i'm workin here!

2003.04.30 10.57

The title of this entry is my take on ''I'm walkin' here!'' which Marty McFly Jr. yells at a car in Back to the Future II in homage by its director Robert Zemeckis in his take on something Robert Deniro says in Taxi Driver. Crazy movie that Taxi Driver. You lookin' at me? YOU LOOKIN' AT ME?! Well... I don't see anybody else here. So you must be lookin' at me.

Sorry for the lack of updates. Been working 12 hour days and the weekends have been semi eventful (when I'm not sleeping). Here is my blog entry from last Friday. Come back in time with me.

Leaning against train station office in Ft. Washington. Five minutes until the R5 gets here. Busy week = skimpy blog updates. I went to NY on Tuesday to see Beth and her mom. At first things weren't going that well. I missed an earlier train. Then my train got delayed due to a ''Police Action'' in Trenton. I didn't arrive in NYC until 6:30 PM. We met up and hit a diner on the way from Penn Station called Hamburger Harry's #145. Not sure what the 145 stands for. Perhaps this is one down, one hundred and forty-four left to go. We then attended a performance of the play "The Play What I Wrote" courtesy of Beth's awesome mom. Slapstick British humor is very some good stuff. I'd read about the play in Entertainment Weekly only a few days before. If you like that kind of humor then you'll go home happy at the end. Bonus -- they feature a surprise guest actor. I am typing this on my BlackBerry and it is easy to contain my excitement while I type this out with my thumbs. So... the play. Right. The article mentioned Roger Moore of James Bond fame taking part earlier this month. We got Alan Alda which isn't too shabby at all. Mr. Alda was great and played up to the audience whenever possible. The 4 Emmys he owns were well deserved. Yeah, the Emmys were mentioned more than once. We then found a nice restaurant called Cafe 123, although the credit card receipt reads Cafe Un Deux Trois. It was cold and windy outside so we didn't spend a lot of time looking for a place, but glad to say the food was good. The Dirty Martini was very good. I sense that I will be writing a web page about the Dirty Marty at sometime. After dinner I hopped back on the Amtrak and returned to Philly. Deep sleep ensued right after I walked my dog around the block in a sleep addled haze.

More entry coming later today. I am security guy today, and no suit or gun is involved.

submission

2003.04.17 11.45

I submitted my updates for MW.com to DarkHorizons.com and got this response:

From: ''Garth Franklin''
Subject: RE: the italian job
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 01:15:38 +1000

TheSuperGenius,
Cool, will include the link today.
Garth Franklin
Editor, Dark Horizons
URL: http://www.darkhorizons.com/

Mail Address:
PO Box 1935, Dee Why
Sydney, NSW
Australia, 2099

Bwaha! Check out http://www.darkhorizons.com/news.htm later today for the update.

paramount

2003.04.16 14.55

Just got back from giving blood. In my usual almost-in-shock-but-not-quite funk. Didn't help that I stayed up til' nearly midnight finishing up one of the last application screens I had to tear apart and put back together again for my job. Today is Code Complete day. I'm very happy with what I've put together these past 23 months. Unfortunately I can't show you. However I can show you some of the goodies I got from my Paramount peeps to post on MW.com. Go there now and view photos from ''The Italian Job'' as well as the nice new splash page. I am getting key art from the one-sheet, subway 2-sheet, the 30 sheet and king bus. No idea what king bus is. The ad they put on the side of a bus? One day I'll be on the side of a bus somewhere. Of course, I'll also be screaming "HELP! HELP! GET ME OFF THIS CRAZY BUS!!!!!!''

free your mind

2003.04.14 17.45

Bring on the Marilyn Manson! There's a Marilyn Manson Listening Party at Numbers on May 3rd. I'm there. Will you be?

Saw about half of ''Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?'' for the first time on Saturday night right after watching an encore of ''My Big Fat Greek Wedding.'' Oddly enough they both deal with a guy who is marrying into a totally different kind of family. Both films juxtapose the guy's parent's with the bride to be's parents. Interesting. I'll report back on the final movie review verdict (i.e. Sucks! or Doesn't Suck!). If I didn't mention it before, my final verdict on ''My Big Fat Greek Wedding'' is that it's funny, but I can't imagine watching it over and over. This second time is definitely going to be one of the last. It isn't ''Back to the Future'' caliber, I mean, come on! Where is the tension? Where's the bad guy? Where are the time travelling DeLoreans?

Today I experimented with new food by buying a Star Fruit and an Asian Pear from Whole Foods. Two weeks ago I purchased a Prickly Pear fruit which was very sweet and had an interesting texture. It was somewhat mentally scary for me, however, since I couldn't stop thinking that I was eating a cactus. ''I'm eating a cactus! I'm eating a cactus!'' Shut up already, I thought. The Star Fruit was tart and tasted like an enormous star shaped grape. A little tough. I will probably try to find a sweeter one next time. The Asian Pear is next up at the plate. Ha. That's my dinner.

Finally filed my taxes after taking forever to procrastinate. I get back a little bit, so that's cool. Massive repair work is set to begin on my house in Houston this week and I'm stoked. The sh***y Masonite siding is getting replaced with ''lasts until after you're dead'' Hardiboard (a concrete composite material). QueenBeth was kind enough to make the color palette choice. It's similar to what is already there, but a bit more chocolatey. Mmmm. Chocolate. Join us for the next book club meeting in May and check it out. Next up? Glass ''room with a view'' patio add-on so I have a place to put the hot tub. After that I plan to build a doghouse for Chew Chew shaped like a miniature Hill Valley Courthouse complete with clock tower. Yes, that's right. I'm obsessed. Tell your friends.

b.z.

2003.04.10 12.35

Haven't had time to update as of late. Had a dream on Tuesday night that I'd found some secret attic at my parent's house. I seem to recall being in this dream attic several times but being afraid to step into the room that I'd found. Something about worrying what would happen when I put my foot down on the floor, as if it wasn't really there or that it looked weird. Anyway, I figured what the hell and walked in. It was great. Like we'd overlooked this thing for so long (according to my Mom in the dream it must have been there since 1978). I don't know what this means, really, but I'm sure it's the same feeling you get when you renovate your house or build on to it. Freaky.

After listening to CDs for the last few weeks I am disappointed at the scratches on them. When are we getting solid state music? Moving parts suck. Okay, end of soapbox.

Talked to a very enthusiastic publicity person from Paramount today. Getting material for the upcoming release of ''The Italian Job'' to post on MarkWahlberg.com. Yeah mini-project. There is no pay, but creativity is fun. They said they had 200 publicity photos and wanted to know how many I would need. I was like, ''all of them?'' She didn't go for it. Heh. Hey, I tried.

hemming and hawing

2003.04.06 1.15

I am in Houston today. This morning I visited an American Express financial advisor and got a spiel on how they could give me an investment plan for only $600. The upside is that this is at least advice from experts and not just friends who think they have a good tip. The downside is that they don't do the work for you. This is just recommendations. Hmmmph. I forgot the coupon for 10k worth of frequent flyer miles in exchange for my listening to aforementioned spiel, so I have to somehow make a return visit to get that taken care of.

I then drove to Gillman Mitsubish dealer where I bought my Eclipse in 1998 to have them check out why my ''Service Engine Soon'' light was on. They got a lot of weird computer messages and wanted to keep the car. This meant I'll have to leave it with them for two weeks until I can come back on April 19th. Bleah. I left the car and they dropped me off at... The Batcave.

I drove the Batmobile home and wondered what I could do realistically while driving this obnoxiously attention drawing alternate car. I didn't even bother with the DeLorean. I think it needs gas, actually. I ran some errands and parked aforementioned Dark Knight Corvette in the back of the lot out of the way. I did some paperwork at home. I then decided that I was going to go ahead with my original plan for the evening -- seeing Kelly Osbourne perform at Numbers Night Club.

I drove my car into the usual parking lot that sits behind where La Strada used to exist before it was burned to the ground. A lot has changed since I've been gone 23 months. I tipped the car guys a $20 and got in line to buy a $15 ticket. No extra crappy ticketmaster charges this way. While standing outside in the line I talked to these street kids with Mudvayne style make-up on. Alicia Warrington, the drummer for Kelly's band, walked up and started asking them if they had a problem with the Osbournes. They started to say something but were more curious why she was filming them with her digital camera. Being an Osbournes series junky I recognized her and asked if ''Fired Sarah'' was around. Sarah *was* Kelly's drummer until Sharon Osbourne replaced her with the more talent-consistent Alicia. Alicia pointed down the street into the darkness and replied, ''Getting a tattoo.'' She was pointing in the direction of a number of scary Westheimer tattoo parlors. Okay, to be honest, a few are nice. One of them has a blue Corvette chopped in half and turned into a sofa. I'll have to get a picture of that the next time I get my secret Batman logo tattoo colored in.

The opening act was some overweight guy who basically had no band to back him up and covered a lot of songs. Glorified karaoki. It was excrutiating to watch because he kept removing more and more clothing, much to my horror. When he got down to his briefs I then realized that the numbing effect of beer wasn't going to be enough to undo the damage. Bastard. Once that torture was all over with it was quickly on to Kelly. She now has dyed blonde hair and it looks to be about the length that her ''real'' hair should be. I think she had some extensions for a few episodes of ''The Osbournes'' this season, but who knows how long ago all that was filmed.

The performance, by the way, was very well done. The first few songs i think they had the gain on her microphone too far down, so the words were a bit hard to understand. Everyone joined in on ''Shut Up.'' She did a cover of the Corey Heart 80's classic ''Sunglasses At Night'' that sounded great. She performed about a dozen songs total and closed with ''Pappa Don't Preach.'' I'd bought a CD that also got me a moment with Kelly, plus a signature. They herded us into a cluster outside the staircase to the bar upstairs. Once I got up there it was Kelly all by her lonesome. I got her to sign ''To Mark, xoxo, Kelly Osbourne.'' I hadn't asked for the xoxo, but I made sure I told her that I appreciated the xoxo. Nothing like a little xoxo to get your day going. I piled out of there and drove the Corvette home with minimal gawking and people honking and saying unique things like, ''HEYYYYYY BAT! MAN!!!!''

It will be daylight savings in a few hours. Not looking forward to giving up that hour again. Will the madness ever end? Whatever. I gotz pizza in the fridge. Buhbye.

godsmack

2003.04.02 11.36

Tried listening to my Godsmack CD again. They are Metallica wannabes. Not impressed yet again. My site got removed from Goobita.com's links list. What did I do wrong? Ugh. I've switched to Manson for some reliable uplifting music. I'm going through bugs assigned to me today at work. Lots of fun because I get to fix problems for others thus learning more and more with each issue. Hope my next assignment is just as interesting. Realized there is only 30 some odd days until the next Matrix film. Mmmm. Who's coming with me?!