Dave J

Legacy

"So I understand I'm going to be playing a planet!"
-Orson Welles, on Transformers: The Movie

Finals time is here again, which in my course of study usually means papers and not tests. And putting things off, of course, no finals period would be complete without that. So in the spirit of wasting time instead of adding an extra couple of pages to one of my last great works before NYU gets tired of me and kicks me out this July, I have come across the idea of just listing--for my own amusement if nothing else--all the major papers I have written in the course of my collegiate career. To make this list the paper must have been over 8 pages long, so as to avoid simply listing all assignments ever done. Here goes! (Oh, and there's no chronological order, so don't bother trying to map annual trends. Also, I have previously joked with Jeff about my affinity for using the same title structure, which basically involves lots of colons and out of place quotations.)

The Cinema of David Cronenberg: What If Frankenstein's Monster Lives?
Bare Behind Bars: A Political Survey of Women-In-Prison Films
Walking the Line: The Careful Comedic Representation of Will Smith
"Just Waiting to Whup E.T.'s Ass!": Will Smith and Racial Difference in Independence Day
Dangerous Difference: Will Smith's I, Robot and Samuel Delany's Einstein Intersection
African American English and Regional Linguistic Change: A Case Study of Three 6 Mafia
Digital Minstrelsy: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and the Urbanization of Action-Adventure Videogames
A Critical Appreciation of Melvin Van Peebles' Watermelon Man
“It’s All Happening So Fast”: Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen and the Filmed Destruction of the Bildungsroman
I Want My MTV: Globalization and Hegemony in MTV's Expansion
Technology of Cruelty: The New European Cinema of Michael Haneke
24 and the Ambivalence of Post-9/11 Politics
Long Live the New Flesh: David Cronenberg's Videodrome and 1980s American Politics
Whiteness and the Periphery of Color: The Curious Case of LOST
The Historical Legacy of Jabotinsky in Israeli-Palestinian Relations
Fortress, Forest and Fog: The Environmental Discourse of Throne of Blood
The Modern Kurosawa: Current Issues in The Bad Sleep Well and High and Low

And finally, the two I am currently working on:
Blackness and Difference in Will Smith's Independence Day and I, Robot ( a subtle remix)
Afro-Centric Discourse on Hurricane Katrina in Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke and Juvenile's "Get Ya Hustle On"

Both titles pending additional colons.

When listed like that, I find pretty amusing the range (or lack thereof) in topics and the odd cultural bent most of them took. Maybe I'll just have to cram them all into one big book... I could call it "Dave's Depressing Facts About Life: An Inside Joke".

And with that, I've actually exhausted whatever writing energy I was trying to unleash on the real final papers, so I think I'll just go unwind with a little more Super Paper Mario.

I, Dave

"Listen, I'm going to tell you what I tell everyone else... don't go in the harder cities until you're really upgraded and ready to go."
-GameStop employee

First off, a hearty congratulations to Monica for her securing a great job at a very large womens magazine, where she started work two days ago. At least one of us now has a real career, with real pay and benefits, and it looks like it's going to be a great fit. Prima!

And here are the pictures I promised from the apartment we landed a few weeks ago, along with very basic explanation. I think the size may only be of relevance to those inside the New York area, as you can pretty much own a house in 45 other states for what a one-bedroom goes for here...

Left half of the bedroom.

A bit of the living room, with hint as to the back hallway and rooms.

A bit of the bathroom.

Night view outside the window of the bridge and skyline.

Finally, I am working on a pretty great ILNT idea that will brighten people's days, just as soon as Jeff gets me the infrastructure. If only there was some kind of committee I could chair where I could do these artsy-fartsy things all the time!

Foolingest Day (and Electrified Fooling Machine)

Alucard: You steal mens' souls!
Dracula: The same could be said of all religions.
Alucard: Mankind ill needs a savior such as you!
Dracula: Man!? What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets!
Opening Scene, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

It has been a long time, and much has happened. I was hoping to have numerous pictures up to tell my tales, but given that the camera is 10 miles away for the next four hours, I guess I'll just do a post of pictures soon.

Last time I posted a picture of a potential apartment view we had. Now it is Monica and I's apartment for real. On April 1st we moved in, with the help of some great and useful friends, and began piling up boxes full of stuff in ornate piles. Then we saw that the people who just moved out had been very messy, and left us a considerable roach problem. In the epic battle of roach vs. man, which I think has been going on since they crawled out from underneath the dinosaurs' pile of corpses, numerous advances have been made in the field of things to buy. I think we own multiple versions of all of them. The roaches and silverfish are on notice: I would sooner asphyxiate in my palace from layers upon layers of horrible poison than tolerate their continued existence. The exterminator comes at the end of each month (the previous owners never allowed them access to their room even once) , so we have to fight the fight until late April.

But at least I have my Guitar Hero! I fought the inner demons that demanded I get the version for the 360 that came out last week, complete with ten new songs, a few new features and the ability to download more starting next week. At this point, the story eerily resembles the last scene in the Simpsons episode with Lisa Lionheart (I guess I'm on a Simpsons kick recently) in which Malibu Stacy is presented with a new hat and Smithers goes, "... but she has a new hat!"
And while I fully recognize the ludicrous nature of this decision, I still don't regret it. Fake guitars hold a powerful spell...

(I am currently writing this at work, where I was just berated by a jackass for not selling him rare rental copies of exploitation flicks he wanted right that instant--I anticipate this crap all weekend after people see Grindhouse. This is after he knocked over the entire TV shelf being stupid and before giving me a lecture on his status as a porn connoisseur.)

So I suppose this would be a good time to relate the second advance in life, which is the actual takeoff of a new script that is essentially a memoir/screed about the slow death of a soul that is caused working at a retail job where everyone in the world seems to be in a competitive race to see who can get retarded the fastest. Unlike other concepts, which never got very far beyond loglines or ideas written in haste inside the Great Idea Book, the personal and autobiographical nature of this project has made it very easy; my strength has always been narcissistic inward looks peppered with the jadedness that comes from being slightly misanthropic since birth. I already have all the arcs mapped out, and pages of actual real honest-to-God writing on them. Customers Got Served. This is why I'm hot.

I got nothing compared to Monica though, who has nearly secured herself a real job. There will be more on this exciting development as it continues. I am really proud of her, and anticipate the acquiring of cable that can come from even larger paychecks.

Pictures of our apartment and nearby dinosaur/jurassic park coming soon!