Month: July 2007

Clumpy Distribution of Parties

By Evan — — Writing

These weekend I have not one, not two, but five parties to go to:

  • A housewarming party.
  • A housewarming barbecue.
  • A party to celebrate the engagement of some friends.
  • A reunion for alumni of my previous company.
  • A book release party.

Lest you think I’m just saying this to brag about my fabulously full social life, please rest assured that this weekend is a fluke. I’m looking at my calendar right now, and every weekend is clear from now till September. Sometimes distributions are clumpy. I really wish they weren’t, though — I think I’ll need a weekend to decompress from my weekend.

The book release party, by the way, is for an anthology edited by my former teacher Ellen Sussman. The title is Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave. I predict it will sell about a million kajillion copies.

NOTE: Careful and regular readers of this journal might have discerned that I tend to lean towards SF rather than mainstream fiction. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine at this party. If an SF type shakes hands with a mainstream type, it’s not like this produces a catastrophic matter/anti-matter explosion that generates photons with a characteristic energy of — Sorry! Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Anyway, who knows, maybe one of these writers managed to sneak in some rocket ships or dinosaurs or something. In fact, my friend Shelly implies that at least one of the stories might contain aliens with zit-producing rayguns. Sounds like an excellent start!

UPDATE: Well, the weekend is over — I even skipped one of the parties, and I am still exhausted. How did people back in the Studio 54 era manage all that?

Oh, that’s right. Lots and lots of cocaine.

Montage Time

By Evan — — Personal

I have so much to do this weekend. It would be really great to be able to do things in montage time.

As Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and other thinkers have pointed out, there’s really nothing you can’t do in a montage. You can build a house. Tear down a house. Fall in love. Train to fight the heavyweight champion of the world. Take control of all cocaine distribution in Miami. Save New York City from a plague of ghosts. You might be tired at the end, but you’ll be all done in two minutes and thirty seconds, three minutes tops.

The only tricky part about montages is picking the right song for the job. For example, You’re the Best Around by Joe Esposito is a really excellent song for making it to the semi-finals of the All Valley Karate Tournament, but a really lousy song for… well, hmmm. Actually, You’re the Best Around is pretty good for any montage scene, with the possibile exception of falling in love.

Oh, and speaking of tearing down houses: isn’t it amazing what you can do to residential construction with just a small hammer and an eight inch prybar? I could take apart my entire building with these things!

Not that I would.

Unless I really ran out of things to do.