Tonight's short dinner with Braden and Nicole was just what the doctor ordered. We had a pretty crappy Tuesday night--I had come over to help build the entertainment center at their new apartment and the night ended with stressed out people, misunderstandings, and general chaos...nothing big, but a signal that everyone should take it easy for a few days--no stress. The dinner was great. We never mentioned Tuesday, but its now a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, I had to miss a cool movie night at Megan's house =(. I'm sure I'll hear all about it soon =).

***
In non-personal news (you're probably saying "Thank God!"):

The New Yorker has a review of Spiderman on page 96 of the May 13, 2002 issue (semi-spolier alert, but not really if you've been alive in the last two decades and paid attention to any part of the Spiderman story whatsoever). I usually love the reviews in the New Yorker--dry, blasé, devoid of any fan ravings, yet thoughtful enough of movie-going audiences to recommend something once and awhile. However, their review of Spiderman comes off as kind of dismissive. It's like the critic didn't even try to go along with the movie, which is usually fine...except for the fact that it seems that Anthony Lane missed huge cues in the script that point to the reason for the ending, which he blows off as fulfilling the "need for sequels." He expects Peter Parker to lunge into the arms of Mary Jane in the end and grope her onscreen. When the script is basically screaming (in bright, neon "Eat At Joe's" letters--now that's something to criticize) that Peter must protect the ones he loves by not loving them lest they become bait for the evil baddies, Peter's refusal to give Mary Jane a huge teary "I love you" is more than natural. Oh well, I agree with many of Mr. Lane's points (it's not a perfect movie), but his review doesn't carry much weight in light of other critics who "get it." And I hate using "get it", but it fits.

The newest Esquire magazine has a new essay by David Sedaris. It's called "Repeat After Me." It's a hoot and touching in a very unsentimental way. Rock on.

I'm finding that the math on the GRE is not that difficult. This has had two effects on me:

1) I am embarrassed over my lack of math skills. It takes me far too long to add fractions and do long division.

2) I am encouraged that a math dolt like me could quite possibly get his act together by May 31st at 8:00 am in the morning.

The Kaplan GRE book is really wry. When describing the "Using Graphs" section of the GRE, they state: "We have no idea why they even put this section on the test."

Ack! Gah! I just found out that posting any of my non-published stories online constitutes them as published. I had high hopes to post a bunch of stuff at my website when it's finished--now I can just put up that one from the Cypress Dome and another that I don't like too much and I don't think will ever be published. So there, viola, I'll put it up on my site and it'll be published. First World rights...down the drain.

Is the web all that great when I can push my bad fiction on unsuspecting people?

It's not that that one story is so bad...it's just really amateurish. I used to believe that every story had to have a huge gigantic moral that came out of nowhere and devoured the characters to pieces. Quite apparent in that story.

Okay, I've talked myself out of it. No one will see that story. Only the nice one about the singer and the stalker.

I kind of despise in-between times--like right now, when I'm in between my undergrad and grad schools. I have to make a bunch of decisions, but none of the decisions really have to be made until August. I'm usually so paranoid that something will go wrong that I give myself WAY too much time to plan for things. I'm thinking that I should have just applied to UCF last Fall so that I could be preparing to start school now, not later.

Oh well. At least this leaves me time to write...which is chugging along nicely. I'm trying to build a routine--one in which I wake up at 7:30am and go to bed by midnight. I've been liking daytime recently. Now I have to work on liking my desk. It's horrible, it bears down on my knees. Can a desk be short? It seemed like a normal desk to me when I was in high school.

During my grad school research, I found this really nifty school--Bennington College. They've got a low residency MFA in which you tailor your classes over a two year period to what you want to study. If you want to focus on fiction and publishing one semester, fine. If you want to do poetry and screenwriting the next, perfectly fine. And they have Rick Moody as a teacher. Coolness! Drawback=$11,000 a semester and little chance for financial aid. Who goes to these schools? Definitely not the son of a public school teacher.

Which would be me.

Oh well. University of Texas at Austin is at the top of my list. It's the only school to offer an MFA in Fiction and allow me to continue studying Screenwriting as a minor. Kickass! I'm gonna start praying for that one right now (as well as take the GRE, polish a portfolio, and try to schmooze my way in the door). Austin is also the "live music capitol of the world" (could this be self-proclaimed?), so that's a bonus. Drawback=3 year MFA. But I wouldn't care. They waive tuition. Yeah, it's a good deal all around.

I finally have post-bac status at UCF, which means that I can register for graduate classes. If I end up going to UCF, this is good--I'll get to apply 9 hours of post-bac work to my MA. If I don't go to UCF, taking any grad classes might be a big waste of money. Decisions, decisions.

I put in more work on my part of the cakepolice.org site last night. It looks like I'll be able to put clippings of my work on the sight, at least clippings from the Dome. It's kinda funny--the design of my part of the site is so modular, so rectangle-ish...quite unlike my personality. I'll link the new page to the main cakepolice page when it's completed.

Gotta go write, study for the GRE, and drink coffee--not necessarily in that order. =)

Sorry about the lack of posting regarding the open house party that my parents threw. It was quite a fun bash, complete with friends and family and a few people I haven't seen in years. We still have plenty of food left over (dozens and dozens of egg rolls, dutifully fried by my aunt). Unfortunately, my foray into junk food left me feeling pretty horrible, so it's back to soy milk and moderation for me. Oh well.

Today was "get your shtuff together day". I registered for the GRE examination, applied for post-bac status at UCF, watched "Bamboozled" by Spike Lee (I so have to return it to my friend Paul), and I'm about to go run errands.

Bamboozled had me crying like a baby--Tommy Davidson, the "P-zone" guy from the pizza hut commercials, has this one scene where he has to stand up to his best friend--I could barely see it through the haze. I'm so pathetic. Spike Lee definately wanted to make people uncomfortable with this movie, but I can't figure out if there was a specific audience he was targeting or if he just wanted to make everyone uncomfortable. He did a great job of including every part of American society in his satire. It was fun to see Mos Def act as well. =)

Gotta go...must buy thank you notes.