Are hipsters dying? Is the movement over? This schlub thinks yes.

During middle school I tried to fit into the "skater" fad by anxiously purchasing a pair of puffy DC shoes from PacSun. And that was it. I still shudder thinking about how sweaty my armpits would get whenever a trip to PacSun happened: my existence was so horribly awkward I would do anything to get picked on less. Even so, I couldn't bring myself to look any more foolish than what a pair of DC shoes did to me - plus I hated the kids who were legit gangster-skaters (at that time, and in Oregon, you weren't a skater if you weren't also half gangster). As such, I hung around the fringes of middle school society, telling myself over and over that the skater fad was a dying trend, and that the next, better scene would be one I'd embrace full-on just as soon as it happened.

And then it turned out that the next scene was this whole hipster thing that's been going on. And I was almost equally fucked. I know the telltale sign of a hipster is a hipster who refuses to label himself as one, but I'm still going to say that I'm decidedly not a hipster. Sure, I fucking love Wes Anderson movies. And yes, I live in San Francisco and have a velvet painting of an owl in my living room and I majored in English and I think irony is great. But I also wear collared shirts and eat meat and detest skinny jeans and washed out Instagram photos and pointy-toed shoes. Plus I have the whole so-ambitious-I-actually-work-a-real-job thing going for me, so I feel safe in saying I'm not a hipster. I'd logically place myself squarely in the nerd realm, on the side that barely juts up against the fringe of hipsterdom, which is a safe place to be because hipsters are kind to nerds and sometimes regard them as fellow companions adrift in a world of meaningless consumerism (their words [I think], not mine).


So but anyway lately it seems as though the hipster movement has no place else to go. Everything verifiably hipster has become so self-aware that the only remaining option for progress - in my opinion - is to step out of the bubble, shave off the beard, and reinvent. I'm so excited to again see people with genuine expressions on their faces I can hardly stand it. Imagine: walking into a coffee shop and witnessing animated mouth movement; eyes that widen in excitement when someone exaggerates with their hands; the sweet booming of a belly laugh. It'll be as if an entire generation of youthful zombies (coincidence that zombies are so popular right now?) just snapped out of their languid repose and realized they spent the best decade of their lives trying to pass as catatonic. Plus lesbians will have their look back to themselves.

I wouldn't describe any of my immediate friends as hipsters... but friends of friends definitely are. From a once-removed perspective, I've had ample time to stare and judge. I could write a lot about their *interesting* fashion choices, or how the whole lifestyle encompasses so much wasted talent it makes me sad, or that the paradoxical, so-different-I'm-the-exact-same nature of their existence is a black hole of logic (or is that the point?), though in truth I'd rather focus on the inherent retarded ineptness of it all. For fuck's sake, people, you're using an app on your iPhone to take pictures that look as if they came from a classic Polaroid, so that you can then use those pictures to embellish your idealized online version of yourself in front of the 1,400 people who claim you as a friend. It's sacrificing real-life living for a too-cool avatar. But if you ever pointed that out, they'd say they're drinking tall boys, wearing ridiculous clothing, and specifically not mugging in front of an ever-present onslaught of cameras precisely because the last thing they care about is Facebook. I suspect, though, that I'm preaching to the choir here.

I'm reminded of a quote from Brenda on Six Feet Under: "That's the thing about depression - if you really allow yourself to feel it, it gets very boring very fast."

Are they bored yet? Don't they have to be by this point? I suspect what's holding back the new revolution is the dawning realization and fear of the fact that they've pissed away so much time doing exactly nothing that to start caring now would be, like, really hard.


Two signs of the coming hipster apocalypse: Jake Gyllenhaal murdering the shit out of them (here), ***and this is a real-time update, foks - I'm so jacked on coffee right now I can't remember what the second telltale sign is that inspired this entire post in the first place. Here's hoping it comes to me soon***

The really great part about this, of course, is that all these clueless hipsters who are about to put down the barista apron, buy a bed frame, and look for lucrative ways to turn their passion for poetry into a moneymaking career are going to be about 2.5 years behind yours truly. For once I have a legit head start! And damn, does it feel good. After the world doesn't end in December, I'm envisioning a 2013 that plays out like a minimalist version of the 80s: those fucking hippies had their fun, now it's time to make money and drive nice cars.

CNN headlines, and the answers you find if you click through

Is Swift dating Tebow?

Rest assured - you shouldn't care.

New ads grossing you out?

It's gonna take more than a photo of lung cancer to get you to start living healthier.

Looking for happiness?

It's sure as shit not here. Sucker.

Did Oscars clinch 2012 for Obama?

We didn't expect anyone to read this. We've got nothing. It was a nonsensical filler headline. Please ignore.

Is Snooki pregnant or not?

This computer will self destruct and blow molten shrapnel into your slack-jawed face in 4 seconds.

Audium

Usually Friday nights go: nap/exercise, shower, frantic dinner, even more frantic drinking, bus to some bar or another for continued drinking.

And it's fun. And I have no complaints.

This past weekend, though, after a productive week at work spent reading up on SF-based blogs, I decided something more cultured was in order. A friend and I bought tickets to an appropriately mysterious event at an appropriately off-the-map location called Audium. I knew we could expect an experiment in sound, which was to take place in complete darkness, and that's about all she wrote.

Friday night rolled around, and while I was excited for whatever I'd just paid $20 to attend, a huge chunk of my gut was nagging for a return to my more familiar Friday night shenanigans. The vodka! and the Rock Star! (My gut nagged.) Instead, I silenced it with a slice of pizza in the least shady bit of the Tenderloin our trek to Bush and Franklin provided, and by the time we arrived approximately at Audium's intersection, I would have sworn we were lost had our phones not declared otherwise. And then there it was.

We were kind of being tailed by this awkward hipster kid who couldn't seem to match his pace with ours, resulting in his being right on our asses until we stood directly in front of Audium's entryway. As such, what was already a bit of an ominous moment was made even more off-kilter by the fact that we were flustered by this kid's presence, seeing as he was the only other one in sight on the dark street with us, and we didn't know whether he was following us inside or what, and so instead of taking a moment to orient ourselves we were kind of thrust unceremoniously inside, which to me is a big deal in terms of establishing a mood and a pace. If that makes sense. Fuck, I'm crazy.


The lady in the ticket booth immediately inside the doors was dressed in strange vintage garb that was just a little too costume-y to take her as a serious human being. She looked like a background extra from Altered States, and her mannerisms only confirmed this harsh judgement. Beyond her, around a dark corner, waited the lobby. Honestly, I could have just hung out in the lobby for the entire length of the audio performance and been content: it was stark, smelled like 1973, and featured strangely placed art pieces bathed in moody red and blue lighting. About two dozen other people milled around, waiting, and I immediately wanted to know who these people were and what the fuck they were doing at Audium on a Friday night. Some had on suits! Then I thought about the veritable parade of Friday/Saturday night performances that had taken place here since the 1960s, and how many countless hundreds of thousands of people had been in the exact same lobby, and I felt a lot less special. Still, it seemed as though I'd entered one of those pockets of our current reality that might have a portal to another one behind a curtain in the basement somewhere, if you know what I mean. Let's just say the air was charged.


After a while this old guy in an interesting tweed suit emerged from the pitch-black octagonal doorway that led to the sound theater. He gave a little speech that meandered in a distressingly memorized way, like "oh I'm just giving this off-the-cuff speech for the 4,000th time, let's see how subtly I can veer into a totally controlled tangent." Then we followed him through the octagon into a long stretch of pitch-black hallway, which soon bent back on itself into another long hallway, which then opened up onto the theater, which let's just say a picture says a thousand words:


We all sat down facing each other, and within two minutes the old man had entered a control booth and dimmed the lights lower, and lower, and lower - until I couldn't see a damned thing. In complete darkness, the sounds began. After a while my mind started to wander, and I forgot I sat in a room with two dozen strangers who were all probably unwittingly starting straight at me through the dark. I thought it would be an ideal setting for a pervert to routinely show up at, wait until the lights went black, and then sneak his pair of night vision goggles out from a backpack so he could observe everyone who had no idea they were able to be seen. Then I realized the old man in the control booth must have night vision goggles himself, a suspicion he confirmed when he thanked us an hour later for being "such an attentive audience." Ah!

My only complaint is that the sounds themselves were a bit (read: lot) outdated, and it was kind of apparent that this musical composition of raindrops, laughter, creepy piano riffs, and bouncy-ball sound effects that took place all around us (even in the floor!) were the machinations of a drug-addled ex (?) hippie. But he was nice and gave another little speech in the lobby afterward about how he creates his works (this is his 9th iteration), so I'm going to focus instead on what a wild overall experience Audium turned out to be. Definitely recommended, even if you do feel leaving dazed and confused.

Hobbit Hole

My new place is fantastic and cozy, with one problem: I never want to leave. When I'm headed out the door to work, everything looks so quaint and delightful in the morning sunlight that I nearly shed a tear, and when I get home from work, the low-domed ceilings and ornate (read: wavy) woodwork surrounding all doors/windows/arches practically begs me to sit on the couch, drink wine, and not get up until it's time to fall into bed. I know I should go climbing, and I know I should eventually get around to vacuuming the kitchen floor, but from the couch it all looks so warm and perfect that how could I have the heart to do anything but sit and stare? Especially since it's mine. All mine.

Let's just say I threw out the bathrobe during my move.


Today's a balmy 72 degrees here in SF, and I'm inside an office. Normally now would be about the time I post an annoying picture of myself sitting in a park sipping on a Forty, but that's not the case these days. Instead, I run outside for lunch, speed walk specifically on the sunny side of the street to whichever restaurant, and then half-jog back feeling guilty for having taken a whole 15 minutes to purchase a salad (but, more likely, a burrito). And it's not like I'm swamped with work. I just have this Catholic Guilt going on still. Man, this shit's bad.


I have to say that my new location in the city has turned virtually every day into a brand-new SF experience. I take new buses (I would say the 38 can go to hell, but that's clearly where it's always stopped at the end of the inbound half of its route, and I don't want to be redundant), Alamo Square Park (complete with the Full House houses) is 30 feet from my front door, and my favorite neighborhoods are all within short walking distance. Just the notion that I'm on my own is almost too much to handle, let alone the rest. This is the big time, people.


On Sunday I stepped out onto the sunny front patio of my place to assess the weather. The patio is elevated a good 12 feet off the ground, and just as I was standing there stretching, one of the big, topless double-decker tour buses stopped right in front of me so everyone on it could take a picture of City Hall (which my street dead-ends into). I was on the same level with them and only like four feet away from the side of their bus, so I awkwardly stopped stretching and started waving. Thirty grinning tourists waved back. I would like to start every day that way: "yes, this is my life, now go on and continue snapping photos of it."

V Day

Time accelerates. I am a man on a rocket ship.

Today is February 14, and I'm pretty sure yesterday was January 3. Or something.

No matter. I've spent the past four days at work holed up with a head copywriter and a creative director coming up with slogans for a relatively cool company's ad banner campaign. I estimate having written approximately 250 slogans since last Thursday, which is fine by me because it's partly what's fueling this TimeSurge (what I'm labeling the whole rocket-ship feeling). My boss here moved me out to the big common creative room where everyone else who writes and designs sits, and they're fantastic company. Everyone plays music, discusses TV shows, throws paper airplanes, and generally acts like fools until it comes time to sit down and produce something. And even then, Whitney Houston is playing in the background.

Although the office isn't anywhere near as sleek as the one in Mad Men, and the clients aren't quite so exciting, the daily conversations, dramatic presentations, and interpersonal dynamics between creative and account people is near identical. I'm having a great time sitting and observing everyone wisecracking and swearing at one another and then get really surprised when I'm called into the action, because I tend to forget I'm not just an audience member sitting on his couch yelling at Peggy for being such a pushover. And the even crazier part is that even though I'm interning, any changes the directors want to make to my copy has to be approved by me, so whenever they come for my permission to chop a word out I get really unnecessarily excited.

This rule doesn't apply, however, to works in progress. I have seen SO much copy I've produced either completely thrown out or ripped nearly in-total to shreds, with just one or two compelling nuggets remaining for me to restructure and build upon. It would be devastating, but two years of creative writing in college turned my skin to dragon hide (and by that I mean: super tough). Also, I keep getting reassured that I'm actually doing a really great job and this is just par for the course, especially when it's your third week writing copy. And these aren't the kind of guys to bullshit, so I believe them. More later, yo.

A Night on the Town

Part I (In Which the Protagonist has a Glorious Night on the Town [and also, just so you know, there won't be a part II]):

Last week my dear friend Alex and I met up at House of Shields in San Francisco's Financial District for some after-work cocktails. House of Shields is a chandelier-y, wood-paneled, airy establishment frequented by attractive suits who need a stopover between the office and a fancy dinner. Every other time I've been there the drinks were bought for me (the perks of being a poor intern at Wikipedia), so I was surprised to discover my meager Greyhound cost a whopping $6 (which, for the record, is about $3 more than I'm used to spending on a well drink). Then I had this fantastic moment of realization where I was all, "wait a second. The price of this drink literally doesn't matter: I made me some money today!" The sad truth is I've grown so accustomed to never having extra dough to throw around I don't know what to do with myself now that I'm earning a modest hourly rate. I've tried twice to buy some quality clothing in order to project an air of stylishness and authority, but I can't justify spending $190 on a sweater. I did, though, happily upgrade from Gilbey's to Smirnoff during my latest vodka purchase at the corner market.

Then we ran into my old boss from Wiki, Jay. The encounter was everything I imagined future encounters for myself to be, wherein I'm a non-awkward adult who thinks nothing of running into people I used to work for, and who can say something totally normal and engaging and not get flustered when the conversation ends just as abruptly as it begins. When we parted ways, I thought back 1.5 weeks to when I still interned at Wiki, and it already seemed like it had happened way too long ago, but instead of feeling sad or nostalgic I kind of just went, "oh, so now I'll be seeing him at bars instead of the office. Huh." And that was that. And I felt wildly sophisticated. And I also had a brief glimpse of the next forty years of my life, during which events and people and situations and run-ins will pile up and twist together and morph into a life so completely foreign to the one I know now that I may as well not even think about it, because it's all going to end so unpredictably that even just trying to puzzle the next week out is enough of a clusterfuck.


At any rate, after our drinks we moseyed through San Francisco's teeming downtown crowds (seriously, they teem) to Spoke Art, a small gallery debuting Tim Doyle's "Surreal Estate" series, in which Doyle has reinterpreted iconic landscapes from some of television's popular shows. The gallery was small, but free beer flowethed, and I'm a huge fan of Doyle's artwork, so I willingly suffered close proximity to so many fancy hipsters for a chance at one of his limited edition prints. Soon, though, with a beer in hand and my unease put to rest by a nearby rendering of the Bluth family's banana stand, I actually started to feel just the tiniest bit like I belonged there. Alex and I stood close to the door, looking at everyone and commenting on how strange it was for us to just be standing there, in a hip art gallery in San Francisco drinking free beer on a Tuesday night, and how we'd scarcely received even a single hostile glance. All at once the situation turned magical. "This is it," I thought, "this is what it's like to start feeling like you've made it." But then if you'll recall my previous post, which actually happens after this one chronologically, you'll start to understand how perilously up-and-down my weekly emotional agenda goes.


So I ended up buying a print of the Seinfeld diner (titled, "The Big Salad"), which a lady at the bus stop an hour later ended up telling me allll about (she went to school right down the street from the "real" exterior used in the show), but not before Alex and I finished the evening with some Thai food at a gloriously random restaurant somewhere in the Tenderloin. When I finally flopped onto my bed that evening, art in hand, and thought about the ad agency, the bar, the gallery, and the restaurant I'd circulated through since I stepped out of bed that morning, I felt incredibly accomplished. Like when I first started college and would leave my dorm room at 1 am to have a late-night burrito at the 24/7 mexican restaurant across the street, mostly just to be able to sit there knowing it was 1 am and I didn't have to get anyone's permission to be doing this and my mom was fast asleep and had no idea that her son was braving the streets of Eugene for a burrito.

So I lay there, feeling dirty from the bus and clutching my art and thinking about how it was only Tuesday night, and everything very nearly fit together into a coherent sort of existence. And it was all terribly exciting, just so long as I didn't let my brain drift too far in any one direction. And now I'm hoping there never comes a time when I'm unable to excite myself just by accomplishing totally ordinary feats.

Mah Brain

I had a conversation with a friend this weekend about the state of my consciousness, and how I need to work on bridging the gap between what's going on with my physical self (like, eating pizza and talking with a friend) and my nonphysical mental processes (like, my brain kind of sitting twenty feet behind me, assessing the situation and making observations similar to a vindictive narrator). I've mostly maintained that living in the present tense and enjoying situations as they unfold takes a certain talent for shutting off one's thoughts, which was why I believe I've never enjoyed small moments as much as other people might. The remedy for this, of course, has always been drinking. But sometimes I just don't wanna!

Then the friend suggested that the only way for a person like me to truly live in the moment, and not constantly worry and project and assess and panic, is to commit myself to really coming to terms with who I am as a person, and to find comfort and a sense of strong identity in all the quirks and unsavory bits of character that are themselves the very motivations for my frequent moments of self loathing. Now, I'd heard the first chunk of that piece of advice several times before, but the section on viewing a lot of the things I *don't* like and want to change as simply unchangeable aspects of myself that should be embraced for their role in defining my character was staggering. This friend is several years older than myself, and hugely intelligent, and also majored in philosophy before law school, so I think listening to what he has to say and really trying to apply it might be worthwhile. He put it this way: "you're here and you're going to live your life, and one day you'll be dead, and you're all you're ever going to truly have in between, so why would you put yourself through unnecessary grief if you could love yourself completely and be that much more fulfilled?"

But hold on! Isn't this exactly what happened when I came out to everyone three years ago? If so, why is it still just as relevant today? How did I learn so valuable a lesson the first time around and then *not* continue to apply it?


If, in the past, I was able to proclaim something as then-difficult as my homosexuality and stick with its consequences, I'd like to think myself capable of similar feats in the present. Personal growth is tricky, and I get restless when I don't know from which angle I should approach it, but this weekend's conversation was a much-needed kick in the pants. So I suppose the purpose of this whole post is to have it in writing somewhere that I'm going to work hard to stop doing anything that remotely resembles apologizing for any actions/words/behaviors that emanate from my being unless an apology is truly in order. And maybe if I stop doing that then I'll stop feeling the need to analyze every situation for reasons to apologize. And then maybe if I analyze less then I'll be more capable of enjoying the present as the person I am. And then this whole post will be irrelevant! And I'll be happy. Or at least happier. Either way, I'm counting it a win.

And I should also be clear that I'm not sitting around everyday moaning and groaning and wishing for everything to be different. On the contrary, I'm usually whistling. I also realize this isn't the most exciting shit to write about in a blog setting, but I feel these are questions and (pseudo) answers that a lot of people can make use of, even if they've been asked and answered before. Sometimes we just need people to remind us that doing nothing but spinning our wheels is a surefire way to get nowhere. And I would much rather end up somewhere. Starting today.

A Case of Mondays, Alleviated by Office Hottie

So last week at work I successfully read 700 pages of epic fantasy, gained a hard-to-shake reputation as the new kid with the disgusting hacking cough, and was actually assigned something Friday afternoon.

On Tuesday, though, I sat in on a meeting where the heads of the creative and accounting teams came together to discuss a series of commercial pitches they're delivering to a company this week. It was super exciting because the budgeting lady was listening to the script pitches the creative team had put together and was saying things like, "with this budget we'll never get two locations" and "can we just have one principal (actor) speaking?" and "now let's keep in mind we need this translated to French and German, as well, so the more narrative voiceover we can get away with the better." Every time they referred to "Creative" as a team I perked up a bit, though I didn't get to contribute an opinion once. They favor the "fly-on-the-wall" approach to interns here much more so than over at Wikipedia.

Then on Friday one of the lead Copywriters gave me an assignment, which is to come up with two of the five tag lines that are going to circulate across the lead banner of a high-traffic website. I would totally tell you which website so you could see my work in a few weeks, but I still don't understand all the confidentiality stuff I signed, and I'm pretty sure this falls under what I promised I wouldn't talk about, so you're going to have to settle for vagueries (new word!). He sent me all these documents that have the company's mission statement and ground rules for creative work laid out, and I've been distilling the "primary message" from these two distinct portions of their web entity to come up with two sentences that describe who they are to a soulful, resonating Tee. The guy I'm working on this with is an old English fellow who dresses proper and has wild grey hair and huge bottle-rim glasses, and he basically stumbled from some unmentioned classroom at Hogwarts to start working here I'm pretty sure.

Otherwise, not much is going on. Actually, a lot is going on, and I have 600 words written to fill the space between these two parentheses right here: " ". But I'm not going to tell you what they say yet until an undisclosed thing happens and I feel I'm in an appropriate place to paste away and let you all read what's there but isn't. And if this is confusing, no matter... it'll all make sense soon enough.

***Evening edit: Forgot to mention anything about the titular Office Hottie. He's tall, handsome, has a great smile, dresses well, and initiated conversation with yours truly TWICE already. Which is about 1.5 times more than anyone else can claim credit for. Either he's a really nice straight guy who just has my best interests at heart, or he's thinking the same thing I am. But how to find out? And what to do once that happens? Shit, man.

Oh, George

I know I spent 15+ months updating this blog (on my MacBook Pro, while listening to iTunes) with rants about how much I hated working at Apple and how all the sniveling, overprivileged customers who came in griping about their iPhone or their iPod touch were more or less the foulest, least deserving people ever, but now that I have my iPhone I totally get the fuss. It's like when I first adopted my cat Squeakers and I spent like two hours every night playing with her in the garage before bed, and I'd always wonder how I used to spend my time before bed prior to owning her. This was pre- learning how to masturbate, of course. I think.


But so now I have the iPhone, and the best part is it could actually help me masturbate, if I wanted. No but seriously, the best part is like literally every second I have with my hands on it, which is a big number by the end of the day. From the battery life left in the little fella, though, you'd never know it. I play Words with Friends like a fiend, and deliberate over wallpaper images, and keep up to near-constant date with Michael Ian Black and Roger Ebert on Twitter, and still there's like 85% of a charge left by the time I plug it back in for the night. What a trooper.

About two weeks in, though, a pixel on the screen went black. I was so used to its flawless performance that it seemed a much bigger deal than it actually was. I wanted a replacement, and I wanted one *now*. Rationality didn't factor in at my base impulse level. But then I was like, "wait a second, AJ, if you're the douche that tosses an entire phone's toxins into the environment because of a single dead pixel, then you are NOT starting 2012 out right. Plus you would hate the person who came in for that if you still worked at the store." And it's true. What ultimately upset me most about the situation was my day-long assimilation with the greedy assholes who unceasingly march themselves to 1 Stockton Street by the thousands, daily, angrily demanding replacements for phones and laptops because of something so measly as a single dead pixel.


So instead I named my phone Freckle and am calling it even... but if Freckle gets another one I'll be in for sure.

Also, I've been reading more Game of Thrones this past week and that George R.R. Martin is one clever bastard. Just when I think I have his methods for plot twists figured out, he goes and throws a wrench in. A fantastic, marvelous wrench all the colors of the rainbow! My thoughts went from, "oh great, here goes Jon Snow blathering on about which side he's on, and it's going to take 500 more pages for any of this to come to a head, and meanwhile he's like camped out right next to Bran but he'll never know it, and gahhh," to "holy shit! He decided and Bran's direwolf saved him!" within the span of fifteen pages. And if you don't know what I'm going on about then you should probably start reading (Simone).

So yeah. It's off to the pho shop for me.

Latitude

It's here...

Kind of. I have to admit that when the creative team behind the Jejune Institute self-combusted last year, I didn't give much thought to what Nonchalance's next massive project might be simply because I didn't think there would be one. Sure, I'd take dates on late-night detours down side alleys in the Mission to check out a relic or two from the former experience, though that was about as extreme as I thought my immersion into a fabricated alternate reality was ever going to get again. But then this website arrived, and it's already hooked me:

http://thelatitude.com/

I'm not titling the link because I think its more mysterious as is (as if my preferences even make a difference to you all). Also, I keep bringing this up, but I wish the big button that you're clearly supposed to push at the bottom of the page had "conceive" correctly spelled on it. Perhaps the typo is part of whatever insane game Jeff's cooking up next... but it probably isn't.

Regardless, I've sent an email into the "inquiries" address listed, and will be keeping everyone who reads this informed of any minute update. And by minute, I mean minute - though a little bird tells me nothing will be officially happening until much later in the year.

Commence speculating. Now.

Wonderment

Lately the world's been wowing me.

For example, today my friend and I were at the gym, running next to each other on treadmills (which was the least sensical thing to do, what with Crissy Field literally outside the window... but she had a really sore throat and thought the outside air would be too sharp on it, so...). We made a point of starting the machines as close to the same nanosecond as possible, and we ran the same speed the entire time. Still, when 25 minutes were up, I'd run farther, burned more calories, and my timer was a full seven seconds ahead of hers. I'm not suggesting I time traveled, but some serious discrepancies were going down between those two machines. If we had done nothing for 25 minutes but run and stare at our respective countdowns, would I have perceived seven extra seconds of time? How does that work?

I swear I'm not high right now.


1/2 of the view from the gym. Not included: Alcatraz, Golden Gate Bridge.

Second, my relationship with John, the guy who runs the corner market below our apartment, totally floors me. I'm actually one of those people living in the big city who's on a first-name basis with the gregarious, over-the-top, somewhat sleazy corner market guy. What's more, he thinks I'm a stand-up human being and is always inviting me to hang out and help him rearrange his shelves of overpriced wine. In other words, he doesn't sense anything the least bit fucked up about me, which I always consider rather remarkable a slip-up for any observant individual to make. (just kidding, prospective employers!) The only truly odd bit is that I've definitely done my fair share of late night canoodling in front of him, and the guy still thinks I play for his team. I always consider just telling him straight-up that I'm gay whenever he gets to talking about "the women with the breasts" that come into his store, but I have no idea where that would lead and frankly I think he'd forget by the next time I came in, so I'm letting this particular sleeping dog lie. For now.

Finally, I'm reaching a point in life where alcohol is still super great and all, but I'm finding it increasingly less necessary (is "increasingly less" a paradox?) to slug down in order to have a good time. During college, when the name of the game was fitting into a straight party full of straight sexual tension, I'd need me a whole lot of Vodka to even consider playing the part. Now, though, after coming out and after gaining quite a bit more self-confidence than I used to possess, I'm discovering it really doesn't make a difference to my fun levels whether or not I'm good and schnockered. In fact, I'm probably more fun (and a hell of a lot sexier) in my coherent, non-bloated format. So I'm trying to practice the more-water-less-booze principle these days, but to be honest by "these days" I mean the past *TWO* days, so this may or may not be a turning point decision for my own personal history books.



Definitely NOT a young, gross me drinking beer from a bowl

Still recommended for all you Netflix Instanters out there: Weekend (Tom Cullen + Chris New = eye candy man sandwich), and Peep Show (the most fun you'll ever have being awkwarded the fuck out***).


*** Did anyone catch that super clever Peep Show / Creepshow tagline reference? God, I'm delightful.

Bringin' in the Bacon

My blog just made $0.46! Someone clicked on that lonely little advertisement to the right, and voila!

Maybe if I just plaster this thing with ads I'll have enough to buy me a sandwich next week. You'd be hard pressed to scrape together enough of an artistic statement on Minor Fiascos to even think about saying I'm selling out.

A Storm of Swords

Another landmark reached over this past holiday weekend was my officially cracking open book III of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Storm of Swords. I spent all summer re-reading Infinite Jest, and it looks like I'm destined to spend all fall/winter/spring creeping through this epic fantasy tale, which for the most part I have no problem with. My one concern to date is that each book seems to be following a longer page count / smaller font trend, and I'm thinking it might be one of those paradoxical situations where the closer you get to an exact measurement of something, the clearer it becomes that exact measurements don't exist. Make sense?

Some thoughts:

- Everyone in the Middle Ages (especially in made up fantasy worlds) is totally okay with dying. Peasants, knights, whores, chefs, small children, kings... they all run with a sort of eager fervor into the sharp end of a sword whenever one presents itself, which is frequently. I get that unless you were born into royalty, life was almost uniformly terrible. Still, though, it's as if these characters (and thousands of unnamed extras) are lacking some crucial brain function that says, "hey, wait a minute, I'm like 23 years old and I have all this stuff going on in my life... maybe I shouldn't jump in front of this angry knight's battle axe." But no, every last one jumps, and as such the reader is treated to epically gory paragraphs detailing severed limbs, mangey dogs munching on spilled entrails, crows pecking out eyeballs before the fresh corpse hits the ground, etc.


- I still have no idea what a mummer's farce is, but it's fun to refer to literally anything preposterous that happens in real life as one. Example: "If Sean even thinks I'm going to meet up with them at the bar at this hour, he's living a mummer's farce." Or: "Did you see the price of that enchilada? What a mummer's farce!"

- George R.R. Martin employs a ripple effect to fantastic use: he features dozens of main characters, the actions of each affecting everyone else uniformly. I'm almost tempted to think the only sane approach to writing such a HUGE story in this manner is by coming to terms with the fact that you have no fucking idea where each book is going to end, and then just writing in a very cause-and-effect type manner until you get to scoot from your desk, put your hands behind your head in a gesture of exhausted satisfaction, and just hope it all makes sense. Except for each book ends so cohesively I don't know how this could be the case. I'll resist making giant LOST comparisons... for now.

- If I was a character I'd totally still be alive, Tyrion and I would be best friends, and I'd eventually gain back Winterfell from Theon via some sort of sexual conquest. Assuming Theon isn't dead and someone else isn't claiming Winterfell... the end of book II got confusing.

- OR I'd be a total bitch locked up with Sansa in King's Landing, crying and asking where all my friends went (news flash Sansa: they're dead, yo!) and trying to be a good little boy so that blah blah blah. Basically, Sansa sucks but I could totally see myself going her route. Sad, but true. 2012 is also the year for embracing sad truths.


PS: Just Googled Theon Greyjoy to include an image of him, then realized he's kinda ugo. Goddamned HBO. These casting directors need to recognize a potential sex symbol when they read one.

The Beginning of the End

There's a special kind of careless planning that has to go into every New Years Eve agenda for the night to really work. Too much stressing and advance-ticket buying and you're toast, too little and you're plain fucked. I have a good friend whose true art, it could be said, is his ability to just kind of make things work on the fly. Or at least it seems on the fly: in reality, the music and the zaniness and the shouting and the alcohol and the zen-like feeling of a good time are all finely orchestrated to present to the participant (in most cases, me) something of a vacation from reality, the kind of vacation where the destination is reached and you were having such a good time in the back seat you didn't even realize you'd traveled.

But anyway, 2012 is here, folks, and I had a heck of an evening ringing it in. Mostly because I've been telling myself this is the year I pull it all together, and so I wanted to send out 2011 with such a sonic blast of excessive buffoonery that I wouldn't know whether to cry for leaving it or to just be glad the hangover's over. Which it is, by the way.


In order to not slander approximately three dozen other rambunctious twenty somethings, I'll skip over last night's details. Suffice it to say, there was a burrito involved. And that's all you're getting. And yes, I just ate it as a really late snack. And no, I know that's not exciting. At all. And of course, this paragraph was a complete waste of your time. But please, do keep reading.

I didn't sleep before my shuttle to PDX, and soon found myself sandwiched between one of those by-now cliche 300-pound seatmates and the window. He left me so little room I literally couldn't remove my sweatshirt and jacket, which wouldn't have been too big a problem if the flight attendants hadn't quickly taken to announcing there was a serious problem with the heating system, and that we'd all just pretty much have deal. I sat in an agonized state of sweaty horror watching the t-shirt clad row of women in front of me fan themselves and make little moaning sounds in between bouts of declaring they just couldn't take it much longer. Meanwhile, I just hoped the fat guy felt really, really bad, though his thug attire and footlong chin beard suggested otherwise. Or maybe that's just me making assumptions. Big, fat assumptions.


I know I shouldn't be so pissed about something so trivial as literally sweating the balls off that I didn't use to gather my courage and ask the fat homie to please just fucking stand up for thirty goddamned seconds so I could remove my warm layers, but doesn't it seem like something he should have just been keenly aware of? I feel like if I was that fat and inconvenient I would make every effort to provide a comfortable flying experience to the unlucky chump assigned a seat beside me, and that would include realizing maybe he couldn't take his jacket off because I'm too fat and he literally can't move his arms and he would probably ask me to move but I look really scary, what with my tattoos and my chin beard and my considerable bulk.

So but anyway, this year I shall: drink less. Run more. Land a kickass job, stat. Spend more time working on this blog. Stop apologizing for my behavior, unless it's warranted. Prepare for the apocalypse (which really just means get as much action as possible). Find some way to further renounce Catholicism. Contemplate law school, then scoff at it yet again. Sell my LSAT books on eBay.

Autostereogram Fun! (II)

The purpose of this entry is twofold: first, I wanted to log an even 20 posts for 2011 before the new year (a pathetic goal, I realize. Here's to working on spending even more time not pursing a job in favor of writing about myself in 2012). Second, I recently accessed Google's statistics for my blog and figured out the only post regularly bringing a LOT of people in is a random image of an autostereogram I put up about a year ago. Apparently if you Image Search autostereograms you get my blog near the top of the list. Go figure.

So, in a shameless attempt to up my numbers all across the board, here for your viewing pleasure are some more fantastic autostereograms! Happy 2012, yo.

Cube!


Cool vortex!


Penguins on ice!


Maybe just for good measure, and perhaps to fuck a little with Google's SEO, I'll type autostereogram one more time: autostereogram. Only on Minor Fiascos.

Weekend

I've shied from appreciating film and television as serious art forms lately in favor of using both mediums as a means of straight-up escapism. Life, man... sometimes you get enough of an emotional roller coaster as is. At any rate, last night I felt up to the challenge of sitting down and digesting a movie that had potential to be quite heavy, and I'm so glad I took the risk. I've waited for the 2011 British indie flick Weekend's DVD release for several months now, seeing as I missed it in theaters due to my dating a guy who simply had no interest in artsy excess. Lo and behold, Weekend is actually now available on Netflix instant and has no set date for a home release, so I'm glad I caught it while I can.

I should say now I'm a sap for most movies featuring gay protagonists (always more than one lead character in gay films). Brokeback, Milk, My Own Private Idaho, Mysterious Skin... each hooked me in a way most films don't, probably for so shallow a reason as that I'm actually able to identify with the relationships unfolding onscreen, whereas with most mainstream movies I'm really not all that able to connect emotionally to a straight man staring wistfully at an equally straight woman. I know what I'm supposed to feel is between them, but it doesn't bowl me over head-on, plus 99.98% of the time it's going to work out in the end for the happy straight couple, so yay. Mystery solved.


Weekend was written/directed by the up-and-coming Andrew Haigh and stars Tom Cullen and Chris New as the most appealing two guys I've had the pleasure of getting to stare at for 97 straight (ha!) minutes. I have a lot I want to say about this one, but I think what I'd like to focus on in particular are two of the quieter moments I noticed that will likely resonate more deeply with gay audiences than straight ones. The first is situated very early on: Russell - a quiet, amicable, and emotionally lost twenty-something - leaves early from his best friend's dinner party with the excuse that he's tired. The next several shots establish his solitary journey home, and it was during this sequence that I knew how honest the film was going to play out. Because Russell doesn't end up at home, but instead soon sits alone at a gay bar, drinking and staring and eventually trying to check someone out in a bathroom.

What's so telling is that he actually *chooses* this isolation over the fine time he was having at the dinner party. His motives are the same as mine whenever I make an excuse, leave early to go home, and end up somewhere completely off the radar: I'm used to operating this way, and I do it every time with the hope that something more might come from abandoning my straight friends in the straight world and running off into the night. He's lonely, repressed, and wants connection... even if it is just drinking and staring. This same sequence is likely viewed by a heterosexual audience (and I can make an educated guess at this because I actually did watch the movie with two straight girls) as: guy leaves dinner party, guy changes mind about going home, guy ends up at gay bar. What's lost in translation is the knowledge that this action wasn't an impulsive decision on Russell's part, but a routine aspect of his life that takes place beyond a veil of white lies serving to keep his straight persona separate from his (potentially viewed as) seedier nighttime tendencies. And that very distancing is what fuels the loneliness, the repression, and the shame. Russell's not closeted, he just believes that in order to remain an upstanding member of Britain's contemporary heterosexual culture, he needs to fit in with the straights.


The second small moment takes place much later, and again focuses on Russell. He's sitting at his goddaughter's birthday party, surrounded by good friends and happy children, and his face is completely detached from the situation. He's there, but he's not. It's not as though he's not paying attention - he smiles and actively participates - but his eyes continue to stare, vacant, and the camera lingers at such a distance that the audience can actually feel the level of detachment Russell is experiencing. A straight viewer might interpret his stoicism as a pronounced anxiety over the departure of the man he's spent this titular weekend with , and to an extent they're right. What's more, though, is that Russell's opened himself up enough to his emotions to realize that the world he's currently sitting in (read: one populated by straight adults with their own children having a ritualistic birthday party) is one he'll never, ever get to legitimately be a part of. His gaze is vacant because mentally he *cannot* truly connect to the situation around him. There's just no common undercurrent of understanding: these people will *never* know what it is to feign tiredness as an excuse to slip off to a bar populated by their own kind in an attempt to feel a true social connection, just as he will *never* know what it feels like to birth a child into a heterosexual culture and participate in all events and rites of passage therein. He is destined to be an outsider in this world, unable to connect because he simply does not have the common wiring necessary. Russell's two days with Glen have enlightened him to the extent that his routine unease in birthday party-type situations is finally making sense. And let me tell you, that's a crushing realization to reach.


Otherwise, the cinematography is naturalistic to the extreme, the dialogue is real without ever once teetering into a severely boring moment, and the audience is treated to some fantastic nudity. What's more, if Weekend's objective was to tell a story as truthfully as possible in an effort to foster a connection between itself and an isolated viewership, it succeeded admirably. I felt good after the film was over, mostly because I knew other guys were going to watch it and connect, and that very connection proves none of us is so alone in our thoughts as we might think. Russell and Glen part ways with a sense that life is for the living, and you've got to embrace who you are before you can take an honest shot at making the most of it. I'll definitely be re-watching this one... a good three or four times.

Christmas Letter

I made it back to good ol' Bend, Oregon today (That's right... again. I'm almost up to a free trip on my punchcard.), and one of the first things my mom had to say was that *everyone* was angry with us about my not sending a letter along with our Christmas cards this year. She let me know that some people - whose names she wouldn't reveal because she didn't want me talking with them - have gone so far every year as to save each one "in those little plastic page protector things, which they put in a binder, which they keep in a special drawer so the collection isn't lost." Then she told me I'm a star and one day I'll be a success, and that I just have to keep trying and it's not easy for anyone, except for all the kids with jobs whose parents she's talked to. The ensuing shoulder-squeeze-from-the-back-seat maneuver she pulled left me squirming awkwardly out of her grasp, at which point the proclamations ended and she started letting me know I needed a serious attitude adjustment towards those who actually loved me in life.

The point is, I'd actually completely forgotten about writing a letter this year. It hadn't crossed my mind a single time. I started soul searching for possible explanations as to the how/why of it, and all I came up with is that I really have no fucking idea what mom, dad, and brother bear were doing all year, while I myself was mostly a worthless heap of angsty nonsense. All in all, it doesn't add up to much more than some pesudo-whiny monologue where I actually have to talk about three other people in addition to just myself. In short: it would've been just like this blog, but less narcissistic.

I contemplated writing a letter for this post, so that the eight of you who actually claim to read Minor Fiascos would be the only eight souls in the world who knew that I actually *did* produce a letter this year, but letters are like super hard to write, and again with the whole me not knowing what anyone else did all year thing.

So just take my word for it: 2011 was a half-n-half year: a good chunk of it delighted, and an equally good chunk crushed my will to live. I used to be that eighth grader who hung out on the playground's fringes, eating Corn Nuts and listening to Blink-182 scream about how nobody likes you when you're 23. "It's so true," I thought. "Nobody does like you when you're 23."

And then 23 actually came. And went. And now I'm 24, and I finally understand what Mark and Tom were singing about. I understand that from a third-party perspective I may appear to have a lot going for me. Internally speaking, though, my accomplishments mostly serve as cruel reminders of the person I *could* be if someone would ever willingly hand a job opportunity my way. But I digress. The points of this post: no Christmas letter, but it's cool because if you're reading this it means you read my blog and so enough said, and also 23 is a super harsh year in terms of adult realities and adolescent idealism just completely fucking crashing up against one another.

Here's hoping the one that gets me a job wins out.

Intrigue

The other night I found myself ordering a Super Taco at El Rancho Grande, the local mexican food joint that's open well past midnight and features a kickass salsa bar. The Super Taco was fantastic, but is not the subject of this post.

On my way out the door, I took a moment to examine the flyers and neighborhood postings taped to the wall. My time with Nonchalance taught me to demonstrate extreme curiosity regarding walls covered in flyers, as they're a super obvious opportunity for an intriguing mystery to begin taking shape. How else these days could anyone looking to screw with people address an audience with complete anonymity? It can't be done any other way, I tell you.

At any rate, I quickly spied a nondescript sheet of paper taped near the bottom of the collage of colorful ads for guitar lessons, used furniture, and Spanish tutors. This piece of paper was plain white, and featured a totally normal typeface that read: "Help Pan with the MAZE. Helen wandered into the MAZE weeks ago. She hasn't been seen since. This MAZE needs our attention. For more information, please contact Pan." The bottom third of the flyer was devoted to tear-off tabs that all sported the slogan "Help find Helen" alongside a web address.


I was floored. Clearly this was the start of some brand-new mystery. Who was Helen? Why was MAZE capitalized every time? What did any of this mean? I grabbed a tab and started walking home, super anxious to look up the website and fall into another grand adventure.

Fuck, I love adventures.

But it turns out I was kind of drunk (hence the Super Taco at 1 am in the first place), and in the course of gesturing wildly to my fellow drunkards on the walk home, the slip of paper with the address escaped my jacket pocket. I realized what had happened after it was too late, and no amount of googling the relevant keywords revealed anything useful. I went to bed a sad man, and awoke having completely forgotten the incident.

On my walk to the coffee shop that next morning, I found myself practicing a routine eyes-to-the-ground maneuver in an effort to avoid contact with a crazy guy yelling at a bus on the street corner, and at the exact moment of looking down I stepped over the scrap I'd dropped the night before! Normally I don't pick anything up off the ground in this city, but such is my ravenous hunger for intrigue that I lunged for it. Triumphant, I marched to Cafe Abir ready to be blown away by whatever lay in wait.

As it turns out, "Pan" referred to the small Pan Theater in the East Bay, the MAZE is the humorous nickname its volunteer workers have given the series of hallways you have to navigate to reach the stage, and Helen is a poor elderly soul who got lost in the hallways on her way to view a performance this past holiday season. The whole effort that necessitated the flyer in the first place is an ongoing grassroots attempt to raise money to demolish the hallways and erect a new theater entrance that minimizes patron hassle/confusion, and that's the extent of it.

I was mildly crushed. I mean, I wanted to trip into a hallucinatory world of sleuthing, and instead got to feel bad for this crone Helen. On the other hand, I had to applaud the Pan Theater people for creating a flyer so nondescript and intriguing that I actually took the time to look something up that ordinarily wouldn't have piqued my interest in the slightest.

This is the future of advertising: subtle trickery. I can't wait until the day that mysterious opportunities left and right end up leading participants to the new flavor of Doritos in the chip aisle at Safeway, or a website for the redesigned 2013 Nissan Xterra. Let's hear it for creative duping!

They Pegged Me...

My result for The LONG Scientific Personality Test ...

INTJ -The Mastermind

You scored 45% I to E, 32% N to S, 52% F to T, and 16% J to P!

You are more introverted than extroverted. You are more intuitive than observant, you are more thinking based than feeling based, and you prefer to have a plan rather than leaving things to chance. Your type is best described by the word "mastermind", which belongs to the larger group called rationals. Only 1% of the population shares your type. You are very strong willed and self-confident. You can hardly rest until you have things settled. You will only adopt ideas and rules if they make sense. You are a great brainstormer and often come up with creative solutions to difficult problems. You are open to new concepts, and often actively seek them out.

As a romantic partner, you can be both fascinating yet demanding. You are not apt to express your emotions, leaving your partner wondering where they are with you. You strongly dislike repeating yourself or listening to the disorganized process of sorting through emotional conflicts. You see your own commitments as self-evident and don't see why you need to repeat something already expressed. You have the most difficulty in admitting your vulnerabilities. You feel the most appreciated when your partner admires the quality of your innovations and when they listen respectfully to your ideas and advice. You need plenty of quiet to explore your interests to the depth that gives you satisfaction.

Your group summary: rationals (NT)

Your type summary: INTJ

FURTHERMORE (from Wikipedia)...

Hallmarks of the INTJ include independence of thought and a desire for efficiency. They work best when given autonomy and creative freedom. They harbor an innate desire to express themselves by conceptualizing their own intellectual designs. They have a talent for analyzing and formulating complex theories. INTJs are generally well-suited for occupations within academia, research, consulting, management, science, engineering, and law. They are often acutely aware of their own knowledge and abilities—as well as their limitations and what they don't know (a quality that tends to distinguish them from INTPs). INTJs thus develop a strong confidence in their ability and talents, making them natural leaders.

In forming relationships, INTJs tend to seek out others with similar character traits and ideologies. Agreement on theoretical concepts is an important aspect of their relationships. By nature INTJs can be demanding in their expectations, and approach relationships in a rational manner. As a result, INTJs may not always respond to a spontaneous infatuation but wait for a mate who better fits their set criteria. They tend to be stable, reliable, and dedicated. Harmony in relationships and home life tends to be extremely important to them. They generally withhold strong emotion and do not like to waste time with what they consider irrational social rituals. This may cause non-INTJs to perceive them as distant and reserved; nevertheless, INTJs are usually very loyal partners who are prepared to commit substantial energy and time into a relationship to make it work.

As mates, INTJs want harmony and order in the home and in relationships. The most independent of all types, INTJs trust their intuition when choosing friends and mates—even in spite of contradictory evidence or pressure from others. The emotions of an INTJ are hard to read, and neither male nor female INTJs are apt to express emotional reactions. At times, INTJs seem cold, reserved, and unresponsive, while in fact they are almost hypersensitive to signals of rejection from those they care for. In social situations, INTJs may also be unresponsive and may neglect small rituals designed to put others at ease. For example, INTJs may communicate that idle dialogue such as small talk is a waste of time. This may create the impression that the INTJ is in a hurry—an impression that is not always intended. In their interpersonal relationships, INTJs are usually better in a working situation than in a recreational situation.

Joan > Conan

I've watched two documentaries on comedians lately: Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, and Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Both are strikingly similar in that they follow two stand-up personalities as they attempt to claw their way back into stardom - and, accordingly, cultural relevance. Throughout the course of both films, Joan and Conan also reveal wildly unexpected offstage personalities, touching/strained dependencies on assistants-turned-family, and dogged work ethics that quite literally left me feeling exhausted on my couch just from watching.

The reason I'm writing is that I've always been a huge Conan fan, and I've always thought of Joan as that semi-funny bitch on the red carpet with all the plastic surgery. And that's pretty much where my opinion of her ended. If I wanted snark, I had Kathy Griffin.


Fast-forward to the present. I still think Conan's great: stellar onstage presence, deliriously absurd (yet intelligent) bits, and a willingness to make a complete ass of himself - and half of rural America - through preposterous prerecorded segments. I won tickets to see him live during my summer in LA, and he was just as charismatic in person. The problem with his documentary, though, is that it bares completely the unpleasant, real version of Conan. He's a dick to his staff, he makes an uncomfortable level of fun of Jack McBrayer during a backstage visit (seriously... I was fidgeting and almost unable to look at Jack's upset face), and he goes on and on about how much he hates personal encounters with fans, despite needing their adoring presence to survive as a performer. Its a hypocritical, stodgy, honest portrayal of a guy who I wanted no choice but to love, and now that I have a choice, I'm not sure I'm so into it anymore.

Joan, on the other hand, came out of nowhere like some whirling dervish - all fists and elbows and attitude. As I said earlier, the annual Academy Awards had turned her, in my mind, into some red-carpet bitch. A well-edited trailer for her documentary was really the only thing that drew me in. Well, that and boredom.


Turns out, the lady's fucking hilarious. And I say "fucking" here because she's also the most profane 75-year-old woman I've encountered. Watch as Joan spends a year jetting from one run-down venue to another, desperate to entertain and willing to do literally *anything* to keep people laughing. The difference in personality between her and Conan is astounding: while both are on their "last leg," Joan's approach is to appreciate everything. No fan is too unimportant, no venue too tiny. She gets by on just a few hours of sleep a night between cross-country flights to increasingly desolate middles of nowhere, and the downtime she does have is spent awash in self-doubt, an agonized appreciation of the little she's perceived herself of achieving, and a desire to ensure everyone everywhere knows how much she appreciates their presence. It's a polar opposite approach to the entertainment business, and while a lot of it may have to do with Ms. Rivers' reluctance to fade into the obscurity of old age, she remains charming.

Maybe I'm just getting gayer, but I think I'm more into Joan. Her rich history in show business, her wall of joke files (seriously astounding), and the fact that within 15 minutes her personality had triumphed over the strange wreck that is her face all have me rooting for her continued floundering, if not downright success. Conan, however, can suck it. I've seen what he thinks of fans like me.