rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

my review of “Glory Road.”

first off, the headline on CNN’s front page read “sumo wrestler-sized jellyfish slam Japanese fishing industry.”
I love casual racism.
and secondly, that’s one big fucking jellyfish.

okay. haven’t done this in a while:

Shinto temple. world heritage site.

figure this one out on your own. “inevitable waves of change” – Propagandhi

false alarm: it’s just a guy in a gorilla suit.

awesome.

back in the hood.
so far, listened to:
“the Great Adventures of Slick Rick” by, duh, Slick Rick.
“potemkin city limits” by Propagandhi. great album. check out track six. they made their own website for it.
song is written like a speech.
the middle verse:
“Thank you! Let me begin with some sentimental appeals to our national myths; assorted clichés coined by the state; the ideological shorthand meant to sweep your private doubts [away] of this virtual training course. This portal; this Trojan Horse that you living idiots paid for and actually rolled into your own kids’ rooms.”
what a great band.

I gotta stop reading other people’s shit. journals, I mean. I find things that bug me. make me uncomfortable. no way to approach it, without sounding insecure, like I’m reaching. sitting here, lining up dates, thinking “when did they say that? right after they talked to me? is that me they’re talking about?” etc. no way to live.
fuck you, web logs.
I bet I bug others. and I’d say to them, “get fucked; don’t read it.” which is probably what others would say to me. I’ve been over this before…

what else.
I pulled “the end of the spear” for review this weekend. which, my biased sources tell me, is basically a recruitment video for Christian missionaries. yeah, the nice gringos come preaching Jesus to the indians in Ecuador. funny, how god looks just like them.
and from what I hear, the move fails to mention how the conversion of these tribes led to the encroachment on their ancestral homelands by oil and logging companies. I bet that’ll be near the end.
please, please prove me wrong, movie. please.

Virginia and Mike are due next month. less than that, now. I’m pumped. Mike is gonna be a father. Mary an aunt. I’m going to be an uncle. another generation marches on.
I’m not particularly good with kids. I don’t exactly know how to approach them, but those around me, friends of mine, Mar, my mom, know better how to handle them. they’re so disarming, so straightforward. bullshitless (wasn’t a word, but it is one now, natch!).
they chose not to find out if it’s a girl or boy, preferring a surprise. you can always paint the room white, it’s not like the baby’s going to give a fuck. and if the color is all it takes to fix a child’s sexual orientation, then so fucking be it, I say. ha.
funny, though. I’ve always thought of it as a boy. though I think a girl would be nice, too. Mike’s going to be one interesting parent. when people ask him how he wants the kid to act, he says, “remember Mowgli from ‘the Jungle Book’?” running through SE in a loincloth with an intricate knowledge of gang territory and a fierce political humor. my brother’s child.
see? mom raised us with a sense of humor. that, or it’s innate. cause we’re all fucking hysterical.

borrowed Smith’s earphones, brought them into the IDS. now I can listen to music, and other such bullshit, while I edit.
today I brought with me:
“double nickels on the dime” by the Minutemen.
“with teeth” by Nine Inch Nails.
that last one’s Josh’s. I like Nine Inch Nails, in small doses. it’s like hard rock dancehall for manic depressives. on this one, Trent Reznor is getting over his alcoholism. fair enough. the other ones were all about BDSM. I’d check out track 8, “only.”

my column was supposed to run tomorrow, but I think I got bumped. again. I didn’t have the gumption to get in Cordell’s grill about it in front of about a dozen people. hope it runs. I’m pretty disappointed in myself about it. I know I can do better than this one. but I’ll let others decide that if they ever read it.

my brother and sister-in-law’s baby is less than a month away. my brother is a sudden self described minimalist. he doesn’t want all sorts of shit for the baby, and he’s right. there are necessary things, and necessary things, and then there are sixteen different pairs of jammies for one god damned kid. I think his reality will lie somewhere in the middle.
one of Virginia’s four baby showers was this weekend. hosted by my stepmother, Debbie. lots of family went out for it. Mar went. that’s why I was at the airport for the Bears game anyway – did I already talk about this? well, if not, Mar needed a ride (“I can just take the bus, Matt, jesus”) and making my sister take the bus because I wanted to watch a fucking football game – that we fucking lost – wasn’t a viable moral option for me. so there I was. picked Mar up and saw the game. gimme a dollar.
yeah, Mar rolled out. said it was a good time. said everyone is solid. said our cousin Cait who showed up is very cool. duh, Mar.

okay, Cordell just walked by and read what I wrote over my shoulder. I didn’t get bumped. it runs next week. fuck. a week?

alright, check this out. I bought “the mothman prophecies” by John Keel. Keel is, from what I understand, respected in the world of goofball UFO enthusiasts. and a bunch of rednecks reportedly seeing the same large man with wings and red eyes in West Virginia right before a local bridge collapsed and killed a lot of people – there’s something to be said about that, I’ll confess.
besides, I liked the movie. you can break me off a piece of Richard Gere. rowr!

fuck.

so I watched the entire game at the Indianapolis airport’s TGI Friday’s.
that’s rough.
what’s even rough is watching the team lose. god fucking damn it.
now, I’m talking about the Bears, of course. I could give a fuck about the Colts.

Alisha went. I owe her something for that one; that takes some gumption to spend an afternoon like that.
but Mar rolled up, and Mar’s always solid. and we saw Ron Jaworski, the former Eagles quarterback and the current ESPN talking head. he came in and sat down at the bar. what’re the odds?

oh well. yesterday, Phil almost got in a fight. drunk, smoking a cigarette in an alleyway outside a bar at 2 am. said he would have gotten into a fight if I was there, simply so I’d have to fight, too. thanks, Phil. I’m touched.
and I saw “Glory Road,” which was decidedly mediocre. don’t waste your time, it’s just “Remember the Titans” on a basketball court.

that’s all. just a quick update from the apartment upstairs. more tomorrow, probably.

here it is, in all its glory.

BloodRayne.

you know, it doesn’t look very good for me when the editors place “Terminator 3″ after Loken’s name in the first sentence and spell the fucking word wrong.
come on, guys. focus.

edit:
oh. and I’d like to give a shout out to Steelers linebacker Joey Porter, cause he says:

get fucked, Indianapolis.

I can’t say much for their chances, but hey. good luck.

wrote a column on train hopping.
it’s weak. don’t judge me.

it’ll be in the paper friday. I’ll post a link then. or, you could find it yourself. I mean, for fuck’s sake, there’s a link to your right. try a little bit.

went to my stats class today.
I love the new professor, Stevens. last semester was Guth, a soulless man, filled with darkness and hate. he declared, on the first day, “a third of you will fail this class.”
Stevens, on the other hand, calls on people in class, wants to learn everyone’s name, and when someone asks a question, he says something like “what a great question. thanks for asking that. that’s a good question. did everyone hear Jimmy’s question?”
then he repeats it! and explains it so everyone understands! and he does it in a way that isn’t condescending!
what kind of fuckin’ professor is this???

I don’t write my own review headlines, but they called my “BloodRayne” review “welcome to the Suck.” I laughed out loud. well done, boys. it runs tomorrow. keep your eyes peeled.

alright, assholes.
I can’t think of shit to write about. I’m sitting at the paper. again. and I’ve been fucking around with a word document for about three hours. I still have nothing to show for it.

this is what I’ve written:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180134,00.html

The allure of spring break has never caught on with me.
Year after year, carloads of undergraduates caravan to Panama City, or max out a parent’s credit card on Cancun plane tickets. Maybe everybody else knows something I don’t. Maybe they’re going down there to meet the fun bus. Maybe they found out about it in a class I’ve failed to attend here in Bloomington over the last few years.
Regardless, I’ve never gone.
Three years ago? Went home. Hung out with Moms.
Two years ago, my roommate and I arrived unannounced at my cousin’s in Ft. Lauderdale. Nothing says “relaxation” like the role of the unwelcome and unexpected houseguest.
Last year, I drove to Vegas. Alone. You wouldn’t know this by looking at a map, but it’s a long way across the plain states. I slept in my car a couple times.
Spring break is a magical, lovely time of year. So why is it that each year, I can’t find anything better to do than load up my car with non perishable food and drive, drive, drive?

fuck.
that big chunk is going to lead into some bullshit about freight train hopping, which I have no intention of doing; but I’m kind of grasping at straws here.
the earlier one – the bit about Samuel Alito – was going to allude to his and the nation’s fascinated stare at the abortion debate. from there, I was going to talk about women’s rights in Afghanistan (that forgotten hellhole that was the beginning of the war on terror). either way, both are pretty shoddy, and I now have 25 hours to think of something interesting to talk about.
bummer, man.
if someone stumbles across this, feel free to interject a story idea. otherwise, you’ll be reading about the size of the last dump I took, and the propensity for dullness that comes with a day shift at Taco Bell. I swear it, by God.

so I got a bi-weekly column.
in the paper.
on the opinion page.
five to six hundred words. on whatever I want to write about. as long as, you know, it’s not too obscene.
first one is due sometime this week. I can’t think of shit.
that’s about right.

so let’s us recap the day.
woke up at noon.
was at class at 12:22 (starts at 12:20). the professor seems a lot more human and forgiving than last semester’s soulless fuck, Guth. god, that guy was a dick.
kicked it with Mar in her crib for like an hour.
rolled home.
at 3:30, went to the bank.
at 3:45, went to Best Buy and rebought “Demon Days” by Gorillaz. fuck you, Josh, and fuck you, Mike.
Alisha called. we got tacos and milkshakes. excellent.
watched “Serenity,” the movie version of that “Firefly” teevee show. pretty good flick.
at 7 pm, I arrived here. got the news about the column.
Cordell the opinion editor is like, “McMulan. do you want a weekly or bi-weekly column?”
and I’m all like, “uh, weekly. duh.”
and my heart’s been a pitter-pat ever since. but, since I’m the copy chief, looks like I’m getting a bi-weekly. gotta spread the love.

so. I can’t think of anything to write about. which is amazing, because I’ve managed to cover a lot of ground, produce a lot of bullshit text through this journal. now, I’ll have an audience that doesn’t total six or seven. what in the hell am I going to write about?

okay, so Orthodox Christmas is over.
for those “not in the know,” my family – or, my mom’s family – is Russian Orthodox. that means they operate on the Julian calendar, whatever the fuck that means, and that makes Christmas fall on Jan 6th/7th. it was cool, though. had a good time. went up weds, Alisha came. me and her and my main man Andrew went into Chicago and dicked around thursday, saw the aquarium, ate hot dogs, and then ye olde traditional dinner was friday night. that means a lot of homemade, traditional food. babolki, perogi, mushroom soup, and whiskey.

so. highlights include:
me pouring Mar a shot of whiskey, and mom watching from across the room with hate in her eyes.
Alisha and I seeing “BloodRayne” so I could review it, and it turning out to be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. gave it an F. it’ll be printed next week.
Uncle Bill slipping me a joint – I’m serious – and me dropping it in the foyer in front of about a dozen relatives – serious again. no one saw, luckily.

and most importantly, I now have “Labyrinth” on VHS. it stars the indomitable David Bowie, who probably insisted on having a huge bulge in his pants in a movie with muppets, and a young Jennifer Connelly. I fuckin’ love that movie, man. and I love it even more cause I lifted it from Andrew’s house.

got back last night. wrote the review, then went to Yogi’s. I was tilting my beer back, and Josh pushed it, spilled beer all over my face. I guess he thought it was funny. so I did the sensible thing and grabbed his sweatshirt and dumped a pitcher all over it. so he poured his drink in my lap. see? all so logical.
either way, now it’s on. I’m taking a dump on his chest when he’s asleep.

now I’m back, in front of a computer. today’s the first real day I’m the copy chief again. I’m here til 7 pm, then co chief Brittany comes in and takes over. I’ll spend five hours a day, five days a week here, so that’ll give me ample time to blog about absolutely nothing; like I’ve been doing for over a year now. so get ready world. I’m back up in the spot.

hey, so what’s going on in college football?
West Virginia vindicated itself by beating those puds from the SEC (in an awesome game; props, Georgia).
Marcus “I served alcohol to a 14 yr old girl in hopes of getting her drunk enough to fuck her” Vick pulled the ultimate dick move, once again proving that in fact, yes, Virginia Tech is a horrible program.
and Paterno won.
and all was right in the world of sports once again.

going back for Orthodox Christmas tonight. buckle up. I might need a helmet for this one.