Hunky dory

I don't really have a valid reason to post this - sometimes you just have to share a hunky dork. Who apparently earns his living looking for balloons on the Internet.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Riley Crane
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Economy

G'night.

White Dune

I just went out for Grownup Groceries (toilet paper and bread, as opposed to Chinese take-out and gummi bears) and realized why the pizza place lady had to consult the driver before accepting my order yesterday. There are literally mounds of snow everywhere. Whole embankments along the roads, as if the car people are preparing for a siege.

Still, life goes on. Unlike in Britain, which I hear is completely paralyzed because they actually got some snowfall this year. It's a full-blown crisis, with headlines like Death Toll Rises, Salt Supplies Dwindle! I imagine my compatriots must be looking around scratching their heads and going "Ale głupi ci Rzymianie."*

Actually, I read somewhere recently that during Napoleon's ill-fated foray into Russia, the Poles were the ones to cover his retreat, because they were the only ones not really all that surprised by the cold. It might have been in a collection of essays on the 19th century by Stanislaw Mackiewicz which my parents lent me. They're quite interesting (the essays) (well, my parents too), but I don't really care for his style. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to share that opinion with them a couple of days ago. I think they're still recovering. I imagine it must have been quite the Tracey Ullman moment: "I just read The Book of Revelation, and I have to polemicize with God..."

I went to Cracow last weekend and was reminded that most of the time composition is key. It was a perfectly enjoyable break from work, but that turned out to be neither here nor there, as the focal point of the trip became learning that my host watched the most fun episodes of Firefly without me (thus robbing me of my vicarious/parasitic joy), and then having to sit at some club right next to quite possibly the only person in the world I never ever want to see again. So that ended up being the snapshot.

Also saw W. recently. At long last. We've really drifted apart, but we're both quite intent on reversing that process. She saw 500 Days of Summer and thanked me profusely for recommending it. Said it fit perfectly into this particular moment of her life, and that she totally identified with the character. There was this weird intensity about the way she said it which made me ask, just to make sure: "The guy, you mean?". "The girl, of course!" she replied with matching certainty.

* "These Romans are crazy", the Polish translation of Asterix wins in this regard

The new one

The end of the year song has been something of a tradition of mine. It's usually simply the thing my mp3 player lobs at me as I'm making my way home in the morning that for some reason resonates the most.

This year it came a bit early, around 10p.m., on a tram bound for Filip's place. Felt right though, as it's been following me around for the past several weeks.


Happy New Year.

Amber and garnet

About a week ago I suddenly had to decide whether I wanted a Christmas tree or not. Seems trivial, but it kind of meant that for the first time in my life I was forced to wonder if Christmas actually means anything to me. And it kind of snuck up on me. So yeah, that was interesting.

I got a tiny one, some colorful lights, and a couple of ornaments from my family home. The small ones, obviously. For some reason I really hoped I'd find a couple of these small glass lanterns among them. There were two left. I put on... River, I think, and dressed my very own tree. That was... interesting too.

I leave the lights on for the night and turn them off during the day. Dad says I'll burn in my sleep, cause they don't make them like they used to.

It's New Year's Eve tomorrow. Every year the ritual is repeated - declarations of disaffection (probably not the right word, but what the hell), plotting exit strategies... This time I simply refused to think about it though, and it seems that I really don't care. The pose was made flesh. I'm contemplating binging on expensive sweets and trying to make a dent in my movie backlog. Or swapping sweets for booze, and doing the same in the company of Filip. There are other, more social options, but... there are also some ghosts I just don't want to face come midnight. Say what you will about New Year's irrelevance, that one moment is culturally charged enough to punch some realities right through your shell.


I get chills every time I listen to this performance. The first clusterfuck of sound at 1:28 just awestriking.

Collision

Had a wonderful evening. Monika came home from Luxembourg for Christmas and held and an impromptu audience at Ormus' apartment - though I think I was the only person to go there specifically to see her, as most of the other people in attendance didn't even know who she was.

Still, we had a blast, mostly due to a lengthy session of... charades. Yes, apparently we're now all old and bourgeois. It should be noted that our team (me, paivi, Monika and Pawel) won, but the main attraction was watching people try to mime absurd and/or obscure movie or book titles. Special mentions (all successful) go to: Darq for the Charter of United Nations, Monika for Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (none of us knew the book), Ormus for The British Museum is Falling Down (same as above), and my teammates for guessing my mime of The Salmon of Doubt even though none of us had read it. Surprisingly, the most problematic - and most fun to guess - title of the entire evening was Kapuscinski's Empire, but that's mostly because first we ended up in China and refused to leave, and then Pawel, in the process of trying to steer us back towards the right area, mixed up his books and got fixated on the Shah of Iran.

I've also been catching up on music. I've yet to plow through Florence and the Machine (was less than impressed by Kiss With a Fist, but Janek sent me Howl and my endings were more than tickled) and the new Regina Spektor album, but have already digested Little Boots. I can't say I care for the record as a whole, but towards the end I've found a definite keeper. It's basically Kylie at her best: thoroughly synthetic, clean and clear. A tiny little plastic bauble, all pink and translucent. The soulful kitsch of Scissor Sisters' It Can't Come Quickly Enough, but without the melancholy. The girl's voice is perfectly smooth and featureless, woven seamlessly into the rudimentary synth background, and then there's that tiny flourish in the chorus, when the afterglow of the last consonant in "over" unexpectedly soars higher than the preceding vowel... Yum.



And to top it off - totally random and unsollicited Tom Lenk. My crush lingers on.

Too steep to scale

My slow burn has finally sputtered out completely. It was an easy, gentle way to go. Like what they tell me freezing to death feels like, complete with that sensation of comfort and relief right before the end.

And when I woke up today it was snowing. Externalization complete.

I'm feeling quite good, almost giddy. I think the cold cleared the air or something, and my brain seems to work better as of late - though I still tend to get drowsy at the oddest hours.

I made it to season 4 of Angel. Good God, I don't like any of the characters anymore. And the whole Connor debacle was just beyond painful. The guy that plays him has the most annoying manchild face... he's playing Pete Campbell on Mad Men. Yeah. THAT one. Gunn was boring from the get-go, and they never really figured out anything specific for him to do, so he's just left to lumber around awkwardly, butchering every humorous line they feed him. Fred's twitchy and really blah. I heard Amy Acker was really good on this show, but I'm still waiting to see that. For a moment I thought at least the green demon guy was gone for good, but no. He had to make a return appearance.

And can we please take a moment to talk about Alexis Denisof being all dark and edgy and oozing manliness? The guy's name is Alexis, for crying outloud. He's the posterboy for pansy. That's why they hired him in the first place! He was comic relief on Buffy. Pitful, effete comic relief! Now they got him brandishing axes, playing S/M mindgames and having phone sex with evil lawyers. Worst of all - they had him grow a stubble. A stubble!

Cordelia was fun, but she went poof, so I'm left struggling with a truly terrifying concept - namely that my favorite character on Angel seems to be... Angel. Brrr. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

In better news, the Christmas episode of The Office is true genius, and it's written by Mindy Kaling (aka Kelly Kapoor), which sort of means that all is well with the world.

On the Radio

Wlasnie mi podeslano klip do On the Radio Reginy Spektor i znalazlem w archiwum starego bloga swoje pierwsze impresje z tej plyty.

I po raz n-ty sie ucieszylem, ze mam takie pierdoly spisane gdzies. I zrobilo mi sie przykro, ze teraz tak malo juz pisze i nie bedzie czym pobudzac pamieci.

Problem chyba w tym, ze nie mam jednak az tak duzej swobody w angielskim jak myslalem, wiec kazdy wpis jest jakims wyzwaniem.

Tak wiec... ewolucji ciag dalszy. Zobaczymy, co z tego bedzie.

Good question. NOT!

A snapshot from last night. Ana forgot her cell phone, so she asked me call her a cab. I did, and a couple of minutes later kazia - for no apparent reason - decided that it was now turn for me to call her one. I dialed the number again and had the following exchange:

me: Good evening, I'd like to order a cab to Placeholder Street 16
dispatcher: What for?!

Which might illustrate why I'm still slightly phobic about dealing with the services sector.

Woof woof moo

God it's good to touch base with the hermetic order from time to time. We've all entered new stages of our lives - some more profound than others - and I feel like we're still in the process of finding a way to re-establish our connection in this new reality. But once in a blue moon you meet up, get drunk, and suddenly there's a glimmer of this old, feelgood intensity - set against a new backdrop, but complimenting it rather than flashing in stark contrast.

And it's a heartbreaking sort of pleasure. Like something you're way too young to be nostalgic about.

Transgress a little, Joseph

In this edition of Insomniac Monthly: my slow burn periodically lapses into a sputter, as it is subject to the forces of inertia squared.

Aside from that, I need to be making more money (I've been burning through my savings at an alarming rate over the past few months), and my restrictive information policy is - however indirectly - putting a damper on my social life.

I would also like to post more, but I still have literally nothing to say.

I'm seriously jonesing for a joint pilgrimage to the ducal court. I'm thinking late winer/early spring, circumstances permitting.

Finally, as evidenced by this entry, I'm apparently making a lot of "I" statements, which as we know is the healthiest and most respectful way of addressing your feelings. So kudos to me.

Slow burn

Fall is upon us, and with it everything that it usually seems to bring into my life.

I like clockwork for how you can compare things to it.

Self-fulfiling prophecy

I had to go get my paycheck today (actually, it wasn't even a paycheck, but an envelope filled with cash - welcome to the 21st century). On my way back I decided to treat myself to something special and check out this posh restaurant in my neighborhood. For some reason at first the waiting staff stared at me like I was some sort of alien, so I felt a bit self-conscious. Once I actually ordered my food though, they seemed to relax - probably taking that for sufficient proof that I wasn't there just to take a dump in their fish tank, or something. Anyway, I was bored, and didn't have a book with me, so I started browsing some fancy-shmancy brochure about their selection of teas. It was bilingual (Polish and English), and in addition to some rather hilarious discrepancies between the two versions, it also sported several outright errors in the Polish bits.

As I was leaving, something came over me and I approached a waitress, smiled politely, and said: "Excuse me, I know this is completely out of the blue, but there are several gramatical errors in that leaflet you have on the table. Just in case anyone ever wanted to correct them..." The girl's face immediately went OMG ALIEN!, and her friend started giggling nervously, so I decided it's probably best not to mention there's also a typo in their greeting card, smiled again, nodded good-bye, and walked out.

I left the restaurant wondering what the hell I was thinking, but also nursing a not entirely unpleasant impression of having completed some sort of cycle.

Mutant apocalypse

Every fucking Tori Amos song the last.fm radio plays is a live version taken from the Beekeeper tour. Which is NOT a good thing :/

All the beautiful people

I wonder if that's gonna be my new thing: only updating the blog late at night, when I find myself unable to fall asleep. Seems quite plausible, especially since I finally dragged the laptop from its resting place in the kitchen and put it on the bedside window for easy access. After all, I can't possibly be expected to get up and cover that meter-and-a-half to my desktop, right?

Still working on a comfortable writing position though. It's very important to get the pile of gigantic pillows just right.

So, these are my current dilemmas. And that's actually the definitive manifest. Which bothers me a bit, to be honest. Last night W. took me out to dinner, to celebrate my birthday. It was actually quite unexpected, because it's such a... grown-up thing to do. And we don't do grown-up, ever. We are for each other the security blanket you reach for when life gets a bit too overwhelming, that shot of tried and true you sometimes need to even your keel... I wonder if that's even a word, or an expression, and if it means what I think it does. It just popped into my head literally out of nowhere, and I'm so tired of second-guessing my every sentence that I refuse to research it.

So where was I... Right, our private time capsule. It's actually quite funny - last night I realized that once again I started leaning in to kiss her on the cheek, and had to stop myself, because we don't do that. Because when people first started doing it in high school, we decreed it as lame and affected, and made a pact to boycott the entire thing. And this custom - or lack thereof - survived, fossilized, to this day. Over 10 years. We don't even think about it, it's just not something we do. So peculiar.

But I stopped one layer short of the point - what I wanted to say is that I had absolutely nothing to say. The dinner was incredibly nice, and I felt happy, but as I sat there, listening to her amusing anecdotes, I tried over and over to find something to reciprocate with, and the best I could come up with was a story that my parents had told me 3 weeks ago.

I've no idea what the fuck is wrong with me. I've never had this problem, I was always spewing gibberish left and right. I used to craft the most insignificant, random things that happened to me on my way over somewhere into tiny anecdotes, just so I'd have something for an opening salvo. I don't think my life is any emptier than it was before (how's that for an optimistic statement?), so maybe I've just lost the interest in people required to observe and fish out those amusing details...

I don't know, but either way, I ran out of steam. I leave you with something appropriately broken and hypnotic.

The skinny

Actually, now that I think of it, I don't really have all that much to write about either In Bruges or Bored to Death. Or even a reason to lump them into a single post, aside from the fact that both ultimately proved to be disapointing.

In Bruges actually has a lot going for it. It's an unusual take on a popular cinematic motif - hitmen. It shows them in-between assignments, as they try to make the best of their downtime in a seemingly random location, awaiting further instructions from their employer. The performances are good, and the mood is spot-on (the movie actually plays like one of those quaint British small-town comedies, providing a cool contrast to its protagonists' profession), which makes the final, ridiculous misstep all the more aggravating. I won't reveal any plot points, suffice to say that in the climactic scene one of the main characters makes a certain distinction - whether for comedic or dramatic effect, I'm not even sure - which is not only tasteless in and of itself, but also makes a significant portion of the movie in retrospect seem like the buildup to a cheap gimmick. And you're handed this turd blossom literally moments before the end credits roll, so it essentially remains your last impression.

As for Bored to Death, it doesn't stumble so badly, but that's probably because to do so would constitute some sort of statement, and the show is too intent on charting the bland side of quirkiness for that sort of thing. The characters are about as removed from reality as the Bluth family, but they're mired in aimless Seinfeldian tedium, punctuated by Jason Schwartzman* repeating what some other character just said in the earnest monotone of a stoner's revelation. The premise... Schwartzman decides to advertise himself as a private detective on craigslist. No idea why, as no reason is given. It's not for money - that he gets for writing... something for his millionnaire... friend, I guess. Or boss who's really into micro-managing freelance writers. Oh, and his girlfriend left him, cause he smokes too much pot and drinks too much white wine. I'm at episode three, and it's about Jim Jarmusch giving him his new script to look over (he's a fan, y'know). It's about Frank O'Hara. But Schwartzman loses it, so Jarmusch decides to go with Charlie Kaufmann instead. Yeah. And it's a good thing namedropping and cameos are such strong plot devices, because absolutely nothing more of note happens throughout the entire episode. I suppose, given the title, that might have actually been the idea, but I've seen good (Mad Men), or even decent (Hung) slow-paced shows about nothing much at all, and Bored to Death isn't one of them.

* full disclosure: every time I saw him on the screen I wanted to punch him in the face. I'm not proud of it, but cmon.