to sleep

Let's talk about sleep for a minute. I don't do it well. I haven't had a good night's sleep in over two years. Is it because I stay up too late, or do I stay up too late because I know I'm not going to sleep anyway? Is it because I have an uncomfortable bed? Who knows. Lately I've been experimenting with prescription sleep medications. I really like Lunesta, but it does have the nasty side-effect of making all liquids taste like poison. That's weird. I'm no chemist but you'd think they could do something about that.

Hoping for some sleep sans bad taste, I tried an Ambien on Friday night. That thing killed me. I was out for 14 hours, and woke up not feeling refreshed and rested but hungover and floaty. Not pleasant. This feeling even carried over into Sunday.

"Growing a beard" made an appearance on my recent list of things I am not good at. Here's why. Actually, I think this is a good picture. It's a little too flattering, beard-wise. Until I shaved Thursday night I looked like I had just rolled out of a dumpster. I like this picture though. I look like an angry and tormented playwright.

Friday night I went to a play. My friend Andy and I have decided to try to write a play and figured we should maybe, y'know, actually see a play first. We saw a production called The Batting Cage.

The Batting Cage is effing terrible. It was one of the worst uses of my money in recent memory. It's playing SLC until October 20. Do not go see this play. I hate to be so negative, and I admire anyone who creates any kind of art, but playwright Joanna Ackerman should be ashamed of herself for this trite and cliched piece of garbage. Maybe I'm being too harsh. Wait, no I'm not. I'm remembering the ridiculous second-act monologue in which one of the characters talks about the titular Batting Cage and I realize that I'm not being harsh enough. And don't even get me started on the deus ex machina ending and that stupid hug... okay I'm done.

After the play we went across the street to Squatters, a local brew-pub institution that I've never even been too. Ran into our old friend Ashley and also a friend of my idiot brother's named Jeb who hooked us up with dessert. That was nice. Also saw Crazy Red Soxman Manny Ramirez belt one over the Green Monster to beat the Angels. I have a soft-spot for the Red Sox since they're the team that got me excited about baseball again back in '99.

Went back to my friends' house post-Squatters and the power kept going out as the thunder crashed outside. Everytime the power came back on we discovered that one of us had been murdered. Whacky!

Saturday I watched the movie Children of Men for the first time. I'm irritated with everyone I know for not forcing me to watch this sooner. This movie is like, flawless. In watching the DVD extras I learned something about myself: I do not care how special effects are accomplished in movies. "Well we invented this new type of camera and attached it to the dashboard and then we didn't need to use a green screen blah blah blah." Just don't care. This type of conversation would be good enough for me:

"Wow, how'd they do those special effects?"

"Movie Magic."

"Oh okay."

On the other hand, I do like DVD extras about production design. I find that very interesting.

Saturday night Emily and I had sushi at Ichiban, where so many years ago I had sushi for the first time. Great place. Also it turns out Emily does really good impressions. Once again, fell asleep on a couch watching World's Jobbiest Jobs, but managed to wake up to go to Monk's House of Jazz. Remember a few weeks ago when I mentioned this place? Of course not. Are you even reading this now? Doubtful. Anyway, Monk's was way more fun this time. My buddy Scott was there and I even saw my old boss from when I worked at the library some ten years ago. Also I danced with a really hot chick. Okay she was kind of hot. And I didn't dance with her so much as she danced at me. And she was really drunk. And loves Journey. But who doesn't?

Nothing happened on Sunday. I hung out with my other idiot brother Mikey and he was being really irritating because he wanted to be mentioned on the blog. Well there you go Mikey. jackass.