Will Hines Dot Net

Thank you to Dyna Moe for my new awesome “Will Hines Under The Sea” header. She took that photo of me originally, also — it was for the UCBT’s performers page.

There’s no reason I’m under the sea. I just think it’s funny and oddly soothing.

EDIT: If you don’t see the new header, hold down shift (or option on a Mac) and press F5.

Continuing my trend of listing items with minimal to no attempt at tying them together in a cohesive entry…

• Saw The Squid and the Whale– a fun-filled tale of a pompous has-been NYC writer being divorced by his philandering wife while his two kids get screwed up before your very eyes — on Wednesday (yes, it’s still playing). I really liked it, although it seemed slight, sort of. By the end I felt a bit not-full, like I had eaten just cereal all day. Regardless of that, I have a strangely-worded compliment for it: It was a remarkably responsible movie. It shows the audience the main behavior of each character and how they all feel about each other in about 2 minutes, and then proceeds to play with that behavior for the next 1.5 hours. I think the very first line, when the family is playing tennis, is the mom telling the Dad “Let’s have it be Frank and me versus you and Walt.” I love laying it out there like that. It reminded me of Sideways in that regard. People will rave about Squid’s “naturalism” but I think it’s true strength is stripping away all the natural dialogue and leaving only the most important, most telling statements. Also, it’s 1.5 hours! Thank God someone can still make a movie less than 3 hours. They all used to be this short! I bet writer/director Noah Baumbach had to do some serious editing down and I imagine that took guts. So I like this movie.
• I skipped The Swarm show yesterday, despite my plugging, because Primal Bias had a chance to perform at Variety Underground. Why did I make that choice? I like performing with PB, and in the end, I’d rather take attention than give it because I am, at heart, a broken spirit with an insatiable void. Let’s just lay that out there.
• The best thing about my Red Sox book is the hilariously obstuse statistics. VORP (Value Above Replacement Player), anyone? How about Park Adjusted Defensive Efficiency? Or my favorite, Support Neutral Lineup-Adjusted Value Above Replacement? They’re all here.
• Eliza and I are 5 episodes into the second season of Arrested Development. Dear God, that show is so unbelievably funny. They pack more jokes and laugh moments per minute than anything, right? I haven’t checked the Support Neutral Laugh Moments Per Minute, but they must be up there. These episodes remind me of a great improv show in that as soon as a character mentions something –they cut right to it so you can see what they were speaking of. They edit fast and furious on AD. They also keep the bar HIGH in terms of running gags. Tobias decides in episode one that he wants to be in Blue Man Group (itself a smart, almost obtuse reference) and for each subsequent episode there are blue paint smudges in the background of most shots. You just have to be smart enough to get it. I love it.

My cats are fighting more lately. Sometimes I think they like it, but Maggie seems to meow in protest a lot. Are the sisters going through an aggressive phase, or does this increased animal anxiety mean there’s an earthquake coming? I’ll try to take some pictures today and update you all.

Kevin gave me a stats-heavy description of how the Sox won the 2004 World Series called Mind Game by the very articulate group over at Baseball Prospectus. I love it. Now if someone could find a way to express improv teams’ success statistically and write a book on that, my worlds would merge happily.

I did an improv show Monday night with a sort-of thrown together cast of UCBT regulars. I love doing those shows — you get to perform with people you don’t normally, and there’s an urgency that makes everything fun. A little sloppy too, but also fun. I think I was nervous, which I didn’t realize until towards the end of the set when it dawned on me that every one of my characters was screaming and angry. What’s the stat on frequency of Angry Characters from Nervous Male Improvisers? I bet it’s high.

Yesterday I tweaked a Flash Pac-Man program written by French programmers. Fantome!

Some quick bullet points as I bask in the glow of another Boxing Day.

• Xmas at Pops Hines house was a good time. Eliza attended and seemed to handle the room of muttering self-deprecating self-involved men (my brothers, father and I) quite well. Among the highlight’s were Kevin’s gift of a Garfield joke/in-your-face insult book to Brian, and “Booyar’s” gift of a skull piggy bank to Kevin. Pictures to come.
• The majority of The Swarm are performing improv this Thursday — you should really go to this. I see 10,000 improv shows a week and I’m STILL excited for this one.
• Been enjoying the software skils of 37signals
• The song I can’t stop listening to recently is “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” by Hank Williams Sr. I remember once reading that Jann Wenner’s mentor — some guy at NME in the 60s — said that Hank Williams was one of those people whose voice had an indefinable “yaaaaargh” in it or something. Some made-up word to describe the power some people’s singing voices have to connect emotionally with their audience. I get that now.
• My car battery, which had stopped working, started once I drove it up to CT. I guess the full charge got it to a good place.

With my new day job, I’m absorbing a lot of information fast about the latest in Web programming. Terms like Web 2.0 and Ajax, which I knew nothing about, are filling my brain. As a man who is part robot, it’s actually a fun experience.

Derek Sivers’ blog is a really fun read if you’re a web tech geek. He’s the guy who made CD Baby — apparently he’s the SOLE PROGRAMMER behind it, which fascinates me, especially because at my new job I’m going to be expected to heft some pretty epic projects with just me and not many other people. He talks a lot about keeping things simple — doing only the features you NEED, not just the ones you CAN HAVE.

There’s been a push for simplicity over the last five or so years in the tech world: the stripped-down look of Google, the minimally featured iPod, etc. People don’t want every option. They want just the necessary ones.

In one of his posts he mentioned a article written by a guy who spent 10 days living only with technology available in 1954. There’s only five pages online, but what I could read was fascinating and it almost — ALMOST — makes me want to give up email for a while.

But first I have to burn a few mixes on my iMac.

My car battery seems to not hold a charge. During the transit strike, I was content to let it sit on the side of the road — I didn’t want to fight the massive snarls of traffic in Manhattan anyway — but this morning, with the end of the strike, alternate side parking regulations were back in effect. That meant if my car wasn’t moved by 8:30am — it was parked illegally. THe ticket is somewhere between $55 and $85, I forget. Whatever amount it was, I didn’t want it.

Yesterday I was sick with mini-food poisoning so I didn’t want to deal with it. But I woke up at 7am today, figuring I could get a jump start from my neighborly New Yorkers. That was an inaccurate prediction on my part. I asked 7 people — feeling increasingly creepy with each request — and was told in each case something to the effect of “I’d love to, but I’m running late. Sorry.” Everyone was polite, which is something. And I was making an imposition which they are under no obligation to fufill. But really — a jump start takes about one minute. I had the cables ready and my hood propped. They wouldn’t even have to get out of their cars.

But it’s not their problem, right? I guess I understand that. I’ve given people jump starts before. But then again I’m not a selfish dick. So I called AAA at about 7:30. They said someone would be along in an hour. At 9am, I got my jump start. Took about one minute. I drove it to the other side of the street, parked it, and turned it off. Yes, I’ll need another jump start when I drive it home for Xmas tomorrow. But I just wanted to get in out of the cold.

Free car for anyone who wants it.

Busy couple of days. I went to Ohio, got a haircut, am featured in a video with Eliza and others online at improveverywhere.com and had to wait up until 4am for AAA to give my car a jump start so I wouldn’t get a parking ticket this morning.

But first things first: Rob Latham has a show tonight, and it’s funny. It’s called The Dahlonega Jr. High Talent Show: Teachers vs. Students. Rob plays all the parts, except one. 9:30pm at UCBT with Nick Kroll. Some key words: Stilts, The Message and Osgood-Schlatter’s disease. Some one-person shows give you a lot of insight into the struggles and triumphs of the performer. Then are shows like this one which feature generous use of stilts and references to Osgood-Schlatter. I heartily recommend this show.

Rob’s name is actually Rob Lathan. But hip people know to always spell it incorrectly as Latham. That’s if you’re hip.

• I started the new day job last week. It’s also fun, as far as these types of things (jobs) go. I’ve been catching up on the web development world, reading about Ruby on Rails, Ajax and any number of other acronyms that have blossomed since I last paid close, close attention.
• Got to participate in an Improv Everywhere mission this past Saturday. Great fun. I will describe it after the mission is made public on its site.
• There wasn’t much parking in Manhattan on Saturday. The city of New York was gracious enough to remind me of that by towing my car. I was parked illegally just off of 8th Avenue (I didn’t know it was an illegal spot) for about 40 minutes before the truck arrived. A $185 towing charge plus a$95 parking ticket plus a 2+ hour wait in the wood panelled hell of the NYC Tow Pound later — and I’ve decided to get rid of my car. Not kidding. More details to come. I have two interested parties (I’m giving it away, not selling it — I didn’t pay for it when I got it either), but if they don’t pan out I will come here first before donating to some desperate charity.
• My cats both slept on the bed last night for the first time. They will be tame, oh yes, they will. Eliza predicted some months ago that they would be “normal cats” by Christmas.
• We have Sirius radio here at work. “Left of Center” is the station of choice. Never again will Hines Bro Brian give me a mix tape full of songs I have not heard of! Never!

Lots of John Lennon on the radio and in newspapers yesterday, in tribute of the 25th anniversary of his death. I understand that everyone’s heart is in the right place but it is strange, and perhaps even morbidly inappropriate, to commemorate someone’s VIOLENT MURDER. That’s not what we’re doing, but it sounded strange to hear DJs on Sirius radio say “we’re honoring the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s death” — almost like they’re saying they’re glad it happened.

Not that I haven’t done just as bizarre things in the name of the Beatles. In college and just after, I had so many Beatles and John Lennon posters in my room at home that it looked like I was a 12-year-old girl from 1964. I believe I was sharing that room with Hines Bro Brian at time (having bunk beds at 22 years old is an interesting way to be completely humbled), because I remember we set the stereo to wake us up with “Strawberry Fields Forever” on October 9 — Lennon’s birthday. It’s a sweet song to wake up to. I remember we tried to use “Good Day Sunshine” soon after, forgetting that that song begins with a really loud drum roll which scared the crap out of me at 8 in the morning.

I went to Strawberry Fields in Central Park for anniversaries of Lennon’s birthday and his murder in 1994 and maybe 1995 — shortly before I moved to NYC. Quiet crowds shuffled around the Imagine sign in the cement while 2 or 3 people sang Lennon songs on acoustic guitar. It was KIND OF a sweet scene, except that once I got there, I was instantly bored. I also remember thinking that it was a pretty unattractive group of people. Only ugly people honor the famous. That’s what John Lennon taught me. That, and that I am a strikingly shallow person.

It’s fair to say that for 2 years in college I listened to nothing but The Beatles. Rubber Soul and Revolver alone probably accounted for 50,000 miles of driving in my car.

I knew a girl in Boston who liked to bake cookies on John Lennon’s birthday. She wouldn’t let anyone else eat them — it was a private thing between her and John. And her food issues, I suppose, but her ritual did strike me as powerfully personal.

It was really nice to hear so many Lennon songs yesterday. Here at my new day job, we played a radio station that was broadcasting a smattering of artists (in London, I think) covering their favorites. It’s a nice way to spend the day. “Jealous Guy” sounds good, no matter who sings it. On the other side of the argument, there’s Elvis Costello who despite being president of the Beatles Fan Club in Liverpool when he was 12 and an avowed Lennon-phile, wrote “Wasn’t it a millionaire who said ‘Imagine no possesssions.’ ” It’s kind of a pissy thing to say about your idol, but I think it’s good to keep hostile thoughts like those around to balance out sentimentality.

I subscribe to the New Yorker but never read it. That’s not a comment on the magazine as much as it shows that I value re-listening to my favorite songs on my .mp3 player on the subway over exerting mini-carlories of effort to Learn Actual Things. Nonetheless, I picked up the November 21st issue recently to happily discover that Woody Allen had written a piece.

I think I love Woody Allen’s writing more than any of his other work. I discovered it in 1986, when my Dad brought home a paperback copy of Without Feathers from Heathrow Airport book shop. I had been on a Woody Allen movie-watching binge and he apparently had noticed. I devoured that book, and it’s one of the few I refused to give away in my recent book purge. It’s a textbook example of concise, silly smart writing.

So it’s a big deal to me when Woody writes another short fiction piece — even something which is essentially a trifle. The old man Allen doesn’t seem funny in his movies, and essentially never makes any public appearances — but still is able to write a really funny piece. His written voice has always been very distinctive from his movie persona, or his stand-up persona. I mean, they overlap of course. But whereas his movie persona seems very “i’m a neurtoic cowardly Bob Hope-ish dude that reads books” his written voice is hilariously NONSENSICAL and SURREAL. It’s sillier than his other stuff. He has a terriffic sense of rhythm in that his word choice just SOUNDS funny to me, regardless of what joke is being made. Like this:

The driver, Beau Stubbs, had recently escaped from San Quentin, where he had been incarcerated for littering.

Well, maybe that doesn’t sound so funny all by itself. It made me laugh out loud when I got to that sentence in the midst of this article. “Littering” — the right number of syllables, and the right “size” of small crime to make the joke work.

Anyway, I love his written stuff. I can’t find it on line so I’m going to type it here. Well, half of it anyway. I might type the rest later.

Above The Law, Below The Box Springs
by Woody Allen
The New Yorker. November 21, 2006.

Wilton’s Creek lies at the center of the Great Plains, north of Shepherd’s Grove, to the left of Dobb’s Point, and just about the bluffs that form PLanck’s constant. The land is arable and is found primarily on the ground. Once a year, the swirling winds from the Kinna Hurrah rip through the open fields, lifting farmers from their work and depositing them hundreds of miles to the south, where they often resettle and open boutiques. On a gray Tuesday morning in June, Comfort Tobias, the Washburns’ housekeeper, entered the Washburn home, as she had done each day for the past seventeen years. The fact that she was fired nine years ago has not stopped her coming to clean, and the Washburns value her more than ever since terminating her wages. Before working for the Washburns, Tobias was a horse whisperer at a ranch in Texas, but she suffered a nervous breakdown when a horse whispered back.

“What stunned me most,” she recalls, “was the he knew my Social Security number.”

When Comfort Tobias entered the Washburn house that Tuesday, the family was off on vacation. (They had stowed away on a cruise ship to the Greek islands, and although they’d hidden in barrels and done without food or water for three weeks, the Washburns did manage to sneak out on deck at 3 A.M. each night to play shuffleboard.) Tobias went upstairs to change a light bulb.

“Mrs. Washburn liked her light bulbs changed every Tuesday and Friday, whether they needed it or not,” she explained. “She loved fresh light bulbs. The linens we did once a year.”

The minute the housekeeper entered the master bedroom, she knew something was amiss. Then she saw it — she couldn’t believe her eyes! Someone had been at the mattress and had cut off the tag that reads, “It is a violation of law to remove this tag, except by the consumer.” Tobias shuddered. Her legs buckled and she felt sick. Something told her to look in the children’s room and, sure enough, there, too, the tags had been removed from the mattresses. Now her blood froze as she saw a large shadow loom ominously across the wall. Her heart pounded and she wanted to scream. Then she recognized the shadow as her own, and, resolving to diet, phoned the police,

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Chief Homer Pugh said. “Things like this just don’t go on in Wilton’s Creek. Sure, one time somebody broke into the local bakery and sucked the jelly out of the doughnuts but the third time it happened we had marksmen up on the roof and we shot him in the act.”

“Why? Why? sobbed Bonnie Beale, a neighbor of the Washburns. “So senseless, so cruel. What kind of world are we living in when someone other than the consumer cuts off the mattress tags?”

“Before this, ” Maude Figgins, the local schoolteacher, said “when I’d go out I could always leave my mattresses home. now whenever I leave my house, whether it’s to go shopping or out to dinner, I’m’ taking all my mattresses along.”

At midnight that evening, along the road to Amarillo, Texas, two people drove at high speed in a red Ford with fake license plates that looked real from a distance but on close inspection were clearly made of marzipan. The driver had a tattoo on marzipan. The driver had a tattoo on his right forearm that read, “Peace, Love, Decency.” When he rolled up his left sleeve another tattoo appeared: “Printing Error – Disregard My Right Forearm.”

Next to him was a young blond woman who might have been considered beautiful if she had not been a dead ringer for Abe Vigoda. The driver, Beau Stubbs, had recently escaped from San Quentin, where he had been incarcerated for littering. Stubbs was convicted of dropping a Snickers wrapper on the street, and the judge, claiming that he had showed no remorse, sentenced him to two consecutive life terms.

The woman, Doxy Nash, had been married to an undertaker and worked beside him. Stubbs had entered their funeral parlor one day, just to browse. Smitten, he tried to make flirtatious conversation with her, but she was too busy cremating someone. It wasn’t long before Stubbs and Doxy Nash began having a secret affair, although soon she found out about it. Her undertaker husband, Wilbur, liked Stubbs and offered to bury him gratis if he would agree to have it done that day. Stubbs knocked him unconscious and ran away with his wife but not before substituting a rubber blow-up doll in her place. One evening, after there of the happiest years of Wilbur Nash’s life, he became suspicious when he asked his wife for more chicken and she suddenly popped and flew around the room in ever-diminishing circles, coming to rest on the carpet.