Category: uncategorized

For the first time (if I’m not mistaken), I, the habitual slacker, filed my tax returns before my parents filed theirs. Granted, I filed 10 days before the deadline, but still. I talked to my dad on the phone yesterday afternoon, and he said he just mailed theirs out. My response was, “Really? I did mine last week! (Ha ha.)” Anyway, this was my first time filing the federal forms online. I used H&R Block’s website, and it was pretty straightforward. For my local taxes I filed on the official D.C. site, which I’ve used for a couple of years now, and I already have my refund, paltry as it may be, sitting in my bank account. Yay.

Ooh. The entire text of Shakepeare’s Romeo and Juliet on a shower curtain. Or duvet set. That’s pretty cool… or cheesy? I guess it all depends on the presentation, really. If I were to see this in a novelty catalog, I might not give it a second glance, but given the rest of the designer’s portfolio and manufacturer’s product line, all very chic and smooth, the Shakespeare duvet seems kind of cool. I can see it in a bedroom with lots of rich red–maybe cover part of it with a throw–which would pick up on the one line from the play printed in red, not black: “O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?” (Via MoCoLoco.)

Did Bush really answer any of the questions posed to him at his press conference last night? I don’t know how he managed not to appear all blurry on the TV screen, what with all the dodging he was doing. (Though his tie was pretty hypnotic.)

There’s a spot-on column in Slate today (“Trust, Don’t Verify“), which highlights Bush’s faulty logic: credibility is merely consistency.

To Bush, credibility means that you keep saying today what you said yesterday, and that you do today what you promised yesterday. “A free Iraq will confirm to a watching world that America’s word, once given, can be relied upon,” he argued Tuesday night. When the situation is clear and requires pure courage, this steadfastness is Bush’s most useful trait. But when the situation is unclear, Bush’s notion of credibility turns out to be dangerously unhinged. The only words and deeds that have to match are his. No correspondence to reality is required. Bush can say today what he said yesterday, and do today what he promised yesterday, even if nothing he believes about the rest of the world is true. […]

Three times, Bush repeated the answer he gave to Edwin Chen of the Los Angeles Times: “Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it.” Outside Bush’s head, the statement was patently false: The 9/11 threat required action, and Bush failed to deal with it. But inside Bush’s head, the statement was tautological: If there were a threat that required action, Bush would have dealt with it; Bush didn’t deal with it; therefore, there was no threat that required action. The third time Bush repeated this answer–in response to a question about whether he owed an “apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9/11”–he added, “The person responsible for the attacks was Osama Bin Laden.” This is how Bush’s mind works: Only a bad person can bear responsibility for a bad thing. I am a good person. Therefore, I bear no responsibility.

Related: Howard Kurtz’s roundup of media reaction (“Bush Admits No Mistakes“).

A couple of years ago, Norwegian conceptual artist Leif Inge created “9 Beet Stretch,” which is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony digitally elongated to last 24 hours. I can’t say I’ve listened to it all (or that I’d ever really want to, even in a few sittings), but I got around to hearing the first few minutes of the fourth movement. It’s kind of cool: ambient, trance-like. What is normally a jaunty passage–each minute is stretched out to about 20 minutes–becomes something eerie and unrecognizable. The composition and orchestration break down and dissolve, just as Inge intends. The piece, which will be played in full in a couple of U.S. cities this month, is available online in Real format, all 24 hours, but thankfully broken into manageable sections.

Related: interview on All Things Considered (“Closer to Eternity: Stretching Beethoven’s 9th,” Nov. 26, 2002).

Over the weekend, we caught up on several Ellen episodes on TiVo, watching some and fast-forwarding and deleting others. A few things:

• Jerry O’Connell is such a spaz–like, hyper and funny, I mean. I love him. During his intro music he walked onstage and shook his booty and started taking his shirt off. Me likey.
• Two musical performances that didn’t fare too well: Chaka Khan and Jessica Simpson, separately, of course. The former was unfortunate, the second (an overworked but underwhelming rendition of “Take My Breath Away”) was expected. But I’m still going to check out her and Nick’s variety show, if only for guests Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.”
• David Duchovny is in a movie called Connie and Carla, which stars Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette. The clip they played, with David’s character trying to figure out what’s up with drag queens, was pretty funny. The movie opens this Friday. [To go full circle: Jerry O’Connell appears for maybe two seconds, along with other celebrities, in the in-house video for Bree Sharp’s catchy tune from a few years ago, “David Duchovny” (audio, MP3, 3.8M). Though if you really want to get all Kevin Bacon-ish, knock yourself out.]

This week on Oprah:

• On Wednesday we go inside the homes of top designers, and also find out the newest winner of a room makeover, who wins a designer-date with Nate Berkus. Hm, why is he always helping out women, when he obviously must have a gay male following (including me)? Do we with our queer eye just not need his services? For interior design, anyway?
• Friday’s program seems kind of disingenuous: “A Secret Sex World: Living On the ‘Down Low.'” The description reads, “It’s a shocker. It’s called ‘living on the down low.’ Men with wives and girlfriends secretly having sex with other men. One man blows the lid off this sexual underground.” Umm, hello? Kudos for talking about sexuality, but it’s called the closet and it’s been around forever. Nothing new here. I think.

Ah, it’s a nice, cozy Sunday. This morning I went to Mass at St. Matthew’s downtown. The place was packed. I should’ve known, especially since this particular Mass was led by the Cardinal. Even D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams was in attendance. I don’t go to church regularly, usually just on Christmas and Easter, but it was nice to have that solemn time to stop and reflect on the meaning of the holiday. Afterwards, I ran into my good friend Adrienne, whom I haven’t seen since the Stanford days. Small world! Well, okay, I guess D.C. does have a fair number of folks with some connection to The Farm. (Right after that encounter I walked by a guy who was wearing Stanford sweatpants.) So hopefully Adrienne and I will get together sometime and catch up on old times.

From the cathedral it was just a short walk to David Greggory, where I met up with Thom for brunch. We ate dinner there a few months ago and had been meaning to check out their buffet brunch ever since. It was quite a spread. You know it’s all very extravagant when one can comment, as Thom did, that “the bison is kind of dry, but the polenta is very good.” Mmm. Isn’t a big, leisurely brunch such a civilized way to spend a Sunday morning? Seriously, I want mimosas every Sunday from now on.

We’re back home, and this gloomy weather is perfect for snuggling up in front of the TV or taking a nap. Happy Easter, kids.

Mesh two songs by Nickelback (“Someday” and “How You Remind Me”), and with some clever editing, you realize both unexpected counterpoint and formula songwriting (MP3, 3.6M). The effect is most pronounced using headphones: the former song is on the left channel, the latter on the right. (Link via Stephen.)

After we listened to this, Thom started humming one of the songs, and I was going to launch into the other one, when I said I could imagine it being given a mock-serious classical treatment. “Like a gay men’s chorus,” Thom suggested. Oh, the burden of our collective overactive imagination.

“The Exorcist in 30 Seconds (and Re-enacted by Bunnies)” (Flash required). Heh. There’s some other funny stuff on the site too, including selected diary excerpts by a third-grade girl, given a dramatic reading by actors (“Amy’s Diary“). Somehow this reminds me of–indulge me, please–Dev’s birthday, junior year in college. Our circle of friends planned a surprise party, and in the days and hours leading up to the event, we had generated a frantic trail of group e-mails. For some reason it occurred to us to print them all out and present them to the birthday boy, but before handing them over, we did a little dramatic reading, passing the “script” around to the respective e-mail authors and taking turns re-enacting the drama known as event planning. Hm, it was a lot more fun at the time than I’m making it sound right now, I swear.