Time for an 'other blogs' post.

As you may or probably have not noticed, dear reader(s?), I have fallen off of the face of the blogosphere. With Killer Joe over, and no other theatrical assignments in the near future, I lapsed into apathy, filling the past couple of days with web-surfing, movie watching, and, naturally, video games.

By the way, Zombieland is pretty fucking fantastic. I got it off of my roommate Luke's external hard drive, and I watched it about a week ago. Even for a comedy, no punches are pulled, so the zombies and violence are pretty brutal. It follows the journey of Columbus, a loner college student who is traveling home through the zombie-infested United States. It should be noted that he also really, really wants to be Michael Sera. He meets a crazy cast of characters, including Bill Murray, who has the best cameo I've seen in ages. I highly recommend it.

Anyway, I wanted to use this post to share some of the blogs I've been keeping myself busy with reading, so without any further movie-reviews, here we go.

BLDGBLOG

BLDGBLOG is a blog I started reading about a year and a half ago, but when my computer was wiped, I forgot about it, and have only recently picked it up. Equal parts poet and architect, the blogs author, Geoff Manaugh, is a baron of the blogosphere. His analysis of the latest and greatest in architecture today is as insightful as it is beautiful. "If these walls could talk" is not a worry; he speaks for them.

frugan living

A newcomer to my favorites list, frugan living chronicles the adventures of it's author as she fishes all sorts of goodies out of dumpsters. Though not an instruction manual in dumpster diving, this blog showcases the bounty that can be had by simply thinking outside of the box, and inside of the dumpster. The latest post, for example, is simply titled $661.30, which is how much money worth of food and home products the author fished out of a dumpster during a recent hunt. Reading her blog has given me the kick in the pants to start dumpstering again, and when spring cleaning season come upon us, I'll start hitting the trash to see what I can find.

Poetry in Action

How could I post about blogs and not mention Garrett's offering, Poetry in Action? Garrett, a Scandinavian Studies/Poetry major, is a good friend and future roommate of mine, and his blog serves as a place for him to showcase his new work. Lately, though, it has been focusing on his adventures in Sweden, where he is studying for the semester.

It should be noted here how I found this blog. While, technically, it was simply through Garrett telling me about it, the story of how I came to meet Garrett deserves telling.

It was the winter of last year, and I had a party to go to. Specifically, a robot party. As one could have guessed, it was a theatre kids party, and I didn't want to disappoint. I reasoned that, owing to my almost distressing level of geekery, that I would be expected to have an impressive costume. So, about two hours before the party, my friend Scott came over and we began constructing.

He had purchased some air duct tubing and tape, while I had raided my attic for some old boxes. We toiled and taped for about an hour and a half, and the results were fantastic. He had constructed a "Keystone robot" complete with a helmet adorned with a radar dish, Keystone boots to cover his shoes, and a great cardboard breastplate. I went a much more drastic route. My template was a box that was naturally large enough to for me to fit my body up until my waist in. I cut holes in the sides for my arms, leaving flaps in the same fashion as the Wallace and Gromit moon robot. My helmet was attached to the body of my robotic exoskeleton, and sported a frame sealed with clear packing tape as a visor, as well as a piece of the aforementioned tubing bent at a ninety degree angle with a headless Mini-Maglite in it to act as a headlight in the most literal sense. On the back, I fashioned a backpack of sorts, complete with an exhaust pipe sticking straight up out of it. On my left hand I wore a Nintendo Power Glove, the ill-fated NES peripheral that was much more at home as a part of my costume than plugged into my television. To top it all off, I stuck my clip-on Think Geek 8-bit tie onto the front of my, er, structure.

Thus adorned, Scott and I struck out for the party, only to be very, very disappointed. While there were some creative ideas floating around (see: stage manages dressed as Stepford Wives), the overall lack of enthusiasm for the theme turned us off. We decided that instead of sticking around, we would make some 'homeless robot' signs and sit somewhere on Green Street. I wrote "VETERAN OF THE ROBO-WARS" on a piece of cardboard, while Scott had something along the lines of "WILL WORK FOR OIL." We started walking towards Green Street, but Scott quickly realized how poorly equipped for the weather he was. In his defense, it was the dead of winter, and all he had on was a light jacket and a cardboard robot outfit. He resigned himself to going home, while I, undaunted, headed towards the party center of campus dressed like a refrigerator. Ditching the sign, I took to walking about outside of the bars, stopping for pictures with drunk folks, and being generally robotically awesome. But, alas, it started to get late, and I was a bit chilly, so I started walking home. While I was out front of Za's cafe on Green street, however, someone from across the road yelled "Hey robot! Want to go to a party!?!" Now, my suit was constructed in a way that made my head immobile, so I had to turn to face a group of students who were clearly on their way to a shindig. Without saying anything, I sprinted, as much as my cardboard shuffling could be called sprinting, across the street. "Well, I am programmed to say yes to partying, so alright." They cheered, and we entered an apartment building.

The group was about five people strong, and on our way to a bank of elevators, they asked me about my costume. I explained that I had gone to a previous party, but that my awesome meter had not been sufficiently filled by it, and I was in danger of shutting down. I was informed that the theme of the party that we were headed to was 'Y2K,' and that I would fit right in. I was thrilled. Upon arriving, I was rather roughly pushed into an apartment filled with people, few of which were in any discernible costume, and none of which I knew. I was alone, dressed in a costume that was multiple times as rotund as I am, and drunk.

Yes.

I quickly realized that a robot costume is not only a robot costume, but a suit of social armor. I was able to, and did, walk up to anyone at the party and be instantly engaged in whatever it was they were talking about. Generally, everyone was fascinated with how I got there, seeing as I knew no one. Eventually, the flow of people pushed me towards a young Scandinavian Studies/Poetry major, and we clicked. I don't remember exactly what we said to each other, but it was apparently awesome, because it resulted in the following picture:



Clearly, it was meant to be.

The next day, I was able to piece the night together with a great degree of accuracy thanks to my being tagged in a slew of Facebook photos, which I shall share with you now, dear reader(s?).



Here I am making new friends. This picture shows you the extent of my robotic casing, as well as the extent of how goddamn awesome my night was. I can't be sure, but the guy poking his head into the frame at the bottom is probably the dude who insisted on pouring drinks into my face while yelling "ROBOT NEEDS MORE ROCKET FUEL." I will forever be indebted to him.



If I had earned a dollar for every time I had posed for a stranger with a camera phone that night, I would have made, like, nineteen dollars. I don't know why, but that seemed to be my default pose when I saw a shot being taken. For an idea of how my night went early on, just use a photo editing program to put a shot of Green Street behind me to represent the masses who wanted a picture while waiting in line to get into Kam's, Brother's, etc.



I danced. With a very, very attractive girl. For those of you who know me personally, this will come as a great shock. I am traditionally one who lives very much in his head, so cutting loose on the dance floor is not usual behavior. However, a delicate combination of semi-anonymity, 'rocket fuel,' and a desire to impress a very, very attractive girl got me to hazardously wobble around for a good twenty minutes. When asked to do the robot, I would reply with "I am a robot. Every dance I do is the robot." They ate it up.

A few days later, I 'friended' Garrett on Facebook, my remembering his name probably due to the fact that it was very unusual, coupled with it's similarity to Barret, a character from Final Fantasy VII. As you can tell from the image, Garrett looks nothing like Barret, which a drunk, robotic Ian found hilarious, boosting the staying power of the memory of his name.

And now he will be my roommate next semester.

I love college.