Welcome to mistersite.net, home of... well, something unique, I hope. Be sure to check out all those lovely links to the right to see who I am, what I do, and what I like. Read my blog too... it's right under this paragraph. And leave a comment, so I know you've visited.
Why I love Los Angeles, Part II.
I woke up this morning at around 11 and went down to the corner coffee shop to get some Joe. It was completely dead.
Why? Because Korea was playing France in the World Cup, and the entire population of Koreatown was watching the game. When Korea scored in minute 81, cheers erupted up and down the street.
That was when we discovered there was a huge screen up in a plaza at Wilshire and Western (about four blocks from our house), and just about everyone in K-Town who wasn't at home or at the Staples Center was there. There were about fifteen minutes left, so we hightailed it down to the plaza and watched the end of the game with several thousand of our closest Korean friends.
It was insanity.
I don't think anything like this was happening in Grand Rapids or Bowling Green this morning.
posted by jimmy at 14:09 -
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--redacted--
Sick of long mealtime prayers? It's time you discovered The Prayer of Derek.
Oh, and I graduated. I was going to write something about it at the time, but I didn't really have much to say other than "hey, I'm graduating, congratulate me." I still don't, but it's too late to congratulate me, so now you all can just regret that you didn't congratulate me in time (or, if you did congratulate me, feel good about yourself). See if I remember you when I rise to fame and fortune.
Yeah. My mom has all the pictures from graduation. When she uploads them and sends them to me, I'll put one or two up. Don't get too excited, though - I looked pretty much the same as I always do, only I was wearing a square hat, a robe, and a colorful hood. It's not like I had a halo because I got a degree in theology. The halo's been there for a while.
So, yeah. Unless I get a letter from the Registrar telling me I didn't pass one of my last three classes - which I don't think is very likely, but I don't want to tempt fate - I'm now James Gillespie Gilmore V, M.A., M.A.T. You can just call me "Mamat" for short.
posted by jimmy at 23:29 -
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Sundries...
I know you all were dying to see the Bollywood Beatles.
I finished all my writing today. 20 pages in just over four hours... not my best speed, but I hadn't eaten all day. All that's left tomorrow is a hell of a lot of reading... then the parents and brother come to town and I put on the mortarboard.
posted by jimmy at 23:17 -
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The final statistics...
...for Divine Appointments: Patterns of Engagement between Burning Man and Emerging Churches:
93 pages
407 paragraphs
1045 sentences
26,880 words
138,725 characters
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2.8 sentences per paragraph
25.0 words per sentence
5.0 letters per word
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Passive Sentences: 8%
Flesch Reading Ease: 40.8 (out of 100)
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 12.0
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Being done with my Master's Thesis: Priceless.
I still have about 20 pages of writing and 1000+ pages of reading to go before I'm done with all the quarter's work... but I'm in the home stretch. Only 43 hours and counting before I'm entirely done with my MAT degree...
posted by jimmy at 21:20 -
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Milestones.
Wow... I've been so engrossed in my work, I didn't notice that yesterday was mistersite.net's 4th anniversary! I started posting here on June 1, 2002 (and am, quite frankly, a little embarrassed at many of those early posts). Look how far I've come! After school's done, I'm hoping to roll out another new version of the site, in which I get rid of this inline frame (which was a good idea at the time, but is now garnering complaints) and add something I've been meaning to add for a while - a blogroll of my friends' and family's blogs (and perhaps a comic-roll of the webcomics I read every day).
I also failed to notice that four posts ago - "Why I love Los Angeles" - was the 300th post on this blog since I moved over to Blogger. That's another significant milestone, I think... not that anyone was counting, but still. And how many of those have been a waste of your time? Pretty much all of them.
Okay, back to writing... only 40+ more pages to write and 1500+ more pages to read, all before 5:00pm next Friday.
By the way, this is what I'm going to look like a week from tomorrow:
...only the lighting won't be as bad, and neither Michelle nor myself will look this bad. This really isn't the best picture, is it.
posted by jimmy at 11:53 -
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Sorry.
I'm sorry that I've been pretty incommunicado with everyone for the last couple of weeks. I know there are a few "how's your life" emails I have to get to, and a few more I have to write. Right now, though, I'm in the throes of "holy crap I have two weeks to finish EVERYTHING" mode, so I'll likely be in the deep dark hole of productiveness for a while longer. So, to everyone who thinks I'm ignoring them... well, I am. But rest assured it's for a good cause, because I need more letters after my name.
posted by jimmy at 00:28 -
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This is hilarious.
Every year, the Calvin newspaper (the Chimes) puts out a parody issue of some kind, and usually it's one of the best laughs I get all year. This year, though, the parody issue didn't rip as much into the Calvin culture as it did into the Christian Right as a whole. It's one of the snarkiest, funniest things I've ever read - and Student Affairs vetoed it. So in my continual quest to be a thorn in the side of the Christian Right, I'm going to link to the Chimes spoof issue Calvin doesn't want you to see.
Cliche Devotional Book
posted by jimmy at 13:22 -
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Coolest tattoo ever.
Shamelessly ganked from Webcomics in Tattoo Form
posted by jimmy at 00:53 -
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Why I love Los Angeles.
Last night at about 9:00pm, I was sitting in my room, having just gotten home from a long day at work, having no idea what to do.
Two hours later, I was in the Largo with about 120 people, watching Aimee Mann perform.
It was one of the better, more intimate shows I've seen - especially for someone as well-known as Aimee Mann. It was her second set of the night and she was really loose; she did an all-requests show and forgot the lyrics or chords to two or three songs. She ad-libbed, she stopped a few songs right in the middle - she was totally human, totally down-to-earth, not at all showy. It was incredible fun.
That's LA, though... every night, there's another performance, another show, another artist I love just hanging out somewhere, playing a little show for a few people who are having the time of their life. The only other place with this many talented, well-known, incredible artists is New York - and New York is unbearably cold six months a year.
I love this city.
posted by jimmy at 18:02 -
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(swimming in new music)
In the last five days, my CD collection has increased by 14 discs, thanks to a few gifts from friends (thanks Bethany and Eric), a healthy binge at Amoeba Music, and my KCRW subscription CD's coming in the mail.
The trouble with me getting all those CD's at once is that I'm a playlist junkie. On the two subway rides I have into town every week, I start my one uber-playlist on shuffle and just relax with a book; when I'm sitting around at work or at home, I'll put on one of any number of playlists I have set up. I have genre playlists, mood playlists, situational playlists... a playlist for all seasons. I'm like John Cusack in High Fidelity, only not limited by the size of a mix tape.
But now I've got 14 CD's to listen to all the way through, pick out the best single tracks, and add to the proper playlists... which means 15-16 hours of listening through new music. This would be a great pleasure if I wasn't already about ten different kinds of busy; since I am about ten different kinds of busy, I just need my playlists to work.
Alas, the curse of riches...
(In case you were wondering, here's a partial list of my new music: Hello Waveforms by William Orbit, Endangered Species by Nickodemus, Greetings from Michigan by Sufjan Stevens, Homage to Mahatma Gandhi by Ravi Shankar, Realize by Karsh Kale, and The Complete Mercury Sessions by Flatt and Scruggs. I highly recommended all.)
posted by jimmy at 00:30 -
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Some Passover humor...
Shamelessly stolen from somewhere else:
An English Jew, a prominent novelist and intellectual, is informed that he will be knighted. The queen's protocol officials prepare him and the other knights-to-be for the ceremony. He is informed that, when he stands before the queen, he is to recite, "Philosophum non facit barba. Non in solo pane vivit homo." just before being knighted.
On the day of the ceremony, the man is very nervous and, sure enough, when he approaches the queen, he forgets the Latin expression. As precious seconds tick by, the only non-English words he can think of pour out of him: "Ma nishtana halaila hazeh mikol haleilot?"
The queen, confused, turns to her protocol officer and asks, "Why is this knight different from all other knights?"
posted by jimmy at 22:42 -
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Some Academic Nerdiness.
A line of thought in three tracks:
Track 1: For my thesis, I’ve been reading Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, in which Turner posits that societies in liminal stages develop rituals designed to temporarily (or permanently) subvert the forces of structure and hierarchy in favor of the forces of community and egalitarianism. He suggests that the structure-antistructure-structure movement is a necessary and vital part of a healthy society, and that both structure and communitas (his conception of egalitarian, nonrational, organic, “I-Thou” connections between people, over against the hierarchical, rational, systematic connections in structure) have a role.
Track 2: Some years ago, George Ritzer published a book called The McDonaldization of Society, which posited that under modernism, the fast-food restaurant was the paradigm for ideal development, as it valued Efficiency, Calculability, Predictability, and Control as the highest goals of a working system.
Track 3: As I was riding the Gold Line train from Union Station to Pasadena, the operator/driver, who usually remains silent and lets the pre-recorded voice tell us what the next station is, was giving us what amounted to a guided tour of the Gold Line’s Arroyo Seco Valley path. He would tell us about all the bridges we were passing over, little facts about the Harbor Freeway, and at one point even slowed down so we could see a pink flamingo in someone’s backyard that he/she kept as a pet. It was by far the most entertaining Gold Line ride I’ve taken in a long time.
My Track 3 experience was a catalyzing experience for me; whereas generally the process of riding the Gold Line from Union Station to Pasadena is a very McDonaldized activity, with the same pre-recorded voice, about the same speed, and silence between stops, today it was something different. In a way, what the driver was trying to do (whether or not he was conscious of this) was not only make the ride more interesting, but to create communitas between what would otherwise be a structured set of isolated and inward-focused individuals on the train, each seeking to get to his/her own destination, by putting them in a different archetypal, perhaps even "ritual," space – that of tourists in their own city, equals on a tour train instead of individuals on the way to work/school/home/wherever. I don’t know that he succeeded – looking around, I think I may have been the only one paying attention to the narration – but it was an interesting thing to reflect on.
I’m sure this will develop into something more of a thesis later, but I’d be interested to read your thoughts on the matter…
posted by jimmy at 14:09 -
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