Dumpster Diving and Freeganism.

I've always been a big fan of dumpster diving/trash picking. This city in particular provides wonderful finds in furniture, clothes and collectibles. Half the furniture in my room has been dumpstered and I've found things like an 1891 copy of Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare and a first printing of To Catch a Thief.

So about a month ago I went on a Freegan tour in Murray Hill.

http://www.freegan.info

The Freegans state their mission best on their website, but to sum up they recover food and items that are wastefully thrown out by major chain stores and food distributors.

Grocery chains apparently receive set deliveries of inventory, regardless of their sales numbers each week, so they have to make room for the fresh foods by simply throwing out food which may still be good.

The Freegans lead these tours in various neighborhoods and recover tons of foodstuffs, then hold Freegan feasts made from the scavanged supplies.

On my first trip out I got eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, pasta sauce and lady fingers. I ended up making ratatouille and tiramisu!

Last night I went for my evening run and then embarked on my first solo mission in my neighborhood of Chelsea. Their website lists a bunch of stores in different neighborhoods with good finds. I had planned mainly on getting bagels from Murray's; bagels and breads are one of the food items you can pretty much count on being able to get daily. I ended up getting not only fresh and warm bagels, but from the Eckhard drugstore across the street I found 24 bottles of fruit punch Gatorade (expired), 3 boxes of Granola bars, Colgate toothpaste, a bag of Butterfinger miniature Crisps, a flashlight, a curling iron and a bar of Cadbury chocolate. I left an additional six pack of Gatorade and one of those huge cans of Maxwell House coffee, still vacuum-sealed.

So, what do you all think? Is this cheapness taken to an extreme, or a viable means of stocking one's pantry?

What shall I have for lunch? Oh, I know... Hanson!

So I'm temping at this ad agency, and the entire office just erupted in laughter at the mass email sent out by HR, announcing that Hanson will be playing the Brown Bag Lunch event here at noon.

My mind is on overload. Oh WHY haven't I bought a hand camcorder yet?* I'm just going to have to tape it with my phone.

Bwahahahahaha!

(Full disclosure: I like Mmm Bop )

Update: But you know what? They rocked out. Solid, SOLID classic American rock band and their vocals and harmonies are tight. Nice guys too.

Video coming soon.

The best part, however, is the fact that this ad agency is located on top of the the Manhattan Mall.

* Because you just got robbed, moron.

My computer was stolen.

Saturday night, Sept 1st, my practically new Macbook Pro was stolen from a friend's apartment where I was staying in the East Village. We just went out for a few hours for dinner and drinks, and when I came back the gate over the window had been picked and all my stuff was gone.

Cops came, detectives came the next day. It doesn't really look too good. Not much they can do except check pawn shops and put out the serial numbers.

The financial loss is bad enough, but it contained all my creative and business work of the past 6-7 months; videos, photography, music composition, writing, databases, etc...

Just not my year.

Another reason never to leave my room.

The Vista-Dell Monologues OR "Why I'm about to switch..."

They're not Widgets. They're GADGETS! See? Completely different from Mac Widgets!

You want to connect to an Airport Enabled Wireless Network? What's your password? Yeah? Great... you can't use that. Spend 2 hours finding the hex enabled WEP, THIRTY TWO character password. Yeah. Good. Have fun!

What's that new Dell purchaser? You hate glossy screens? Well, we're not going to make ANY mention of this in the purchasing specs, but your new screen? GLOSSY!!!

*****************

You know what just frakkin' crashed?

The screensaver.

THE F&%#ING SCREENSAVER CRASHED!

And because it crashed, NOTHING appeared on the screen, so I had to shut off the computer. I couldn't even shutdown programs properly or save.

THANK YOU VISTA!

*****************

Okay, new rule. In any given week, your computer should not crash more times than you're having sex.

So far my machine is beating the pants off me.

Vista SUUUCCCCKKKS! I have had computer VIRUSES that are less annoying than Vista.

Hey, and I know AOL sucks and everything, but the fact of the matter is it's been around for almost TWO DECADES and is one of the most common pieces of software around. If your operating system can't run a new and clean install of AOL without crashing every 45 minutes, maybe that's a PROBLEM.

*****************

Ah, more gems. The computer just restarted all on it's own. You know why? I PLUGGED IT IN. Yes, that's right. The battery was running low, so I plugged it in and... RESTART!

Also...

Sound Recorder in Vista now ONLY saves to WMA files and not Wavs.

Of course, that is moot, because the Dell Inspiron 1505 I bought DOESN'T HAVE A BUILT IN MICROPHONE!

You know what it DOES have though...?

A return policy.

Time to get a Macbook Pro.

Studio 60 is too smart for the room.

Hmm, so it seems Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is being canned.

It's a shame that people equate using several words longer than 3 syllables in a row with being pretentious.

Perhaps NBC should just institute an ideas-per-minute quota so that they don't fall into the trap of trying to make an audience member think about more than two different concepts in any given 60-second period?

Reality TV has just deadened people to the idea of heightened or stylized language. It's left the American viewing public only able to absorb the trite self-help monologuing of an over-hyped karaoke game show contestant competing to run Donald Trump's holdings on a deserted tropical island while learning to do the samba.

Larger than life characters? Too unbelievable. Please, give us the recycled pablum of a modern day Mary Tyler Moore facing the trials and tribulations of a boys club work place! And wacky co-workers... Please, PLEASE... WE CLEARLY NEED SOME WACKY CO-WORKERS! What's that? Dating is hard for single women in their 30's? REAAAALLLY?! What a REVELATION!

Update on Craziest. Director. Ever.

So browsing through my few old blog entries, I re-read (or re-skimmed) the huge email I received from the crazy director/producer who last spring made hundreds of actors go through 5 rounds of callbacks and sit around for hours each time. Each round would be followed by an equally insane and rambling email.

Well after a little Google-fu, I found the guy's full name (he used a FAKE name for the first couple of rounds). His name is Avi Klein and his film is called "After the Life" (NOT to be confused with the French film of the same translated name).

Anyway, even better, I found an INTERVIEW with him online! It's hilarious and scary:

http://www.elitestv.com/pub/2006/Aug/EEN44e3a1961059a.html

A few choice quotes:

"As a young NYC film student who wasn't blessed with the power of connections, in the traditional sense, I transformed many of my sonnets or "written words" as I called them into the project that is now fully submerged before you."

"My soul reacted with hunger and strives."

Comedy.

My friends/roommates can be DICKS.

So tonight (Friday), I'm sitting in my apartment measuring the wall for pantry shelving when my roommate Danny walks in with his date, Amber. I overhear Amber ask Danny how the pantry's going, and he replies, "Oh, it's not going at all."

I was a bit taken aback by this comment and more than a little insulted. I say, as lightly as I can muster, "I beg your pardon?"

Meanwhile my other roomate Luke has stolled in and starts talking about how I don't do any work on the pantry and just play Warcraft all the time.

I mention that I had just started it six days ago on Saturday and Luke goes, "Yeah!" as though that somehow bolsters his impression of the situation.

So now Danny and Luke are having a chuckle over my not having completed the pantry, and I am not only offended at this point, but rather confused that Waldorf and Stadler here, who haven't lifted a fucking finger to work on the thing, have the nerve to sit there mocking my efforts.

Speaking of which, here is what I've been doing on the pantry:

Last Saturday I began a project to install pantry shelves in a poorly used alcove in my new apartment. Saturday morning I removed everything that was shoved in there, as well as the old shelf (singular) from the alcove. Then I removed some old, tacky wood paneling, scraped off the glue, and plastered any holes and gouges, repairing large, gaping holes in the drywall and along the baseboard. Then I waited for it to dry.

Sunday I sanded the surfaces and repatched any spots I missed. I also then plastered and sanded the opposite wall, which my roomates at some point 5 or 6 years ago had removed the wood panelling from but never finished. That evening I picked up some Oops paint from Home Depot.

Then on Monday I painted the alcove with several coats of paint, as well as the opposing wall. I had to stop after that as I had a friend's premiere to attend.

Tuesday I had the gall to clean my own room during the day and get my tax materials together. I'm such a selfish bastard! I had planned in the evening to go dumpster diving for wood, as I don't have any money to buy new wood from the lumber store at the moment.

Wednesday I had an early morning call to shoot on One Life to Live (that was fun, by the way). When I got home, I was exhausted and in need of a nap, but it was such a lovely day I went for a walk and did some shopping and errands then came home and conked out around 8:30pm. I woke up in the middle of the night and found myself rather awake, so I put on my rollerblades and headed up to go explore trash piles at 4am. I was fortunate enough to find several dumpsters that yielded prime finds, as well as a dumpster diving guru by the name of Robert who gave me several diving tips (for example: if there's too much for you to carry, hide the rest of it behind an empty dumpster so it won't get taken away with the full one when the truck comes).

Thursday I went and bought cable pins and repined our internet cable along the ceiling edge out of the way, as I had to pull some of it off the wall to plaster and paint. I re-measured the space and sat down and started calculating how I was going to divide up the shelving. This was actually harder than I thought. Should they all be the same width? How tall is a can of beans? How many do I want to stack? Will wine fit here? I was just taking my time thinking through all the variables, but apparently roommates interpreted this as me slacking.

Friday I had another shoot with OLTL, but upon arriving home I had some supper, changed into my work clothes and sat down one final time with my calc sheet. I was just marking off shelf heights on the wall when Danny entered and the above interaction took place.

The sucky thing is, I was having a really nice day and these snide, arrogant and just plain rude remarks from my roommates ruined it.

Danny got home later from his date and I confronted him about it. Rather than apologizing he simply said, "Please... it's a two day job."

Where's the perspective? These idiots don't contribute a dime or a minute to the process at all and yet they feel they have the right to criticize me for taking a whole fucking 6 days to complete it?

That sucks. Fuckers.