monday july 2 2001    |    2:14 a.m.

mmm. sunday-to-monday night. late-to-early. parents asleep, poolside quiet, sky dark. i like it.

mark eitzel tuesday in little havana. covert little show, not ticketmastered: tomorrow i'm selling a bunch of cds at uncle sam's and then proceeding northward slightly to books&books to buy tickets for mr. e.

today mom and i went to see the newest zhang yimou film, the road home. it was gorgeous. present marked by gritty black-and-white, flashbacks occupying 90% of the movie in flaming color. i cried and cried. not necessarily out of sadness -- chinese movies are usually a tour-de-force through grief -- but out of... i don't even know. just: wow. out of wow. maybe i liked to live better, and they could have cut back on the close-ups of zhang ziyi's face (she's cute, but come on). but that's just being critical for the sake of being critical. it was lovely.

patrick and i went to denise's on friday night like we usually do. brought some amaretto and beer and found her and johnny playing canasta on the porch. we switched to the usual boardgame (time's out!, in case you were wondering -- essentially charades on cardboard) after the cards got rained on during a quick trip to johnny's. then denise's friend alex came over. he's a lout and i don't like him to begin with, but he was especially drunk and obnoxious and wrapped up the night by hanging out his car door and puking on denise's front lawn (he'd parked on the lawn so we could hear his music: frat rock at its worst, i couldn't even make out the band/s).

so denise had to take him home and drive his car, while patrick, johnny and i followed in patrick's car. uneventful enough. at some point on the way back though, patrick stepped on the brakes and something cracked. and crunched. and kept on cracking and crunching. and he was losing control of the brakes. we cracked and crunched along for a while, until patrick had the idea to lay all his weight on the brake pedal -- and somehow this stopped the noise. which picked up again as we were pulling into the mcdonald's drive-thru in north bay village at 6:15 in the morning to buy breakfast. needless to say his car is now also kaput. denise just found out that her mechanic has been in the hospital due to high blood pressure, so her new engine will have to wait through the recovery period. sigh. which means we all stay home.

except for mark eitzel. thank goodness for record label guy. thank. goodness.

[ insert smoke break. ]

[ speaking of which... this is so fucking condescending. and self-righteous. they claim to hold or pursue the truth, for god's sake! i prefer this curmudgeonly site. worlds better. and far more honest. ]

another installment in the mind-reading / separated-at-birth chronicles ::: today i was thinking that i had to e-mail julie -- it's been about two weeks since we last spoke, since she called me at mark's from a hotel in washington, d.c. the night before she left for bulgaria. so i e-mailed her from the school account. once i was done i checked the alternate account, and what do i find waiting for me: an e-mail from jules written only hours earlier! i shouldn't be surprised by now.

by the way: will work for travel. get me out of here!

and one last thing. i've been working on this website. i have no coding skills and little-to-no designing skills, so i could use a helping hand in either department. content-wise, too, especially if you're in the general south florida area or have connections therein. unfortunately at this point i can't offer much in return, aside from recognition, props, and my undying gratitude. (as good as it gets, eh?)