Mobies

I like movies. I like seeing movies in theatres. Some people don't like to pay for movies when they can download them for free, but I like the experience of going to the movies. Even though they take a (Coca Cola-)red hot poker and jam it into my ass with ticket and concession prices. As long a your girlfriend doesn't throw it away (and I'm looking at you Kaseyfacey) that movie popcorn lasts forever anyway.

Recently I've seen The Fall and The Dark Knight. Twice. Once in IMAX. Suck it! The Fall was beautiful. I'm at work and shouldn't be blogging anyways, so I'm not going to go all hypertexty on you guys. Look it up yerselves. It was mostly everything I like in a movie. Beautifully shot, with purdy people, and a little girl with chubby cheeks and no front teeth. Did I cry during this movie? Yes. Was it because of Charles Darwin? Yes. I wish I could see it again but it's one of those movies that only stays at The Naro for a short time. I'll just say a few things then move on: Lee Pace is a handsome, handsome man. You don't need special effects to have a visually stunning movie. Sugar pills are not funny to some people.

Now. The Dark Knight. I love this movie. The action is fantastic: well done but not over done, exciting, and imaginative. The writing is very un-comic-book-movie. You forget you're watching Batman; it's just a movie. If that makes sense. And the acting: Christian Bale, I like you. I really do. But your Batman voice in this one was duuuumb. I liked your fighting style better though. Gary Oldman, nothing less than I expected. You are the man. Aaron Eckhart, you sure are handsome. Too bad you didn't get to bang Katie Holmes again! You definitely have the eyes for Two-Face. Am I forgetting anyone? Oh. Right. Heath Ledger. Heath, you make me so sad. You played the best Joker anyone could ever play. I want to be The Joker's friend, even if he does scare me sometimes. And he did. But I also love him. That's hard to do. You gave me chills. Both times. As Kasey put it, watching The Joker is probably the most bitter-sweet movie experience I've ever had.

IMAX actions scenes of the Dark Knight were breath taking. My definite favorite is when they're transporting a certain someone and a certain someone else comes and messes shit up. Then someone else comes and messes the second guy's shit up too. The entire thing is sweet and contains the only action sequence to make me literally sit up in my chair and speak some kind of expletive. Go see it.

Also seen recently was a re-release of Blade Runner. Lordy is that movie long. But I like it, and it looked really good. I watch it regularly while I fall asleep. Sean Young is hot in a kind of bitchy way and (young) Harrison Ford is the man. I'll say this: I'd rather watch long-ass Blade Runner than the new Indiana Jones. That's for sure.

Okay, I'm outie for now. I'm tired as balls and twice as ugly so I gotta conserve my energy.

Keep it real, dawgs.

- David

It's Not Like In The Movies

It never is. It's never as simple or clear-cut. It's never as resolved.

I'm too much of a softy for my own episode finale.

- David

A Year of Bike Commuting

Sunday, dear friends, marked my one year bike commuting anniversary. Woo! Apparently I set a calendar reminder and totally forgot about it until a text showed up proclaiming the event.

It's not a big thing, but I am proud. The only things I'm really able to continue doing for an entire year is your moms, so this feels like a real, albeit subtle, achievement. Kinda like, "Oh, I've been coming to this same bar for a year." If you've know me personally for any decent length of time you're aware I'm not a big goal setter. This just happened, and I'm glad.

Let's do math! This is going to be so horribly generalized that it's nowhere near accurate, but so what. It's my party. Before I got let go I was commuting 6.5 miles each way. I worked there for about nine months, if I remember correctly. So that's 2,340 miles right there. Then for months and months I was doing 24 to 35 miles every Saturday with the Portsmouth gang. Let's say I did that for... six months at an average of 29.5 miles. There's another 708 miles. All together, 3,048 miles in less than a year strictly going to work and riding on Saturdays. That doesn't count the few races, numerous store runs, and general daily dicking around I do on two wheels. Hells yeah, that's a lot of miles.

Even though it's vaguely unrelated, the recent truck-ectomy I've undergone makes my transition to the dark side feel complete. I do still drive Kasey's car on occasion but if she ever found my collection of questionably-legal "reading material" I'd be four-wheeled vehicle free. Concerning the aforementioned removal of my truck, I would like to say I paint it cleaner and prettier than it actually was. I do like being bicycle-only, but I don't like the way it went down, and I apologize to those that had to deal with it.

As other peeps online (see the Stalk Others section, stage right) have already said, it's not really about saving money or the environment (which are both good) although I admit to resorting to charts & graphs regularly when attempting to convert non-riders. Cycling is a huge complex of simple pleasures, beauty, and logistics all working smoothly together to produce a phenomenon that's just good. I feel dumb trying to name it so I'm done. Just try it. Twice. Even if it hurts the first time. ;)

In celebration I rode My Girl Friday, recently retrofitted with a front brake, into work yesterday. I want to take her out more, but she's like the hot teen-aged daughter I hope to never have: I think everyone wants to take her away from me and do horrible, horrible things. I see them eying her as we go by, leering like construction workers. Jenny is the tomboy, I don't worry about her much. We'll see how it turns out.

In closing, I'd like to thank Kasey for putting up with my ever-increasing bike dorkiness, and my friend Kurtz for being the first car-free guy I know and showing me it could be done with style and a hefty drinking schedule. Also Google Maps for only steering me wrong once out of a million routes, and all the guys at Cycle Classics for fixing my shit and giving me a place to hang. And God. Because I feel Him in this blog tonight. But not Jesus. Jesus can suck it.

- David

Vain Davey

I get off the bus.  I'm already wearing cheap rainpaints rolled up to the knees over my jeans, similarly rolled.  Two thin neoprene toe-covers are stretched over the first half of my scuffed black and white sneakers.  My helmet, huge and red and hated, is already damp from being left outside all day.  A tight black cycling cap under that.  Sleeveless wool undershirt, white cotton t-shirt.

Waiting for a break in three lanes of commuter traffic.  LEDs blink brightly (one hopes) in the heavy raincloud light.  One foot shoved into a shiny metal toe-clip with a cheap strap.  Looking over my shoulder at the white lights of oncoming cars it begins to drizzle.

Cutting diagonally across the moistened black road thunder cracks so close and loud I duck over the handlebars.  Behind me a smattering of cars approach as they float down the bridge.  The wind can't decide which direction to blow.  The air is cool.  I'm behind a line of cars, waiting to turn onto a more quiet street.

The light changes and we're off.  I consciously tell myself "Drop, drop, drop" as I drop the weight of my body down on each falling pedal, trying to let gravity boost my acceleration and save my knees.  I try to rotate my ankles just so, spreading the point of pressure over the axis of the pedal.  There are as many different ways to pedal as there are variations of people's walks.

Cars pass me, hissing rain under their glossy tires.  I eye every parked car's door suspiciously as I skirt the line between giving the cars that pass enough room and keeping some for myself.  The rain has picked up a little.  A fucking SUV pulls out of the curved intersection in front of me, accelerating faster than average, scurrying out of my way.

Rainfall ramps up smoothly but dramatically in a few minutes.  I pull over to the empty parking spaces along the two-way street.  No decent trees.  I lean my bike against some sign I can't read.  Sliding my bag off, I remove my hat and helmet and pull the now transparent cotton t-shirt over my head.  My shoes are already soaked through.  Unrolling the red rain jacket from my bag and replacing it with the wet shirt I smile ruefully, making for my eyes an overhang of my brow against the rain.  A different SUV pulls into the side street in front of me, stops, reverses, and heads back the way it came.  Jacket donned, I replace my headgear and squish my shoe into the toe-clip.  It's raining so hard it feels like hundreds of heavy fingers drumming on the flat of my shoulders.

No traffic.  Kicking off the sidewalk and onto the pavement, alive and fuzzy with the downpour.  The rain is hurting my face, tiny disintegrating stones that threaten to split my lip.  I bare my teeth in a maniac's grin and the reduced surface area of my lips catch fewer blows.  My mouth tastes like I've lost a tooth.  Warm salt water, pain, and metallics.  I pass a ponchoed figure getting into his Jeep Liberty and he yells "Woo!", grinning and holding his hood as I go by.  Woo indeed.

I grudgingly talk myself into pulling in to a cantina parking lot, crossing the rivered gutter.  My mouth tastes so salty I'm sure something is broken.  Spitting into my palm I see nothing.  Again, nothing.  It hits me:  The collection of salt in my hat is being rinsed out into my face and mouth.  Back on the road I spit to my right for a few blocks before it stops.  I half wish it was blood.  There's no angle that allows me to shield my face and see at the same time.

Ridiculously, "This Is How We Do It" plays over and over in my head as I fight the wind and what must surely be torrential downpour.  There's no voice telling me to pull over, wait it out.  That voice died in infancy a year ago.

I love this.  This is the heart.  I'm a red blur of… I can't name it.  But it's in your face, jeering with a confidence and a finality that you've never known.  Racing down one side and up the other of an underpass at over thirty miles an hour, you wish you were me.  Peering out of your minivan window with envy at my freedom.  I don't even see you.  To me you are a metal cube that may be out to get me, and you blink out of existence as anonymously as you entered it the moment you're out of my personal bubble.

My wheels glide like salmon through puddles so deep the water swamps my feet with every revolution.  I'm laughing.  Part of me is already speaking these lines.  The largest part is effortlessly rotating the sphere of my multi-layered perception in al directions, taking in detail and danger.  Exiting an empty parking lot I lock up my rear wheel with my legs and slide across the matte blacktop, barely even slowing down.

Downtown.  I run a stop sign that's there for no reason.  No one honks.  Moving through traffic and construction the natural grace of my movement overtakes me and I become the smoothest motherfucker you know.  I'm God, I'm Jesus, I'm your misspent youth well spent.  I'm Clive Owen in Sin City.  I'm everything you want to be.  I'm a bright and burning reminder of all the things you've done wrong in your life, looking down from your office window.  Look at me.  Now look at yourself.  At this moment, I am magic.

A tree branch has fallen over my path.  I tilt my head back and to the side like I was peering around cigarette smoke as I speed towards it.  Everyone is huddled under the overhangs of buildings; my way is clear of pedestrians.  I'm panting so hard nerves in my shoulders are being pinched.  After a time I learned to welcome this as a good sign.

Alone save an impatient office worker atop the river ferry I look out at the five tall cranes that service a dry-dock shipyard.  If I were any wetter I'd be twins.  If I were any more calmly content I'd be enlightened.  I'm spent.  The beauty that only comes with this physical exertion overtakes me and I turn to sit on a bench.  Removing my glasses and pressing a hand towel to my face I sob hard four or five times, my torso jumping each time.

Thus finished, I replace my rain-dropped glasses and watch the water roll away beneath me.

Well, I got my phone...

Well, I got my phone turned back on finally. This is only like the second call I've made with it since. I'll be calling my family soon. Just let those of them that read this blog know. Work is going pretty good, this is my last week of training so we've been taking call in all this week, haven't been doing too bad. I think I'm actually getting a hang of it so I feel pretty good so far. listen

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Chacha cha cha cha

Don't you know I love you baby?

I survived the weekend, mostly unscathed. Only got rained on once or twice, only almost fell out of my chair once or twice (lack of sleep), only had to sneak my way onto the ferry once or twice.

My training is nearly complete at work. I just wrapped up a ton of classroom time and now I'm fairly confident in my abilities to answer a phone and document it. From what I can gather, I have another week of shadowing or something, and then it's full on worky jerky. I'm only resisting the inevitable a smidgen.

I've grown comfortable enough with the public transit system to have devised my own route. Every day this week my regular bus has had a full bike rack before even getting to my stop. Luckily I can wait thirty minutes and take the next bus and only be a few minutes late, but that won't fly after training is over. So I did a little research and discovered an alternative route through a different tunnel that yields on-timeyness. True, it involves two and a half more miles of cycling in the morning, but the bus was mostly empty and the rack certainly was.

I might have a fun video to upload later today. The front desk is empty, the gym is open, and I have a video camera. Stay tuned.

- David

Exhile

Woo! This is my 500^th blog post!

Sorry I ain't been around more. Four weeks of finding a job and then two weeks before my first paycheck has taken it's disabling toll and now I have no phone and no Internet. Although for the time being I can still receive calls. Six days 'till payday! Hopefully that means six days until the restoration of my communication services. I'm lightly considering pilgrimages to the local coffee shoppe to partake of their Internet only.

Things have been okay. I'm trying to be a better Buddhist. What does that mean to a whitey in the big city? Reading my old teacher, mindfulness when I remember (ha!), and meditation on the bus. Apparently I'm full of bitter anger and despair. Who knew? Beneath this Peeps-ish exterior lies something not as sweet or fluffy. I'm working on it, it's a road not a destination, it's all in the process, etc, etc, ad naseum.

I finished The Road. It was awesome. Did I cry? Yes. Was it worth it? Fo sho. I highly recommend it.

Be safe, the weather seems weird all over.

- David

4th o' July

Twitter and BrightKite are awesome free services where you can keep track of friends (like me!) as they run around doing whatever it is they do.

Have a safe Fourth!

- David

This is a test post...

This is a test post from Jott. Calling it in on a cellphone so I don't know how it's going to look when it's posted, but I might be making posts like this regularly cause I don't have access to a computer like I used to where I can hop on the internet whenever I want. Let's see how this comes out. Take care. David. listen

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