|
|
Friday, July 28
Said "you got to learn to bubble"
After the short rehearsal last night I double-backed by the club to speak with the director. The thing is, I don't know what I am doing up there. The first day was fine, since I had to the basics to absorb, but now I a supposed to hold two poses for a few seconds at the end of the runway and do some sort of swirly thing on the way back. My whole soccer game is based on needless spinning, so that part shouldn't be a problem, but the posing bit has got me stumped.
So I go back to the Club and ask the Directors for some personal advice. He says, keep your shoulders back and head up. Well that's all fine I guess, although in real life the more confident I feel, the more I slouch and shamble. Its the John Elway effect. That guy would walk around the sidelines and into the huddle all pidgeon toed and ambulatory, only to reveal himself fully after the snap. That had become my schtick. In my mind my walk would start out Verbal Kint and end up Kaiser Sose.
I think it started while trying to meet a girl in Drama class. I would slowly walk with her to her next class feigning a limp just so I would have more time to talk to her. She later became my first girlfriend. Now I shamble around whenever I feel cocky.
Anyhow, I can do Head up and Shoulder's out, it's the posing that confounds me. As far as the swirly thing goes, I revealed a nice little move on Tuesday that got the only applause of the night. Dan-O, the Gold-Club Soccer Teams' center defender knows the move very well.
Incidently, most of the girls think I am a drunk. The first day of rehearsals a bunch of them were standing in front of the club waiting for someone to let them in. I walked down the street towards them, and without stopping said "I need a drink" and shambled straight into the SideBar. When I joined up with them later I told them how I got the gig between drinks at Cherry. And the yesterday one of them asked me if I had me drink, and I said, thinking about the bottles of water I brought, "yeah, I brought a couple of bottles".
Misunderstanding, she asked me, "Do you really drink that much? It's a hell of a first impression to make". I can get pretty obstinate when it comes to correcting people impression of me, so I just looked away in mock embarassement.
Truth be told I am drinking a lot less than ever before. By most people's standards I am a health nut. I have been completely dry during the week for the last few months, and its even money that won't drink on a given friday or Saturday. Crossfit and the Camero are the two biggest factors. But hell, if I can't drink, I can at least act like I do.
by
Sean
on July 28, 2006 06:57AM (PDT)
Wednesday, July 26
somebody't watching me
This used to happen to me quite a bit
The victims awake to find that they cannot move, even though they can see, hear, feel and smell. There is sometimes the feeling of a great weight on the chest and the sense that there is a sinister or evil presence in the room. And like the above reader, they are often quite frightened about what is happening to them.
It still happend to me on planes, but without the evil presence. I "wake" when the Flgiht Attendant asks me if I want anything to drink. I am unable to raise my head up for more than a second before it crashes down. I am also unable to swallow or speak, due to what I percieve to be dry throat. It passes in a minute or two.
by
Sean
on July 26, 2006 01:15PM (PDT)
I would walk 500 miles
At lunch yesterday Drew told me about how he once entered a Krystal Eating Contest, unaware of the level of competition. He put down 14 of the little buggers only get schooled by a little Vietnamese woman who ate 35. He told me that story apropos of nothing, especially my modeling gig, which , since you asked, owed nothing to my T.V. experiences, except the necessary swollen head.
My first Fashion Show Rehearsal was tonight, and like Drew I had underestimated the situation. Now, In my case it wasn’t that I was being outclassed, per se*, it’s just that I didn’t respect the level of effort this ordeal is going to take. I thought, for instance, the show was this Thursday. Nope. Its August 11th. There are 4 more 3 hour rehearsals before then. Crap that's a lot of walking. Not that I don’t need the practice.
Usage Note: Longtime Slowdown readers, and savy corporate types, know that “Per Se” actually means “Remove one Negative from the preceding sentence.” If you are unfamiliar with that formula, go ahead and experiment. Slowdown Readers also know that I have to use the word Actually in pairs, since any sing use of that word invites the Meaningless-Word Demons into your home. The second use of that word, is the verbal equivalent of salt over the shoulder.
by
Sean
on July 26, 2006 07:19AM (PDT)
Monday, July 24
you might be better off with a chopstick!
Hold Steady have a new album coming out in october.
We really like Hold Steady, but not as much as the moon.
Yes, that link is to the same old moon song from years ago. I'm stickin to the classics these days. The Moon song is Emo, if I understand the genre correctly.
by
Sean
on July 24, 2006 01:39PM (PDT)
Sunday, July 23
seach the world over, for my angel in black
Miss Universe is on and down to the Last 10,
Trinidad and USA seem to have the best thing going. Switzerland is a bit too sophisticated. Columbia and Puerto Rico are probably be my next two.
Long weekend.. need to sleep.
by
Sean
on July 23, 2006 07:18PM (PDT)
Saturday, July 22
later on we did some sexy things, took a couple photographs and carved them into wood reliefs
“Got up early so I thought I’d Get Home (or try) before Daniel wakes up.
Last night rocked. Thanks!
Gina
Yesterday Dave and I resumed a great old Friday Happy Hour tradition of drinking beer and playing board games for 5 hours. That’s my kind of Friday Evening. Later we caught dinner at P’cheen <sp?>, which serves both Delirium Tremens and Pranqster. That’s a good place.
After that Dave went off with Kelly, and I returned Yo Gi’s invite to go to the Mark, which was having a Karma Reunion Night. She had called me up one night over five years ago to go dancing at Karma, so this was very nostalgic (Nostalgia, she told me, was in the stars, astrologically speaking). After the Mark we hit El Bar, and then went back to my place so she could sober up. Sobering up consisted of a game of one athletic one-upmanship. Her with her yoga, me with my Gymnastics. She did Scorpion, I did one legged squats. She did a back bend, I did Hand Stand Pushups. She did an arm pose, I did an L-Sit. She reached into the air and grabber her foot <!?> and I did a Back Lever from the overhead sprinkler system. All of this failed to sober her up enough to drive, so she crashed on the couch.
When I woke up this morning, she had left the note that I began this post with. Daniel is her son. This morning she IM'd me saying that she would have stayed for breakfast but she knew all I had was scotch and cheesecake. Scotch and cheesecake is now the official breakfast of the WhiskeySlowdown. You can't get any more WhiskeySlowdown than that.
by
Sean
on July 22, 2006 01:51PM (PDT)
Friday, July 21
you're gonna make me spill my beer, if you don't learn how to steer
Lileks weighs in on the autosteer tractor, after seeing an image of Chuck-e-Cheese in a farmer's outfit, with his hat on backwards.
...no farmer puts his hat on backwards, okay? I don’t care if he’s one of those modern farmers who has the air-conditioned tractor cab with the GPS autosteer that turns the tractor at the end of the furrow (you think I’m kidding? Hell, you can read a book while you do the back 40 these days. You can take a nap. You can watch a DVD. I have no doubt there are internet-enabled tractors with satellite access that allow farmers to sit in the cab, turn on the autosteer, head for a chat room and bitch about rainfall.) NO FARMER WEARS HIS FEED CAP BACKWARDS.
Okay? Okay.
The bad news about these new tractors is that steering was about the only part of farming I was good at, and I wasn't all that good at it. The good news is that now if I fulfill my dream of buying a farm in Kansas, I can be even more old-school while I do it. I can just see myself having a drink at the Crazy R, griping with the old dudes about all this newfangled technology: "You can't hardly FEEL the field anymore, I tell you. This new breed can't tell the wheat from the chaff".
I was actually pretty good about carrying the irrigation pipes around, but its all circular irrigation now so my skill set has dwindled further. Its got to the point that there just isn't much physical labor in the game anymore. Gramps once told me to pull out all the weeds in the pasture, perhaps because there was no real work to be done, I don't know. After an hour the tuck was loaded 6 feet tall with Noxious weeds, and I was pushing it around the field for exercise. Grandma drove out to see what was wrong with the truck, which made me feel pretty foolish. We called grandpa saying that there was another dozen truckloads worth of weeds out there and he said, forget about it, we'll send a plane in. Least he didn’t nuke the field while I was out there: I once got downwind of some ammonia I was fertilizing with and I couldn’t taste food for a week.
The caricature of the old farmer being technology resistant is patently false, as far as I can tell. Who else routinely calls air strikes or uses satellite imagery to plan their season? Not that technological prowess is what makes them great. There are too many of those things to count, the least of which is their incredible 'dad strength'. Grandpa could lift up the hitch of an implement with one arm, lower the hitch of a tractor with the other, and hammer the pin in with his forehead. He’d do this while carrying his oxygen tank, all the while I'd be looking for a pry bar.
But the biggest thing you notice, coming from the city, is their ability to actually do things. Things you would worry about for days beforehand, they do without giving a moments thought. Drag a 40 foot wide implement down a city street, fix an engine, burn down a an old building, shoot vermin, and generally carry on. And that’s before Dinner, which is at noon.
You notice this general competency in the old guys, and the 12 year old kids. The contrast between what they do, and what your typical city bloke does, will give you pause. . Anyone who simultaneously holds a negative opinion of “flyover country” and any opinions about the nature and direction of this county, is dangerously ignorant.
by
Sean
on July 21, 2006 06:39AM (PDT)
Thursday, July 20
My God, what have I done
by
Sean
on July 20, 2006 09:01AM (PDT)
|
|
