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Glad to see you again. I took a hiatus from my daily updates because I had better things to do for a while. No longer. Lots has happened since the last update, including two seperate trips to see Veera. Good times were had by all, but, I must hold to my multiple personality disorder, keeping a steadfast divide between my Veera life and things which, while not as joyful, are fun to read and can be liberally treated with sarcasm.

Most important in this half are changes in vocation. When we last left, I was a substitute teacher at two schools in the area. I was tormented by children and left to provtor tests, which is one of the most boring horrible teaching assignments ever. Needless to say, I loved it. But school years end, and I was left listless for a few days, with only a job freelancing for the Enterprise, the local paper.

But not for long. James Joyce -- the old friend you will remember from an earlier episode where he cut his hand to prove that he was weirder than I, not the Irish writer -- offered me a job doing maintenance and landscaping work at a local hotel. What the Hell, I'm still in summer job mode until New Orleans, I said, and took it. W. B. Yeats maintained that we must strive to be something we're not -- the Irish must be a proud nation and sober, for instance. This was certianly the case. The Ryan you and I now abhors the sun, the daytime in general, the fresh air, and in general anything which proves he has a corporeal existence. This job required me to be outside in the sun eight hours a day, doing all kinds of physical labor. But I love contradicting myself (If any of you old-time Fordhamites will recall I was a hard core straight-edger, Brendan-style, who started drinking without peer pressure and for no good reason at all), and I loved the job. I got to use a power washer from hell, whose water jets can generate more psi than Jenna Jameson's mouth (sorry, that's a permutation of an Anthony joke.) The ostensible function of this is to take UV damage off wood so it can be stained, and I certainly used it for that use, but you should see what it will do to cars' paint jobs and huge flowerbeds. Complete and total destruction. Picture me with poer tools, in the sun, reveling in my masculinity, if the image can register.

--Warnng, the next paragraph will come off as incredibly arrogant, but this is an update, and things are going very well for me--

But, of course, that couldn't last. My existence is dependent upon windowless newspaper offices, the glow of a computer screen, and deadlines. After only three days of work, the local daily called me in to take over for the ad designer while she was gone for a month. I am now playing a different game of opposites. Whereas I did everything but advertising at a weekly tablod that used Pagemaker, I am not an ad person at a daily broadsheet that uses Quark. Whereas at The Ram I was, well, me, the ultimate in the fast and loose mentality of Executive Edior even when that wasn't my job, at the Enterprise I am Mike Henry. I set at my computer for 8 hours a day, virtually unspeaking, and crank out the work. I'm generating about a Ram's worth of advertising every day, and we don't use national advertising, so I have to design every one. In fact, the part-time ad girl desided to take a vacation becuase nearly all the ads for the week are done. But Mike Henry-production levels come with consequences. I have been offered a permanent position there basically doing whatever needs doing, becuase, as the Production Manager said, "We're confident you can do anything." I'm still writing stories (my first one was published this week), and I now get 15 hours added to my time card for each one. Things tend to move around a lot at the Enterprise, so if I stayed here, there is a good chance I could be Editor within the next few years. How sweet it is. I am still looking at New Orleans, particularly the Tulane alumni publications, but until I go back to school I have choice between a few fantastic options.

Note: Sadly enough, the Enterprise is the first time I've worked with a black male. There are no minorities in Saranac Lake, but we come off better than the Bronx Bombers at Fordham.

The only downside to all this is Saranac Lake, which is not the most exciting place on earth in the way that Castor Oil is not the tastiest liquid on earth. But I am making the best out of it, mountian biking every day that it's nice (I'm heading out as soon as I finish this) To finally eradicate the me you know, I have also become a morning person. I've gone from someone who has lunch at 10:00 p.m. to someone who wakes up at 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday. Otherwise, I've just been hangingout with James and his Japanese wife, watching people eviscerate themselves with dangerous animals on the discovery channel.

Also, I was carded and denied for the first time ever. Ever. I routinely got into bars when I was 16. The irony here is that I am, of couse, 21. I tried buying a case of beer for some of Veera's friends and I was denied. Why? Becuase I was buying for people waiting in the car. Nope. Becuase my license was fake? Nope. Becuase the vendor looked at me and said "We don't take New York licenses."

Think about this. I was lucky enough to never need a fake ID, but even I know that New Jersey IDs are some of the easiest fakes to make possible, and the new New York IDs are some of the hardest. Did this guy honestly think that I was a Jersey resident who took the path of most resistance. Better still were the gouys who claimed that I had my brothers' ID, and then sold to me anyway. The joys of being 21 and apparently havign a baby face. I would have argued my case better, but I'd already had a few Jack and Ales, so I stormed off, and muttered "Freakin' illegal.... I'll report you to the Better Business Bureau." I have a lot more stuff to tell, I'm sure, but I can't think of it off-hand right now, and I'll save it for the newsless weekdays where I spend most of my time at work and downloading cover songs: (Best yet, a punk cover of "Cabaret" by Me First and The Gimme Gimmes.)

I love soda. Golly gosh I do. Technically, any mention of soda could fall under the obsessesion section of my website, but for a few things. First, I've had too many obsession sections already. For some reason I couldn't stop mentioning them (you'd think I was obsessed with my obsessions.) Secondly, for the purposes of this site, obsessions are to be celebrated, They are revelatory, defining habits--such as Brendan's comic books, Missy's showtunes, and Bo's "Barely Legal" pornography. Soda is different. Soda consumes the soul as well as the teeth, and makes teenage girls' bones brittle.

I was an addict. There is a machine at Fordham that I've sunk literally thosands of dollars into (keeping me up through Ram office nights) It helped explain why I will still stay up until sunrise unless I consciously put myself to sleep. I'd order a two-liter bottle of Pepsi with dinner "to have some tomorrow." As you might have guessed, I frequently didn't even have some later that night.

And it's not my fault. I am a casulty of the Cola War. I took te Pepsi Challenge and decided to give the world a Coke™. (Speaking of the Pepsi Challenge, they;ve brought it back and say that more people prefer Pepsi in blind taste tests across America. If you're an American that can't tell Pepsi and Coke apart by taste, I don't trust your tongue. Christ, I could tell Dr. Pepper from Coke even when the former gott accidentally was canned in a Coke can. "I prefer soda number 3. It has that fine Cola taste." "Actually, that was the ketchup someone left out.") In case you have't noticed, the surest sign of inflation, and what I'm sure is causing Greenspan to drive up rates, is the inflation of soda size. A few years ago I was tutoring some kids. They went to the store, where they found some "cute little bottles of soda" as part of a special promotion. They were 16-ounce bottles. Remember them? They disappeared with the "4 free ounces" 20-oz. container, which was only free to get us hooked. Then came the 24 oz, then 32oz. large sodas, and then Shaq's own One Liter "Big Gulp." Shaq is over 330 lbs. I don't need to eat like him. But I'd get a "Bug Gulp" with lunch and another with dinner. Go to a foreign nation sometime. They still serve human sizes. When I was in the Phillipenes my friiends and I had to get four sodas with out value meals to satisfy our American-size addiction. The soda companies hav't sunk their talons into them yet, but they will. Look for soda by the barrell before 2020.

I am now down to 12 oz. a day. Just enough to keep the withdrawal away...

AMADOU THE RIGHT THING

As Bruce Springsteen began a 10-night stand at New York's Madison Square Garden, the local Patrolman's Benevolent Association called for a boycott of Springsteen in protest of his new song "American Skin (41 Shots)" which refers to the Amadou Diallo shooting.

Fans who've heard the song say it's very moving, although it's no "Tenth Avenue Freezeout."

As Bob Lucente, president of the New York State chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, put it, "He has all these good songs and everything, American flag songs and all that stuff, and now he's a floating fag." Don't even ask Lucente what he thinks of David Bowie.

Some police officers are deeply offended by the lyrics; "Is it a gun?/Is it a knife?/Is it a wallet?/This is your life" ... while other people who've seen Springsteen perform the song live are far more bothered by his monotonous melody and mannered vocal.

One heckler was escorted from the Garden after he approached the stage and flashed obscene hand gestures at Springsteen during the song. Further investigation revealed it was just Bruce's ex-manager, who does that every time the Boss plays New York.

The controversial song threatens to cut deeply into Springsteen's popularity in New York and shove millions of his policeman fans back into the arms of Eddie Money.

BLAIR BUSH PROJECT

George W. Bush, not to be confused with George HW Bush or a man with a full chromosome complement, has narrowed his search for a running mate nomination after being told that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were fictional (and Democrats).

Bush advisers claim about a dozen people are under consideration, and Bush agreed, saying he'd whittled the list down to 13.

According to Bush staffers (no pun intended), the Governor is sending out background questionnaires. The Daily Show Web Research Emporium has received a secret copy of several of the questions:

1.) Dude, have you ever had so much beer that when you woke up in the morning you were in your father's wing of the house and you didn't know how you got there?

2.) When doing the "Elephant Walk" do you playfully massage or is it all business?

3.) Is the levying of specific tariffs, aimed at negating the advantages bestowed upon a company by its government, a reasonable exception to our commitment to free trade?

Bush told Hearst Newspapers last week that he had narrowed his list "a little bit," and that now Barbara Bush, Ronald Reagan and Al Gore were definitely out of contention.

The secrecy of Bush's deliberation is allegedly rivaled only by that of his father's deliberation in '88, and that worked out well.

Many strategists think Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating is the front-runner, since he is a Catholic who opposes abortion, and because he'll definitely help Bush get votes from people who live a full 1 mile from his power base.

Lots of traveling coming up--going to see Veera next weekend and vice versa for the weekend after. As you can imagine, I am happy. we were going to go to Myrtle Beach for a wedding (not ours) and a little fun in the sun, but we realized that there would be about 36 hours of travel and 6 hours of sun. What this means for you New Yorkers is that I will be in the area and plan on going out on the town on Saturday night. If anyone wants to get in touch, email me. In the meantime, I'm working on ym first few faeture stories for the newspaper. Should be an auspicious beginning, too--I could be turning in up to 4,000 words for my first article. It will probably run closer to 3,000, but that is still larger than any story seen in The Ram since the days of Jarrett Murphy. Oh Jarrett, whence has your massive forehead gone?

First, a brief note: I'm making money these days by just sitting around and reading. Yes, I am test proctoring for exactly one students, who broke her arm and has to use the computer. Money and another school district to add to my résumé just to make sure a gimp doesn't spell-check. You see, there is karma for the sixth-grade debacle. Also, I'm working on my first feature for a daily now...

When you have an obsession (or addiction) based upon foreign paraphanelia, New York City is the place to be. Not only does it offer the finest crack pipes west of the Mississippi, but a innumerable collection of bootleg Hong Kong kung-fu films, the genre of choice in the inner city. These two products are often offered in the same place, but I've spent a lot of time sniffing out places in the Bronx area for the latter.

Yeah, there were Kung-Fu movies before Bruce Lee, but that's like saying there was writing in the Balkans before Homer, as the pre-Lee films were invariably as exciting as a merchant's ledger in Minoan Linear B. And, though I worship the ground that Lee lies under, by today's standards his were not much better. As a reporter put it in Time, "He had one unwatchably bad movie and two watchably bad movies." The former was The Big Boss, known in the U.S. as Fists of Fury. His father admonishes him in this movie not to fight, and, to the audience's disappointment and boredom, he takes that advice through two-thirds of the movie. The fight scenes are not very good either, since they play out about the way a real fight between Bruce Lee and some schmuck off the street would, dying in less than a second. Picture a man being thrown through a wall and leaving a man-shaped hole and you'll know all you need to not watch this one.

The latter two are Fists of Fury, known in the U.S. as The Chinese Connection, and Enter the Dragon. The first has some good fight scenes, including Lee going into a Japanese dojo, and first fighting, then bothering a score of karate masters (what else would you call repeatedly rapping people on the feet with nunchaku?) Come to this movie to watch Bruce Lee, stay for the incredible anti-Japanese racism. (This film should have been played as a double feature with WWII-era Bugs Bunny cartoons as internment propaganda) And Enter the Dragon? I don't need to mention it. If you haven't seen it, you don't deserve to read this. "I do not punch. I free my mind, and it punches all by itself."

With Bruce Lee's death in the early 70s, people began to realize that, like porn, kung-fu films were really funny. We thus get a slew of stars chosen for their utter inability to punch or kick. "Who's the Master? Shogun!" is the catch phrase of this era.

In the late 80s, some American filmmakers looked over to Hong Kong, and realized that these plucky little Asians were making films much better than they were. The actors trained for 19 hours a day since age five (making it more rigorous to be an actor than a Spartan) and seemed perfectly willing to give their life away for incredibly stupid stunts. The archetype of this class was rising star Jackie Chan, who had been a stuntman on two Bruce Lee movies, and became a star in Hong Kong with the classic Drunken Master, and was forbidden to appear in another American movie for a decade after he debuted in Cannonball Run.

We all know about Chan because he's made a slew of American films, such as Rumble in the Bronx (which really should have been called Rumble in Vancouver. Last time I was on Fordham Road, I didn't notice a huge mountain range.) and the thoroughly Americanized Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon

Chan is entertaining, but an obsessive must go for the roots. A real kung-fu movie must have thirty-minute long fight scenes with maybe three cuts. A real kung-fu movie must entail at least as much danger and pain to the actors as to the characters. Chan, more acrobat than martial artist, is moving away from making these.

But if you like Chan at all, then there is one movie that will blow you away. Drunken Master II. The fight scenes are amazing--under a train, against fifty men in a crowded room, and, of course, drunken boxing against a man so flexible I believe he's made of cartilage. It is also alone as being genuinely funny even through shoddy translation. The moral of the story is that if you drink industrial grade alcohol, you become invincible. Oddly enough, no distributor has picked it up in the U.S.

The man I find preferable to Chan is Jet Li. He's no acrobat--he was Wu-Shu champion of China six years in a row. And he can act--though not as good at Comedy as Chan, he's great at drama and in less than a year has learned to speak English with little accent. Any of his movies will amaze you with his grace and speed--doubly so when you realize that he slows down while on camera so the film (at least 24 fps) can pick it up. I saw him "normal speed" on the Tonight Show and the camera couldn't pick up half of what he was doing.

But not all of his movies are great, either. Something they love in Hong Kong but most Americans hate is "wire-fu." Wires are used in nearly all Kung-Fu movies, and often to great effect (see "The Matrix") But in many of Li's films, the actors are on wires nearly all the time, because once you study martial arts, you apparently gain the ability to fly. (When I was a karate instructor, the only physical law I overcame was friction, leaving me unable to stop sliding around the floor for weeks.) Here's a brief rundown of some films that don't have too much of this and will blow you away.

Fist Of Legend: This is a remake of The Chinese Connection that erases the racism and is actually better than the original. Three of the best one-on-one fight scenes ever filmed. The director was the choreographer for The Matrix. If he can do that for Keanu, imagine what he can do for Jet. Also directed by him was...

Tai Chi Master: Not the greatest plot, but who cares? Fantastic 50-on-2 fight scene, and a breathtakingly powerful sword fight. Michelle Khan, of Tomorrow Never Dies fame, stars in this one as well. (For a pretty good movie starring her alone, see Wing-Chun)

Swordsman II: Fantastic movie with great plot and fight scenes. A little heavy on the wires.

My Father is a Hero: Decent fight scenes, as well as featuring the little kid who is the Jet Li of tomorrow. These two make a better team in:

Return to the Shaolin Temple: This movie made Li a star, and he already is acting and fighting well in it. I tell you, this little kid gives me hope for a Kung-Fu world after Jet. The scene where he is standing one leg straight up until noon like his father ordered while kids pelt him with rocks is classic. He rocks don't bother him much, and, precisely at noon, he kicks their delinquent butts.

Kicking arse in Fist of Legend, best martial arts movie of all time, unless you're counting Black Belt Jones

.

"Black people like your movies, Li. So we're going to put you in a movie with Black people. And that will be the entire premise of the movie. At first titled Jet Li Meets the Negro, the studio wisely changed it to Romeo Must Die.

Hey kids.... Small update for now, as I've been reworking the index page to make it as ugly as possible, and that's hard work. I've got the next obsession page in the works, though. I'm running out of obsessions. High bandwith shall arrive here on the 27th...

Eve sent me a message saying that next time I say how bad I was as a kid, I should give examples. Fine, Eve, this is for you. Here's why I can't get too mad at marauding sixth graders.

I was a precocious little kid, which is where teh problems started. I'm of middling intelligence now, but I was nearly as smart when I was five as I am now. This is an advantage in simple math and reading; thus, I spent about 2% of the school day doing work, and I had to do something with the rest of my time.

In kindergarten, the most effective form of punishment was to take away someone's chair the rest of the day, leaving them standing for six hours (this was a Catholic school. Disciplinarianism. mmmmm...). Most students tried to avoid this. I chose to practice for it by eating dinner standing up. I had a hard and fast rule: Whenever my parents would ask me how many times the teacher had to yell at me and send me out of the room, I would subtract four.

I had a hobby in first and second grade. I would sit next to the teachers' pet, and do my darndest to corrupt them and make them into consummate troublemakers. After I felt they had been corrupted enough, I would move to the next pet. And yes, I did this quite consciously.

Around 3rd grade, i was obsessed with Bruno and Boots, characters from books I had read that did things like fill their high school pool with Alka-Seltzer. I was inspired. As we put it, my friend pAt's and my job, was to "Incite riots and cause Chaos." We nearly always did, because little kids are halfway to riot mode anyway, and by the end of recess half of the class would invariably be set on panic mode, if not all fighting each other.

In a precursor to journalism, I used to walk around with a notepad, record everything that someone had said, and read it back to them periodically. For some reason, this will throw a child into a frenzy better than anything, particularly since half of the words are obscene once they realize what you're doing.

In 8th grade, I kid you not, I had people convinced I was a vampire. I also covered the cieling of the French room with approximately 987 spitballs, and frequently would tackle people randomly during the lesson. In 9th grade. I would get my fellow students to completely rearrange classroom furniture whenever the teacher would leave the room. My friends and I staged a revolt in French class. I and other students demanded to be given detention "in honor of the martyrs." Our teachers had no idea what to do, and two of them quit to become waitresses. The first day of 10th Grade English, I laughed out loud for 40 minutes to see what would happen. This is all a brif list, because I have a horrible memory as far as life events go. This isn't even covering daily clas clown stuff, like faking seizures (which I used for a different purpose in college) I'm sure Eve's done much worse, though.

A day full of good news. First, I had an interview with the two local newspapers here, and it could not have gone better. They look like fun places to work and I hit it off well with the publisher and editor. I got a call back for a job literally within ten minutes of leaving the office. I'll be writing some nice big feature pieces in a daily, which can't hurt and when I file them I'll be laying them out with the managing editor as a kind of apprenticeship for an editorial position. This is about the fastest track to power in this town. I am the Saranac Lake equivalent of a budding investment broker except I will neither go insane from 120-hour weeks nor snort coke off of prostitutes backs with $100 bills. So I'm happy. Veera also got a kick-ass job as well today in the Chrysler building. Caloo callay! This bodes well.

Secondly, and nearly as important, I'm ordering high-bandwith access again, meaning you will probably be able to contact me at times that are not between 11:00 and 11:15 p.m. It will also be the first reliable high-bandwith access that I have had since December 9, 1998, which was before Napster. In other words, I shall soon have Mp3's of every last noise ever uttered by a human or higher-primate mouth. I've already added some covers, including punk covers of "Seasons in the Sun" and--Missy will love this--"Phantom of the Opera." I'm still looking for Gwar performign the theme to "Facts of Life," and "Enter the Sandman," erformed by Zamfir and his Magical Pan Flute.

I taught a sixth grade class yesterday. Bo Missonis, who taught a sixth-grade class in the Bronx, is a hero. My god. Kindergarten cop wasn't a stupid comedy. it was a documentary. Imagine kids spitting on each other and then trying to convince you that what they did was a good act. "But what if there was battery acid in my mouth?"

Picture the conversation: "Can I use the world "lesbian"?

"No!"

"Okay. Can I use the word dyke?"

Picture kids covering me with glitter. Picture me screaming: "THERE ARE A FEW UNBREAKABLE RULES. NO VIOLENCE. NO SWEARING. NO YELLING." And having all of them broken before the minute was up. Picture me chasing kids down the hall and having to let them get away because they were struggling enough that to restrain them would cause them injury. I was lucky enough to get them on a day full of arts and crafts. Picture these kids with hot glue guns. I'm lucky no one lost an eye.

But, again, I was much worse so it's okay.

Now, I'm a messy person. Messy enough that it's a character flaw, so perhaps I shouldn't be speaking on this subject. But why is it that most women will fly into a near-state of shock whenever they find out that someone is coming over? "We have to clean the bathroom / vacuum / mow the lawn / polish the doorknobs / disinfect the floor / sterilize the dog ... basically perform all the necessary tasks in case we have to perform sudden invasive surgery on the kitchen counter, or allow the Boy in the Plastic Bubble to wander around the house. Case in point. There is neurosis over the "messy" state of the house today because a high school boy is coming over to study. I know there are exceptions, but most high school boys really don't care if there's dust on the mantle. Hell, most high school boys wouldn't notice anything unless they stepped in some old food on the floor, and then they'd just say, "Sorry, dude, is this yours?" I really wonder if women have different senses than men:

"Do you see how dusty this place is?"

"No."

"Oh, I forgot, you have to rely on your eyes. Try reaching out along the electromagnetic spectrum."

Sheesh.

Okay, here's a sample of how my thought process works. I'm fixing myself some chili that is just old enough to require extra microwaving to stave of food poisoning, and I'm thinking of an old debate case NYU ran back in the day. The case was: Computer-generated child pornography (drawing images that look like kids, but no real kids being harmed) should be legal. In the real world, there are strong arguments on the opposition. In the debate world, the case is unbeatable because for some reason only libertarian arguments are allowed on APDA. This set me thinking about the legal guidelines of obscenity and pornography, which themselves are nearly obscene in their lack of clarity. The three major guidelines are: nothing that offends the local ethic (by this standard there's a possibility the entire Internet could be regulated along Taliban-controlled Afghanistan standards. Cover up those ankles, ladies!), the famous, "I'll know it when I see it" clause, and something degrading which serves no useful purpose. Not only does this render the Backstreet Boys obscene (which I agree with), but it makes it easy to get around--virtually everything has can be construed to have SOME useful purpose. Even "Piss Christ" made powerful statements about hygiene. I heard something in communications class a few years back about pornographers deliberately trying to get around this with public service messages woven into what for lack of a better term shall be called a "plot." I, not being a porn maven, really wonder how they do this. I'm sure a few people on my mailing list could help me. I'm sure Jenna Jameson has done wondrous films on the importance of brushing (the obvious joke shall not be made--I'm not looking to get kicked out of GeoCities.) I can just see the titles:

BARELY LEGAL FLOSSING SCHOOLGIRLS

CHICKS WHO CRAVE HEALTHY BONES AND STRONG TEETH

BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR LIES A COLLEGE EDUCATION

DEBBIE DOES LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE SHE CROSSES THE STREET

DEEP GROUT: BATHROOM CLEANING TIPS