Scream Of Consciousness

I shaved the beard off on Sunday, and got my hair cut on Monday. I woke up on Tuesday and wasn't fully pleased with my haircut. It's almost too short. I went from looking like Grizzly Adams to a women's college basketball coach in just 24 hours.

When I used to treat women poorly back in college, I was casually dating a gal named Lisa. I lived with five dudes at the time in this four-floor party house. It was sweet if you were 21. Anyway, we were all fourth- and fifth-year students and we always had people over at all times of day and night.

One Sunday night after we all got back from a weekend road trip at Ohio University, where we were furthering our alcohol consumption research, we had two different groups of gals over. One roommate was friends with the younger sister of one of his old neighborhood buds. She would sometimes bring over her fellow freshmen girlfriends, one of whom I was particularly interested in. Lisa and a couple of her girls were over as well, and once she was ready to pass out, I told her to go upstairs and I'd be up shortly. Of course, an hour passed, and I was still trying to make some progress with young Brandy. Lisa came down and I sent her back up with possibly one of my rudest lines ever: "Go back upstairs and put on some Enigma, and I'll be up there in a minute."

I've been thinking about buying a sixer or a decent bottle of wine and walking around the city with it. Now that the weather is getting nicer, I'm bound to find a party in the neighborhood. I feel like it would be an exciting challenge to approach the partygoers by making up something like, "Hey, is this Chad's place?" And once they tell me it's not, I'll steer the conversation (I'm a master at that) in a way that leaves my new acquaintances no other option but to invite me in.

"I could have sworn he said it was right around here. Stupid me."

Next, I'd take my bottle of wine or the sixer inside and charm the pants off a group of total strangers by regaling them in tales of my perverted mischief. I think I would enjoy being the hit of a party where I know no one. Of course there's always a chance I'll be found out for the fraud I am and get my ass kicked. Many people who don't know me think I'm gay, and I imagine some who do know me think the same, so I should be extremely careful not to stray toward the wrong crowd. The smart bet would be to scrap the plan entirely. But if you've ever seen my bank statement, you know I seldom place money on the smart bet.

Check out my friend Jason's Web site. He's an old college buddy from Cincinnati, and he's getting pretty good at painting what non-art-smart people like me would call "glow-in-the-dark shit." But it's actually a little more technical than that. His site shows his paintings as they appear normally, but once you mouse over them, you see what they look like after changes in lighting are applied. This isn't just a trick on his Web site either. This is how his pieces look in person. They're really cool, even if you haven't had a puff. Expect big things from him in the future. He's going to be rich and I'll expect him to buy me some Hardee's and Budweisers in the near future.

Scream Of Consciousness

One topic doesn't necessarily outweigh another today, but I've got a few things for you nonetheless:

I tripped a girl: With apologies to Jill Sobule, this event did indeed occur near the intersection of 68th and 3rd today. I was en route to purchase some delightful grocery store sushi for lunch this afternoon when I saw some stock personnel taking up much of the sidewalk out in front of Food Emporium. I slowed my step to allow these hard workers to maneuver their carts around and into the store. I was clearly the first person waiting to walk straight through the narrow corridor once these workers got out of the way, and when I started to move forward, a man to my left with a bad attitude knowingly cut me off and was pulling by hand his lady friend behind him. Without thinking, and just reacting with anger, I quickly picked up my pace and, keeping my head down, pretended I didn't see either of them and turned my left foot outward and, um, accidentally tripped his girlfriend. I promise I didn't know it was a woman. It all happened so fast and I'm still dealing with anger issues when it comes to adjusting to the hustle bustle of these city streets. This is a good example of why I would or could end up back in Louisville.

Scratch and win: Every month, there's a new rotation of commercials that gets played far more than others, particularly in the morning. One that's currently got a high-annoyance ratio is about the local scratch-off game. "You could win" a certain cash prize, but quite honestly, if I'm scratching, I'm definitely winning, and I don't need to leave the house for lottery tickets for that.

Melinda and Melinda: I've seen this movie a couple of times, and it's on right now as I type today's failures. I used to think Chloe Sevigny was so darling, but it's hard to take her seriously after I finally caught an online viewing of "The Brown Bunny" blow job scene. A few times. She and three or four others might call it art, but it looks to me like anything but that.

Speaking of movies: Loved "The Illusionist" on Saturday. Hadn't seen Edward Norton in a while. He did an excellent job, as did Paul Giamatti. And I think that was the first movie I'd seen with Jessica Biel. My, she's well-deserving of the hype, and she's a decent -- not great -- actor. But "All The King's Men" was a little slow and Gandolfini, as much as I love him in "Sopranos," shouldn't try to pull off the Louisiana accent again soon without a lesson or two.

Challa at your boy: XBox Girl, who is Jewish, seemed to take great delight in sharing a few facts about her religion over breakfast recently. I ordered the French Toast on Challa bread. She, by the way, will no longer be called XBox girl, as she recently left the job that made the nickname sensible. She started a new job today, but she's a confident gal; I don't think she's schvitzing too badly.

Nonetheless, one of her accounts will be an adult toy company. I can't give you many more details than that, but you're welcome to nominate a new nickname.