Where I Am: In my Car, in the Bronx

What I’m Doing: Fulfilling a request of my crazy wife

There’s going to be days where nothing interesting happens. I’m sure there will be a lot of those days.

My main concern when taking this picture was to fulfil a wish made by Lisa: that in one of my many boring car shots I highlight her first ever gift to me, the Love Monkeys.

Actually, I don’t think that it was the first gift she gave to me. That may have been the Donald Duck lunchbox filled with pictures of a fetal scrotum (which I cannot differentiate from all the other swiling gray masses but which she assures me is quite prominent. She’s an ultrasound technician, which makes the act of obtaining these pictures far less creepy but not the intent behind them).

While that lunchbox is tucked away in the closet of things-we’ll-eventually-unpack, the Love Monkeys have had a home in my car and the car I had before this one (both Ford Tauruses because I am, at heart, 90 years old) and will continue to make their lovenest in my vehicles until someone vomits on them.

They’ve got a card attached full of inside jokes we no longer have. It’s like our love had a yearbook and she signed it.

permalink January 12, 2007 at 11:40 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: In my newly painted kitchen

What I’m Doing: Looking Short, Failing to set up a Good Eats-style shot

I spent a good 5 minutes trying to set up a Good Eats-esque "inside the cabinet" shot but gave up and settled on this. This is actually my first reshoot since the project started, since the photo I had settled on earlier in the day was kind of a letdown when uploaded to the computer. I still had some time left in the day, so I decided to snap some shots of myself in my newly painted kitchen.

It’s dramatically different. Everything’s much lighter and less ancient-looking. I don’t know the exact names of the colors Lisa picked, but the cabinets are essentially cream-colored and the walls are a blue/green type color that actually looks better than I thought it would. You can kinda see it in the picture.

All the cabinets and drawers are open in my kitchen and the light fixture is hanging down from the ceiling so all the paint can dry properly. I’m not sure if it’s going to be Lisa or I who incurs the first massive headwound.

permalink January 11, 2007 at 11:53 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: Lisa’s Makeup Table

What I’m Doing: Wallowing in my Dumbassitude

Perhaps it would have been better to write it backwards, like the writing on the front of ambulances, so that the message scrawled on my forehead served not only to warn others of what I am but also to remind me that I am, indeed, a dumbass.

I’m pointing to that finger because that was the finger my wedding ring used to be on. I think. I’m such a dumbass that I’m unsure if I’m pointing to the correct finger or even the correct hand. There’s no convenient matted hair or skanky yet strangely enticing smell left marking the spot like when my watch comes off. My hand’s just a little bit lighter.

You see, I’ve lost my wedding ring.

My fingers have always been skeleton-like, with the bone wearing the flesh and muscle only out of a sense of duty and not because it feels like it’s fooling anyone. Somehow when I lost weight again after the wedding, my fingers got a bit thinner as well and my ring became loose. It wasn’t always loose, but when it was it would come flying off my hand with the slightest gesture. This was the case when I lost it.

I was shuffling around some banking as I waited in my car at the drive-up teller. My ring flew off and I didn’t see where. I got out of the car, carefully scanning the ground to make sure it hadn’t landed on me and subsequently fallen off me outside the car. I poured over the car’s interior and did once again when I got back to the office. I pulled up the driver’s side upholsetery to see if the ring had somehow magically seeped through the chair cover. It hadn’t.

So now I’m ringless. Lisa and I are both taking it in strides. It’s upsetting, but nothing too earthshattering. Hopefully, once I remove my car seats, I’ll find the damn thing.

I hope.

permalink January 10, 2007 at 11:34 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: My house, in our dining room

What I’m Doing: Demonstrating what a normal head looks like when compared to my Easter Island-esque cranium

This marks the first appearance of my beautiful wife, Lisa, who complained of not being included in any of my photos despite the fact that there were only 8 taken. I’m honored that someone else besides me would show interest in this project, but mostly I’m relieved that at least there won’t be 365 poorly staged and photographed pictures centered on my big, fat, lonely head.

We are not dwarfs. Well, at least I’m not. I’m sitting on a chair in front of our kitchen counter and Lisa is hunched over beside me. When she stands upright she’s a little over 14 inches tall, so the angle is not as deceiving as one would think.

The reason we are sitting in front of our kitchen sink is, besides the fact that I needed a picture that wasn’t of me just standing around being uninteresting (which, it can be argued, I am doing here in a sitting position), that the template for the new counters are being done tomorrow and thus the old countertops have been relocated to a far less useful location.

The entire process of replacing the countertops seems designed to be inconvenient. The old countertops must be removed before the templating can be done (a process wherein cardboard is laid out on top of the cabinets and then cut to match its shape, which seems like a technique invented in Medieval monastery that remains unchanged to this day) and there’s a two week period during which the new counters are fabricated and you’re left counterless in the meantime. It’s like our kitchen appliances have been run out of town and set up a refugee camp on our dining room table.

We’re left without a kitchen sink (but still have a functioning dishwasher) as a result of this and thus will be doing the bulk of our dining for the next two weeks off of plastic. This is funny because Lisa has been trying to pawn off plastic dinnerware on me since New Year’s to get rid of the leftovers from the party and now, when we actually need and want to use it, we’ll have to buy more, which comes in party-sized quantities, so that the vicious cycle will continue long after the new cabinets are installed. I imagine I will be able to see through my cutlery well past Easter.

Today was my grandfather’s birthday, the first since he passed away last year. We headed down to my grandmother’s house to keep her company (and keep her mind off things) where we joined a crapload of people: my sisters Lizzie & Patti, my brother Mikey, as well as my Uncles Chris, Frankie, Eddie, Richie and John, my Aunts Carol, Patti, Danielle, Renee and Debbie and my cousins Frankie, Frankie (a third one), Danny, Kayla, Kelly, Angie, Tori, Chris and Skylar. That’s nowhere near close to a full house in my family, in fact it was a small gathering if anything.

Deja and Reg were nice enough to take care of Bowser when they got home and when we returned we went over to their house. They’re recently engaged and have just begun the wonderfully arduous and hate-inducing task of planning their wedding. There’s no visible bruising so unless they’ve gone at each other with wire hangers and phone books, they’ve managed to keep their fighting to a minimum, most likely because they’ve got a full two years to build up the kind of intense loathing for each other that only a wedding can inspire. They spent their night at an overly-crowded Bridal Convention and were seriously considering ditching the traditional church-and-banquet-hall stuffiness that we tried to avoid and taking their act on the road to Vegas. Lisa and I, being the loving supportive friends that we are, wholeheartedly encouraged them to pursue this. We were in no way motivated by the mind-boggling amount of booze, strippers and other debauchery that such a wedding would no doubt involve, but instead were looking out for the best interests of our dearest friends. It wasn’t huge gyrating Asian dirty pillows at all. Just love.

I am not, as is visible to any and all who view these pictures, a professional photographer. I’m not even an amateur photographer. I fiddle around with the exposure as if I know what I’m doing, try to keep my hand from shaking too much and keep my thumb extended; that’s the extent of my mastery of the craft. This project has forced me to confront the fact that I take really uninteresting photos as a general rule, the kind you use as a springboard for the memories and not something that really captures a moment in time all by itself. It’s also forced me to rethink something that I’ve otherwise been fine with: I’m a boring homebody. I’m sure I’ll get a few great shots on the various vacations I’ll be taking this year (Disney World, Vegas, Europe, Lake George) but if I don’t want 95% of my photos to be pictures of my head in one of the 7 rooms of my condo (eight if you count the hallway!) I’m going to have to get out more and learn to use my camera.

Let’s see how that goes. Don’t hold your breath.

permalink January 10, 2007 at 4:57 am · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: In my Living Room

What I’m Doing: Waiting on Hold with Nintendo, Bottling my Anger and Disappointment so That I’llBe Satiated by Well Wishes and Two Copies of Nintendo Power

A Wii has been returned to me. Not my Wii. But a Wii nonetheless.

All my save files, Virtual Console games and Miis are gone.

It won’t be very fun playing through those grueling first two hours of Twilight Princess again and all my Miis are a shadow of their former selves, as if I’m in a Twilight Zone episode where I wake up and everything is just different enough that I might be in an alien zoo.

I did learn that the Virtual Console is linked to your account (which they did transfer) and that all your games have permanent licenses associated with them. If, say, I delete a game to make room for whatever, I can redownload that title whenever I like.

That tidbit was not enough to make things right.

permalink January 9, 2007 at 3:28 am · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: Laying on my couch in my living room

What I’m Doing: Holding my beloved Gears of War, hiding both my double chin and the fact I’m wearing the same shirt as yesterday with varying degrees of success

This may be a bit premature. After all, our relationship just got started and we’ve only been together a few times. I can’t help it, it feels so right:

I love the Xbox 360.

It’s a beautiful machine that fulfills needs I didn’t know I had. The atrocious online offerings of the PS2, combined with the meager online setup on the DS, the virtually non-existent presence on the Gamecube and the fact that no one had the Xbox Live service on the original Xbox but me (and I didn’t care to get my ass kicked by strange 12 year olds) led me to believe that an online-integrated console was something I could easily do without. That’s still true, but now that I’ve seen what Xbox Live is capable of it makes other console’s online offerings ludicrous and arcane.

To whit: I was playing Gears of War and little icon popped on the bottom of the screen informing me that my brother had sent me a video message. I was able to, with the click of a single button, pause the game, go to a screen where the message (and others) was waiting for me. I played the video (my clearly annoyed mother not understanding what he was having her do), replied with audio using the supplied headset, then went back to my game. It was seamless.

Relating this kind of thing is what would get me called a “fag n00b” (I assume the 1337 speak is implied although it is spoken and not typed) by the aforementioned 12 year olds but it was truly a mind-altering experience. Wii’s messageboard seems quaint in comparison, the equivalent of having the walk out to my mailbox in the snow as opposed to opening an email.

The gamerscore is a very bad thing indeed. My penis is a many splendid thing but it is challenged against all reason by the fact that I haven’t unlocked as many achievements in Hexic as someone else. I spent a good 90 hours of my life completing Jiminy’s Journal in Kingdom Hearts 2, so the mindless and infuriating grinding required of me in order to unlock all the achievements in Pacman is something I can, sadly, see myself doing in the near future.

Enough of how wonderful the Xbox 360 is, as I’m sure I will return to it in the future. This should be about Gears of War and how much I love it.

As a general rule, I suck at First Person Shooters. There’s something about the wiring in my brain that craves the split-second jumping required in a platformer but can’t aim worth a damn when it comes to the FPS. My thumb does not want to comply even when the enemy is centered on the screen. In the Doom-like FPS where the confrontations are basically face-to-face stand-offs between you and the enemy, I lose. Gears of War emphasizes cover, something that vastly improves my chances. I have time to get my bearings, work out a strategy, and, thankfully, aim properly whenever I encounter an enemy. When I die, I usually deserve it. That’s something I can’t say about most other FPS games.

The game has an amazing momentum to it. There’s no break in the story, you just continue through the story. There’s no feedback as to how many headshots you’ve made, what you’re accuracy is, and a constant stream of C- level completion ratings. You survived, and that’s all that really matters. The game moves on.

The only snag was the vehicle level where I picked up the junker. The vehicle itself brought the game to a complete halt. Although the controls on the vehicle were tight, the entire ordeal was just annoying. It was night and you had to stop the vehicle every so often to shoot these tiny bat-like enemies that were as black as the sky and who would come at you from all directions. Your only clue as to where they were coming from would be a teammate shouting something like “6 o’clock!” a split second before they attacked. I got through the thing in one try and it still left a bad taste in my mouth.

The game demands my attention in an all-consuming way that won’t jibe with regular, nightly play. I do have a wife and, as he constantly reminded me by jumping into my face when I was playing, a new puppy to take care of. The weekends however…DIE LOCUST SCUM!

permalink January 8, 2007 at 11:49 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: In my house, in the living room

What I’m Doing: Being Gluttonous

Ribs…is there any diet you can’t ruin? I blame the ribs but it’s really the result of laziness and poor self-control.

You see, I’ve been on and off my diet since I got back from my month-long wedding/honeymoon at the end of August 2006 and I’ve been a lot less strict about keeping to it.

On January 22nd, 2006, having returned from my wedding planning session down in Walt Disney World, I weighed myself for the first time in ages. I had vowed that I would start my diet in preparation for the wedding when I returned from the vacation and this was the first step. I weighed 312 pounds.

Let’s repeat that: 312 pounds.

I’m not sure how I convinced myself that I weighed anything less than 312 pounds: the American Astronomical Society considered me a walking eclipse. The size after Venti at Starbucks was named Lou. My bellybutton echoed. That kind of fat.

It was startling. So startling that I actually followed through on my diet for the better part of a year (until July 10th, to be exact) and managed to lose 80 pounds. I gained 28 pounds of that back on my wedding/honeymoon (which means I consumed, on average, 3500 calories more than I burned on a given day. The only rational explanation I can think of is that I accidentally swallowed a deer every night in my sleep) and have managed to lose 22 pounds of that weight since my return (74 total pounds lost in a year if you’re keeping count).

The urgency to lose weight isn’t as strong as it was last year. The only major event I have coming up is my first trip to Europe. It’d be nice to finally take my shirt off in front of other people after several decades of shirt-swimming but I don’t see that happening even if I keep to the same rigorous diet from last year. I still have another year of strict dieting before I consider the tanning and hair grooming that would be necessary to combat years of poor body image (which is, unfortunately, entirely valid).

So here I am, being Fatty McWillpowerless again, dining on ribs. I know, normal people on diets allow themselves a treat every now and then so that they don’t go insane on their diet. I can’t do that. Food is my drug and I get the shakes real easy. I’ve had Nathan’s hot dogs twice since the ribs incident and managed to eat every last Twix and Kit Kat leftover from my New Year’s party. I have no one to blame but myself.

Hopefully a year from now I’ll be able to look at this post and those surrounding it and laugh at what an amazing porker I was, just as I can do now with last year’s pics:

That’s Andi and Adam’s Wedding Dessert Party which they were nice enough to let us attend so we could see what ours would be like. I think when they saw me they briefly considered a stun gun in order to not go bankrupt. That’s another story for another time, though, and probably on my severely neglected Disney Wedding blog. It’s so severely neglected I won’t even link to it.

permalink January 8, 2007 at 11:21 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: Deja & Reg’s Place

What I’m Doing: Cheating on my Wii, Bowling Poorly

The loss of my Wii was somewhat offset by the fact that I had ready access to another one a few hundred feet from my front door. This was in turn offset when I walked in to Reg exploring the Desert Temple in Twilight Princess. I should be playing that!

Wii Bowling and I don’t get along. It is a testament to the accuracy of the Wiimote that I suck as much at virtual bowling as I do in its real-life counterpart. In the virtual world I have a natural hook that I must compensate for when I aim. I had actually gotten it down to a semi-science when my Wii decided that practice makes broken and went belly up. The skills I had learned do not translate one-to-one at Reg’s place: his sensor bar is on top of the TV as opposed to below, like mine and the finesse that I must put on the ball is different as a result (or at least that’s the convenient excuse I’m using). Since I can’t practice at Reg’s house the way I can at home, I’m stuck finishing last and getting by with 8-1 frames and the occasional spare.

My wife, however, is a natural at the game despite the fact that her bowling style, if translated into the real world, would kill her and anyone within a 5-foot radius. We would never be allowed near a bowling alley, let alone in one. In the virtual world her style translates to unfailing strikes and spares and nary a Mii loses a limb (which they don’t have to lose in the first place, but still.)

Reg has worked out his style to whatever lies between a semi-science (which I just invented and therefore should be able to invent this one too) and a science such that he has a position from which he bowls that, if he gives it the right amount of power, equates to a strike every time. The trouble he seems to be having is in getting that power consistently, or at least within a range that doesn’t make it seem the Wii is just guessing every time he bowls. This is one of the biggest shortcomings in Wii Sports: although the game is very forgiving when you make mistakes doing what it wants you to do, it never actually tells you what you need to do. For example: we’ve both had the game for a while now and not one of the four of us knows how to control the direction of the ball in Wii Tennis. Not even a clue. We just hit it and hope it goes where we want it to. We try hitting it to the left or the right as the opportunity presents itself but more often than not it just goes in the same direction it always goes in. This particular night I hit the ball into and off of the net so many times that we thought we had cracked some sort of code but instead just ended up baffled.

Deja, unlike the rest of us, confidently and seemingly effortlessly beats the shit out of us in Wii Bowling. Well, to be fair, Lisa and Reg give her a run for her money and win occasionally, but she’s so consistent in her score that she must have sold her soul to the devil for a better-than-average virtual bowling score which, when you think of it, is about as useful as a gold fiddle, especially since she doesn’t trashtalk.

permalink January 8, 2007 at 10:54 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: My Kitchen (love that wallpaper!)

What I’m Doing: Holding an Xbox 360 Controller lovingly

There’s a disconnect in taking these photos and posting them here on the blog that I didn’t count on when I started this project: although I’ve kept faithful to the project for a stunning 8 days (I know, amazing!), I’ve somehow managed to retain the incredible laziness that ensures that any project I undertake will fail and as a result I’m writing about these photos on the blog days after I’ve taken them. This is, however, not the case over on Flickr, where I write an entry about each photo when I post them.

Today’s photo offers this problem: what I wrote on Flickr and what I’d write now about it are two different things. Here’s what I wrote over there when I posted it, the day I took it:

Ah, the rebound. My relationship with the Wii went south and who was there to pick up the pieces? The XBox 360.

Sure, it may be a bit heavier and we don’t share a lot of interests but damn, does it try hard and that counts for something.

While that may have reflected my view of the Xbox 360 at the time, now that I’ve actually played a game on the thing I unabashedly love it. We do share a lot of interests and when we don’t, it’s more than willing to sit and do things that I want to do just because it cares. If you can’t tell by my eerie anthropomorphization of the thing, I’d have sex with it if it had a big enough hole and less electric insides.

My experience with the old Xbox was much like my snowshovel: the two or three times a year I needed it, it was great, but for the most part it was just taking up a lot of space. The 360 and I are going to be good friends. When I actually have money to spend on myself (damn you xmas!) I’ll be delving deeper into the Live Marketplace. For now it remains just out of my reach, full of things that I know I don’t need but also know that I need.

There’s a lot to explore and a lot of promise from the system. I’ll get into that more in a later picture post wherein I spend the better part of the day repelling invaders from with the planet’s core. Hominids rule!

This post brought to you by the Italics Group: Slanting for a New Tomorrow.

permalink January 8, 2007 at 9:38 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project

Where I Am: My car, parked outside the UPS store

What I’m Doing: Cradling my Dead Wii

The extension of my lower lip cannot hope to convey the soul-crushing sadness that I feel over the loss of my Wii. After a launch day of frantic searching spanning two states that turned up empty, I drove down to Manhattan to the Nintendo World Store and was able to snatch up a Wii after waiting in line with a couple hundred others. I not only bought a Wii but an extra controller, an extra nunchuk, a Classic controller, copies of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Excite Truck. I had already purchased Red Steel, Super Monkey Ball and Rayman: Raving Rabbids in anticipation of the launch and had subsequently purchased Elebits along with an additional two controllers and nunchuks. Oh, and $100 in Wii Points. My point is that my inner-fanboy had gotten the best of me and I had invested far too much money and time for it to die on me.

And die it did.

I should’ve seen it coming. It had died a few weeks earlier and I was somehow, through a mixture of hope, tears and blood sacrifice, able to resurrect it. I should’ve known that, like Jesus, it would only be around for so long after it rose from the grave.

To add insult to injury, it also took my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess with it. It lays trapped in its cold, lifeless core in this photo, taken outside my local UPS store.

permalink January 5, 2007 at 11:12 pm · Filed under Failed 2007 365 Project