Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Thursday, January 18, 2007 The Pitch: It's like An Illness meets A Sickness! It's supposed to be easy: gather a bunch of old DVDs that are cluttering up the joint; make sure they're a mix of okay movies, lousy movies and maybe a lost marvel or two; bring 'em in to a used a record store; wait ten minutes; walk out with some decent folding cash.So, check it. I walked into Streetlight Records with the following: Broken Arrow Buffalo Solidiers Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Freeway Gamera: the Ultimate Collection The Laughing Policeman Maria, Full of Grace Mission Kashmir Plan Reign of Fire Scarface: Two-Disc Anniversary Edition Tomb Raiders/Godfather's Daughter Torque We Don't Live Here Anymore And, after ten minutes of walking around and browsing (and finding three or four things I wanted to buy, and talking myself out of them), I walked back up to the counter, where the guy said, "Yeah, so there was one that was a little too scratched up for us (Mission Kashmir) and for the rest we can offer you twenty dollars in cash or twenty-five dollars in trade." "Twenty dollars in cash?" "Yeah, I know it doesn't seem like a lot for so many movies--" and here he showed me how he'd broken down the pricing, "these three are ninety cents, these are a dollar, two dollars, and the ones on top are three dollars. Those are pricing new at nine dollars these days." I wasn't upset, but it was a little disappointing. On the one hand, I'd priced all of them out on Amazon used and new before I went in, and I knew some weren't movers (Crouching Tiger, We Don't Live Here Anymore, and those two old Hong Kong flicks on one disc, Tomb Raiders and Godfather's Daughter, each go for a little more than a dollar on Amazon New & Used), and some were going at the rate he offered (one of the movies he'd offer me three bucks for, Freeway, was selling for exactly that on A N&U). But some were going for more, like Scarface for $6.25, or Broken Arrow for $4.00, or The Laughing Policeman for $5.56. In fact, if I didn't factor in Amazon's bite, all the movies I was offering him would fetch a hair over $40 on A N&U (assuming they all sold which wouldn't really be the case at all). I was expecting something a little closer to $28 cash, but obviously that was very wishful thinking. I should've taken the money, but instead I just thanked him, took the bag, and left. If I hustled my ass off, I might get two or three dollars more than what he was offering for trade. I've had a bit of luck in the last year flipping some of my purchases for more money, and like most pieces of luck, this has proven a dual-edge sword. I now act like I know what I'm doing with all my collectibles when, in the past, all I did was collect them. Now that it's time, again, to start moving some of them up and out, I find myself torn between just getting rid of them at any price, or "maximizing" my profits on them. (There were seven DVDs that I put on sale on Amazon before leaving for Streetlight because it looked like I could sell them at a genuine profit.) When I'm not looking at my DVD collection or my books, when they're not in my line of sight, I just think I could load all of it up and get rid of everything, all of it. But then when I actually stare at the space over my desk, or the books on each shelf, a passionate yearning moves through me--something that feels simultaneously desperately happy and desperately sad. Danger: Diabolik next to G.I. Samurai? Sex & Fury across from L.A. Confidential, and next to Fight Club which itself is next to the Battle of Algiers? All 28 volumes of Lone Wolf & Cub? Every Don Delillo novel in print? The Complete Encyclopedia of Pistols and Revolvers sitting besdie Vollman's You Bright and Risen Angels? The Egyptian Gods & Goddesses resting beside Sniper II? As I've written before, I could stop buying books or DVDs, renting movies, and not run out of material for perhaps a decade. So why don't I stop buying them? 2006 was a pip. Edi and I spent our first year of marriage happily traveling, happily working, happily watching everything falling into place. 2007, despite a wonderful trip to New York, already feels heavier. Are we buying? Renting? Having kids? Adopting? And what happens when we die? Is that it? It's much easier for me to hide from all this than her, but I can't hide nearly as easily as I used to--I finish watching Shogun Assassin and look over at my desk and shiver. Maybe it's the cold, sunless day. Maybe it's my post-chocolate blood sugar. And maybe it's just an awareness that I could emerge from this coccoon if I knew for sure what I would be without it. posted by Jeff Lester | 2:56 PM | Wednesday, January 03, 2007 The Pitch: It's like "Yes!" meets "Maybe!" I had four resolutions for 2006 and so far I've broken all of them. I told myself that in 2006:
Monday, September 18, 2006 Please ignore again. posted by Jeff Lester | 11:31 AM | Sunday, September 17, 2006 I am just testing. posted by Jeff Lester | 11:40 AM | Monday, June 05, 2006 The Pitch: It's like Bibble meets Babble! Hello, Internet!Actually, thanks to the Blogger being a worthless crashy git, I'm not even writing this on the Internet--I'm typing it in WordPad in the hopes of avoiding those damn Word-specific characters that muck up easy reading on the browser. Uh, where was I? Oh, right: Hello, Internet! I am without thought or resolve but why let that stop me from posting? I'm back at work after more-or-less-a-week-off during which time I saw two stinky movies in the theater (Art School Confidential and X-Men: The Last Stand) one excellent movie on DVD (Renoir's Rules of the Game--wow!) and noodled about on Guitar Hero occasionally. (Considering I can't even make it through Smoke on the Water on the Hard setting, I think it's time to hand in my axe.) Apart from that, it was a little bit of French class, a little bit of yoga class, a lot of book buying and not a lick of actual book reading. One thing I did do during my time off was get some new software. Webroot was having a sale where if you picked up Spy Sweeper, they'd give you Windows Washer free. I didn't know much about Windows Washer but it sounded cool, what with its ability to remove unwanted files on your computer and improve performance. Turns out Windows Washer really should be called, I dunno, Cheatin' Child Porn Protector. Despite all the stuff it says about helping improve performance, the main things Washer does is obliterate your browsers' cookies and history, and overwrite files with a randomizer. It's a great little program--if you're worried about the feebs raiding your computer, or your wife wondering if you're posting to Hot Or Not. Since I have neither of those worries, I haven't done anything with it, other than look at the lovely interface, which talks about adding "bleach" to your "wash" and suggesting you "throw in a little bit of bleach every so often to make your computer extra clean!" It'd be almost charming, if the cognitive dissonance wasn't more than a little creepy. Of course, I'm looking at this ass-backwards--Washer is supposed to protect you from others' abilities to watch what you do on the Internet. But I use gmail (and google calendar and their customized homepage) so I don't find that as much of a worry. Thanks to selling my soul to Google, I'm like the nudist next door neighbor doing stretching exercises in front of the window at high noon. It's already too late for me to worry about my privacy. (Although I guess if I ever sell one of my computers, I'll use it to wipe the drives.) Another keen pair of programs I purchased: BackUpBuddy and BackupBuddyVFS from Blue Nomad. Blue Nomad created Wordsmith, the word processing program I use on my PDAs with barely a problem over the last five years, and I've always been attracted to the idea of BackUpBuddy, a program that reinstalls *all* your programs and info onto your PDA in case of crash, as opposed to the time-consuming reinstall every program after the OS restores the memo, address and calendar data. And after reading around and realizing that the VFS version would allow me to save everything on my PDA's memory card and reduce the chance of lost data to just about zero, I knew I had to pick them up. When I ended up with a new one gig sd card for my PDA card, I figured it was time to make the plunge. As I said, I've used Wordsmith for a while, and have installed it across three PDAs in those five years, and unlocking the registration was probably the easiest it's been for just about any non-freeware program I've installed. But somewhere in the intervening years of program development and refinement, Blue Nomad has become an automated nightmare, like the world run by Skynet in the Terminator movies. It took three days of emailing their support desk (who was, admittedly, pretty prompt and helpful, albeit occasionally skimpy with the telling detail) to iron out the transfer of the programs from shareware on a 15 day countdown to fully registered. In fact, I had a scare-up with the memory card program on Saturday that makes me think it's still not registered. (How do you know BackUp Buddy VFS is registered? It stops telling you it's unregistered...except it doesn't always bother to tell you it's unregistered and suddenly when it mentions it you've lost another two days of your 15 day window. I believe the Maori had a word for such a situation and it was: Yikes.) So. I've got a souped up PDA with a bitchin' memory card that can store, more than likely, every bit of writing I've done in the last decade. The kicker now is, of course, the writing. I'll be honest. I'm not happy with the writing. I'm 75,000 words into a novel that is not ending, is not moving, and where I've forgotten too much of the early plot threads to smoothly take them up. More than this, though, I'm not really happy with my style. It's chatty but bland. Unimaginative and self-absorbed. At first, I was quick to blame five years of Nanowrimo (and my cumulative crap quarter-million) but I've also been writing the Fanboy Rampage for the newsletter for six years now, usually on a tight wordcount and it's made my work patter-heavy, description light. It'd be nice if it was, I dunno, terse or something but it's at best, an entertaining piffle. And entertaining piffles have their place in the world, but I want to write more than piffles. Hell, at this point, an entertaining piffle would be a step up. And that's part of why things have been so quiet here at Casa High Concept. I'm not sure if blogging, speedwriting, comics reviews, and Fanboys are what I need right now. I don't feel able to focus my narrative voice as much as I used to and until I figure out what I need to do about it, things may be very quiet here for a while. I dunno. Anyway, thanks for listening and checking in all this time. I'll post some more here this week. It's usually around the time I get really depressed and start whingeing that I have some sort of writing breakthrough. With luck, maybe it'll be right around the corner. posted by Jeff Lester | 6:05 PM | Monday, March 27, 2006 The Pitch: It's like Infinite Jest meets The Liar's Club! I'm on a mailing list about David Foster Wallace and I never post on it. (Lately, I haven't even been reading it.) And that proably would have been the best place to post this interesting little article about Mary Karr finding religion. Wallace, it is rumored, had some sort of romance with Ms. Karr (to the point of having her named tattooed on him, if stories are to be believed) so it's interesting hearing her take on A.A. and spirituality in contrast to what he's presented in Infinite Jest.But if I'd posted it on the mailing list, it would've likely been received with resounding silence and, given the choice between the resounding silence there and the resounding silence here, I much prefer the one here. It's more peaceful, somehow. Oh, and I also like her ending quote: So that's the kind of Catholic I am. You know? I like everybody. I'm vain and pretentious and arrogant and terrified and full of longing for the numinous and for that joy. And yet I sometimes think I do everything I can to shove it away. I find that really touching and lovely, you know? And probably would have even without the word "numinous." posted by Jeff Lester | 5:19 PM | Saturday, March 18, 2006 The Pitch: It's like a Walk meets a Strike! Wow. Didn't intend to let that previous post stand as my most current for so long.A little bizzy in the shizzy lately--overtime, newsletter, job #1, job #2, and MGS3. Yesterday morning, I beat MGS3 (for I think the third time) and then went to work where I picked up my copy of MGS: Subsistence and accompanying Metal Gear Saga (shown here for your viewing convenience) which I trepidatiously pre-ordered two months ago from EBgames. Yes, now I can replay the game I just replayed, but with additional features and bonuses. I don't think my poor wife can allow this fact to fit in her head, even knowing me as she does. "Wait, when does Subsistence take place in relation to the game you just finished?" She asked me this morning. "Uhhhh..." was the best I could master. Fortunately, it is a game that rewards replays. The most recent time I replayed it, I went sniper-crazy, picking off one boss early (and so skipping the later fight with him entirely) and then picking off as many enemies as I could, as opposed to my usual tactics of trying to sneak through everything and swearing like a sailor when I inevitably fail. It really was like playing a different game, parts of which I enjoyed tremendously. I imagine there's gotta be a good essay out on the Intarweb somewhere about the post-modern concepts of rereading a work and replaying a video game but I haven't found it yet. It'd be interesting to compare the replaying of video games with the rereading of literature. Although MSG3 doesn't have much thematic heft to it, there are some themes that may be worth exploring or thinking about in a literary sense. But more interesting to me is the idea that the creative team gives you additional items, secrets or tweaks to the gameplay when you replay the game to modify the experience. How this compares, favorably or not, to literary rereadings would be worth kicking around the curb. But that's nothing I'm going to be getting to any time soon because I'm gonna be playing Subsistence. posted by Jeff Lester | 4:30 PM | |
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