complimentary fruit basket

i don't know what crack jefferson was smoking, but there sure ain't anything romantic about farm country.

matthew | archive |

water on the brain

my great great grandfather was the first president of the marin medical society. when my great grandmother was pregnant with my grandfather, the good doctor told his daughter not to scrub the floors, or the baby would be born with water on the brain. whether or not this story is true is unknown, but it has become part of the family lore.

he might have also reminded her to get plenty of rest and to take her allergy medication in the spring, or she'll get water on the brain. by which i mean, of course, that i have a sinus infection. excuse me while i go writhe in agony in bed.

matthew | archive |

7 a.m. epiphany

i can't decide if i'm an inherently boring person, or if it's just that i haven't taken my shower yet.

matthew | archive |

looking back at ivory

sometimes i miss pure academia. i miss being surrounded by pretentious people who quote aristotle and comte at the drop of a book bag. god knows i rolled my eyes enough at my alma mater, but i do feel a little nostalgia for her. a lot of this past weekend, while purely visceral and enjoyable, prompted thoughts and ideas which contected to discussions i had three or four years ago in adams house and the hasty pudding and riding home on the T.

i miss the freedom to do nothing but think sometimes. it feels as if i have to isolate my life into separate extremes. and i wish there were a better way to integrate all of my passions and follies into a unified whole, some sort of emulsification of my eclectic tastes. but then again, i suppose i am that integration.

i don't quite know how to say what i want. but i can recognize what is missing

matthew | archive |

rise up

i can't quite decide if i was on good behavior or bad behavior this weekend. i suppose since none of us are messianic archetypes, nor are we absolute satanists, i am a healthy mix of angel and demon. well, healthy from a pragmatic hedonist's point of view, at least.

rise up, put your faith in jesus.

i know the combination of a heated swimming pool and copious amounts of alcohol is not advised by the surgeon general. i also imagine that the surgeon general throws dull birthday parties. luckily for me, the hosts of friday's party knew how to get a rise out of a bunch of gay boys (two words, beginning with skinny and ending with dipping). yes, that was my bare white ass on the diving board, now stop grabbing it.

rise up, he's got the power to heal us.

nothing so libidinous happened on saturday. though i didn't sleep much--a misplaced wallet provided the excuse to go out again. not that i even need an excuse to shake my booty with a bunch of half naked men. it's spring, god dammit. so i ventured out to loose my self in base rhythms and psychoactive byproducts of yeast metabolism.

rise up, he's all you'll ever need.

but i suppose the culmination of the weekend was my first circuit party. oddly enough, i kinda enjoyed it. other than caffeine (since i had slept erratically and minimally since friday and was working every day), i was sober for the whole thing (though i did facilitate a drug deal or two, which i am still not sure if i should feel guilty about or not). it was just eight hours of dancing and watching and listening and feeling. every once in a while i'd go up to the balcony and just watch the crowd, the massive sea of bodies of all shapes and sizes and personalities melded into one responsive being. my thoughts drifted to performance theory and the history of religion and the evolution of western dance and philosophies of vice and virtue and tragedy and orientalism and lighting design and psychopharmacology and cultural economics and dramatic movement and biological imperatives and god and the value of the mind over the body and a thousand other things. and then i'd dance; i'd purge all of those thoughts, the heavy questions and worries and weight and just move. move. move.

rise up, everybody rise up.

matthew | archive |

murder on the dancefloor

party management rule no. 437 states that at no time should one throw popsicles at the audience in a crowded dance hall. the popsicles hurt upon contact and, after hitting the floor, they melt and cause the floor to be first slippery and then sticky.

rule no. 438 of course stipulates that one should always place a bowl of condoms and lube by the entrance for your quests' enjoyment.

matthew | archive |

why history is a crock of shit

i have come up with three or four interpretations of my date last night. all of them were solidly based upon the events of the evening and all of them contradict each other. which just proves the point that all action is ambiguity and trying to understand this world is a vain and futile attempt to bring meaning into an pointless existence, and i might as well end it all and throw myself off the fourth street bridge into the los angeles river.

on second thought, maybe i'll wait a few days and see if he calls.


matthew | archive |

geo-cultural politics

in friendster, have you noticed that all the new yorkers look bored, wear dark colors, and affect a punk or an otherwise (pseudo)subversive attitude? and all of the angelenos are smiling, bare chested, and tan?

matthew | archive |

ich und elaine

i don't get german. my ancestors spoke it all the time, but by the time i was born, the family spoke mostly english and all i really learned were words like oma and opa and esse! german grammar seems almost archaic, and the language relies heavily on harsh glotal consanents; neither of which impresses this romantic. i can follow some very basic conversations, and if pressed i can tell you that i must leave for the opera right now. but german is a language i could never really teach myself, and one i never could bother myself over being taught.

nonetheless, it can be extremely sexy. not wine and roses sexy, but sweaty back-alley-in-the-rain-up-against-a-brick-wall-with-the-smell-of-lightening-in-the-air-and-swollen-lips-and hairy-chests sex. sie wissen was ich spreche.

matthew | archive |

i'm being followed

does everyone in weho have a blog now?

matthew | archive |

all is full of love

weak and strong. short and long-lived. passionate and amicable. loud and calm. bitter and happy. jealous and generous. strained and flowing. waxing and waning. hopeful and unrequited. eager and tempered. imagined and real. manipulative and manipulated. dependant and benevolent. hidden and brazen. material and spiritual. lustful and ecstatic. fervent and tepid. from near and afar.

painful, yes, and joyful.

matthew | archive |

s'en cacher

speaking of the internet community, it's been interesting how my social life and online life have begun to overlap more. or rather, i'm discovering that many of the people i know and run into on street i also find writing journals online. i was always a little bummed that los angeles didn't have the blog communities that new york and san francisco did. but i'm now hesitant to mention to these people that i have my own journal, or that i even read theirs. it's not that i'm keeping this thing secret (god knows why i would). i just sorta like that this is a small slice of my life--obviously one which i control to a much greater degree than my physical one--and i don't know how much i want to integrate it into my other realities.

plus, how can i freely talk about my crushes and romantic exploits when they're reading this. folks, i'm doing this for your purient interests.

matthew | archive |

clique cliche

apparently, friendster is all the rage now. i've been on for months, which i guess makes me old school (or a dork...or both).

it's a little bit popularity contest, a little bit meat market, and a little bit community center. i think it has proven most beneficial to me in getting to know better some people i only see in passing. i don't even have half the people i know on my list, (i tend to wait for people to peg me first--i'm still waiting to see if an ex of mine will peg me) but many of them i only know loosely. it also has been good for my dance card.

some statistics, if you will: as of right now, i have 28 friends. four are women. twenty-two are gay, five are straight, and one is bisexual. twenty-seven are human. six of them i have known since college, and i have lived with two of them. i have met twenty-three of them in real life. i met 8 of them online, and fourteen of them have blogs, journals, or websites. five of them i know only via the internet or telephone.

and i've made out (or more) with eight of them.

matthew | archive |

cruise control

i am bartending my sister's twenty-first birthday party. i am so getting my mother drunk.

matthew | archive |

pennies from heaven

don't you hate it when you get what you want, and you have no fucking clue what to do with it?

me neither.

matthew | archive |

mon beau bistro

it's a dirty little building where spring and main converge. a little triangle in the middle of the garment district. a few blocks away, rows of motion picture palaces now house discount retailers, gem merchants, and evangelical churches. the poor and the homeless share the sidewalks with fashion designers and showroom clerks. and in the shadow of the mart, sits this brick building with window boxes and lace curtains. the bathroom is painted in trompe-l'oeil, and there is a patio on the roof. service is slow, but attentive, and the accents are thick. the coc au vin is just like maman would make, had my mother been french. the smell of lemons and cheese flavors the little downstairs deli. it is a little bit of make-believe nostalgia, a home for fantasies. heavenly, yes. angelic, even.

matthew | archive |

insomnia

i was going to write something about desire. in fact, i did--as i was sitting in the cafe, watching the cute math student leisurely study his text. it started off romantic and then went philosophical and eventually fell into the psycho-anthropological.

but i won't recount it for you tonight kiddies. no romantic angst disguised as social theory for you! i'm just going to curl up in my bed. i have to curl because its big and empty and cold. wrap myself up into a little ball, like a hedgehog. only i don't have spines to protect me.

matthew | archive |

the best laid plans

i don't know why i do it since it is so damn expensive and the service is so bad. but i do. everytime i meet someone at the cinerama dome, we have drinks. the arclight reminds me of a train station--the lobby is a huge affaire with a news stand, and time tables, and a bar, and a concierge, and a huge clock watching over it all. the design is little muddled, but it has some nice neo-modernist touches. anyway, we sat in a leather bound booth, she eating vegetable wraps and i sipping my pinot noir, discussing how much our current situations annoy us. as i'm twirling my glass, she asks me what my plan is. i stare at the pool of red juice and list of some of my ideas for the summer. i don't know why i think the summer will be a good jumping off pojnt, but i suppose it is just too many recent years spent in academia. luckily, the clock strikes the appointed hour and we suffle off to our movie, but i struck me that for all the thinking i do, all the fantasizing and figuring and consideration, i haven't really planned anything. i am free floating--i know my direction, but i'm letting the current carry me wherever it may flow.

i am so fucked.


matthew | archive |

is that all you blighter's can do?

i hate to write. well, not really. i do enjoy composition. it just hate setting it down on paper. which, you see, is odd seeing as how i keep a journal, write articles, and edited two literary magazines at one point. which is why, in these dire economic times, i have decided to go back to the written word to supplement my income. but no matter how hard i try, i find it hard to actually create an output. i tend to write in piecemeal, setting down ideas and phrases i like from different parts of the story or argument, and then fill in the gaps. which means i have lots of notes, lots of floating paragraphs, and no whole. it's sort of an anti-gestalt way of organizing thought.

i've been sitting here far too long with nothing coming. i don't even have the desire to clean my room, which is de rigeur during any of my extended writing projects. so i think i'll go outside, get something to eat, maybe stroll the avenues, take a hike, go to the gym, see some friends, go to an art opening, pop into the getty, walk along the beach, take in a movie, or any of those other activities of actually living.

matthew | archive |

sedussa

topics of conversation that, when discussed at a dance club, will not get you laid:

pharmacutical formularies
legal career recruiting
justice as a legal structure
the branches and methodologies of anthropology

matthew | archive |