I want my computer back

So I typed this huge entry -- only getting halfway through it -- but because I am not on my currently-incapacitated computer but rather on a rather crappy old laptop that my roommate loaned me and which has a rather suspect Internet connection, I LOST THE WHOLE THING. That's like thirty minutes of work gone forever.

The perfect ending to a perfect year.

To sum up:
1. Thing in Asia is bad. Go here, please.
2. Finished my novel.
3. Sixers are good.
4. The Life Aquatic is my favorite movie of the year and I started writing this giant essay about it, getting about three huge paragraphs in, but yeah, that's gone. I'll try again later. (Matt hasn't written anything about it yet, but he does have up his top ten list. I've seen five of those.)

Happy New Year, friends.

Earlier today I told someone to staple antlers to a mouse to further my career

R&D is nearly finished; keep your pants on.

You know, I didn't think any sports news would irritate me as much as the Braves getting Tim Hudson, but then T.O. had to go get hurt and now everything's horrible. I am ready for 2004 to end. With a handful of isolated exceptions it's been one suck-ass year. You're up, 2005; you have thirty seconds to WOW me.

That said, I said I was going to be confident and I'm sticking by that. ANDY KNOWS. Eagles: I won't give up if you won't.

Meanwhile, I've been meaning to do a hardcore SABRmetric analysis of the Phils' new lineup to figure out whether or not I should continue to despise Ed Wade. I haven't gotten around to that yet; any day now. My suspicion is that it's not so bad after all. We'll see.

"Scrooged" is my favorite Christmas movie. I've seen it like thirty times. The line above is from it, as are many other hilarious lines that kill me. Hilarity ensues! Go rent it and watch it on Christmas Eve, like I'll be doing.

I'm sorry this entry wasn't terribly well-written but I'm saving all my write-y brilliance for the end of R&D. We're in crunch time here, folks. Away I go...

Happy Holidays, y'all!

BOB MOULD @ NORTH STAR BAR, 12/3
"See A Little Light". "I Apologize". "Celebrated Summer". "Your Favorite Thing". "Hoover Dam". "Makes No Sense At All". "The Act We Act". "If I Can't Change Your Mind".

If you don't know them, you should.

I'm just saying.

PIXIES @ TWEETER, 12/4
"Where Is My Mind?". "Velouria". "Planet of Sound". "Debaser". "Bone Machine". "Monkey Gone To Heaven". "U-Mass". A bunch of others I don't feel like typing out.

See above...

EAGLES CRUSH PACKERS, 12/5
I had a new strategy this week: complete and total confidence. I'm tired of the typical Philly fan mentality, i.e. our belief that an Eagles defeat is the expected default, and that a win is an unexpected gift, or bonus, like we were good that week and this is our reward. Screw that. We've got the best team in the NFC, it's time to start acting like it. I'm saying, let's get arrogant, let's get some swagger, let's have some freaking confidence for once. People were talking all week like this was the week we were going to find out we aren't that good. I wasn't having it. I believed we were going to win this one and we did, convincingly and punishingly. Trust me, folks. Something cool is happening and it's only going to get cooler.

With the Eagles, two awesome concerts, me watching "Hero" which is truly incredible, the salvaging of 3,000 words of "R&D" that I thought had been lost in my latest computer crash, and the enjoying of some fine fish tacos on South Street, this was a fine, fine weekend. Hope yours was as pleasant, dear reader(s).

WE ARE RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT. WE ARE ONE.

The rumors you've heard in "People" and "Entertaiment Weekly" are true: I have completed National Novel Writing Month, hitting 50,000 words last night around 7:00 PM. The novel isn't actually finished, but I hope to wrap it up within the next few days.

I absolutely loved doing it. It was incredibly helpful, being traditionally unmotivated and self-doubting, for me to give myself an assignment and a deadline, and then keep myself to it. There was no entrance fee, no prizes, no one looking over my shoulder: just the self-imposed belief that this was something I needed to do, for myself, for all the people to whom I've described myself as a writer (however nebulously). And it really worked. For most nights in November, it was just me and some CDs and my laptop (oh, and often a bag of Munchies, aka "Salty Crack"). [Well, at least all the nights I wasn't distracted by TV, Windows pinball, Thanksgiving, or when my laptop terrifyingly crashed on Monday night. Don't worry, the novel was safely backed up on a CD, but still. It sucked.] It was heavenly. I think maybe I was born to be locked up in a room writing.

It helped, of course, that the story I came up with really captured my imagination, and really gave me room to come up with scene after goofy scene (as well as ramble a lot). I'm really proud of it; I can't wait to actually finish it, then re-read it to make sure I wasn't just deluding myself the whole time.

So I think I'm just going to keep going like this, for the foreseeable future: just forcing myself to write X amount of words every day (I'm thinking 2000; I've done well with that so far). Perhaps I'll finally finish that other book in a reasonable amount of time. (Say, end of February? Dare I dream?)

I also learned that Rush is the best writing music out there. It's probably the very intensely serious vibe to all their stuff; the constant power they put into every single note. It really drives you along. XTC and Bob Mould work really well, too. Genesis and Mudhoney don't; I can't say why.

Meanwhile, I'm here to tell you the Sixers are going to be all right, although they occasionally worry me. I've seen roughly half of their 13 games so far and they're definitely a work in progress. They shoot okay, but not great; they defend well, but not all the time; they put together three great quarters and then collapse. The main reason I'm confident is that there's no legitimate reason they can't win this division. The Nets are trash, the Celts are pretty bad, the Raptors and Knicks are hanging in there but I'm not convinced that either of them are all that good. We should be pulling away with that division title any day now. Get on it, boys!

The new Nirvana box set is quite cool, though it just feels frustratingly incomplete; I can't put my finger on it. They've been working on this thing for years, when they weren't suing each other and arguing; it just feels like maybe they were sick of thinking about it and put out whatever they had finally put together that week. [Listen: I like Kurt Cobain a lot, I think he was a brilliant songwriter, and probably a good guy, and I feel terrible that he was obviously very troubled and didn't get the help he clearly needed, and far be it from me to question another man's tastes or decisions, but seriously: what in the world did he see in Courtney Love, anyway? In the Incesticide liner notes he describes her as the epitome of class and dignity, or something along those lines. Are we talking about the same woman, Kurt? The strung-out banshee who's always getting sued and beating up photographers?]

Gotta go play Settlers...