The First Day

Oh man. The first day of Update Everyday in May. I better make this good. I generally like to kick off the month with a standard blog-type post, so that those of you who don’t know me can GET to know me and those of you who DO know me can perhaps learn new things about me! I am not very good at ‘blogging’ in the traditional sense as I have no confidence in the events of my day. I just do not believe they are very interesting, nor do they lend themselves to jokes. But let’s try it anyway!

Today was crazy! And by crazy I mean boring. I was up late last night watching the new episode of The Sopranos and the last two episodes of season two of The West Wing. The former is pretty awesome, though the decision to make it half-mobster drama, half-gay-love-story-in-scenic-New-Hampshire is a little puzzling, especially with so few episodes to go. But still: Vito looked so happy riding that motorcycle with too much torque alongside his new firefighter boyfriend with the neat facial hair. I only hope that Vito’s old boyfriend, the security guard who loved oral sex in cars, will not find out and get jealous.

The West Wing on the other hand, has been a goddamn revelation. I agree with pretty much every piece of criticism thrown at Aaron Sorkin’s writing: it’s clichéd, it’s often preachy, it’s often overblown to the point of ridiculousness and he seems to take any and all criticism really personally. But at the same time he’s one of the few television writers around who writes characters who are flawed but still likable and, further, actually like each other. The characters on Sorkin’s shows (and a few others, like The Office) actually laugh at each other’s jokes. For some reason that’s become a rarity in TV-world.

Anyway, last night I watched Two Cathedrals, the episode where Bartlet gets all huffy and swears at God. It is all Shakespearean in that it is completely overblown and over-the-top but still totally fucking awesome. You can actually watch the scene by clicking here. My favourite part is when he goes all latin on God’s ass.

Oh god. I still haven’t talked about my day at all yet. I am terrible at this. So anyway I stayed up until 5:30 a.m. watching those things and so I didn’t wake up until almost 1 p.m. today. But that’s okay because it is raining and I had very little to do. I immediately remembered, upon waking up, that I was supposed to go pick up my tickets for graduation, like, two weeks ago. I kept putting it off because I was in emotional turmoil! And also because I am lazy and sometimes don’t get out of the house until the Alumni Office at King’s is closed. So I BURST out of bed and out of the house and walked very quickly to campus.

When I got to the A&A building, I checked the board they have set up for graduation. It said the following: April 28 is the last day to pick up tickets for the graduation ceremony. I immediately thought the following: fuck. My parents were not going to be able to come! They would be mad! They wouldn’t get to see me walk down the street in a fur-lined robe being led by a bagpipe-playing-dude (bagpiper? bagpipist?) to a giant church down town. And the only reason I would ever consent to walking down the street in a fur-lined robe being led by a bagpipe-playing-dude is FOR my parents.

This moment sucked.

But then I went to the Alumni Office anyway. And a very cheerful woman took my name and told me that I was not too late. She gave me tickets for my parents so they can still see me in the fur and also the bagpipe-playing-dude who will probably be the true highlight.

That part of my day was, as you can see, rife with DRAMA. So after that I needed a break. I wanted to go to the Student Union Building or the Grad house or somewhere. A place that had wireless internet and perhaps a beer or some fries. Wireless internet and beer and/or fries is my favourite combination of things barring Sex and Candy and a summer car ride. (I should probably put ‘Sex and Candy’ in italics. This is a family web site.)

But, walking around Dal, everything just looked dreary and depressed. No one was in the SUB or the Gradhouse and the Gradhouse had a “wet paint” sign on the door. So I was defeated. Defeated again and again. I am slowly coming to the realization that Halifax may, in fact, be a very boring city in the summer.

I spent the rest of the day at home, save for a 20-minute stretch where Bryan and I wheeled a barbecue across town. Bryan did most of the work. I was the navigator. You know, like Kit, on Talespin. I really wish there were some hilarious anecdotes from that adventure, but there were not. Bryan just kept getting hit in the solar-plexus whenever he pushed it against an edge in the sidewalk. I tried to help him avoid that. That was all the excitement there was.

Clearly if I am to keep ‘blogging’ I will need to either do more with my days or start lying. I will let you know my official decision tomorrow!

Matt