Ok ladies and men-folk, I, like many of you who are "in the know", am a big fan of Don Hertzfeldt’s little insane animated gems such as Rejected! and Billy’s Balloon. I also like to wear t-shirts with things that strike me as amusing emblazoned upon them. Don has a line of t-shirts for sale on his site with art from the cartoons. The problem is this – Don is a decent animator and a funny guy, but can’t design a t-shirt for shit. His cartoons are simple and clean, but his t-shirts are either poorly laid-out, too cluttered or everything in-between. Trust me, I’ve done this for a living.

Here is my proposal. I am going to design a bootleg Rejected t-shirt (just one to start) for my friends, family and myself. I’ll design and execute all the artwork, printing arrangements and other fine details… all you guys have to do is give me money for them. I am not going to be making any profit off these, I’m just interested in getting a few cool shirts for my wardrobe without having to pay a fortune for them. The more I order, the better the individual price will be.

DISCLAIMER: I am not trying to take money away from Don, I just refuse to buy a product that isn’t what I want. I love his cartoons and fully intend on buying his DVD that’s coming out soon with all the cartoons collected on it. I am also not starting a wholesale Don Hertzfeldt bootleg t-shirt product line. I’m only ordering as many as I have orders for, only select people will be able to get these and no profit is generated… I’m only recouping what I’m spending on them.

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, I want to point out that this is still a hypothetical scenario. I want to gauge how many people are interested in this to see if it’s worth my time (which is at a premium these days). Also, if enough people are interested, all orders will be pre-paid – let me repeat that so I’m being very clear – all orders will be pre-paid, for a few reasons. The first reason is so I don’t get stuck paying for a handful of shirts some joker said he wanted and decided later he didn’t reeeally want. Secondly, I don’t want to have to chase anyone down and collect money from them. The third reason being that I’m not a rich man and can’t afford to bankroll this project. All in all this will prevent any hard feelings and make my life a hell of a lot simpler.

The proposed design is this:

Shirt Style: Single color print, front and back design. Black shirts with white ink and/or ash/heather shirts with black ink (with a possibility of off-color sleeves). All shirts will be 100% cotton heavyweight – I want these to last.

Shirt Front: The spoon man, all by his lonesome with only his bowl – no banana. It’ll be printed as big as I can get it -likely around 15" or so tall.

Shirt Back: The phrase "MAH SPOON IS TOO BIG!" nice and big – again, up to about 15" – in a very rough hand-written type of font, maybe tilted a bit to add to the effect.

I’m not going to pester my printer for a price until I’m sure this is a go. More than likely it’ll be comparable to a concert t-shirt price. Also, I have a few follow-up designs in mind for a future time – a banana shirt and a "I’m the Queen of France!" shirt, both in a similar style as this.

If you are interested in ordering one or several of the "Spoon Man" shirts, and have any suggestions for minor improvements you can email me here. Be sure to let me know how many you’d like so I can get a feel for what the first order will be like. Also, be sure to specify who the hell you are in your email so I won’t instantly delete it assuming you’re some random loser from the internet who I don’t know – nicknames are acceptable, considering a lot of people only know me as Stuff or DmentD. Friends and family only to make orders for these, folks.

If the response is good, I’ll move to the next stage and put together some artwork for everyone to see.

Here I am, the front man, administrator and one of four people who operate a public LANParty known as the Geek-O-Rama. I’m faced with a metric ass-ton of inner turmoil. I’m a man divided.

I’ve been doing this LANParty thing for, jeez, more years than I care to count – the last three being open to the public – each event spaced out about every two months or so. I didn’t set out to make my fortune while running these events – my greatest hope was to break even and have some extra cash left over to increase and update my networking and server equipment. Pretty much everything we have been working with is either computers and equipment I already owned or scrounged, donated for temporary use, or I had a few pennies to rub together after an event and used them to buy what I needed. We host the events at a local hotel and have never seemed to break the 40-ish person mark. My ultimate goal was to bring together and build the local gaming community and have a little fun at the same time.

Here’s my dilemma.

On the one hand…

Attendance. It’s dwindling. People are getting burnt-out on the whole dismantle-and-drag-around thing. There aren’t enough people in this city who attend LANParties to be able to have folks cycle in and out of attendance. There’s nowhere around here to really advertise the events – no real "gaming" shops aside from Babbages and Electronics Boutique, and they won’t let us post any flyers – the bastards, a sprinkling of comic shops, and the massive papering we’ve done on all the local campuses is for naught. All other efforts yield nada as well. It’s not for a lack of trying. If nobody comes to the events, we can’t pay for the events, we don’t have more events. Simple math, really.

Competition. There is one other public LANParty in town. If you’ll remember what I said above, there ain’t enough people to go around. Now, this other LANPary has a different goal than we do. They want to become the "pro-circuit" event. They want to be CPL qualifiers and have the massive tournaments and attract all the foaming-at-the-mouth über competitive gamers and blah, blah, blah. I, on the other hand want an event that attracts people that want to come and play, regardless of skill level, regardless of the game.

Attitude. I like folks that enjoy gaming for shits and grins, not merely for the dick-stroking thrill of victory and huge cash prizes. Gamers that are willing to give a new title or mod a try. Quite frankly, I’ve developed a big chip on my shoulder with regard to CounterStrike. CounterStrike is the only game that has nearly caused my attendees to come to blows. The really good players take themselves way too seriously, refuse to play anything else, and will be belligerent, rude and mope if you don’t have a tournament. If a game stops being fun, I stop running the server for it. If you can’t laugh at yourself, you don’t earn the right to laugh at others. I mean, c’mon, what’s funnier (or more pathetic) than sitting behind a monitor pretending to be the person in the game. We’re all guilty of it and we all enjoy it so damned much. Lighten up people, life’s too short to go through it without trying new things, or having a few laughs.

Weariness. Let’s face it, this shit can get old after a while. I have five computers – sometimes six – that I have to break down, load into the car, unload from the car, haul into a hotel, reassemble, run for fourteen hours, break down again, load into the car again, unload from the car again. haul back into the house and reassemble… again. Add to that list about ten containers of miscellaneous gear, a dry-erase board, prizes, a 150-pound power distribution unit and other bric-a-brac. All of this gets done by four people with the occasional help (and I thank all-that-I-don’t-believe-is-holy that I have those folks that do help). Aside from the physical aspect there is also planning the event, updating the servers (hardware, software, new games, patches and mods for the games), running the servers during the event and running the tournaments too. We really don’t have a lot of help in this department… I once had someone help me with the servers. For one event. He then got busy and distracted and I was on my own again. What I really need are people who will not only be there the one or two times, or at the beginning and end of an event, but to be there in the two or so months in-between. Dedicated folks who want to help… a lot. So far, I’ve had one offer. Not a whole lot of people standing in line to help. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Time. Two months may seem like a long time to prepare for a decent event, but between work and sleep (what little I get) it’s a hard choice to make between preparing for the event and having a real life. I forget what my friends look like after a while. It gets real hard to motivate yourself when you have little assistance and a houseful of shit to move looming in your future.

Summation: A lot of damned work, hassle, research and bullshit for very little return. Spiritually, financially or satisfactorily.

On the other hand…

When the event goes juuuust right and everything gels, it’s like magic. I feel like a wizard of the highest magnitude who just performed the spell of a lifetime. There is a full house, everyone has a great time, the tournaments go off without a hitch and all is well with the world. It makes all the pain and hassle seem worth it. Seem.

I’m weary. The wind is out of my sails, I’ve lost my spark and am rapidly losing my taste for it. I can’t motivate myself to think about the next possible event. We haven’t even set a date.

I’ve got a hard decision ahead of me concerning the future of the events, or the lack thereof.

*sigh*

Chalk another failed venture up on my board. Shit. I’m running out of chalk.

Mardi Gras is over and done, and for a change Nadia and I didn’t try to escape the tourons and locals alike. We used this as a prime opportunity to catch up with old friends who usually gather in one place around this time of year to party and… well, catch up with each other. Our friend Krazy is the crowned King of Mardi Gras. He is a host extraordinaire. He arranges, organizes and agonizes over the annual Mardi Gras extravaganza, ensuring that everyone keeps safe, has a place to stay, gets to the parades on time and generally has a good time. He’s very good at his job. Krazy’s apartment was the local hub of activity and general all-around meeting place – and our destination on many a night during the festivities, much to the chagrin of his neighbors. The place was jumping and filled to the rafters with people, all of us laughing, joking, drinking (of course) and, well, catching up. I’ve taken a number of fond memories away with me from this Mardi Gras, and I primarily have Krazy to thank for them.

It was also a golden opportunity to visit with Heather and Gonzo. Gonzo is Krazy’s brother and one of my many good friends who pulled up stakes and moved to California (you cowards!). Gonzo, like Phreeq and myself, is a technology fiend and aficionado of some of the finer things in life. I stocked up on some good cigars, scraped the last of my precious Dancing Bear tobacco from it’s jar (forgetting completely that Phreeq has a full jar at home) and filled an ice-chest with Guinness in anticipation of enjoying them all with Gonzo and Phreeq. I was not disappointed. The best of it all was standing on the landing, talking and smoking the twisted trio of Davidoff Special "C" cigars that I saved for the last possible moment before having to depart the night before Gonzo and Heather were to leave for home.

I am also and single-handedly responsible for planting a dangerous seed in Gonzo’s brain with regards to a certain arcade contraption of mine. That is a story for another time.

We also made a handful of other friends from out-of-town. Two more temporary immigrants from California were Andy and Dawn. Andy is a closet processed-cheese loving pervert, and Dawn had been known to kill a man over a piece of sushi. There were also some Michigan-ites in the hizouse. Trevor, Ivory and Sonic were great fun to hang out with. Greets, guys! If I forgot anyone, I apologize, my walnut sized memory can only hold so much.

The only unfulfilled wish I had for this Mardi Gras was to see two other special folks from Cali who have been known in the past to come into town for the festivities. Maybe next year. Till then, greets and love to you. Keep safe, sane and satiated.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Happy Birthday, Cuz! Snap, I don’t want to see you freebasing any of that Angelo Brocado ice cream. Pounders, me want mead!

Now to catch up on all that lost sleep.

The demons are back.

The little winged purple bastards are back, if only for a little while. They sit on my shoulders and perch on my head whispering evil things to me, strumming the invisible strings connected to by brain. Their names are Irritability, Anger, Irrationality, Moodiness… and Heartburn, oddly enough.

I am in no mood for bullshit today, and I’m doing my damnedest to not lop anyone’s head off for no reason – for the most part, they really don’t deserve it. I feel like a raw nerve being prodded by a dentist’s pick and it’s getting harder by the minute to be even a tiny bit congenial.

I don’t want to be crowded, chided, babied or concerned about. If another motherfucker listens in on my phone conversations and doesn’t have the good sense and manners just to keep the fuck quiet, instead of waiting for me to hang up and clue me in that they were eavesdropping by commenting on the fact that it sounds like I’m in a crappy mood and having a bad day, I’m going to unmercifully bludgeon them into a bloody shattered mass of loosely connected tissue and bone shards.

I woke up this morning in this mode and I have no rational explanation for why. That doesn’t make the fact that I’m in it any easier to deal with, and it doesn’t make the world piss me off any less. More than likely I’ll be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed come morning, but all I care about is the here-and-now.

The repetitive, obtuse tasks I’ve been engaged in all day have left me with too much time to think. My co-workers have taken the available opportunities to engage in a little good-natured ribbing which otherwise I would have reveled in, but only brought me closer to a homicidal episode. I was "let off the hook" for a dinner get-together that I was looking forward to, and have interpreted it as a kind and gentle blow-off. My mind’s eye isn’t seeing 20/20 today, so I might be way off base on that one. Fuck it. Don’t care. Throw it on the heap.

If I can make it home without killing anyone, it’ll be a miracle.

FUCK! Heartburn.

I must have some kind of hang-up that I don’t admit, even to myself. Maybe it’s not so much a hang-up, as an outlook issue. Let me see if I can work it out here in public, because my own attitude about this is starting to bother me. Let’s go for a ride, shall we?

First, let me say this: I am in no way judging anyone here, with the possible exception of myself. If a problem exists it is entirely my own to deal with, and not a reflection of anyone else.

I have friends that like to attain, shall we say, an "altered state." Now, these people are fine, upstanding folks for the most part and are as nice a bunch of guys as you’d care to meet. They’re fiercely loyal, very protective and would give you the shirt off their back, and the back to go with it if so required. Some are local residents, some are from out of town. In fact, they are from a town where partaking of a certain leafy substance is infinitely more socially acceptable than in most parts of the country – it’s the equivalent of having a cocktail.

These folks are all extremely discreet in their indulgences and quite conscientious of those of us who don’t participate. They also don’t exceed their own self-imposed and well considered limitations either. My stance on the whole issue always has, and always will be one of casual indifference. The whole thing rates on the same chart as alcohol – either substance is harmless in and of itself, can be easily abused if in the wrong hands, and if used in careful moderation can be quite enjoyable to the person "consuming" it. I don’t much care or mind what other folks do as long as they don’t hurt themselves or others, or try to force something on me. As a matter of fact, I firmly believe that the smoke is a much safer route to go than the drink. While I don’t partake myself, I don’t condemn others if they do.

So, if I’m this casual about it, why do I get so bothered when I’m around my altered friends?

Sherman, set the wayback machine. It’s time we dive briefly into my past.

Once upon a time, when I was young and impressionable, I watched a beloved sibling waste a considerable portion of his life destroying his mind with substances. This same sibling has since cleaned up, and become a productive member of society – has been for many years and I am extremely proud of him for that. Whether I consciously knew it or not, his substance usage left an indelible impression on my psyche. I have never taken drugs of the illegal variety, nor used legal ones in an unintended manner. Alcohol is the strongest modifier I indulge in, with the occasional foray into the realm of tobacco in the form of cigars and pipes.

I do not enjoy losing control. In my early adulthood, I drank enough to discover a few things. There are many levels of drunk, from mildly buzzed to blood-alcohol toxicity – I’ve traveled the lower 70% of the scale. I’ve found my comfort levels and I stick to them. I usually stay in the mildly buzzed range with the occasional shuffle into tipsy. I don’t drink that often, and when I do it’s in the company of friends and family. I don’t like the sensation of being drunk and the lack of mental and motor skills that accompany it. It just doesn’t turn me on. As I get older, I have to acknowledge the fact that my memory is iffy at best, and quite frankly my hearing isn’t what it used to be, especially in a noisy room – and I ain’t that old to begin with. I don’t need anything that’s going to prevent me from remembering events and make it harder to focus on a conversation.

Taking all these things into consideration, you can see why the herb doesn’t appeal to me. That does not mean I’m going to "tsk, tsk" and shake my head at folks for passing the peace pipe. To each their own. Quite frankly, most of these guys don’t behave markedly different after the fact.

I do.

I can’t put my finger on it. The reasons elude me. If I know the deed’s been done, I get a little weird. My brain crawls silently out of my left ear to go get a cup of coffee, leaving my mouth and feet in charge – my heart never gets to cast a vote. The problem then becomes this: the mouth is incapable of coming up with anything clever to say, if anything, the feet can’t find a spot to park for long and the heart is screaming to the rest of my body that everything is grand and groovy, these are my good friends and there is nothing to see here, move along. After a short while things get back to normal, but only after I feel a metric ass-ton of foolish. Does my brain think they aren’t the same people as before they had a smoke? Do I think their cooties will get on me and cause me to fail my next random drug test at work? Am I passing some sort of unconscious judgment? Am I worried that they’re going to burn-out a crucial part of themselves, like someone else I knew? I don’t know. It’s all an autonomic subconscious reaction, and quite disturbing to me that I can get like this. It’s some Pavlovian reflex I’ve developed out of nowhere and I wish it’d go away.

I feel like a damned hypocrite. I’ve never condemned anyone for using responsibly, but I have a hard time – briefly – dealing with people who do, most notably my friends. What the fuck is that all about?

So, I’ll continue to look off into the middle distance, rather than the eyes of the person I’m talking to after I find out what recently transpired. I’ll excuse myself and put distance between ground zero and myself. I’ll keep on feeling like a damned fool for all the other little nervous habits I suddenly develop out of thin air. I’ll also take this moment to apologize to the people I inflict my silliness on, remind them that I love them all and request that they continue to put up with me. Accept me for who and how I am, and don’t judge me for my brief regressions – I can give them up any time I like.

"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

When I was in school – elementary to high to college – I was operating under the assumption that once I was done grinding through the education mill, I’d simply have oodles of time to do whatever I wanted. I was obviously working under a very false assumption. As the rest of you semi-responsible adults know, it’s all a big fat lie. You younger folks who happen to traipse through here and read this, consider this a warning.

After your schooling is done and you’ve got your ed-ju-mi-ca-shun, all that time spent in class and elsewhere doing your projects and homework is supplanted by other things. If you’re a normal productive member of our warped little society, and you like to eat and live in something other than a cardboard Maytag box in an alleyway behind the "adult" cinema, you join the great American workforce. You get a job and work, work, work. You young pups out there might not see this as a problem. You say "Hey, I was in class for eight hours a day, and doing homework on top of that – working will be a breeze!" You know what? You’re right… for about the first year. Tops.

A job gets old reeeeeal fast, I don’t care how much you like it. The problem stems from repetition and lack of control. How would you like to dine on the exact same meal every day? Add to that an eating schedule you have little or no involvement in, with precious few breaks in the routine. I don’t care if it’s your favorite meal you’re being fed. I love Chinese food, and I joke that I could eat it every day, three meals a day – but I’m very sure that after the first week that shit would get real old, real fast.

Ok, so now you’re working eight hours a day not including travel to and from your job, lunch breaks, etc. Once you get home, you’ve got other responsibilities. Feed the cat, cook, feed yourself, do the dishes, wash-dry-fold-put away laundry, take out the garbage and so on. That’s a lot of crap to do no matter how thinly you spread it. Let’s not forget that if you’re married and/or have kids, you definitely want to spend time with them, and there is a whole new set of duties that go along with that too.

Unless you’re a complete waste of skin, you’ve got some friends or family you like to hang out with now and again. We’re not all social butterflies, but we do like to interact with other people on occasion. That takes up time as well. You go out, have dinner and a few drinks maybe, start talking and *WHOOSH* hours have passed (in some cases days, depending on how many drinks you have). Let’s face it, human beings are one of the most social animals in existence. We crave companionship and stimulation on every level from physical to cerebral. We must interact – it’s a driving force we unconsciously act upon that stems from our very DNA.

Sleep. Here is the one thing that gets universally abused. If you’ve gotta work, do all the things necessary to live from day-to-day and run with the herd too, then something gets neglected and it’s usually sleep. It’s the easiest thing to skimp on, and is done in so passively – you just don’t do it. It’s that easy. What’s the loss of a few hours of rest when you can visit with your pals who have come over for dinner? Especially when the wine is good and the conversation is better? Nothing. Why sleep on Saturday night when you’re out on the town, when you can catch it up Sunday evening? No reason, whatsoever. The eventual problem is, all that lack of sleep you’ve been getting catches up with you. You start to get fatigued, and it flavors everything you do.

The human body isn’t like a battery, you can’t run your charge down over the course of several days (or weeks) and get one good night of rest to fully re-charge. You need good, solid rest on a regular basis to stay at your peak. You’ve gotta top that battery off every night. The horrible fact is that we don’t, so the world gets filled with brain dead zombies with an overactive social life.

Here is where I live. This is my life. I work a job that ain’t too bad, but nonetheless eats up a good part of my life. I have a wife that I love, whom I don’t get to spend as much quality time with as I’d like. By the time we get home from work, cook and eat dinner and do the chores, we’re exhausted and it’s time to hit the sack and start the vicious cycle all over again. We’ve got a multitude of fantastic friends that we try to spend as much time with as we can, which never really happens because we all spend the weekends catching-up the things we can’t get done during the week. As everyone knows a five-day workweek lasts eleven days, but a two-day weekend lasts four hours. Top all this off with my bad habit of having more irons than fire to put them in, and a computer/internet addiction that makes most hardened burnt-out heroine addicts look like a lactose-intolerant kindergartener during snacky-time. I don’t get near as much sleep as I should, and it’s starting to add up. Unlike most people, I have a fatigue battery and its charge is full, it’s bulging, corroded and ready to pop.

There aren’t enough hours in a day to do all the things I need to do, much less all the things I want to do. If I were to clone myself and establish a sympathetic, empathic, telepathic link between the two of us so we could share our experiences as if we were one entity, send that clone off to play while I worked, I might get caught up. Actually, while I’m riding the wave of the whole clone delusion I might as well make a third clone to sleep for us. "She touched my pepe, Steve."

It’s not all bad. I’ll eventually lose my mind one day. Many years from now they’ll find me in my little one room cardboard summer cottage behind Billy Bob’s Smut Multiplex and Salad Bar. I’ll have vast amounts of time then to mumble to myself and drool, pick through dumpsters, soil myself and scratch at one spot on my scabby scalp until the hair there won’t grow back. I’ll be willing to bet that there’s plenty enough real estate behind the porn theater for a few of my friends to join me. We can pass a bottle of Ripple and drool in unison. It’ll be a little slice of heaven.

What is a commercial?

There are several ways to define it, but only two are of concern to me right now. We as consumers see them as an advertisement that is sponsored by a business or organization for a service or product in an effort to stimulate revenue. Third parties, such as broadcast television and radio stations, view them as their primary source of revenue generated from the businesses or organizations that are paying to advertise, and use that income to cover the cost of operations so as to keep their transmissions free to the consumer. In the case of most print media (newspapers, magazines, etc.), advertising is used to supplement the cost of operations so as to reduce their cost to the consumer – and indeed there are many free publications as well that, like TV and radio, have completely covered their operating expenses.

There is a disturbing trend I’ve seen lately. It’s been creeping up on us slowly and gaining momentum. Movie theatres are entering the mainstream advertisers market. You’ve seen them – the car ads, the sports drink commercials, the jewelry store spots with the idiotic grinning and nodding employees – showing up when the "previews" start, and in some cases even earlier. Now, I’ll wager that you’re sitting there reading this and wondering why I’m making such a big deal out of a few silly commercials before the movie starts. I’ll take the long road to explain.

Movie theatres don’t own that movie they show you. They rent it, in a sense, from the distributors that are owned by the film studios. They get it for a specific block of time for a certain price, and in some cases, a percentage of the ticket sales. When we buy tickets to see a movie, most of that goes toward covering the cost of the movie and the actual overhead of running the theatre – the lease, electricity, employees, etc. In New Orleans, the going adult rate is $6.50, but elsewhere around the country, a movie ticket can cost anywhere from $9 to $12 and higher. Ticket prices have only gone up, and they continue to climb every year.

Once you get into the theatre, you’re enticed to the concession area – this is where they make their profits. You may not have been paying attention lately, but those snack prices are a little on the high side. The local theatres charge $4 for a "large" popcorn which consists of $.05 of popcorn and $.10 of bag. Not too shabby a profit margin if you ask me, and those lines I wait in to get a drink are no shorter these days than they used to be.

If entertainment and media sources are using commercials and advertising to reduce their out-of-pocket operation expenses in an effort to lower (or eliminate) their price and raise their attraction to the consumers, why the hell aren’t movie theatres doing the same? Surely they’re not just giving that premier advertising space away? I’ll tell you why.

They. Don’t. Have. To.

People want to see movies on the big screen – which is the best way, actually. Prices go up, and folks will grumble – much like I am – but continue to go anyway. They’ve got a captive audience who have just gladly paid $6.50 or more each to race into that theatre and plant their butts into a seat and stuff their faces with overpriced munchies while answering the same tired old trivia questions again and again. In most civilized cities there isn’t much competition amongst theatres anymore. In New Orleans there are two large franchises that own most all the theatres, the meager few others are independently owned. The rest were squeezed out. Currently, competition is light for a product in demand, therefore it’s a seller’s market. They feel they have no need to discount our tickets just because they’re generating other revenue from advertisers and commercials.

Don’t get me wrong… for better or worse I’m in favor of Darwinism in business enterprises. The smaller theatres got shoved out because they wouldn’t, or couldn’t get the first run movies, they were shabbier, lacked a certain charm, or didn’t fill a niche and survive. For example, we have a few small theatres that are choosier about their content and specialize in more cerebral movies, both independent and mainstream, and do well in their own right. The larger theatres have wider movie and snack selections, nicer, cleaner and more comfortable theatres, better quality prints to show, blah, blah, blah. The downside is the massive throngs of bodies you have to fight against while there. It’s like a slow-moving riot… with popcorn.

Theatre prices are affected by many things: the actors demand more money to make a film, the studios pay more to make their films overall, they charge more for the theatres to show them, and the theatre jacks up it’s price for ticket sales. It’s trickle-down economics plain and simple. Ultimately, nobody is putting a gun to your head, and you don’t have to go to the theatre, or if you do, buy those expensive snacks. Stay home and watch TV, read a book, love and spend time with your children.

In the foreseeable future the theatres will skip the crummy trivia and previews altogether and fill to the brim the time between the end of one movie, and the start of another, with commercials. The moviegoers will see no benefit from this revenue generated by the theatres in the way of lower ticket and concession prices. If you wanted to boycott those theatres, there are precious few others to go to if you want to see the latest Hollywood flick on the big screen. The average moviegoer is also a happy member of the big herd, and will not go to any length to raise his voice in concern, or use products that don’t advertise in movie theatres. Moooooo.

So, what recourse do we have? This answer and more, after a word from our sponsors…

Dear Pals-O-Mine,

As you may well have noticed, contact from me has been notably absent – pretty much since you left my immediate sight. Occasionally, when the planets align, the seventh seal is broken, and the time of the year is right, lets say, around Halloween or Mardi Gras, you’ll hear from me, or I from you. These times of year trigger strong, welcome memories that remind me of good times gone by, and henceforth remind me that there are some people that I’ve been sorely out of touch with… regardless of the fact that email is free, letters are obscenely cheap to mail, and long distance phone charges are pretty damned affordable these days.

I have come to the conclusion that the blame lay squarely on your shoulders. That’s right, it’s your own damned fault. If you hadn’t jumped ship, pulled up stakes and run like cowards I never would have lost contact with any of you, not even once (some of you local folks can shut the hell up right about now). Really, every single one of you knows that my memory fails faster than the Hindenburg did after the Blue-Flame society got on board, and I’m more easily distracted than a crow in an aluminum recycling plant. What? What were you escaping? The crime, grime, negativity, poverty, corruption and record murder rates in this fair city? Pshaw, those things can be overlooked easily. What were you seeking? Peace of mind? Cleaner air? That and fifty cents will buy you a newspaper (although it’s likely a dollar fifty where you are). No, it’s clearly your fault.

Where do we stand, now that I’ve uncovered your critical flaw? Well, we continue on as we always have. We live our lives, thinking fondly of the past, and looking forward to the days when our paths cross in the future… and they will cross, one way or another at LEAST once a year either by phone, email or visit. When they do cross, we’ll have a grand old time laughing at the lesser mortals around us, drinking, having a cigar and generally living it up for the brief time we do have. Once that time is up, we’ll swear up and down that we’ll keep in touch, exchange our information again because the old info is out of date, and part ways.

Our intentions are good, they really are. We never mean to go on living our lives, being so shallow as to deal only with those people in our immediate world, it just… sort of… happens. We’re human, and as a human in this day and age we have too many irons in the fire – too many things that we HAVE to pay attention to that we can’t always give enough attention to the people and things we WANT to. Unfortunately, that means that only those things that touch our immediate day-to-day lives get the lion’s share of it. It’s a sad fact, but true nonetheless.

Having said that, I want to let you know that the brief time we do get to spend together, either in the same room, state or even miles and miles away, is no less enjoyable. They become the fondest of memories. Because they are so infrequent, we treasure them all the more.

So, regardless of the lack of communications being exclusively your fault, let’s try an experiment. Let’s not swear to heaven and hell on earth that we’ll call each other every other day, or even every other week. Let’s try a realistic goal. Let’s try that free email thing I mentioned, and let’s try and do it, oh, let’s say once every two months or so as a start. If we opt for more, great – if not, great. Also, I’ve got this silly blog thing here, and I know for sure that most of you have something similar – we’re all professional ranters, so what better way to get a feel for what’s going on in each other’s lives than to read what’s on our collective minds. This ain’t a-gonna be too hard, seeing as we all spend about half (or more) of our waking hours on-line doing the digital equivalent of watching paint dry.

For now I’ll just raise my glass and toast to future contact. Cheers! I’ll see you guys in the funny-papers, and don’t take any wooden indians.

Stuff

This is a passage from Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett that I found extremely amusing. I am an unwashed heathen, and have some very strong opinions on religion and those who have it. I have a great deal of admiration for people who have the stones to stand behind their faith or lack thereof, who firmly believe – or don’t – with all their heart. The majority of the people with their ass on a pew are doing it just to hedge their bet, or keep up appearances, not because of an unshakeable belief. That, my friends is called hypocrisy.

"This Om … anyone seen him?"

"It is said three thousand people witnessed his manifestation at the Great Temple when he made the Covenant with the prophet Brutha and saved him from death by torture on the iron turtle–"

"But I bet that now they’re arguing about what they actually saw, eh?"

"Well, indeed, yes, there are many opinions–"

"Right. Right. That’s people for you. Now if I’d seen him, really there, really alive, it’d be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched ’em like a father and cared for ’em like a mother … well, you wouldn’t catch me sayin’ things like ‘there are two sides to every question‘ and ‘we must respect other people’s beliefs.‘ You wouldn’t find me just being gen’rally nice in the hope that it’ll all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin’ sword. And I did say burnin’, Mister Oats, ‘cos that’s what it’d be. You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, decarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just … is just bein’ nice. And a way of keepin’ in touch with the neighbors."

Shakespeare said "All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players." Quite frankly, I’d rather be backstage with the crew than out front with the cast… the crew has so much more fun, and has more to offer.

Every so often I step outside of myself and look at the world around me, and realize that I hang out with some very cool and interesting people. None of us are people of note in the grand scheme of things, but naturally we’re all very individual personalities nonetheless. There are some very common traits we all seem to share: intelligence, open mindedness and a rather eclectic taste in what we find entertaining.

For example, one these folks is a die-hard metal band enthusiast (but not all metal bands, mind you) and would be more than happy to discuss with you for hours on end the virtues of that musical genre. This same guy will then turn around and talk to you about the time he spent working in the theatre and share with you his love of modern and classical musicals. The more you think back to the conversations about metal bands, the more you realize that a lot of it was concerning the proficiency of the musicians, and detailed discussions of how hard they work to master their art, not "Hey bra, they fucking ROCKED!" He has even found in his travels performers that combine the finest elements of hard, sharp edged music with the poetry and grace of elegant storytelling and clever orchestration – bands that will never see mainstream airplay, but are oh so much more deserving of it than those who do. His attention to detail and ear for music knows no bounds or bias, and he isn’t hung up on any one style. He may not like everything he hears, but he can appreciate the work and instrumental skills that went into it.

Another close friend of mine, a young gentleman of twenty we’ll call "Zygote" for the sake of this immediate paragraph. Zygote is another media fan with a voracious appetite for music and movies. On the surface, his musical preferences seem to be a more alternative-rock-rap flavor. If you listen to his playlist long enough, you’ll be a little taken aback by a few things you hear – Harry Nilsson’s Coconut song, movie themes, etc. He also startled me one day by asking me if I had Guys and Dolls on DVD, knowing that I have a fair collection of musicals in my library, and another day snatched The Lion King off the shelf and started watching it with the claim that it was one of his favorites. By this point I shouldn’t be surprised by what Zygote might do or say. He’s one of those hyper-intelligent, "I could give a crap what you think about me or the things I do" kind of folks who will do calculus in their heads for fun, and prove that there is more to a person’s personality and character than just the sum of their years. Those years are still relatively few, but there is a strength of will that exists there that you’d be hard pressed to find in most forty year old professionals.

My own taste in film will bounce from Gilliam to Woo, Scorsese to Kurosawa, Tarantino to Kubrick. I firmly believe that a movie can completely blow chunks, and still stand slightly on technical merit. I am a fan of the stage – drama, comedy and musicals alike. The only two genres I haven’t developed a taste for are opera and ballet (I’m so low-brow, what can I say). The music I listen to ranges across the charts in both artist and style. I’ll swing from a Vonnegut novel one day, to a Lobo comic book the next.

I don’t expect everyone to enjoy the same things I do, nor do I expect to groove on the same things you do. I do, however, expect to be able to have a decent conversation with you about any of it and have both of us part ways a little wiser for it, rather than agreeing to disagree because it’s not your or my bag.

Most of our society has come to the incorrect conclusion that once you reach a certain age you should stop learning new things. They think that their mind is like a door, and should be closed, locked and barred against the outside world lest the world get in and rearrange the furniture. Unfortunately, this happens very early for some people, and others could really use the redecoration at any age. Your mind should be a revolving door, letting shared information and experiences in, and allowing it out to be shared and experienced with those around you. When you stop learning new things, you stop living – in the metaphorical sense. Plant my body in the ground when I stop learning, ’cause I’m already dead and just haven’t stopped moving around yet.

I have a plethora of nieces and nephews, and they’re growing to be exceptional people. The two youngest – one each niece and nephew – are in their middle teens right now and are showing great promise of becoming intelligent, well educated human beings that refuse to walk the middle-line. They’re very distinct and individual in their tastes and interests and keep their minds open to new things, even the wacky stuff that dear old Uncle DmentD throws their way.

My wife and I share a great many interests, but remain individual in our own specific tastes. It’s what makes us who we are, those little differences. Where our paths cross is divine, but I enjoy the discovery of the traits that are uniquely hers, and revel in the features I know and love.

I started with a quote from Shakespeare, and I’ll end with one from Aunte Mame: "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!"

Carpe that Diem, baby.