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ding dong

By anders pearson 30 May 2002

the big head honcho of all the different new media / learning initiatives at Columbia is leaving to go be president of Arizona State. so tonight we had a big fancy dinner to say goodbye. really expensive catering, excellent food and an open bar.

<p>afterwards one of my coworkers mentioned that he was going to a bar on 105th and columbus ave called &#8216;ding dong&#8217; that he said was a punk bar and invited a few of us to come along. so we did and sure enough, a mere two blocks from my apartment is a little hole-in-the-wall type place (although it&#8217;s actually fairly spacious on the inside) that plays punk rock, and has walls covered with graffiti and U.K. Subs, Exploited, and Mot&ouml;rhead posters. </p>

<p>so i&#8217;m ecstatic about the discovery but i must hang my head in shame for living here so long and never noticing it (to be fair, it isn&#8217;t exactly very distinctive from the outside).</p>

may 17-19th

By anders pearson 19 May 2002

lani was up for the weekend.

<p>friday night we somehow ended up at a biker bar downtown drinking with a bunch of russians (lani&#8217;s russian housemate and his friends from princeton came into the city for a bachelor&#8217;s party). </p>

<p>on saturday, in a rare showing of ambition, lani and i didn&#8217;t sleep in all day (our usual weekend activity). instead we actually went out to see the <a href="http://www.whitney.org/exhibition/biennial.shtml">Whitney&#8217;s Biennial show</a>. then we wandered around st. mark&#8217;s place for a while. after dinner, we watched Mulholland Dr. then went out for a drink with julintip.</p>

<p>today, we again made it out of the apartment for dim sum and bubble tea with julintip, adam and some of adam&#8217;s friends.</p>

coinage

By anders pearson 17 May 2002

i accumulate change like no one i know. every night i come home and dump out a big handful of change that’s accumulated in my pockets. i’m not really sure where it all comes from.

<p>over about the last year, this has built up to about half a cubic foot of change that i&#8217;ve dumped in a box in my apartment. last night i had a slight <span class="caps">OCD</span> moment and decided to sort and count it. i simply didn&#8217;t have the time or energy to completely sort it though so i settled for just seperating out the quarters (the only coin with any practical value whatsoever as far as i&#8217;m concerned) and counting those.</p>

<p>$100.50 </p>

<p>just in quarters. i was pretty impressed.</p>

<p>while that was kind of entertaining, i&#8217;m really looking forward to the day when we can use digital cash and smartcards for everything instead of having to deal with heavy and inconvenient coins.</p>

toofs

By anders pearson 15 May 2002

pepsi: bad

<p>flossing: good</p>

<p>take care of your teeth, folks. </p>

<p>i spent about two years nursing a pepsi bottle (2+ litres/day) and not brushing and flossing often enough. about a year ago, i lost a couple fillings and noticed some cavities forming. demonstrating at least partial intelligence, i quit caffeine entirely (thereby curbing my pepsi habit) and started brushing and flossing much more religiously. demonstrating that it was only <em>partial</em> intelligence, i didn&#8217;t go see a dentist immediately. </p>

<p>i think quitting the pepsi and taking more vigorous care of my teeth halted or at least slowed the spread. unfortunately, plenty of damage was already done. </p>

<p>i finally made it into the dentist today to get them looked at. the results: well&#8230; he says my <em>gums</em> look healthy&#8230;</p>

<p>my teeth have some issues though. next wednesday i go in for my first root canal. joy. some cavities to take care of too but they&#8217;ll probably wait until after i upgrade my dental plan so i don&#8217;t have to pay for them out of pocket.</p>

<p>to top it off, i&#8217;m still due to get my wisdom teeth out.</p>

charlie don't surf

By anders pearson 13 May 2002

i basically spent the weekend catching up on sleep and watching movies.

<p>on friday night, i finally watched <a href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0166924">Mulholland Dr.</a>, the new(est) david lynch movie. lynch is my favorite director and i&#8217;m ashamed that it took me this long to get around to seeing this one. pure genius. i&#8217;m really glad that i bought the <span class="caps">DVD</span> instead of just renting it because i&#8217;m going to have to watch it about 10 more times before i&#8217;ll have any clue about what went on. <a href="http://us.imdb.com/Name?Watts,+Naomi">Naomi Watts</a> really impressed me and i had no clue until after i poked around on imdb that she was Jet Girl in <a href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0114614">Tank Girl</a>, one of my all-time favorites.</p>

<p>on saturday it was <a href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0078788">Apocalypse Now (Redux)</a>. the extra footage makes it much longer and slower in some spots but definately improves the overall experience. </p>

<p>sunday afternoon i somehow got sucked into some action movie with Dolph Lundgren fighting insane, genetically altered escaped prisoners in some post-earthquake/apocalypse desert world. i don&#8217;t even remember what it was called and, honestly, the less remembered, the better.</p>

<p>finally, last night i watched <a href="http://us.imdb.com/Title?0171804">Boys Don&#8217;t Cry</a> because it was on TV and i hadn&#8217;t seen it before. powerful movie. love that cheerful ending.</p>

linden tree

By anders pearson 07 May 2002

there was a huge linden tree in my grandmother’s yard in connecticut. the trunk was at least 5 feet in diameter and it had stood there longer than anyone could remember.

<p>everytime we visit, my grandmother points out the linden tree and how old it is and how close it is to the house and how it&#8217;s bound to fall down any day now and dear god don&#8217;t we hope it falls away from the house. i always look at this huge, sturdy looking tree and figure that it&#8217;s pretty solid and won&#8217;t fall down and grandma&#8217;s just worrying over nothing.</p>

<p>well, it fell down last friday. away from the house thankfully.</p>

<p>i should go visit again soon so i can see what it looks like. the tree was such a big part of the landscape that i can&#8217;t imagine the house without it towering over everything.</p>

validation

By anders pearson 04 May 2002

the default template now validates as xhtml 1.0. the validator doesn’t like some of the characters in the posts themselves so the site won’t actually validate at the moment, but the template is clean.

<p>i&#8217;ve only got mozilla to test with so let me know if IE screws something up now.</p>

hic

By anders pearson 02 May 2002

right now i’ve got the worse case of hiccups ever. i’m dead tired but i can’t go to sleep because i’m hiccuping and it won’t go away. this is so strange.

the power of the riff compels me

By anders pearson 02 May 2002

last night, against my better judgement and in complete disregard for my health, i went down to the roseland with my friend brian and some of his friends to catch a Down show.

<p>brief background: Down is sort of a stoner/southern/rock sideproject of members of several thrash/hardcore bands (pantera, crowbar, corrosion of conformity, and eyehategod). they put out an album and did a short tour in 1995 and blew everyone&#8217;s mind. no one heard anything from them again until they released a new album a few months ago and announced another tour. for those of us who have been listening to their first album since 1995 and kicking ourselves for not catching them on that tour, this was an opportunity that couldn&#8217;t be missed.</p>

<p>before the show started, i ran into angela, a friend and fellow metalhead from Bates who was trying to scam a drink off someone.</p>

<p>instead of an opening band, they had a projector set up and played about 40 minutes of videos of all the classic rock that presumably forms the core inspiration for the band. black sabbath, hendrix, thin lizzy, kiss, etc. that was interspersed with footage of the band consuming vast quantities of alcohol and pot while recording . </p>

<p>when they finally came out onstage, phil was stumbling and obviously already wasted. as the first song started, i got kicked square in the head by some combat boot wearing, crowd-surfing maniac. i couldn&#8217;t see in my left eye for a few minutes. luckily i was so packed in to the crowd that even if i&#8217;d passed out, i wouldn&#8217;t have fallen down. that pretty much set the tone for the evening for me.</p>

<p>for a band that&#8217;s only written two albums, a two hour set list is fairly predictable. they pretty much just played every Down song that they&#8217;d ever recorded.</p>

<p>phil really was wasted. after each song, he&#8217;d sort of ramble more or less incoherently into the mic for 5 or 10 minutes about how much he hated the record companies and journalists and about how stoned he was. eventually, someone would throw a joint on stage and he&#8217;d get even <em>more</em> stoned. meanwhile, the rest of the band would stand around waiting impatiently for phil to get his head together enough to play the next song. a few times he even stopped songs in the middle so he could say whatever had popped into his mind (&#8220;wait&#8230; stop&#8230; i want them to really <em>hear</em> the ending of this song&#8230; ok&#8230; start again from the drum bit&#8230; everybody listen closely&#8230;&#8221;) by the end of the set, Rex (the bassist) was looking downright pissed at phil. don&#8217;t get me wrong; i loved every minute of it. i&#8217;d happily pay just to watch phil stumble around stage and rant for a couple hours. he doesn&#8217;t make much sense, but he&#8217;s pretty funny.</p>

<p>so despite still being somewhat under the influence of a flu with the worst sore throat ever, i found myself spending a few hours in a moshpit getting kicked in the head, crushed, screaming my lungs out and somehow enjoying the whole experience.</p>