RandomCha

Check out Section 2 in this week’s Chicago Reader, which features no fewer than four restaurant reviews by yours truly!

legalmoose can sympathize.

Today is the the last business day of the fiscal year of the Federal Government, which means that every single slacker who has not spent all their budget money is calling us today in order to do so, by 5 pm, “all items MUST ship today” & “my credit card must be charged today.” On top of which it’s the usual end-of-the-month Inventory Day.

Blech.

Poor Andy. Work has been ragging on his sanity all week long, and then last night he had two nightmares and barely slept.

But we had cheesy tacos for dinner.

I guess Proust has got me thinking; or else, perhaps what I’ve been thinking got me to finally read Proust. But for a long time, years maybe, I have for some reason had this intense desire to have a friend who lives in Paris. Parisian. We’d chat online, exchange emails, slowly mapping out our cultural differences and similarities. And I’d have a constant window into what’s going on over there, what the perception is of the US, trends. If he were a writer it’d be even better; then we could exchange work and hopefully I could sharpen up my French at the same time.

Well it just hasn’t happened. And I’ve really tried. I’ve searched for guys on livejournal, on myspace, even (shudder) gay.com. A lot of beginnings. But it always fizzles out. They always stop writing. They lose interest.

Maybe Paris is just the New York City of Europe. Maybe those Parisians have no time for cultivating a transatlantic friendship, just as many New Yorkers have a hard time believing that anything of value happens anywhere else in the country. NYC is still seductive to me, beguiling, but I’m aware of the tricks it likes to play and I’m not taken in by them anymore. I can look at NYC, amused, but wise to its attituide. I’ve only been to Paris once, so maybe I’m still naive. It’s an odd, sensual, autumnal sort of daydream. I can spin tales about it in my mind.

Proust writes about that: what we imagine is always more pleasurable than the reality of the thing we imagine.

I was just offered the film/TV blogger position at chicagoist. I accepted.

EDIT: Lest anyone get too excited, this is an unpaid position, so alas I ain’t quittin’ my day job. Not quite yet anyway.

This has to be some kind of record. The film festvial schedule came out yesterday, Andy and I pored over it, discussed, chose the four films we want to see and settled on which screenings to attend. And tomorrow I will call 312-332-FILM and redeem our festival pass.

And as usual, our choices have ended up being Eurocentric. Sigh. They just happen to be the films we most want to see this year! Romania, Germany, France, UK.

Presidential Thunderdome: Bush vs. Roosevelt

Last night I finished reading Volume I of the Proust. Only five more left to go!

Tower Crashing Down?

Wow, I just got my first-ever post on chicagoist

I’m trying out for their Film/TV bloggist position. Cross your fingers.

(P.S. Plus, in the entry I think I coined a new word: SigOth. Will it catch on?)