Author: Dan Rhatigan

Wilting in the Heat

As you may notice, all those software demos didn’t kill me, although I did get an extra nine hours of them that I wasn’t expecting. Every once in a while during the meetings, I would be amazed that people were actually deferring to my analysis of one damn thing or another, and it seemed just crazy. Who am I that I should be expected to have a reliable opinion about anything? Then, of course, I’d remember that I am almost thirty, after all (despite my boyish good looks), and I’ve been working in some variation of the same field for about 10 years. Then I would ask why I’m not more successful, and then I would remind myself that I purposely kept switching gears to learn or to do cool new things instead of just plodding ahead, and…

Oh well, you get it. The mind wanders when one is tired, right? But it’s been a week like that. Too poor to go out much. Too hot to have much sex when the opportunities present themselves (seeing as they’ve only been presenting themselves in places where it’s much too hot). Too much work to just hang out in the hammock and catch up on this month’s magazines (Wired, Paper, Metropolis, Emigre, Wallpaper, Nest). so all the mind wandering squeezes itself the little nooks and crannies of my attention span, forcing itself its way into my jam-packed mental space.

Today’s entry is dedicated to my faithful Manservant Hecubus, as a reminder that he’s still aces in my book, even if I have been too big a lazy bastard to write and catch up lately.

Endless Dreariness

One of my freelance gigs is a consulting project for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, doing some research about a computer system they want to buy. (Yes, I am also a nerd-for-hire by other nerds. Who knew?) Today, I will be sitting through a couple hours of software demos, which would not be much of a treat under the best of circumstances. After my unfortunate bout of insomnia last night, all those PowerPoint presentations and all that corporate jargon will surely kill me.

Film Buff

For such a film nut, there are huge, gaping holes in my classic-films checklist. I blame it on my youthful fascination with trash culture. (Which I still love, but I temper with appreciation of the finer things.) I always pooh-poohed all the greats — the silent films, gorgeous black-and-white masterpieces, taught thrillers — as long as I could get a chance to see something more fun, like Valley Girl or Class of Nuke ‘Em High. Thankfully, I’ve gotten over that kind of short sightedness. Now, whenever I see something generally regarded as a classic, it’s always such a revelation, and I could kick myself for not catching it sooner.

It happened the first time I saw Buster Keaton, who I now regard as one of my all-time favorites. It happened when I recently saw Sunset Blvd. and suddenly realized how many other images I had seen on film over the years (not to mention that whole Carol Burnett skit) had drawn from it. And it happened again tonight when I finally watched the DVD for Notorious that I picked up a while back, thinking that I ought to watch it, if just because it was set in Rio and Duran Duran did that song about it. What a gorgeous movie! Just beautifully done. (And it made me very nostalgic to see footage of places in Rio I had been to when I was there.)

Wow! That Hitchcock guy knocks my socks off every time. Do people know about him?

And I don’t mean to get too faggy — and this is above and beyond, even for me — but did Edith Head sell her soul to the devil or something for that kind of talent? We would have a totally different image of Hollywood glamour if it weren’t for that woman.

Room at the Inn

Things could get wacky here this summer. I don’t mean “here” as in this site, although there could be spillage into my online life, but “here” as in my house, since I’m taking in a lodger for the summer. My old roommate David, he of the Twine Tour, is going to be in town for the summer working on a movie and we figured that we could solve the problem of his accomodations and my rent increase with one fell swoop. I haven’t had a non-romantic roommate in a long time, and I have no interior walls in my loft, so this should be kooky.

Of course, things have always been kooky for David and I. When we first met, small-world factor reared it’s ugly head when he realized that the year before a good friend of his had been telling him about a guy (me) he met at a movie who also had a copy (just like David’s) of the photo-novelization of Can’t Stop the Music, the Village People movie. Kismet! Our kitsch-loving paths would be forever intertwined from then on.

In other news of kookiness, the new episode of Ooze is finally out, much to the dismay of the easily offended everywhere. My oldest pal Eddie and his cronies continue to spread the word of juvenile antics. Be sure to check out their promotional video for PWEETA, People Who Enjoy Eating Tasty Animals.

I Was Never Punk

I never said I was a punk, so you can’t call me a poseur. I was never good at committing to just one “scene”, since my interests were always so eclectic, although like many disaffected teenagers I went through my skater, New Wave, punk (Ah, 1987 — the year all the Staten Island New-Wave kids went punk…) , rude-boy, and newly-out fag phases before amalgamating them all into the Sparky you all know and get fed up with today.

Anyway, the subject was punk. I went to go see The Filth and the Fury last night, the latest documentary on the Sex Pistols. Although I was never much of an angry, working-class kid, the Sex Pistols really captivated me way back when, and it was easy to see why as I watched footage of Johnny Rotten shouting and snarling into the microphone as he stared wild-eyed at the crowds. I could feel my whole body tense up with excitement. It was also surpisingly moving to hear him talk about his rage and sadness at how Sid Vicious just fell apart once he became a junkie. I guess it’s not very punk for him to get teary during an interview, but I guess he’s John Lydon now and not Johnny Rotten, so we’ll cut him some slack.

Julien Temple thankfully doesn’t take the whole thing too seriously, even though he’s trying to show a more historical view than he did in The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. Even though a screenwriter pal didn’t think he handled the passage of time well (whatever wanky film-biz nonsense that is), I liked the way he built a context for all of it with a hilarious montage of film and video clips, including a bunch of apropos snippets from Richard III and British TV news. He also kept the contemporary Pistols in silhouette when he interviewed then, which was a deft way to not ruin the impact of all that combustible young anger by showing what they looked like all old and bitter.

To balance things out, today I’m listening to the soundtrack to Hair, surprisingly moving music of another sort altogether. (And back from the days when Treat Williams lived up to his name.)

Debtor’s Prison

My ass is killing me! Except for an hour-long emergency nap, I basically sat in my uncomfortable desk chair for 17 hours straight yesterday, moving from some blogging to designing tedious trade show banners (and does anyone else think Adobe Streamline sucks as much as I do?) to hours and tedious hours of formatting lesson plans for a Thirteen project.

Yes, the deadlines are starting to come together, I’m in that uncomfortable space between one income trailing off and another beginning, and the IRS just realized that I neglected to include a check with my tax return for last year. You’d never know from my apparent poverty that I actually make pretty decent money. But a series of ridiculous expenditures over the years has kept me in a constant state of catch-up, and it sucks. Here are the primary culprits:

  • Moving back to New York from Boston I had no debt at all shortly before I left Boston, but a last-minute trip to China put me in the hole. so when I got back, the whole move down here basically done on credit.
  • The Bushwick Loft An enormous, awesome 4,000 square feet of raw loft deliciousness that Mark and I lived in when I first moved back to New York. It was cool as hell, but it took many visits to Home Depot and Ikea to get it to look that way. Ch-ching! Of course, all that money was wasted by the next year because the junkie we were subletting our half of the floor from basically chased us out. Oh yeah, then paying for another move 14 months after moving in.
  • Brazil An incredible trip, but it basically wiped me out. that’s what I get for travelling to exotic foreign countries on a whim. Again. It was one of those moments where you have such an incredible time that you think, “I’m young, I’m fabulous, and I have the rest of my life to pay for this. Oh wow, look at the bunda on that one…”
  • Grad school A very, very expensive way for me to learn that I have too much experience to get much out of being a part-time student in a program that’s not as customizable as it first appears. Doing just enough work to finish in time for class still had me somewhere at the top of the curve, meaning I could slack off when I didn’t have time to devote to my projects and no one would worry about it since I was still getting A’s. (And for the copy editors out there, I know there should be no apostrophe after that A, but I just don’t want it to look like “as”. Deal.) Oy! The money I spent on tuition and my projects. And those student loan people are like vultures!
  • Gadgets! I’m one of those guys with the gadget gene, meaning I begin to salivate uncontrollably when I see electronics I think I need. Now, I admit that I needed the second computer for a huge freelance project, but did I really need to splurge for the Palm V when I needed some way to keep track of my hours? I know it’s sexier than the earlier ones by half, but it was a little pricey. Oh well, as long as the G4s stay completely, stratospherically out of my price range, I guess I’m safe.
  • That one month where I had to pay my rent with my credit card Oh, I don’t even want to think about it anymore.

So remember kids, if you or anyone you know is in need of a graphic designer with a truckload of experience and mad skillz (as the kids say), don’t be afraid to come a-knockin’. My real expertise is with typography and print, but you might have noticed that I also know how to throw together a web site.

The Long Late-Night Haul

Once again, coming back to Brooklyn on a weekend night has been an odyssey of train delays, shuttle buses, and alternate routes. Ya know, if I didn’t have so much space for so little money, I might not be tempted to put up with it. But, since I have a sweet deal, I’ll just continute to rely on my thorough familiarity with the subway system. At least the Morplay show I went to was a whole lot of fun, even if Cazwell’s cute roommate still won’t flirt with me.

Body Clock Upset

I’m tired. In my efforts to shed my commuter’s sleep schedule, I’ve been staying up later and later and sleeping irregularly, and now I can’t get drowsy before 4 in the morning. It’s hell on those mornings when I have to get up for meetings and stuff. I need to pretend I have jet lag and stay awake for 30 hours or so and shock myself back into a schedule that is a little more practical. (Note: This would be slightly related to the tactic that got me in this mess in the forst place, back when I decided to go out and stay out all night, just because I could for the first time in seven months.)