The Tin Man » 2005

Thursday, December 1, 2005

So, tonight we head to Montreal for the weekend. Matt and my parents and I are driving to upstate New York tonight and then continuing on to Montreal tomorrow morning. We’ll be there through Sunday. This is a last-minute request, but does anyone have any must-see recommendations?

11:00 AM | 2 drops of oil

You know, it’s been five months since I officially became a New Yorker, but in the back of my mind I still fear that it’s only temporary and that I’m going to have to leave, that it’s all going to be taken away from me. I don’t know why this is.

One reason might be that I work in New Jersey. This isn’t really a problem, but it is a fact. Every day I take the PATH train to work, and I switch trains at the same stop in Jersey City where I used to get on when I still lived there. I live in one state, but I work in another. Not only that, but my employer is the state itself. So while I live in New York, New Jersey has pull over me.

A second reason might be that since long before Matt and I officially moved in together, I was unofficially living at his old place in the financial district. For at least a year, I was sleeping there, commuting to and from there every day, and keeping most of my clothes there. I’d visit my own apartment every few days, but those visits became less and less frequent, down to once every seven or eight days. So while I was unofficially living with Matt, I still had this phantom “other apartment” where most of my stuff was. Perhaps I got so used to having a phantom apartment that I still feel like I have one now, even though I distinctly remember moving all of my stuff out of there at the end of July, a month after I’d officially moved in to the new place and started using it as my official mailing address.

A corollary to that reason might be that my moving process was so gradual that I never really had a clean break between living situations.

Another reason might be that even though this is “our apartment,” I don’t quite have the same claim on it that Matt does. We live in this apartment because it comes with Matt’s job. Matt could unilaterally decide he wants a new job and we’d have to move; or Matt could break up with me (not that that’s gonna happen) and I’d have to move out. My living situation is kinda dependent on him. But maybe at some point we’ll rent a place together that will be equally both of ours.

The next reason also relates to Matt. For the foreseeable future, I want to stay in New York. But what if Matt decides at some point that he’s sick of New York? When you’re part of a couple, you have to think of concerns other than just your own. We’d have to reach some compromise.

Finally: for the several years that I was pining away over Manhattan from my Jersey City perch, I had these grand visions of what it would be like to finally be a Manhattanite. I’d be able to go out whenever I wanted. I could meet more people and have more dates. I could meet people in chat rooms more easily. I could bring people home more easily. Now, I much prefer the coupled life to the single life, but I’d always associated living in Manhattan with being single. Manhattan isn’t quite as exciting when you’re part of a couple. Instead of going out to a bar on a Monday or Tuesday night, I have dinner with Matt and we settle in for some TV. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with this - it’s just different from what my visions of Manhattan had been.

I’m 31, almost 32, and any potential for me to be a young single guy living in Manhattan is gone. I spent those years differently than I might have and they are unrepeatable. I’m always going to mourn that. Well, maybe not always, but I haven’t yet gotten over it: staying asexual and closeted until I was 24, staying in Charlottesville, VA for law school instead of moving to the big city after college, and then living in New Jersey for several years once I finally did move back up to the NYC area.

I think I need to acknowledge all of that as a kind of death. A death of years, a death of time, a death of opportunity. It totally sucks - it totally sucks that it’s all gone and that I screwed it up. Part of me keeps hoping that I can catch up on what I’ve lost, that I can make up for it somehow. But I can’t. I guess I’m still in the Bargaining stage.

I just realized that.

3:13 PM | 16 drops of oil

Tuesday, December 6, 2005

This past weekend in Montreal was great. We were there for my brother and his fiancée’s engagement party, so I got to meet my future sister-in-law’s three brothers and eight million relatives. Matt and I got to stay in a nice hotel room in which the shower was separated from the bedroom area by a glass wall. We walked down the Rue de St. Catherine, visited the Biodome, and took the funicular to the top of the Montreal Tower Observatory at the Parc Olympique. The temperature was in the 20s for most of the weekend, so we decided to save most of the outdoor stuff for August, when we’ll return for the actual wedding.

Crossing the border was surreal. I’ve travelled to various countries around the world, but this was my first trip to Canada. It was odd to just drive into another country. As we approached the border, the ubiquitous green federal highway exit signs started containing the word SORTIE in addition to EXIT, which seemed like an uncharacteristic American accommodation to foreign language speakers. Then we reached the border, had our passports examined and stamped by a guy in a booth, and then continued driving into Quebec. All the signs were suddenly in French. Weird.

Information hound that I am, I’ve found some links related to the U.S-Canadian border crossings:

- maps containing all the border crossings - the maps are enormous; if you click on “full-sized map,” your browser will freeze up.

- border crossing data from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

- more data - this page contains links to smaller maps; scroll down to just before Section 7.

12:52 PM | 3 drops of oil

Thursday, December 8, 2005

As a huge Back to the Future fanboy, I can’t believe November 5, 2005 passed without my realizing its significance: it was the 50th anniversary of Doc Brown’s invention of time travel and Marty McFly’s arrival in 1955.

As a belated honor, here (because I just discovered it) is: Back to the Future: A Trilogy Chronology. In addition to a detailed minute-by-minute chronology - chock-full of notes, quotes, goofs, references, and detailed information about certain text-filled frames (such as the listings of a 1955 phone book page and the text of the front page of a 2015 copy of USA Today) - the page also has other BTTF goodies, such as Where’s the DeLorean Now?, an analysis of how many time-travelling DeLoreans exist at any given moment in time. (I’ve actually thought about that before.)

And I thought I was obsessive.

12:44 PM | 1 drop of oil

The New Yorker has made Annie Proulx’s short story Brokeback Mountain, on which the movie is based, available on its website. I’ll have to read it either before or after seeing the movie, which opens tomorrow.

4:19 PM | 5 drops of oil

Chief Justice Roberts issued his first Supreme Court opinion yesterday. Here’s a stylistic analysis of the opinion. My favorite part of the analysis:

For anyone who attended the oral argument in the case, Wednesday’s decision also shows that Roberts is unafraid of standing up to Justice Antonin Scalia. One of the relevant precedents in the case was a 1968 case called Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises. When one of the lawyers at argument referred to the case by the shorthand Piggie Park, Scalia interrupted and said, only half-jokingly, “You know, it really would improve the dignity of this Court if we referred to Piggie Park as Newman.”

Without apology, Roberts referred to the case throughout his opinion Wednesday as Piggie Park.

5:02 PM | Comments Off

Friday, December 9, 2005

Sung to the tune of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”:

My bones proclaim a story of incompetent design.
My back still hurts, my sinus clogs, my teeth just won’t align.
If I had drawn the blueprint, I would cer-tain-ly resign.
Incompetent Design!
Evo-Evo-Evo-lution! Design is but a mere illusion.
Darwin sparked our revolution. Science SHALL prevail!

More here. (Thanks, Mike.)

12:06 PM | 1 drop of oil

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Our chorus performed our annual holiday concert last night. It was a lot of fun, etc. etc. But whatever - the biggest highlight for me occurred after the concert:

That’s us with Buffy’s mom, Kristine Sutherland. She and her family are very close with a member of our chorus and his partner. We also met her husband, actor John Pankow, although I feel that in our geeky Buffy-fanboy-ness we neglected him.

11:30 AM | 12 drops of oil

Monday, December 12, 2005

Extended biographies of New Yorker staff writers.

11:59 AM | 1 drop of oil

The season that might have been: Buffy Season 8 opening credits, made by a fan. It’s rather well done.

11:52 PM | 3 drops of oil

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

The Fellowship of the Ring: The Complete Recordings, three CDs plus audio DVD, was officially released today. Here’s an extensive review, with pictures as well as screen shots from the audio DVD.

Amazon.com has reduced its price to $47.99 (lower than it was listed last week), but CD Universe has it for $41.99. Nevertheless, I’ve ordered it from Amazon because I get free two-day shipping. I look forward to listening to this.

11:04 AM | Comments Off

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Andy tagged me for a meme, so:

Five Simple Pleasures:

Lying awake in bed on a weekend morning.
Doing the Saturday New York Times crossword. (Not easy to complete, though.)
Eating good soup.
Sitting on the couch watching TV with my arm around Matt.
Listening to good music.

You’re it:
Matt
Mike
Nick
Patrick
Matt P.

12:06 PM | 4 drops of oil

Newest pet peeve: people who, when ordering food from a counter, begin their order with “Gimme” or “Lemme get.” I start my orders with the more tentative (and hopefully just rhetorical) “Could I have…?” The first two just strike me as rude.

1:40 PM | 6 drops of oil

Friday, December 16, 2005

A Happy Hipster Hanukkah. I love it.

“HELLOOOOOOOO Jews!” the M.C. shouted to the 1,000 or so people sipping drinks and jostling elbows in the hazy purple light of Crobar, the Chelsea club, on Sunday evening….

Christmas has gotten out of hand, said Jackie Hoffman, who is starring in “Chanukah at Joe’s Pub,” a one-woman show. “No one does ‘The Sukkot Revue,’ ” she said, referring to the autumnal Jewish holiday, “because then we’re not being badgered.”…

Hanukkah is a minor, generally child-centered holiday that celebrates the victory of the Jews over the Syrian Greeks around 165 B.C. No classic Hanukkah films or ballets were inspired by it… Adam Sandler’s 1995 “Hanukkah Song,” in which he enumerates Jewish (and semi-Jewish) celebrities, is the closest thing to a mainstream Hanukkah tune.

“I think Sandler was the catalyst for a lot of this,” said Robert Smigel, the voice (and hand) behind Triumph, after his performance on Sunday. “A lot of that was him asserting himself as a Jew.”…

“Like most other trends,” Mr. Tannenbaum said, “the Jewish holiday hipster started in New York and has spread outward.”

The movement is likely to only go so far, said Rabbi Marc Gellman, part of “The God Squad,” an interfaith cable television show, and a Newsweek.com columnist. “This revival is primarily a New York-L.A. thing, and it’s the result of the fact that the only geographical region that has a majority of Jews outside Israel is Manhattan,” he said. “If you live in Wichita, the new hip Jewish movement will never reach you.”

11:52 AM | Comments Off

The Fellowship of the Ring: The Complete Recordings arrived last night. I think I’m in love.

I’ve only listened to the first disc of three so far, but it’s like experiencing the movie - the Extended Edition - scene by scene. The first disc is one hour long and they’re only just arriving at Weathertop. The disc includes the entire two and a half minutes of the mournful choral elf song, “A Elbereth Gilthoniel,” that we hear in the Extended Edition when Frodo and Sam spot a procession of elves in the woods near the Shire. So hauntingly beautiful.

An accompanying 44-page booklet includes musical notation of various themes used in the score, with analysis as to how various themes are related.

As a bonus, anyone can download the “annotated score,” which is not really an annotated score but rather a track-by-track description of the three-disc set. It’s a beautiful-looking document with stills from the movie.

I may need to finally get an iPod just so I can have my own “portable Fellowship.” Once the other two complete recordings come out, I could listen to all nine-plus hours in one big Lord of the Rings audio marathon.

2:10 PM | 1 drop of oil

Exactly how long does it take to port a cell phone number from one carrier to another?

After two and a half years, I finally decided to get a new cell phone, the Motorola 815 from Verizon. I ordered it from Amazon and it arrived on Tuesday night. Now it’s Friday afternoon and my old number, from a Cingular phone, still hasn’t ported. The guy on the customer service line said it would take one to five days, perhaps as many as 10 days. And it’s only been 2.5 days. But I’m impatient.

Actually, the first person I spoke to at Verizon customer service - who sounded like a young overweight southern woman with marshmallows in her mouth - put me on hold five times. Five times she’d come back on the line. “Sir?” she’d say. “Yes?” I’d say expectantly. “I apologize, I’m still working on the transfer,” she’d say. “Okay,” I’d say politely, feeling just the tiniest bit more annoyed each time.

The fifth time she told me they were having a problem, and that they would have to send me a letter which I would have to sign and mail back to them before my number could be ported. After some assertive skepticism on my part, I asked if there was someone else I could talk to. There was a short delay and the aforementioned guy came on the line. He told me that they’d sorted things out on their end but that I had to wait to get permission from Cingular, which would take one to five-or-ten days. I asked if I still had to sign a letter. He told me probably not, but that if I got one in the mail I should probably sign it and send it back anyway.

So for the time being, I’m carrying around two cell phones. Annoying.

At least I finally have a camera phone.

2:15 PM | 5 drops of oil

R.I.P. John Spencer. I can’t believe he was only 58.

I wonder how The West Wing will handle this.

7:16 PM | 2 drops of oil

Sunday, December 18, 2005

We saw two movies this weekend.

Today was Brokeback Mountain. Hmm. Objectively, I thought it was a great movie - wonderfully acted and directed and filmed. But it didn’t really move me. That wouldn’t be such a big deal to me except that I keep hearing things about people leaving the theater crying. Matt, surprisingly, was sniffling and wiping his eyes at the end - surprising because I’m usually the more emotional one. I don’t know why I wasn’t as affected - perhaps I couldn’t identify with stoic cowboys; perhaps I’m tired of gay movies that don’t have happy endings. I don’t know. None of this means I didn’t enjoy the movie - I did. I just think it was meant more for straight America than for us gay boys.

Last night was The Producers. I don’t know what the critics are talking about - it was hysterical. Over the top, perhaps, but, duh. That’s the point.

And now Matt is watching the ABC TV production of Once Upon a Mattress, making this the gayest movie weekend ever.

10:04 PM | 4 drops of oil

Monday, December 19, 2005

Two things:

1) I’ve set up a feed of my Flickr photos in the sidebar. My new phone has a camera, so I’ll use it. My phone number finally ported to the new phone yesterday - it turned out someone was supposed to give me a phone number that would automatically start the process, but I didn’t find this out until I went to the Verizon store yesterday to find out why my number hadn’t ported after five days. Even after doing that, it still required another phone call to customer service last night, where I spoke to a very helpful woman. So it’s done, and as Russ told me, I’ll probably never have to call Verizon customer service again.

2) My birthday is next Tuesday. I’ll be 2⁵ years old. Hooray for powers of 2. I’d rather be turning 25 than 2⁵, but what can you do? Oh yeah… you can buy me stuff. If you like.

11:44 AM | 2 drops of oil

How to make a CD holder with origami.

2:29 PM | Comments Off

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

So, it looks like there’s going to be a New York City transit strike. I guess I’m fortunate that it won’t affect my work commute - the PATH trains to New Jersey are run by the Port Authority, not the MTA, although there may be more people than usual on the PATH tomorrow as people look for alternate ways to travel up Sixth Avenue. Matt, for his part, is totally into this story.

Sigh. For the third time in just over four years (9/11, the blackout, now the strike), we’re going to see people commuting on foot over the Brooklyn Bridge. And I guess we can look forward to stories in the New York Times Styles section next Sunday about romances that bloomed during shared cab rides. (Matt totally stole that from me. I thought of it first.)

12:28 AM | 2 drops of oil

Here’s some background on the standoff between the TWU and the MTA and on what each side is looking for (published last week). The MTA has given some ground since then - they even backed off their demand to increase the retirement age from 55 to 62 - but apparently that’s not good enough for Toussaint.

10:16 AM | Comments Off

An interesting string of comments about the strike on the TWU’s blog.

10:41 AM | Comments Off

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Okay - yesterday it was fun, the novelty of it all. But today is Day Two of the strike, and it’s more annoying. The PATH was more crowded this morning. There was a long line of people on either side of the stairway leading down to the turnstiles at the 9th Street station. Since I had a Quick Card instead of cash like everyone else, the PATH employee let me cut ahead. Unfortunately, there was a line of people emerging from a train and coming up the stairs, and I thought I could make it down before they started coming up, but I was wrong, so I tried to squeeze back into the line while slowing people down, pissing people off who were both coming and going. Yeah, I was that guy. I hate being that guy.

Once everyone was done coming up the stairs, I went down to the turnstile, where this woman was about to put her $1.50 into the cash fare machine. She saw me coming and said “Um -” as the beginning of what was probably going to be an accusation, but of course I wasn’t using her turnstile but the one next to it that only takes Quick Cards and per-ride Metrocards. I went on through. I felt like a commercial for the PATH Quick Card.

Okay, so it wasn’t like I had to walk across a bridge to work or anything, but that’s my story.

9:37 AM | 5 drops of oil

Thursday, December 22, 2005

Hooray, the strike is over! Life can return to normal.

3:22 PM | 4 drops of oil

Friday, December 23, 2005

Today’s been such a nice day. It was warmer than it’s been, the subways are running, the streets are filled with pre-Christmas spirit (hey, I can still appreciate it), and I’m off from work until January 3.

Last night and today I finally watched most of the appendix DVDs that come with The Two Towers.

I feel so relaxed. Hooray for vacations.

7:21 PM | 2 drops of oil

Monday, December 26, 2005

An early birthday present from my parents, my brother and his fiancée: a video iPod. It’s my very first iPod. Yay!

8:46 PM | 5 drops of oil

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

I’m 32 years old today. Thirty-two is an interesting number because it’s a power of two. Today I can slice my life in half, into fourths, into eighths, into sixteenths. Half a lifetime ago I celebrated my 16th birthday in Australia. I’m now twice as old as I was at the end of 80s. Weird.

Matt and I had lunch at E.J.’s in the Village this afternoon, and as an early birthday present, Ron Rifkin of Alias and (presumably) his wife were sitting at the table next to us. Matt later told me that he admired my self-restraint and subtlety in not staring, since I’m known sometimes to melt around celebrities. Afterwards I thought that maybe I could have gone up to him and quietly whispered some code words in his ear. But I don’t think he would have enjoyed that.

We did some shopping after lunch, and now we’re relaxing. I’m going to play with my new iPod and watch a rented movie. Tonight we’re going out to meet a bunch of friends for a birthday celebration. It should be a much better birthday than last year’s, when I had the flu. Yep, it should be a good one. Happy Birthday to me.

4:18 PM | 9 drops of oil

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

The 50 Greatest Gadgets of the Past 50 Years.

12:34 PM | 1 drop of oil

Thursday, December 29, 2005

So I’m taking the whole week off from work. I’d been looking forward to relaxing and doing fun things and so on. But now I feel like the time is just slipping away. My ambitions never seem to match reality. I still have four and a half days left, but I’m not sure where the first six and half have gone. I’m sure that by the end, though, I’ll look back and appreciate having had time to do nothing.

I’ve been sleeping horribly, though. The last few mornings, I’ve been waking up at around 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. and tossing and turning for three hours or so before falling back asleep. Then I finally wake up around 11 or noon but I still feel like a walking zombie. It’s been an insomniac’s vacation for me. I hope this goes away soon.

Last night we finally saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I read the first book years and years ago when I was a little kid, and I don’t remember anything about it except Turkish Delight. I didn’t know what Turkish Delight was at the time - I pictured it as a dish consisting of turkey and gravy, and it never occurred to me to wonder why Edmund would consider this to be his favorite dish. As of last night, I still didn’t really know what Turkish Delight was. Matt still had to explain it to me afterwards.

Anyway, I enjoyed the movie, although I liked the first half better than the second. The whole battle thing seemed to come out of nowhere for me, and while I found Lucy adorably cute and clever in the first half, she was grating on me in the second half.

Let me say, however, that I will feel less skeevy about myself once Skandar Keynes (Edmund) turns 18, for reasons I don’t care to go into.

4:59 PM | 5 drops of oil

This evening I saw A History of Violence. What a disturbing and violent (surprise, eh? you wouldn’t have guessed it from the title) movie. I had no intention of seeing it, but then I read yesterday that it won the Village Voice’s seventh annual film critics’ poll, so I decided to check it out. I read some reviews afterwards, and I didn’t really catch on my own the meta/subversive/humorous element that some reviewers have apparently seen in it - although now that I think about it, I did find myself laughing in admiration at some of the shocking violence. It’s a provocative film and worth seeing, and it has a devastating, heartbreaking final shot. Viggo Mortensen is mesmerizing.

11:17 PM | 1 drop of oil

Friday, December 30, 2005

I just saw Woody Allen’s newest film, Match Point. Stop reading if you don’t want any (minor) spoilers.

It’s being called his best film in years, and it is, although I would have enjoyed it more if it weren’t a remake of his very own Crimes and Misdemeanors. It’s set in London instead of New York, but it still has the earmarks of Woody Allen: there are some very talky scenes and the characters are interested in high culture. He still doesn’t know how to write women, so he lets his misogynistic tendencies take over - Scarlett Johansson’s character is inconsistently written, and she inexplicably becomes nagging and annoying halfway through the film. Up until then, I loved the movie; from then on, I didn’t buy or like what was happening. However, the movie is saved by a great final twist.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is even hotter than he was in Bend it Like Beckham, but I am in love with Matthew Goode. And Penelope Wilton is terrific.

And so my week of movies continues.

4:58 PM | 2 drops of oil

Saturday, December 31, 2005

Enormously fat snowflakes are falling outside our windows right now. Some of them are an inch across.

Today’s the last day of 2005. What do I remember about the past year?

The event that most stands out for me is that Matt and I moved in together and I officially became a New York City resident.

I performed at WYSIWYG.

We formed friendships with a great group of guys. (If JP had a blog I’d link to it too.)

We went to The Catskills and Chicago and Montreal.

I took a fiction-writing class.

I got an iPod and The Complete New Yorker.

I saw lots of plays and musicals and movies. I read many good books.

In sum: I moved, I made new friends, I went places, I learned things, I did things, and I got cool stuff.

Not a bad year. Bring on 2006!

4:05 PM | 3 drops of oil