There goes the bank account

I've been through this so many times before, and here it goes again. Leaving the nest. At the ripe young age of 28, I'm moving out of my parents house AGAIN to East Williamsburg (aka Bushwick) where a lovely huge studio awaits me. It's run by some Orthodox Jews who seem to be rather generous with their converted warehouse.

As you can see from the photos I'm dragging over from the craigslist site I've got 20 foot ceilings and over 500 square feet of space to frolic. There's a front yard with a bbq to store my bike, a back yard with a bbq to walk dogs, and a rooftop with a bbq where I can store my sanity.


So when everything's ready and the moving boxes have been recycled and the charcoal has been acquired, you're all invited to Jaime's new and quite individual bbq house warming.
PS - there's also a game room with free pool, free air hockey, a coffee machine, soda and snack machine, a circa 1975 gym, and practice rooms for acting, instruments, classes, whatever, and some odd medieval type dining table.

Wasting away in coldpizzaville

It's about 10 at night and I'm sitting in my cubicle cause we got handed a brand new brief at 11AM today for a presentation to a client tomorrow at 11AM. Yipdy freakin' dooo! Not too much to complain about it though, I even asked for this. I had a horrible case of Strep that turned into what looked like Mono and am now just back at work full time since Monday and what was the first thing out of my mouth to the ECD? "Ready for some 1AM night's boss, just let me know when. I'm rearin' to go!" Is it so wrong to ask for my karmic justice early for hardly working for two weeks and officially losing only 3 sick days? So here I sit with my poor AD (after finishing our cold delivery pizza) trying to figure out how to create a negative space sand castle of an apartment on the beach with absolutely NOTHING to work with.
And what do I want to talk about on this blog? Cable and Phone! Fucking cable and phone companies that suck the living life out of me for worrying, needlessly since it doesn't do anything, about when I'm going to be able to turn on the TV, check my email, and make a fucking phone call that won't charge me peak air-time minutes! We moved into our new Condo (leaving my old house of 25 years behind, tear, whimper, tear) with a promise from Verizon to have the phone on that same day and cable coming that Tuesday. The phone guys apparently decided not to show and Verizon gave no good reason why they didn't and promised to be there Monday at which point they promised that they rang the doorbell at exactly 10:09AM (which they didn't do because my mother swears she was there during that time) and said they'd come back on Thursday. Meanwhile the cable company sent a new kid out to see us (after I'd been on the phone with them the night before about how they promised a certain price but now where saying that they never said that or that whoever did say that was wrong) who found all our cable jacks to be just holes in the wall and discovered our working cable line in the attic (which was about 120 degrees at that point, poor kid) and that he needed access to our neighbor's attic to get the cable working which meant getting our neighbor's and the condo board's permission to get the cable running so our poor cable kid will be back on Tuesday to try again (excuse the run on but boy-oh-boy) We'll see what happens. Based on our previous experience with cable, I'm sure we've got a while to go.
I've just had a conversation with the studio about how to create a three dimensional sand castle of negative space out of a two dimensional floor plan, and you know what, we're going to try to do it tomorrow morning using LightPath (whatever that program is) and see if we can get it done before the 11AM deadline. Cheers to that.
And in case Bush didn't think I noticed... He did WHAT?! 62 Senators and a huge majority of Representatives passed the Stem Cell Research bill and Bush vetoed the fucker. THIS was his first veto. He's been in office 5 and a half years and THIS life saving bill that would help advance cures for everything from alzheimers to parkensins to broken bones, is what he chose to veto?! What the fuck is wrong with this guy?

Bullies never go away

My girlfriend introduced me to her DVD collection of Freaks and Geeks last night. I saw the first and one of the last episodes. Apparently there were bullies in high school in 1980; shocking I know. But for the past few days, as I turn on the news any time now I see the beginnings of WWIII starting in the middle east I'm starting to see a connection. Hamas is a minority in Palestine. The Radical Clerics in Iran are a minority. And Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria also make up a very small part of their countries. It's a wonder they have been able to do what they do when a majority of people in their countries want nothing to do with this violence. But then again what were the Nazis but a bunch of drunks in the early 1920's screaming that they'll take over the world only to be arrested for drunken disorderly conduct. Bullies are always a minority, but their intimidation goes unchecked for one reason or another that I don't think any of us have ever figured out. Otherwise parents would know what to say to their kids when a bully comes by. Rather than just "Ignore him," or "Try to talk it out with him," or of course "Tell a teacher." Cause that always works.
Hezbollah is now (probably taking it's cues, guns, and money from Iran so the world ignores their Nuclear Program especially during the G8 summit going on right now) kidnapping Israelis and launching rockets into Israel as far and as much as they can. Every one of their acts is technically an act of war. And I ask myself what the Israelis, all 5 million of them in a sea of 150 million Muslims, can do? I understand they have arrested criminals. I understand they have killed not only terrorists and conspirators but also innocent women and children as "collateral damage" but nothing they have every done in any way compares to the horrible acts of aggression Hamas and Hezbollah do almost every day. Remember, almost every Muslim country does not recognize Israel's right to even exist. Israel has always, always just wanted to exist, to be left to their land and live their lives.
I think one of the biggest PR moves ever made by the Muslim nations was during the '67 war. Before that, Israel was a little country that had to be protected by Europe. It was a liberal cause. Then Israel was able to defend itself against 3 enemies at the same time and even gain ground in the war. But what Israel lost that day was the liberal cause because Israel went from a country of 5 million surrounded by a sea of 150 million to an occupying force of Palestinian refugees without a country (not that they had a country before then or that any and I mean ANY Muslim country would take them in). The liberals moved their cause to the Palestinians and when I lived on the west coast all I saw all over Berkeley were stickers under STOP signs that said Israel.
What is a bully who loses a fight? And what is a picked on kid that stands up for himself and wins but is never out of danger because the bullies are still there? And what can Principal America do about it? Maybe I'll have to go watch Strangers with Candy and see what Amy Sedaris would do.

If the Devil Wears Prada, does God Wear Gucci?

A benefit of the mono is time to go to the movies. So yesterday I saw The Devil Wears Prada. Rather good for a chick flick, but I'd still put it in the chick flick category: no depth, emotional swings based on very little actually happening, and hotness for the sake of inner beauty rather than for the sake of hotness.
But it made me think about some of the changes I've been going through lately. Most of you know my clothing line as that of a cartoon character, the same jeans and sneakers for like 6 months straight with a t-shirt roundup that's recycled every week and a half to two weeks. Nothing much to write home about, but hey, there's reliable old Jaime with the same shit on every day. And then...
Jessica took me to Woodbury Commons. For those of you not from the Northeast, Woodbury Commons is a shopping center outlet of about 300 stores approximately 2 hours north of NYC. I hear you got a lot of that on the west coast, but it's freakin Mecca over here to a lot of people. There are even Japanese tours of the place. Anyway, I got in one day a few shirts from Banana, and get this: three pairs of shoes. 1 Merrill, 1 fancy pants converse with no laces, and one pair of shoe like substance that I don't even know what it is but man is it haute couture! And I've stolen some very nice Hush Puppies from my bro. I also got my first socks that are only ankle high. I feel very weird without sockage on my ankles, but I'm trying. FYI - apparently if you tell the woman behind the counter at Hush Puppies that you should get a discount on Merrill's because they're owned by the Wolverine brand which your agency handles you'll get the employee discount of 20% no questions asked. Pretty neat, try it some time.
I've noticed that since college I seem to have a lot more girl than guy friends but it took Jessica to actually start dressing me differently. And it's a slow process, granted, I revert easily, but she's on my fashion like yellow to a rain coat. Brand names never really made much sense to me, you put an A/X on a shitty 75 cent t-shirt and all of a sudden it's not $10, it's $50. And that's on sale! I may have to hock branding on others if I want to take home a pay check, but that still doesn't mean I understand why, when I was in Paris on the Champs Elyse and Concha came across the Louis Vuitton store she ran to it like she was in Chariots of Fire only to fall to the ground, crushed like a her soul had been deflated because it wasn't opening for a few months. Nor does it explain why my male La Jolla ECD takes us all out for pedicures, including yours truly and walks around in Louis Vuitton sandals all day.
A little help people.

Oh yeah, that's right, I'm a writer

First of all, welcome to the blog world Emily!

Funny, I kinda just thought these things would write themselves and then life happens and next thing you know you haven't written for a month. Time for some updates:
I've got a lady, her name is Jessica, and boy is she lovely, I mean all around lovely. She's in the movie business trying to become a creative producer and is casting other movies along the way to make the money flow. Can't wait for all of you to meet her, those of you who haven't already of course.
I've been travelling to St. Louis for business on freaking Friskies cat food. Goodie goodie gumdrops I have to say. Center city is like the cleanest place in the entire world. And I had forgotten about that arch thing, yes it's still there. I can feel myself getting sucked into this packaged good and it's not a pleasant feeling.
Luckily I have jury duty assigned to me for this coming monday to get me out of it. But of course that itself I'm trying to get out of because my last trip to St. Louis brought me down with my worst case of Strep throat I've ever had which would be bad enough had it not led to my first case of Mono. Yes folks, I, a 28 year old, have just contracted the kissing disease. Jessica is fine, no worries there, but my god, what the hell do you do with Mono? I'm sitting in bed at noon writing this on a Thursday technically working from home and next week we're moving out of my home of 25 years into a condo, while I have this freaking disease so I can't lift anything and help around the house when I'm really really needed. It's a weird state of affairs so if anyone has any ideas of how to entertain me please send them to this blog. Muchos Gracias.