…walking home, you notice that someone has carefully secured their shopping cart to a post with a U-lock.
The elevators at my workplace went out yesterday for a time. I took the elevator this morning and noticed it pause a little on the 10th floor. I work on the top floor, the 11th.
So far today (for coffee, and lunch) I’ve gone up 22 flights of stairs and down 22. At the end of the day it’ll be down 33.
I figure it’s a good source of motivation for me to do something that uses less electricity and gets me exercising a little bit. Let’s see how long I stick with it.
[A story, from the personal archives of gohlkus maximus, c. 2002.]
* * *
“When were you born?”
“Exactly 100 years ago today.”
A slight pause ensued. “Ah. Well. It says here on the, uh, sheet — it says you’re 26.”
“26, 100, what’s the difference?”
“Indeed,” the reply came, with a barely perceptible quizzical smile. “Well, all right.”
* * *
He, non-descript, pudgy, short, sat in a bland cafeteria in a brick office building. He stared pensively at, not through, the smoky plexiglas windows. Brushy shrubs failed to catch his attention as they swayed ever so slightly in the shifting wind.
After lunch and the sports section, both guilty pleasures, it was back upstairs.
“Are you still writing that story?”
“No, I gave it up.”
“Why?”
“It wasn’t going anywhere.”
A slight, uncomfortable pause. “Come on, you’re a talented guy. I’ve read the stuff on your website; I’m sure you can write a decent story.”
“I don’t know. I keep getting caught up in this dialogue between undefined characters. I think the idea is to make it ‘universal,’ but I’m not doing a very good job of it.”
“Huh. Yeah. That is a problem.”
“See? Why go on?”
“Well….”
“Yes?”
“Why not? Maybe someone will enjoy it, or understand what you’re trying to get at, or feel something because of it….” The reply trailed off.
“‘Feel something,’ such as, ‘I just wasted my time,” or ‘This guy is a moron’?”
“Yes! That exactly. It’s better than nothing.”
* * *
He snored, which caused him grief. His live-in former girlfriend couldn’t fall asleep next to him; it took her longer than it did him — and, of course, he was snoring before she was anywhere near sleep.
His first attempt to solve the problem was to use Breathe-Right strips. The solution itself was problematic, since it was difficult to remember to apply them every night. Further, the routine that was necessary for the strip to function properly — wash nose, dry nose thoroughly, blow nose, brush teeth, peel backing from strip, apply strip just! so! — usually created such an unusual state of alertness at bedtime that it became difficult for him to get to sleep. The upshot of his snoring and otherwise (apparently) uninspiring lifestyle was that she left him.
* * *
Bar. Night. Wisconsin.
“I think it’s wishful thinking that it was just your snoring that, uh, prompted her to leave.”
“I did acknowledge the lifestyle somewhat.”
“But you minimized it significantly.”
“… True.”
Just in case you didn’t know. Here’s a nice little widget about it. I’m mostly posting this just because I like this little flash thing:
[Edit 7/19/10: Oh, well, http://baybridgeinfo.org/ took it down.]
Take BART (which will be running 24 hours a day) over Labor Day weekend and avoid accidentally driving into the Bay.
[Edit 7/19/10: Hmm, I wrote this before someone actually DID drive off the bridge and die. Maybe I should rephrase it. Nah, I’ll stick by it.]
You may know I’m originally from Wisconsin. Being a native cheesehead (I’ve reclaimed the term), I am pretty much genetically required to be a Packer fan.
So, naturally, I find it interesting that Brett Favre, Green Bay legend, signed with one of the Packers’ main rivals, the Minnesota Vikings, today. This after retiring twice and waffling about it for what seems like the last four or five years.
I’m guessing it’ll probably work out for the Vikings about as well as it worked out for the Jets last year. [They narrowly missed the playoffs after he performed increasingly poorly as the year went on, because he was playing through injury.] Maybe worse. I don’t see the soon-to-be-40-year-old Favre lasting 10 weeks, much less 17. How prepared are the Vikings’ backup quarterbacks going to be when Favre inevitably goes down?
Despite his signing with the despised Vikes, I still have some admiration left for Favre, for what he did in a Packers uniform and his fool-headed stubborn competitiveness. If you were an NFL quarterback — a certain Hall of Famer — and you still thought you could play, wouldn’t you do pretty much the same thing? There are only 32 starting jobs for NFL QBs. What else is he going to do? There are only so many laps he can do on his riding lawnmower in Kiln, Mississippi. I don’t think he’s going to quit until he gets carried off the field on a stretcher.
Yes, he’s a diva, he’s indecisive, he’s selfish, he’s not even really that smart. Oh, well, he’s human. I know a lot of people are pretty upset, but ultimately, I’ll still applaud him when he goes into the Hall of Fame as a Packer.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – July 18, 2009
Contacts: Dave Krzysik, 415-273-1545
Jason Gohlke, 510-684-6100
Brainwash Movie Festival to show 25 shorts, 1 feature
15th Annual Drive-in Bike-in Walk-in Festival starts tonight in Oakland, continues 7/31 & 8/1
The New York Times says the Brainwash Movie Festival “pirat[es] a piece of that old Hollywood magic and challeng[es] conventions on the role of public space in the process.” (Now Playing, a Digital Brigadoon, 7/29/04, Chris Thompson)
“We project movies onto a tarp in West Oakland,” counters festival director Shelby Toland.
The sometimes thought-provoking, often wacky, but always original Brainwash Movie Festival returns in the summer of 2009 for what could be the best festival ever.
“These are movies that know they’re movies,” claims festival judge Jason Gohlke. “If you like the art of storytelling, if you care about the suspension of disbelief, or if you just like watching moving pictures on a screen, you don’t want to miss Brainwash this year.”
Attendees to the festival are encouraged to either drive, bike, walk, or take public transit to the venue, where movies are screened in traditional drive-in movie theater fashion, complete with FM transmission and a full-service concession stand.
The fully juried festival will screen 23 original shorts in two separate programs (see http://www.brainwashm.com/2009/07/2009-brainwash-program/). There will also be a Premiere Party — Brainwash Zombie Night — on July 18th at 9 pm at 1357 5th Street in Oakland, which will be the West Coast Premiere of the feature film “Doctor S Battles the Sex Crazed Reefer Zombies: The Movie.” Filmmaker Bryan Ortiz of San Antonio, Texas, will be in attendance for Q & A.
The 2009 15th Annual Brainwash Movie Festival will be held July 31st and August 1st at 9:00 p.m. in Oakland — check BrainwashM.com for location details. (Tentative location is the Steel Building at 1960 Mandela Parkway @ 18th; backup location is 1357 5th Street.) Moviemakers to attend include Mark Thimijan, creator of “Mister Coffey.”
Admission is $9 per person per night OR $30 for a Double Brain Pass, which gets two people into the entire festival including a special exclusive preview night. Buy tickets at http://www.ticketweb.com/snl/EventListings.action?orgId=16986 or at the gate.
For more info, see http://brainwashm.com/.
I’ve been spending lots of my free time — even when I was on vacation and out of town — working on the Brainwash Movie Festival. (Here’s Brainwash on Facebook — become a fan!)
That would be the Bay Area’s own original Drive-in, Bike-in, Walk-in Movie Festival, held within spitting distance of the West Oakland BART station.
2009 marks the 15th annual festival (founded by the mysterious Shelby Toland and one of my co-workers, Dave Krzysik), and I’ve been helping out for at least the last five years. Sometimes it’s felt like 500, but this is not one of those times. This is the first year I’ve officially been a partner in the festival.
I launched a new website (which still needs some images and stuff) when I happened to be out of town, designed some new flyers, put us on Facebook, helped judge the movies and set up the program (and 24 of the 25 shorts are actually really GOOD), and then this past weekend helped shoot the trailer for this year’s festival (finally). It’s all been a lot of fun but pretty exhausting. Hopefully we’ll get a good turnout, but it’s always hard to know what’s going to happen.
The venue is actually a little up in the air, which is a humongous pain, a problem for promoting the festival, and a story I (or Dave) can tell you some other time. Parts of the festival will almost certainly be at the Steel Building at 18th and Mandela — we will know if we have to move it on Thursday.
But I can say with confidence that if you come to the festival you will enjoy it.
When, and where?
- July 18th at 1357 5th Street in Oakland: Brainwash Zombie Night and Premiere Party (RSVP to Zombie Night at the Drive-in on Facebook)
- July 31st at either 1357 5th Street or 18th and Mandela: RSVP to Brainwash (night 1) on Facebook
- August 1st at either 1357 5th Street or 18th and Mandela: RSVP to Brainwash (night 2) on Facebook
Buy tickets in advance on TicketWeb. Hope to see you there!
You may or may not be aware that some of the hippie types in Northern California are not fans of common expressions that involve cruelty to animals. The most common expression I’ve heard transformed since moving to the charming little enclave known as the Bay is “to kill two birds with one stone.”
Not cool, not cool at all: Better to say (and I’ve heard people say these unironically–and I must admit I have used one of them) “feed two birds with one seed” or “free two birds with one key.” (I just heard someone attempt to use “pet two rabbits with one hand” the other day, but that seems to miss the mark somewhat.)
I have my own modest proposal, which all must indulge since it is in fact my birthday. I used the phrase “the straw that broke the camel’s back” on Friday (for reasons I won’t get into here). I propose a new, cruelty-free variant: “the plaster that set the camel’s full-body cast.”
I upgraded this blog to the newest version of WordPress today. WordPress is so awesome and it’s totally free.
This site is built on it, as is my work blog, and I plan to upgrade another site by basing it on WordPress.
I really should get finishing putting my notes up from WordCamp, if only for completist purposes. Last week was a rough week, though — I was (and still am) getting over the flu, while at the same time I was preparing for CLCV’s big fundraising event (which really went well, but very well could be the last of its style. It was a sit-down dinner with an hour or two of people talking, as opposed to a cocktail party-type atmosphere that maximizes schmooze time; that may be more what the people want). And now this week we had a couple budget-related staffing changes, a big strategery meeting (yes, I said “strategery”), and I’m still getting over the flu. I also have lots of Brainwash-related stuff to do.
Malcolm Gladwell column about how David beat Goliath. (I’m a fan of the little guy.)
[Note: this is the last entry in a series of entries, categorized “Unfinished Thoughts”, which were originally posted to gohlkus.wordpress.com ostensibly to blog about later. But, the vast majority never saw gohlkusmaximus.com until July 2010.]