bingeing and purging

Today was garbage day. Lately, I’ve been on a cleaning kick and when I got home last night I knew that I needed to tackle an area of the apartment and throw out a ton of stuff. And I had already made the decision about what needed to go first…

My target: Magazines.

Have you ever been called by one of those magazine services? I was, and since my head tends to resemble a large purple lollypop (mmmm… sucker), I said “Sure, I’d love to receive lots of magazines.” And lo, they started to arrive (there’s more to the story than that, but I’ll save that for another blog). So let me describe the magazine situation in mathematics terms:

Lots of incoming magazines + pack rat = lots of piles of magazines

I knew I had a lot. I didn’t realize how many. So I threw all of them down from the loft and their other hiding places into the main area and started to go through them at 6.00pm (I’ll be posting the pictures of this). I’d quickly scan through each, clip any good articles, and then throw them out. Well I decided to keep count of my progress. Five hours and 188 magazines later(!) I gave up. There’s about 40 or so left, but I was starting to hallucinate from fumes from all of the cologne samples. The mix of mental exhaustion, stinky chemical attacks, and YM! (please, please don’t ask about why I get YM!) was something that was not ment for this earth. Thanksfully Di dragged me away from ground zero and played some Cure to help rid me of the O-Town/Brittney effects.

Side note 1: On the plus side I found a couple keepers (including an Internet World from 1994 talking about how great Mosaic was).

Side note 2: While working on ridding myself of the paper menace a telemarketer called selling *guess what*? Magazines!!! She was really nice and we chatted for a while. I learned how the mailing label on a magazine shows how long your subscription will run. Sadly, I discovered I’ll be getting Yahoo Internet Life until I’m 41. I informed her I wouldn’t be renewing after that.

One of my many guilty pleasures is movies. I love ’em in just about every variety from art house fare to good bad movies (Armies of Darkness for example). Thankfully where I live makes it very easy to feed that urge. Rochester has two great theatre for lovers of non-mainstream movies (and a bunch of great mainstream theatres too): The Little Theatre and The Dryden Theatre at the Eastman House. The Little is our local art house theatre. If you’re interested in seeing indy films here in town, it’s the place to go. And that’s cool…

But for the best selection of films, good and bad, new and old, you’ve got to go to the Dryden. The George Eastman House is both a museum and film preservation institute. They are responsible for salvaging, restoring and storing massive amounts of film. When the Wizard of Oz was re-released into theatres a few years back, they were showing a print that was restored at the Eastman House. Almost every night of the week you can go to the Dryden and catch a different film, with an introductory lecture, for about 7 bucks.

So where is this blog going you ask? Well August is a kick bootie month at the Dryden for Fan Boy’s like me. You can check the calendar yourself, but here are a couple highlights:

  • 8/2 Godzilla (1954) – the original Japanese print, subtitles, no Raymond Burr
  • 8/3 Oceans 11 (1960) – see the brat pack movie before the star studded remake is release this December
  • 8/7 The Valiant Ones (1975) – Old School good Kung Fu cinema
  • 8/8 Annie Hall (1977) – Arguably Woody Allen’s most mainstream film and one of his best
  • 8/9 Destroy All Monsters (1968) – More rubber suit goodness than you can handle. 11 Monsters and Godzilla throwing a drop kick. What more could you want in a film
  • 8/10 La Femme Nikita (1991) – forget the crappy American Remake or the bad TV series, this is the good stuff
  • 8/12 Touch of Evil (1958) – Only Orson Wells could figure out a way for Charlton Heston to play a convincing Mexican
  • 8/14 Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain (1983) – Before Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon there was The Bride with White Hair. And before the Bride there was Zu. This was one of Hong Kong first big Kung Fu/Fantasy/Wire Work/Sword Play films and still one of the best (thanks to the presence of talent like Yuen Bao and Summo Hung). Also a lot funnier too
  • fingers are getting tired… to many good movies… one last
  • 8/21 Swordsman II (1991) – Before Jet Li came to the US he made his name in period Kung Fu films. This is regarded as one of his best.

Fact is, just about every movie in August is a good one. Check the calendar for yourself And if you’re in the area and want to take in a flick, drop me a note.

sigh. I was so close. Unfortunately before I could update my other pages to the new look, trouble struck and blogger is having problems accepting template changes. I’ll try to fix ’em up tomorrow. For now it’s off to Toronto….

Ok, finally got this design to a point I’m happy with. Dig it, this is the finished look for my blog. At least for right now….

Wow. It’s been three days since I returned from the Martial Arts conference and I’m still grappling with the lessons learned there. Within the course of two days my world suddenly became a much bigger place. More about that on the Martial Arts Page.

One of the other projects I’m involved in when I’m not at work is setting up a Theatre Company. I’ve been involved in theatre for a number of years on a college basis. Basically, the theatre scene here is Rochester, well… kinda sucks. We have one major professional theatre here in town that stages good stuff from time to time. But the majority of their stuff is way too safe. The rest of the professional and semi pro groups in town are a pretty mixed bag at best. Any hoo, I’m documenting our progress in the creation of the company on my Theatre Page. I’ll have a report up later today on our meeting with the associate director of University of Rochester’s International Theatre Program.

Other than that I’ve been fighting exhaustion and a bit of depression. My body is trying to recover from the weekend. I’m feeling a lot better as I got more sleep last night. Night’s here have been very hot and I’m too cheap to get AC. Oh, check out the new look of Julia’s Blog! I need to get on the ball and add links to my friends blogs from this page. *Sigh* So much to do and such little time….