So Logan, from Telepathik Friend, went to see Secret with me. The movie was pretty much exactly what I expected from a Jay Chou feature length chick flick with a twist -- weird and boring, in a good way. I described it later as piano porn -- Jay Chou plays a gifted piano student (named Jay) who goes to a piano school for gifted piano students and plays a lot of piano, by himself and with others. There were scenes in this movie where they really had to try to get that piano sequence shoehorned in. I laughed, I cried, I mouthed 'what the fuck'. Logan and I had never hung out before so I really had no idea what his reaction was going to be, but he totally dug it. And it was really great hanging out in the hallway after the screening and hearing a bunch of Jay Chou dorks fail to impress their dates with bits of apropos Jay Chou trivia.

The other night, Emily and I hung out with Jackie, whom we met when Yellow Crystal Star / The Ear Is The Brain toured through Cafe Berlin last year. I made a really great joke about 'the Lot's Wife of salads' which seems less great each time I tell someone about it. Jackie and her friends are coming back into town on the 9th, and Emily and I have made alternately tentative and deadly serious plans to play a set as Craig Party USA to open for them at their show. so Look Out

I found out that one of my classmates used to party with Matthew Barney, and he was a dick!

Emily and I bought a projector, the same model as the one OBECat used to have. THis model is extra desirable because the bulbs are $5 each instead of $500. It has a bunch of names, and you can find it for as cheap as $100 on eBay (in our case, right after we bought one for $200). The picture's decent, it's a little loud and hot but who cares, and as long as you never let Meredith Frasier around it your investment could last a lifetime.

The guy who bought my real estate finally paid off the entire balance, after a few months of skipped payments. I'm almost out of debt! Plus I finally got a job, walking around neighborhoods with a clipboard and making notes about parking garages, plus I've been tutoring my classmates on Final Cut, plus I've been filming at this hipster dance club on Friday nights. So my financial situation is starting to turn around. If I can get a nametag job when school is over (or something in the industry would be fine too), I'll be capable of buying groceries with no worries. Emily just got a job as the carousel operator at Golden Gate Park!

Emily had a piece in the Southern Exposure art auction fundraiser, and I managed to slightly embarrass her by eating something life six plates of hors d'oeuvres. More embarrassing than the event itself was when I related the story to my classmates the next day and they all said 'Yeah, I would expect that about you.' I'm really thrilled that my dominant personality trait is my enthusiasm for free food. The people there totally blew my mind because they all looked exactly like the Nuni couple from SNL. I didn't realize those people were real! I tried to have a couple of conversations (at the catering table) but kept cloddin' it up. Some nights just go like that. My favorite piece of the night (in true clod fashion) was a Siegfried and Roy promotional 3D movie being projected in a back room. Nice to see our fellow Missourians getting represented.

I did my first professional-type videography gig on Friday night, at a LGBT Indian-American fundraiser. There were some drag sets and gender-flipped traditional dancing, and some lesbian Indian comediennes, and a buffet table (more free food jokes) and lots of hot gay Indian dudes. So it was a great time. Hopefully they'll love how the DVD turns out and hire me for more stuff.

My uncle Frank was in town and took us out to dinner at a fancy restaurant where you get charged for water. He advised me never to ever go back to Missouri. Makes sense. The last few days I've felt much more at ease here; I mean, our neighborhood is still smelly and scary, and rent is ludicrous, but I'm starting to make actual friends and know where the fun things to do are, and I'm beginning to see some of my goals come into fruition. A grown-up life seems within reach.

I made this commercial for this contest site and if I win I'll be out of debt. So vote for me. I don't think voting actually matters but it can't hurt. The aspect ration is off a little and it looks like I made it in an hour, because I made it in four hours, using footage shot during a hijacked class exercise. So, my usual idiom. It'll also be my midterm project once I clean it up a little (I uploaded it forty minutes before the deadline).



The other night I bought some milk and ice cream and was biking home after getting yelled at by a homeless guy, and as I was hurtling down the mostly carless main street the milk bounced out of my basket and landed in the street right in front of me. I had no choice but to run it over, and the jug split open and hemorrhaged all over the asphalt. I don't know if it was the shock, or the idiom, or the fact that the impact of riding a bicycle over a quart of milk at top speed had shoved my bike seat into my balls at a noteworthy speed and angle, but, during the four blocks home, I cried.