I know it hasn’t escaped your attention that I haven’t rented anything since my DVD Freedom Pass expired a while ago. Maybe you’ve noticed me outside, pointedly not making eye contact with any staff members despite the fact that I can see you all perfectly well through those ginormous windows and I walk by at least twice a day because you’re, like, right next to the train station. Blockbuster, baby, I know my behavior must seem hurtful and puzzling to you, perhaps even cold and a little bit fruity: we used to be such pals, you and I. I defended your Freedom Pass to scornful Netflix members of my acquaintance and even forgave you when told you didn’t carry Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, not even on vile VHS.

But my patience, oh you villainous video vendor, is not entirely without limit. See, here’s the thing, or anyway one of the things, perhaps even the most annoying in the great heaping pile of things: your store is in a serious state of disarray, to put it mildly. All those little empty DVD boxes that are supposed to go in front of the Blockbuster DVD boxes that actually contain the rentable DVDs are just kind of scattered and stacked up all over the place: any hope of alphabetical ordering or indeed general categorizing at all has long ago fallen by the wayside. I’m having difficulty conveying an accurate sense of the incredible frustration attending any attempt at finding a specific video. Let me give an example: I tried for, like, two weeks to rent Requiem for a Dream. The first couple of times I went to Drama and then found the sort of vaguely demarcated R section (R as in Requiem, not as in Rated), I found the empty cover box, but no Blockbuster DVD box behind it. Okay, no big deal, said I: I assumed it was out. But each time I returned, I discovered the vague R section became more and more vague until it disappeared entirely. The empty Requiem cover box was eventually located in a five-deep stack of other empty cover boxes (with their DVDs nowhere to be found), while its former spot was occupied by another stack containing the Britney Spears movie, Ice Age, and Die Hard.

It’s not like this was the standard sort of mess you might expect to find at a video store on, say, a Monday morning, after an endlessly abusive weekend of Manhattanites looking to do some serious renting. It was bad when I first got my month-long Freedom Pass and got progressively and indeed exponentially worse over that entire month, such that when my pass finally did expire I swore never to spend another furious forty-five minutes in search of Requiem for a Fucking Dream. So, thou treacherous Blockbuster: I say farewell to your surly, unhelpful staff, to your complete lack of DVD categorization beyond Action, Comedy, Drama, and New. It’s not me, it’s you.

So if you’re an unabashed public television dweeb like me, and you totally dug on the whole Frontier House thing (and to a slightly lesser degree perhaps the whole 1900 House thing, and by lesser degree I’m making a vague reference only to the fact that it was only like three episodes long so I didn’t really have time to become completely enamored with it), then maybe you should think about applying to be on Colonial House (produced, like its predecessors, by my own beloved WNET). Although I’m seriously tempted, I can’t spend five months living in someone else’s house, colonial or otherwise, but maybe you can!

It’s not that I’m surprised our Commander In Chief spent most of the State of the Union talking about taxes and inflicting upon his audience that repulsive little smirk as applause greeted the end of his every sentence. I wouldn’t call it surprise, either, that I experienced when he tried to pass himself off as an environmentalist (not to mention an AIDS activist). And I wasn’t even a little surprised when he trotted out his favorite weapons of mass destruction routine. Apart from a couple of references to the evils of “hitlerism” and an impressively concerted effort by his speechwriter to see how many times it’s humanly possible to work the word “terror” into any given sentence, we didn’t learn anything new. Even given that this is a Bush we’re talking about here, I can’t recall the last time I sat through a more useless and tiresome speech, and I’ve listened to the State of the Union every year since before I really had an inkling what the Union was, much less an interest in its State. My family has always been perhaps more than usually political (while it is a much-lamented fact that I was born on the day Reagan was inaugurated in 1981, I was handing out campaign literature for Dukakis by 1988), and while I wouldn’t by any means call myself an enthusiastic Democrat, I identify particularly with my father, who (as my brother recounted earlier) was driven to forcibly remove a cover featuring our President from an issue of the Economist, and to do savage violence upon it.

Marketplace has a great interview with Andy Serkis; New Line has been suggesting a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as Gollum, which would be a first. No one has ever been nominated for a “voiceover” role - but then, Gollum wasn’t a voiceover role at all. Serkis acted each of Gollum’s scenes during the regular shooting of the film, and then again in a motion capture studio; all of Gollum’s expressions and gestures are his, and his voice wasn’t even altered. The studio is encouraging voters to think of Gollum not as an animated character but as nothing more than an elaborate sort computer generated makeup job, worn by Sekris. That may be pushing it, but it seems beyond question that the performance of Gollum is certainly no less Sekris’s than is that of any of the other characters. Really, though, I’m not all that interested in the Oscars. The interview was great on a geeky Lord of the Rings fan level more than anything else, and the highlight is definitely Andy describing how his Gollum’s gollum was inspired by his cat’s hairball noises.

In other news, a philanthropic reader sent a sixpack of this delectable confection, which has done wonders for my early-morning alacrity. Not to imply I’ve sworn off Jolt Espresso, but there’s something to be said for a minty-fresh source of caffeine, excessive consumption of which doesn’t make one have to pee every twenty minutes. Hooray for Jolt gum!

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m no sissy when it comes to East Coast winter weather. I recall temperatures well below zero when I weren’t nothing more than knee-high to a grasshopper, and snowdrifts taller than me when I was considerably beyond grasshopper-height. Maybe it’s just that last winter was such a wussy ripoff of a winter, more like an unusually chilly and interminably long fall than anything else, but honestly: this January has been particularly brutal. The last thing I want to hear from the friendly NPR weather man while I’m shivering from my shower and scrambling to put on all my heater-toasted clothes before they go all cold again is that at JFK it’s four degrees but feels like negative six with wind chill. And it’s not like ten blocks is so terribly far to walk but when it feels like negative six (with wind chill), it also feels like much, much longer than ten blocks, and my extremities are actually in pain with the cold by the time I make it to class in the morning, and I end up dropping my wallet at least once trying to get my ID out to show to the friendly security man because I can’t feel my fingers even a little bit.

Today was cold and tomorrow will also be cold, and my heat doesn’t work and I’m whining about it, but other than that, things are great.

a is for Athena, who is smart and fun to read.
b is for besmirched, home of dee bee underscore (say my name, say my name).
c is for Catchdubs, written by a fellow NYU person.
d is for the Dooce, who left us for a long time but then came back again.
e is for enoentity, who doesn’t look like Henry Rollins, not even a little.
f is for fuck.org, home to the mysterious #lost weblog.
g is for Gawker, which I read with my tea before school.
h is for Heather Champ and Harrumph, which is fun to say out loud.
i is for Isaac, my favorite brother.
j is for Jish, whose name is cooler than mine.
k is for k10k, which I missed while it was away.
l is for loobylu, who draws pretty things.
m is for Mena Trott, who has a pretty new design.
n is for NYC Bloggers, but not for their merchandise.
o is for Ossuary, which keeps us sheltered from the elements.
p is for Penny Arcade, which never ceases to make me happy.
q is for qat, who makes fantastic pumpkin cookies.
r is for the Rabbit, who makes me giggle audibly.
s is for Small Stories, which involves an abundance of cute indie girls.
t is for toothpaste, which is for dinner.
u is for Useless Worthless Insipid which is a different color than I remember it..
v is for volatile, because I said so.
w is for WIGU, because J-Ro is seriously hot stuff.
x is for xihr, a stranger in the night.
y is for yellow, as in littleyellowdifferent, which still has nothing to do with Nuprin.
z is for Coach Z, of Homestar Runner fame and glory.

I know I was snarky about William Gibson using Blogger for his weblog, but I’ve been enjoying his posts more and more, lately. I’m impressed with how quickly he’s mastered the format - writing a novel or short story and writing for the web are very different beasts, but he’s made the transition seamlessly. I forget, sometimes, that I’m actually reading a weblog by the same guy who wrote Neuromancer - my battered, much-loved of which still gets reread at least once a year or so. I suppose it’s another mark of a job well done that his blog leaves me itching to read his new book.

1. Chris and I went to the American Museum of Natural History today to check out the Einstein exhibit (which I recommend for the biographical miscellany, although the physics is oversimplified a bit) and to gawk at the dinosaurs. Post-gawking, we wandered through the massive and intimidating Dinostore. I acquired a Tube-O-Dinos, which was cool enough, and an Amber Insect lollipop, which turned out to be much cooler: I bought it thinking it was a cute idea to make amber-colored lollipops with candy bugs in the middle, but it turns out that it’s a real cricket imprisoned in high fructose corn syrup or whatever. I like the idea of kiddies not picking up on that (I didn’t until I read the ingredients list and got to the part about CRICKET AND/OR LARVA) and sucking away happily until they get to the chewy cricket center. Or would it be crunchy?

2. My crazy downstairs neighbor, who’s been out to get me since I dared to complain about the salsa music shaking my apartment (two floors up) well after midnight, actually apologized to me today, and promised to turn it down earlier on weeknights. Who knew!

3. Looking for a third DVD to rent earlier this afternoon, so as to exploit my Freedom Pass to its fullest, I picked up Lovely and Amazing on the basis of a half-remembered recommendation from someone in one of my classes last semester. It turns out to be pretty good, and really I can’t complain about any movie featuring Catherine Keener getting arrested for satutory rape of the actor who played Donnie Darko.

4. While arranging my new dinosaurs, formerly of the Tube-O-Dinos, I accidentally knocked off my desk this gorgeous handmade Dia de los Muertos skeleton lady that I picked up at a Mexican folk art place in Massachusetts. I love my skeleton lady dearly, and I swore for several minutes straight when I picked her up to discover she’d lost an arm. I sat disconsolately at my desk, staring at her ceramic stump for several more minutes and wishing I had some superglue before I remembered that I actually do have superglue from the last time I broke something. Five minutes later she was sitting proudly atop my desk once more, her arm firmly affixed with not so much as a crack visible. Hooray for superglue!

5. I’d given up on getting my third philosophy class for this semester and had resigned myself to my useless English elective with its massively expensive textbooks when I got email notifying me that the philosophy class did end up getting moved to a larger room, and I had a spot in it if I still wanted it (which of course I did). Now I’ve got to go buy another set of books, but I’m much happier about my schedule, and after this semester I’ll be nearly done with the major, finally. Hooray for larger lecture halls!

I’ve been meaning to write something about Adaptation since seeing it a couple weeks ago with Spencer and Chris, but I’ve been having trouble distilling my thoughts on the film into something at all comprehensible. Before seeing it, I told Spencer (who wanted to know what to expect) that I thought it would probably be weird and amusing, if nothing else, and I think that holds true. It was, if nothing else, weird and amusing - but I admit to being a little disappointed. While I understand why the film shifts as it does maybe two thirds of the way through, I still didn’t like that it did; the fact that the audience is sympathetic to the Herculean task to which the writer comes face to face doesn’t make his failure when finally meeting it any more enjoyable to sit through. Overall, Adaptation undeniably has its moments - I nearly laughed the overpriced cola directly out of my nose, buckeroos and buckerettes, throughout the first portion of the film, and I can definitely say that it left me with an unqualified desire to read The Orchid Thief. It’s just a shame that the weakest portion of the movie comes after all the good parts have faded from immediate memory and looking at one’s watch becomes the most enthralling option available. All in all, I guess I’d say see it, especially if you happen to have a fondness for Being John Malkovich that might make you inclined to be forgiving toward Adapation’s flaws.

My own faq is rather out of date, I know. As part of rather more sweeping changes I’m still chipping away at, I’ve scrapped the whole thing and am rewriting as necessary. Classes have started again, though, which means my personal project time will be decreasing exponentially over the next couple of months - so here’s a couple more queries that show up a lot in my inbox, and their answers.

What’s your major?
I get a lot of school-related questions; the answers to most of them are scattered throughout the archives, but I’ll summarize. I’m currently a junior philosophy major at NYU. Yes, I’m a little old to be a junior - I took nearly two years off to work a design job, but thanks to a heap of AP credit I’m only a year behind what was originally my graduating class. Yes, I recommend NYU as a school, but if you’re considering moving to New York to enroll, don’t underestimate the role the city will play in your life. Yes, I can give you dirt on good and bad philosophy professors I’ve had here, for those of you considering the major or minor, but for that you should mail me.

Is Story really your last name?
Yes.

Are you related to Derrick Story?
Not that I know of, no.

Are you related to Dana A. Story?
Yes! He’s my grandpa, and he’s apart from having built his share of ships (as has my Dad), he’s also written quite a lot about shipbuilding in general and in Essex in particular.

Are you really going to microwave your clothes?
No, I’m not really going to microwave my clothes, but I appreciate the concern.

How was your first day of classes, anyway?
Okay, this one isn’t frequent, but thanks for asking! Classes went well, apart from the fact that the professor for my Brit Lit elective didn’t show up. We waited around until we could wait around no more, then wrote an explanatory note on the board and left. Maybe we’ll see him Thursday?