of the book and onto the desk you were working at. "stowaways!" my friend, dave faulk would cheer. which i thought was hilarious.
i learned to forge a friendship with those tiny ants; them and me, living in harmony within my cubby. instead of killing them, i would relocate them. although, i often worried that one of these tiny ants would crawl into my earhole, while i was sleeping, and set up shop in my brain. he'd step on certain spots in my brain, causing hallucinations and weird behavior. over time, he could learn to control my every movement.
...maybe some ants really did. maybe the one i saw today has been living in my head for six years.

cowboys in a blanket

as i mentioned here, it gets cold at night. "damn cold," as doc brown would say. and i'm forced to wear long underwear to bed every night, like some dirty cowboy.

as our side of the world continues to see less and less of the sun, these nights have only gotten colder. i now sleep wearing long underwear AND a hoody, IN a sleeping bag, WITH my blanket on top of that.

and it's so cold in the morning, i can hardly muster the will to get out of my little cocoon. which makes for some fun potato-sack-race-type travel to the bathroom. as seen below.

novody enderstams whadym sayeeng

i'm a mumbler. it's a common affliction. and i don't have it too bad. i'm lucky enough to have a pretty-easy-to-understand accent. and i think i talk loudly enough. but still, no one ever has any idea what i'm saying. at work, if i'm on the register and someone orders a drink from the bar, i'm supposed to take down their name. "can i have a name to call out when your drink is ready?" i blurt out in one breath, monotone. "huh?" everyone ALWAYS replies. it's my own fault, i know, but it's annoying. then, when i'm the one making the drink, i yell out the name in a booming (borderline angry) voice, and sometimes look DIRECTLY at the person i know the drink belongs to ... and they still don't respond. which i find frustrating.
but tonight i went to a party. which i don't do a lot. and i'd meet someone and they'd say "what's your name?" "nic," i'd say. "daniel?" they'd ask. "no, nic," i'd correct. "oh nathaniel." "yes," i'd agree.
how does that happen?

new nic michaels/patrick rule movie

but how can this be? nic michaels lives on the left coast and patrick rule lives on the right.

i'll tell you how this can be: greenscreen, computer animation, pixar, tom hanks, video game graphics, the internet, movie magic, trick photography, criss angel, walt disney, imagineering, ARE ANY OF THESE THINGS RINGING A BELL?

the true story of how this movie came to be is a simple one. in july of two-thousand and eight, patrick and i were living together in los angeles. we knew our time together was running out. he was to move and i was to remain. "one more movie" we demanded of each other. i think we drank whiskey. i could be wrong. may have been rum. we got the camera out. kenji (one of our other roommates) helped. the fourth and final roommate, axel, was not there. don't remember why. may have been in san fran. doesn't matter. so we shot some unscripted silliness and then settled back into our typical (at that time) habits of debauchery and laziness.

months later, i would find myself at the end of the night, opening up that footage and tinkering with it. last night, again with the aid of booze (wine this time), i finished the editing.

so officially, on the record, this movie was conceived, produced, and edited under the influence. i was even buzzed when i uploaded it to youtube.

not to advocate drinking. i'm just saying. oh, and i've been watching a lot of tim&eric lately and pretty blatantly stole some editing moves from them.

robot girlfriends ... FINALLY

This morning, my roommate sent me a link to an article titled "Inventor builds his own girlfriend," in an email titled, "this reminded me of you."

and i'm trying to figure out why this reminded adam of me. does he know about all of the girlfriends i have invented for myself? sure he does. or maybe it's because i, like Le Trung (the inventor), have "never had the time to find a real girlfriend," but probably have the time to create a robot that could act as my girlfriend. or maybe it's because he's read a short script that i wrote a few years ago called "my best friend, my robot."

any way you slice it, it's not flattering. and neither is this article about Le Trung. it tells that the robot's name, Aiko, is japanese for "love child" but Le Trung denies the robot was made for sex. and then he adds that her software could be tweaked to "simulate her having an orgasm." also, pictures and comments like this on his website are not helping his case:


that comment "AND yes Aiko is still a virgin," really troubles me. i feel like that implies that she is capable of having sex, she's just saving herself for someone other than Le Trung.

Le Trung has videos of his girlfriend on youtube so you can see their playful interactions. watch him flirtatiously pinch her arm, as she responds sternly "i am starting to feel it... please let go of my arm. you are hurting me. why did you do that for? it's hurt ... i don't want to do this anymore" then he squeezes her breast and she tries to smack him, stating, "i do not like it when you touch my breasts." it's just like having a real girlfriend!



really all of this makes me sad. not just because of the blatant creepiness of the whole thing. but also because this guy is clearly a genius yet he doesn't have the imagination to create a girlfriend who is even remotely attracted to him. it's heartbreaking. he doesn't stand a chance with Aiko ... but he still loves her ... and he still squeezes her breasts despite her countless slaps and cries of "i do not like it when you touch my breasts." poor le trung. unrequited love really is the saddest thing in the world.

i'm not very good at being a human

today, i woke up around noon and my stomach hurt from being hungry. i was so annoyed by my body nagging me to eat something. i didn't feel like preparing anything (i JUST woke up). so i ate a clementine. it was okay. but somehow it made my stomach hurt more. so i ate a banana. which made my stomach hurt MORE. so i drank some water and ate a protein bar.

this is what i do when things hurt. that's how little i understand my body. i mean, i know how to use it, i just never know what it's trying to tell me. so i just drink water and eat fruit and hope it stops. how people find the motivation to cook elaborate meals, and exercise regularly, and take care of themselves, is completely beyond me.

and it was another beautiful day in southern california. but i didn't really feel like going outside at all. so i read a bunch (finished a book), watched some tv (top 10 videos of the 80s on VH1 classic), ate some fish and chips for dinner (from the freezer). more tv. more reading. a little writing. a little video editing. and here i am, it's after 3am and i'm not tired. normal people have gone to bed by now. and they'll wake up in a few hours and start doing grownup things.

i don't understand such behavior. i can't even fake it. i try to get up and do things just to see what it's like. and i fail every time. i'm just not cut out for this stuff.

and i've never seen that robin williams movie "being human." actually, i'd never even heard of it until just now when i googled "being human," hoping for some advice.

i think i might have rabies

a homeless guy bit me yesterday. i dropped a dollar in his cup and before i could pull my hand back, he was on me. he grabbed my forearm with both hands and chomped down on my wrist and wouldn't let go. it was really freaky. i was able to knock him over the head a few times with an unopened can of ginger ale. then i ran off and he didn't chase me or anything.

but since then, i've been in a really funny mood. not funny haha. actually, quite the opposite of that. it's hard to make jokes when all i can seem to focus on is this blind, murderous rage.

i'm a loner, dottie. a rebel.

i don't have to work tomorrow. and when i don't have to work tomorrow, i feel it's absolutely necessary to enjoy myself tonight. even though i was tired and grumpy, i refused to go to bed early like a responsible adult. because going to bed early is for school nights. and this, most certainly, is not one of those.

so i racked my brain for a way to unwind. i felt i hadn't watched a movie in awhile. hadn't drank any alcohol in awhile, neither. why not do both? so i drank some whiskey and watched "pee-wee's big adventure." now just to be clear, i am a big fan of pee-wee herman. he's a fictional character that had a very strong influence on me growing up and he continues to be a source of inspiration to this day. i've had many an argument about mr. herman.

a lot of people, particularly females, do not appreciate what pee-wee provides to children and adults alike. i see him as honest, imaginative, individualistic, enthusiastic and manic. all of which, children should be. he also stands up for himself and displays a punk-rock attitude, as witnessed here:


for more on pee-wee's love for hobos and punkrock, click on the respective words.

there was this one time in 8th grade: before we went to lunch, we all had to stand and pray, then line up to go to the cafeteria (i went to a catholic school). and i had miss vance for homeroom and she was scary. she wouldn't yell. she'd just stare at you until you'd be quiet. she was very intimidating. anyway, one day as she was staring at us, waiting for us to quiet down so we could pray and go to lunch, me and nathaniel prodouz were quoting lines from pee-wee's big adventure. i was doing the scene where pee-wee and simone are sitting in the dinosaur, waiting to watch the sunrise. and pee-wee is telling simone to follow her dreams and move to paris. she says she would but ... and pee-wee says "but what ..." and then, in the classroom, everyone quieted down right at the moment when i finished the line "everyone i know has a big but(t)." and miss vance was staring at me and everyone cracked up. miss vance rolled her eyes and said "in the name of the father" and everyone stopped laughing and started praying.

sometimes i look like this in the morning

apparently, when i'm asleep, i roll my head back and forth a lot and press it really hard against the pillow and hold it like that for hours at a time before rolling over and doing it another part of my head. i even do it to the top of my head, it seems. how? i have no idea.

sometimes i have long hair. and i like having long hair. but it's always weird and matted when i wake up and i end up having to take a shower. then it's wet for like an hour and a half and i look like a girl until it dries. so inevitably, i end up saying, "i'm tired of having long hair." and i cut it all off. then i have short hair and i'm like "i feel so efficient with this short hair. i'm built for speed! i'll get so much more accomplished with all that time i'll save not showering twice a day." (i have to shower after work because i smell like coffee).

but then i wake up and my short hair is sticking straight out. so i end up taking two showers a day anyway. waste of my time.

and like 3 weeks ago, i had a really bad cold/flu and it was right before i was going home for thanksgiving, so i was really worried that i'd be sick at home and not be able to play with my nephews. so i drank a bunch of cvs brand nyquil and slept for 13 hours a night. one night, i was having this dream that me and my brother were looking for places to urinate. it was night time and we'd try to go to an alley to pee on a building and some shopkeeper or whatever would yell at us. we could find ANY place to pee. anyway, i woke up and had to pee really bad. but i was still half asleep and totally drugged up. on my way out of the bathroom, i caught a look at myself in the mirror. it was hilarious. i was too tired/drugged to laugh. but i wasn't too tired/drugged to take a picture of myself that i could laugh at later.

closing time

so i had to close at the coffee shop tonight and after we kick all the stupid customers out, we get to change the satellite radio from the xmas station to whatever station we want! usually, someone brings an ipod and we just listen to that. tonight, no one did. "how bout the nineties station?" suggested one employee. "no! it's so cheesy!" exclaimed another. i thought of bands like nirvana and pearl jam, snoop doggy dogg, the cranberries, even ace of base. "i like nineties music," i decided. 2 versus 1. nineties station. booyah.

the first song was some bizarre janet jackson ripoff that i don't think i've ever heard. but i figured they were just trying to represent all popular music of the nineties and i assumed something good was up next. then, AS i was wiping down tables and putting chairs upside-down on top of them, that song "closing time" by semisonic came on. i felt like i was trapped in the LAMEST MOVIE EVER MADE. it was incredible! the timing could not have been cornier.

so i finished doing that and it was time to go out and bring the tables and stuff in from out front of the store. but the song was still on and i was afraid if i opened the door, some passersby might hear the song and think i made some "closing mixtape" (sidenote: i did make a closing mix. it's actually just "closing time" repeated 13 times. i'll burn you a copy).

anyway, the second employee was right. the 90s channel was awful.

amster! amster! dam dam dam!

i just saw this article on the bbc news website that dutch authorities are trying to "clean up" amsterdam by shutting down HALF the city's brothels, sex shops, and marijuana cafes. i put "clean up" in quotes because i think the correct phrase they were looking for is "water down."

they're also planning on reducing the number of "sex windows" from 482 to 243. "sex windows" is a bit of a misnomer. they aren't windows you have sex with. that would be weird. even for amsterdam. they are just windows, through which you can view prostitutes. no big deal. and for people too proud to pay for sexual favors, but still curious enough to want to see the red light district, amsterdam is spectacular for window shopping. but don't make eye contact! when i was in amsterdam, we were checking out the red light district and saw this LARGE prostitute sending a scared looking young man out of her booth. we were laughing because she was sweaty and gross and out of breath and he looked like he wanted to sit in the shower and cry for a few hours. the big prosti caught our eye and started yelling for us to "come here!" it was terrifying.

but it was all part of the experience. and i didn't really experience anything TOO crazy. and part of me kind of regrets that. i mean, i don't wish that i had visited a hooker or anything like that. i just feel like i should've done something more amsterdamy, ya know?

there were a few semi-crazy stories from the trip. one night, we got a little too drunk at this campus bar and i convinced the girl we were staying with (a friend of my friend, mike's) that we were sober enough to go into the city to check out some more bars. on the train to the city, my friend mike somehow fell and cut his head open and was bleeding pretty badly. but we were still smooth enough to convince everyone we were with that we could totally still go to some bars in the city. so mike is like all sprawled out in the train, with his head tilted back, holding a tissue to the gash, trying to stop the bleeding. suddenly he lurches forward and barfs all over the floor of the train. finally, the girl hosting us is like, "okay, we're not going into the city. we'll get off at the next stop and turn around." then one of the conducters comes back and sees mike, bleeding profusely from the forehead, sitting in front of a bunch of barf, and the conducter asks, "is he okay?" i'm wasted and say something like, "yeah, just needs another beer." and the conductor actually laughs and just walks away. looking back at it, i can't believe we didn't get arrested or at least thrown off the train or something.

then later that night, mike woke up and started making a ruckus. he somehow thought he was still on the train and he wanted to get off. we couldn't get him to realize we were back at his friend's flat. it was kind of scary. kind of comical. funny what alcohol and headwounds can do to the brain.

oh and another story from that trip: we were at a party one night and it was a lot of international students. and this one guy and girl call me over to them and the guy asks me where i'm from. i say the states and he reacts disappointedly, the girl seems triumphant. i ask what gives and they tell me they were just looking around the room trying to guess where people were from. i ask where they guessed i was from. the girl guessed ireland or america. i tell her that's a good guess because i'm going to school in ireland, but i'm from the states. i ask the guy where he guessed i was from. "portugual," he says. "portugual?" i say. "yeah," he says, serious as hell.

it's not a very interesting story but for a minute it made me feel like i looked exotic.

happy st. nicholas's day!

the sixth of december is my feast day. well, not my feast day but my saint's feast day. well, he's not MY saint, per se. i guess he's everyone's saint. well, he doesn't belong to everyone. i mean, he's not a slave, for cripe's sake. he's his own man. a man of god. so i guess he's god's saint, if you want to believe in that stuff. but he wasn't like a robot or a piece of property. i mean, god gave him free will, according to the church that calls him a saint. so he was his own man. but now he's dead. and now he's a saint. that's how it works. you've got to die if you want to be a saint. them's the rules.

anyhow, it's the feast day of saint nicholas. when i was a kid, we'd put our shoes outside of our bedroom doors on the night of the fifth of december. then in the morning, before school, we'd find candies in our shoes. as we got smarter over the years, we'd use bigger shoes, so as to fit more candies.

anywho, at some point, we started leaving the shoes on the fireplace. we'd still have candy in the morning. then, a few years after that, it seems ol' st. nic got tired of visiting and sometimes he'd forget to have our mom remind us to put our shoes out, then ol' mom had to give us ziplocks filled with her OWN candy. even in my freshman year of college, i got a ziplock o' candy in the mail for st. nicholas's day.

on an unrelated note: i'm the only kid in my immediate family who ever had the name "nicholas" but don't think i got any special treatment on st. nicholas's day. i was just another face in the crowd at my household. and i wouldn't have it any other way. my mother was fair ... stern ... stern, but fair.

did laundry today

did laundry today. while i was sitting there, some scraggly old dude came in and said "excuse me sir." i looked up at him and he says "do you run this place?" and i was like, "no. there's some guy over there ... i saw him working on one of the machine's over there. i think he runs the place." the scraggly old dude happened to be black, so i didn't want to describe the owner by his race and run the risk of appearing racist. but this dude was above all that and just said "asian guy?" "yeah," i said.

but i was flattered this guy thought i had my shit together enough to be running a laundromat. i mean, i don't. but he thought i did. i had just woken up like an hour prior and i'm sure i looked like i had just woken up an hour prior. and i was scribbling things for a MOVIE SCRIPT (so L.A.) on the back of a piece of paper. but this guy thought i looked like a laundromat operator! it really made me feel like i could make something out of myself. sincerely.

anyway, this dude finds the guy that runs the place and starts thanking him for something he did a long time ago that changed this scraggly dude's life. and the asian guy totally didn't remember the guy. and the guy's like, "well, i remember you!" and the asian guy didn't seem to care AT ALL that scraggly guy was seriously touched by something asian guy did. and scraggly guy came back all these years later to thank asian guy.

and i don't know if scraggly guy was crazy or something. i couldn't hear parts of the conversation. but i thought asian guy could've at least pretended to be happy for scraggly dude. asian guy was just blatantly uninterested.

but maybe it was a scam. that'd be a pretty good scam. go to a guy that deals with lots of people on a regular basis and say like "you probably don't remember me, but i sure remember you! i used to be a heroin addict until you did something that turned everything around for me." and then they're touched and all. and they want to continue to help you. so you say like "yeah, things have been getting a lot better. but it's hard for a convicted fellon to get back on his feet. let me borrow some dough!" and then you beat up the guy, steal his clothes, tie him up in the closet, and put his clothes on and PRESTO CHANGO, now you're running the laundromat! scam success!

read books, eat pizza!

if it weren't for the Pizza Hut "book it!" program, i never would have learned to read. fact.

"book it!" was this thing where if we got our parents to sign a paper that said we'd read a book, we'd get a little star sticker. we'd put said sticker on our "book it button." once we filled the six star spots on our "book it!" button, we'd get a free personal pan pizza at pizza hut (one topping only)!

in the midwest, when i was growing up, Pizza Hut was king. and Pizza King did pretty good business too. what i'm trying to say is, we liked chain restaurants. and pizza hut had a damned good gimmick. "give the 7yr old a free tiny pizza and mom and pop will bring the rest of the fam for full-price pizza."

in my first grade class, the teacher rewarded the top three readers with an added bonus of a saturday trip out to her house in the country. i got to go. it was fun. she had a pond. danny omlor found a turtle there and she let him keep it. the turtle had an orange belly. danny named him michelangelo.

si-neck-tah-key

what'dya expect dummy? this movie was nuts. and i liked it. a lot. i like phil hoffman's face a lot. i like charlie kaufman's brain a lot. i snuck a ginger ale into the theater. i like ginger ale a lot. it's my new thing. ginger ale.

the movie theater smelled like armor all. then it smelled like bacon. i think someone brought a snack.

there was a woman sitting two seats to my right who cracked up at the wrong parts. she was annoying. before the movie started, they had one of those anti-cell phone ads where a guy is on his fone during a movie and some aliens vaporized him. the dumb broad to my right got a real kick out that. i was tempted to move seats at that point. but it was a small theater and she was a loud laugher. so what's the point. anyway, about a half-hour into the movie, i think she got lost in the plot. she didn't laugh for the rest of the movie.

california on fire

this was a couple of weeks ago. but when everything was on fire around my apartment, i was reading about it on the internet. and whatever news site i was reading that day had pictures and this was one of them. some dude with a sars mask, texting, on his segue. hilarious.

seriously though, the sky at sunset, when southern california was burning down, was beautiful.

sleeping like a cowboy

here's the thing about living in the desert, it gets effing COLD at night. don't get me wrong, i like the weather here. it's december and still gets up to seventy everyday. but at night, it's foggy and COLD. so during the day, i leave my windows and bedroom door open, to try to get rid of my smell (see i have a smell, to read more about said smell) but then at night, i have to close all the windows and bundle up in my sweet long underwear that i bought at the army surplus store down the street. they make me feel like a cowboy. to get the full experience, i eat a can of beans and drink a pint of whiskey in bed. then, in the morning, i shoot someone and rape their horse.

you didn't know cowboys did that? so naive. you think it's like in the movies where cowboys just make out with each other all the time? open your eyes! cowboys lived for one thing and one thing only: to eat beans, drink whiskey, shoot people, rob banks, and ride and rape horses. and that's IT. that is ALL they lived for. in one word, cowboys are murderous, villainous, bean eating, horse rapists. no more, no less. sorry to shatter your little dreams, but grow up.

harvey wine-stain

i spilled some wine on myself awhile ago. not surprisingly, it made a stain. i washed the shirt, knowing that the stain wouldn't come out, but i was kind of hoping it would be like one of those things where you just smack the tv and it fixes itself. or like when you just turn your ipod off for awhile and then when you turn it back on, it works like normal. it wasn't like that though. the stain's still there.

does anybody know how to get wine stains out? i don't know how to do anything.

i read a book!

last week, i went home for thanksgiving and on my way home, i read a book! the whole damn thing in one day! can you believe it?

the book was "breakfast of champions" by kurt vonnegut, jr. it's great. vonnegut is from indiana, like me. and he was awesome, like i want to be.

anyway, that's the fastest i've ever read a book. seeya.

skateboarder/bikerider

today is my good pal, pete ohs's, birthday and as a present to him and to myself, i finally got off my lazy hump (noun hump, as in "butt", not verb hump, as in "pork") and put this video on youtube.

it's a movie we made back in april of 2004! and it's called Skateboarder/Bikerider. watch it if you'd like. it's on youtube right here:

the story behind the video is this: we were in this club in college called the DePauw Film Society. there were maybe like a dozen of us. but we would all help each other out and encourage each other to make movies. and the idea was: we'd meet every so often and show each other our movies or recruit people to help on upcoming movies.

the club was a semi-success. anyway, after one meeting, pete said, "let's just shoot a movie this afternoon, just so we have something to show at the next meeting." and so we did. pete had an idea for a conversation that was cut together absurdly fast. the rest we kind of just made up. and pete shot and edited the whole thing. and actually, dave hadn't even planned to be in it. he had just gotten home from rugby practice and he was on a bike. so pete decided to throw him into the mix.

pete has since misplaced the master tape Skateboarder/Bikerider. luckily, we showed the movie on this show called DFS Presents. it was a show that pete and mandy levy hosted. they would show short films that depauw students had made. actually at one time, the show was called Student Short Film Show and pete and i hosted it together. and there was another point in time when it was still called DFS Presents when dave faulk and i hosted it. but dave and i were much less ambitious and mostly it was a "watch dave and nic behave sillily" show. except nobody watched it but us.

ANYWAY, so pete and mandy showed the movie and interviewed me. i wanted a copy of the show (because i love watching myself on tv) so i taped it off the campus tv station (D3TV), using my VCR (remember vcr's?). so years later, i showed the VHS to a friend in grad school (nicole prowell) and her boyfriend really liked it and wanted a copy. nicole, being much less lazy than myself, copied the vhs to a dvd for her boyfriend. and she was kind enough to give me a copy of the dvd. and finally, last night at about 1am, i decided to rip the movie off the dvd and put in on youtube for the world to enjoy. the end.

i have a smell

Every room I've ever called my bedroom eventually takes on a very distinct smell, the same smell of my very first bedroom. My smell, apparently.
The presence of this smell has been confirmed by others and I've been told that it is not an offensive smell. But it is a smell, nonetheless, and I, therefore, am smelly.
... And for that, I hate myself.