le plus de choses change, le plus ils restent le même.

wow.

tooling about the house on one of the first (and hopefully not only) free, vacationy vacation days i will have this summer, with VH-1 on in the other room, i found myself being pulled toward the television as if wrenched out of my seat by a tractor beam.

it was the brand new, new kids on the block video.  now, perez had it linked a couple weeks ago, and i checked it out then.  there were some buffering issues but listening to it, it was decent for what it is - a laid-back, frothy confection of well-crafted pop song.  it is what it is, y'all.

but what amazed me is the pull that this group has some weird tug of my heartstrings - and drawstring.  donnie wahlberg still makes my mouth water, and seeing nkotb back in their "whoa, oh," arm-swinging, same-outiftted glory, still makes me weak in the knees.   the days of my first concert at RFK stadium, of the slick posters covering my bedroom walls, of  my very first sex dream, starring jordan knight (in hindsight it 's suprising that jordan and not donnie filled my first R-rated nightime fantasy).

i wonder if there's a direct correlation between that last particular event and my knock-kneed, butterflies- bellow-the-belt response to seeing the boys from boston on tv today.  while admittedly a little embarrassing to admit that nkotb can still provoke this type of response in me, it actually seems a little more appropriate and less potentially pervvy twenty years after the fact.   at their initial peak of popularity, 19 year one old donnie was eliciting randy, sticky responses from my 11 year old self that i'm not sure i even fully understood.

this deserved its own post because PORTISHEAD IS PLAYING COACHELLA.

and yes, the rest of the lineup, including my still beloved norman cook, also sounds kick ass, though perhaps more mainstream than years previous.  seriously though, the (reunited) verve, M.I.A, the streets, sasha & digweed, the breeders?  mmm, so good.

i wanna gooooooooooo!   maybe the east coast coachella, jr will really come to fruition? here's hoping…

so i don't usually do this, but then, i never get these from anywhere other than petunia. so i'll indulge.

april tagged me with a 'say 7 secrets' meme. now, as i said, i don't usually do these things. but i believe april made 2 faulty assumptions here, one building on the other.

the first is that i would see that she had tagged. because other than mentioning it in her post, she didn't give me a heads-up. fine, fine. though i have blogs by friends who i dont read regularly, so i dont think its clear-cut that i would see this.

but the second is the reason i might not have caught it. because april has not told me she is writing online again. i only found out i had been tagged when i noticed some traffic from her site and wondered what the hey was going on. nice one, april. you were in my feeds, but i had shifted folders around and hadn't seen your latest wave of writing. oops.

but here we are, so let's see what seven secrets i can whip out for you that aren't totally obscene, freaky or depressing.

1. i have recently figured out that my job, and indeed, my life, requires a fair amount of control. by me. i think it has to do partly with being sick and lack of control that inflicted upon me.
2. i hate that the skin on my face is fucked up but am loathe to take too much medicine to try to help it. additionally, it got worse after being sick, for whatever reason. every doctor i have ever spoken to about it has refused to believe me that they are related.
3. i had a 20 second crush a few minutes ago as i got on the train. sadly, she sat elsewhere in the train and i will probably never see her again. especially since i'm riding a train that is an hour later than my usual one.
4. though i make myself sick with anxiety in trying to decide if roxy is the right girl for me, i'm also fairly positive i will marry her. though this just increases my anxiety because 'what if she isn't right for me…and i end up with her anyway?' the logic is circular and like every other relationship i have ever been in, i commit myself so totally that i feel completely trapped before there is even any notion of a future.
5. i am listening to 'no more tears' by ozzy right now. and you know? it fucking rules. in fact, i'm going to have to listen to it a second time.
6. ok, that doesn't count as 5, because it really isn't a secret. and this doesn't count as 6 either.
5. i am planning on a large amount of creative output in the next 6 to 8 months. writing, books, animation, drawings, videos and dvds are all on the plate. i'll post as things firm up.
6. i'm terrified of rachael moving for grad school and having to make the decision to move with her or not. this is not so secretly referred to as 'the talk we aren't allowed to have yet.' coupled with secret #4, i believe i have an unwise amount of anxiety about my relationship with her. this too only causes more anxiety.
7. i have, not so tastefully, suggested recently to roxy that we get a girlfriend. and explained the notion by saying it would be like 'getting a dog that talks. and that we could dump.' if you find this to be not so surprising, i would like to say i was at least 33% joking. this, again, may or may not be a secret. but it is somewhat horrible to be admitting publicly. so it stays.

i'm not as high strung as i sound by these; i actually just tried really hard to admit things i don't usually admit. at least in writing, publicly.

plus, ive posted (and will post again tomorrow) so much silliness, i thought i would be serious again for a moment.

and now i think i get to tag 7 people with it.

petunia, aubrey, roxy, madame levy, kurt, lisa, ray and hima (8, because i think hima will rebel. but still, i want to see what she does.)

edit: well fuck. re-reading the meme rules, it's facts, not secrets. so i just said a bunch of personal stuff for no real reason. well, secrets are more interesting than facts, so i'm changing the rules a bit. that's right. secrets it is. if i'm going down, i'm taking you with me. die fish devil!*

* quote from ben in 'mask of evil.' it rolled off my tongue. or something.

The Five: All-time greatest geek crushes - TV Squad

what? really? they include a picture of jennifer anniston in slave leia gear and then dont include leia in the top 5? this is a terrible, awful list.

tripp's top 5 geeky crushes:

1. teela from he-man
2. princess leia
3. erin grey in buck rogers
4. lynda carter in wonder woman
5. betty and veronica

perhaps not a perfect list…who did i miss?

i was listening to luna on a playlist this morning (why yes, 'california all the way' was the song, why do you ask?). it made me think of susan otis. when i spoke to her several years ago, when i found out she had married and was still living in dc, she commented on how she remembered me being obsessed with luna's 'penthouse' album. this, in turn, got her into them and she was addicted to 'california all the way'. which i then got. and its a damn good song, still. but it makes me think of her. and i dont know how that makes me feel anymore.

way back in the day, i had some serious hots for this girl. but our communication was, to put it nicely, lacking. it has never been clear what happened. and i think that is part of the problem in my head. i'll never know. i know i wrote her a letter, clumsily explaining i had strong feelings for her. i think this was after freshman year of college. i know that this letter was met with radio silence. a long, long silence. i know that i evenually spoke to her again. and she said she had written me back, explaining she felt the same way about me. (this is when i still knew people who were email and computer phobiac. it meant writing real letters, ones that perhaps end up lost somewhere.) i know that sometime i drove to uva and brought her to w&m for a formal. i know we didnt kiss that weekend, though, after the fact, it turns out she wanted to kiss me. but i was naive and she, it would seem, was timid. i know that petunia and i were dating by the time i found out about the contents of her lost letter. i know this caused all sorts of drama and grief. and i know that nothing became of any of it. ever.

like i said, i dont know how i feel about her anymore. in my thoughts, she seems to be this two-d character, one who briefly went up against the younger, more stupid tripp. she fits into that weird year or so of my life that no longer makes sense to me. perhaps i have made peace about it all. perhaps i just realize that, in the grand scheme, it doesn't matter. perhaps i am a fool.

there were days where, if you had asked me, i would have said 'yes, i will marry this girl. this is the girl that was made for me to love.' and again, perhaps this was my age and romanticism — but i cannot recall having that feeling of certainity about anyone else. perhaps i learned my lesson. perhaps there was something more there, during some fraction of a second. perhaps i will see her in an airport in 5 years and we will both be divorced and the stars will align.

but right now? i don't think i care anymore.

i finally finished the photoset from the tioga pass. take a look.

i had a miranda (from sex and the city) moment today. after having a long discussion with my friend dan last night about why we're always into people who arent into us, or why meeting people for anything meaningful is so much more difficult than it used to be, and also how i should give up on my current crush and also stop being overly nice to people i dont care about going out with, it was funny to overhear the conversation on the sidewalk that i overheard on my way to the studio this morning. as im stuck walking behind two girls (undergrads? - maybe grad students, i couldnt tell), i heard one telling the other about a 'date' she had been on last night. she wasnt sure if the guy was hitting on her or if he was just befriending her b/c someone in her life was sick, and she also noted how she thought he was hitting on someone else that evening (but she couldnt tell, b/c whenever a guy talks to a girl she thinks he's attracted and going for it), and she also said that the guy hadnt invited her up to his room at the end of the night but she didnt think that meant he wasnt into her. mind you, i heard all of this in about a ten yard stretch of sidewalk, so it wasnt like i was following them for blocks. but in those ten yards, i wanted to just tell the girl that the guy just isnt into her and she should move on. as should i.