Manlio Rules

normally when i read these “best of” year lists, they’re always something simple, like album or movies. now, i don’t listen to a lot of new music, and i hate most movies that i see. so i wouldn’t be so good at that. so instead i made up my own categories and stuff, which isn’t particularly original, but whatever.

Best Actress who i always thought sucked: Jamie Pressley

She’s great on “my name is earl”. i’m not saying she should be playing Lady Macbeth at the Globe, but she does a pretty decent “trailer trash bitch”, and that’s something.

Best Video Game: Prince of Persia, the Two Thrones

if you want a full review i’ll email you, but this game is simply brilliant, and i’ll leave it at that

Best Party I went to: Alex and Karen’s 4th of July Party

Lots of food, good friends, and some killer watermelon margaritas. good times good times

Best Movie I put off seeing and then finally saw and dug it: Garden State

It doesn’t hold up after 3 or 4 viewings, but it’s pretty clever, and the soundtrack is awesome

Best thing I bought for myself: Nikon SD300 digital camera

I probably could have gotten this much cheaper had i waited till the holidays, but finally having a digital camera has made my blog and my flickr account much happier. i know i haven’t posted photos in awhile, but i have some from last weekend that i’ll get around to putting up soon.

Stupidest thing i did: The toliet incident with Earl and Neil

if you don’t know what this is, let’s just say it was really really dumb. bad hands, bad hands

Worst thing i did to someone else: ha!

i’m sure i could think of something and then admit it, and maybe the person would read this and find out, and maybe they wouldn’t, but let’s just play it safe and say that i gave as good as I got this year.

Best Kiss: Sady’s friend Sara

there wasn’t a ton of competition for this one.

Best Date: Tammi

Though the aftermath of this one was very odd, i’d say a 7 hour date full of good conversation wins the prize. of course, there was no second date, but that’s just to be expected…

Worst Overall Moment: Richard Foreman’s “crit” of my show

there’s nothing like having someone tell you that your work is horrible in front of lots of your family and friends.

Best Overall Moment: Last minute movers show up

after the original movers didn’t show, getting last minute movers 2 hours before i had to be out of that house was outstanding. and then we did the move in 2 hours, and it only cost me $300. score.

and that was my 2005, distilled down to a few superlatives. i’m hoping 06 will be better.

so, Rhode Island for a few days, lexington for a few more, it’s the typical loconte children xmas tour. everything went pretty well, we stuffed ourselves silly last night and now i’m sitting in my dad’s office trying not to think about how much i ate over the last few days…

oh MTA, that’s wonderful. do you think that next time you might end the strike BEFORE i walk 5.5 miles with a huge backpack for 2 hours in order to get to Penn Station to go home for the holidays? cause like, that was unneccessary. seriously, i hope you get everything you’re asking for, especially if that involves fixing the fucking G train, which i’m sure it doesn’t.

Bocce championships sunday at Floyd. We went in as the #1 seed as a result of our undefeated record for the season.

first game was at 1PM, against the #18 seed in the tournament. It happened to be Katie Irish’s team (katie was a friend from a lighting design class I took at NYU). We ably defeated them in 2 games to advance to the 2PM game, which we then speedily won.

after the longest 4 hour lunch break ever, we were back at 6PM for the semi finals. Off the Wall were our opponents, and they were pretty good. we were a little cold after 4 hours of eating meat, and they smoked us in game 1. things were looking grim. but we laced up our bootstraps and came on back in game 2, and then really just demolished them in game 3. we were riding high, things were going great

championship game: I’d love to say there was some sort of tension or whatnot, but there wasn’t. we got killed. we put up 2 points in 2 games, and those were lucky. the team we were playing was just much better. every player they threw out there didn’t miss a single roll, and they very easily dispatched us, capturing the bocce championship. we got some t shirts and i have a massive hangover from the 9 straight hours of drinking.

but we’ll get em next year.

wcs will have a review up soon, i’ll post.

this weekend was long. very long. and sort of in a good way.

friday night was the learning worlds xmas party, which was very open bar. after that i rolled to lesley’s karaoke extravaganza. . i broke several of my established karaoke rules very quickly, including a screaming version of “18 and life” to START the night, effectively ruining my voice for the rest of the event. brilliant planning really, just brilliant. I helped the sisters flanagan clean up around 12:30, and had one last drink with them at a bar before meeting kevin at the cellar for a glass of whiskey. then i stumbled home.

saturday i went to see Collapsable Giraffe at the Collapsable Hole, which was a good time, very interesting show, lots of great stuff that was unplanned happened including Jim almost getting in a fight with some asshole, and the chef from next door showing up during the performance and asking them to stop. which of course they did not. From there i hit up Carin’s birthday party, and socialized for a few hours before meeting Kevin and Aziza at Loreley, which was frankly a mistake, i should have just gone home.

sunday was bocce…

so last night i was at Sticky, which was held at mama’s cafe and bar. sticky is a series of 10 minute plays which are held in the middle of an often crowded environment. live theatre at it’s best. because of the way mama’s is set up, people were rotating seats for most of the show, especially trading off with people who were’nt trying to have dinner.

at one point in the later sections, two women got up from their seats, put on their jackets, and left the bar. My friend mike and i saddled in. I noticed that both of them had left a significant amount of their food on their plates (salmon and chicken, respectively). I also had not eaten dinner.

but i was torn. is it weird to finish their food? a quick poll of surrounding people indicated that it was, but no one could tell me why. If i knew the women, it would not have been weird. but since they were friends of friends of friends, it was odd for me to pick up their still warm chicken and chow down.

what do we think about this? I’m not going to tell you what i decided to do till a little later on.

and yet, we won. cause the other team didn’t show up. Which will make us the #1 seed going into the playoffs this weekend. but man, do we look like the weakest #1 seed ever. We scrimmaged each other in a nice little “keep your skillz up” game (team ITP vs the others), and i’ve seen better bocce played by cats, even cats who are currently doing other stuff and ignoring the game.

to make an excuse, let’s run down the roster:

Daya (was 4 martini’s deep by the time she got to the bar)
Sara (was exhausted)
KB (was sick)
Kevin (was jet lagged)
Alex (was fine, and it showed as he was the only one to play well consistently)
I (was in a pissy mood and hadn’t eaten, so i got trashed pretty quick)

i won’t go into the specifics of the game for everyone, but i personally threw several balls waaaaaay off target, and basically looked like a complete amateur (to the point where after i made 1 good shot, alex came out of the john, and was like “wow, manlio came through”). And playing poorly is ok, if it’s game 1. but this was game last. we come out with that crap on sunday, we’ll be the best #1 seed ever to not make it past our first playoff game.

thursday: Matty K’s bday dinner and drinks. all I can tell you is that the Cellar’s deal of all you can drink Yuengling for $12 between 9-12 is a great idea, by which i mean a horrible idea.

friday: Matt S’s bday party at soda bar. fairly uneventful. Matt got drunk, so mission accomplished

saturday: finally got some errands done during the day, including 2 hours of gym time. i love weekends. sat night i ended up going to a friends party in park slope. nice times, but in retrospect i should have stayed in, cause i woke up sick on sunday

sunday: guitar lesson, movies (kiss kiss bang bang), dinner, freelance work.

tonight: bocce

tomorrow: mike’s reading

wednesday: band practice

thursday: sleep

so, as many of you know, i’ve been thinking about getting a new job for quite awhile now. i’ve turned down a few well paying jobs for increased flexibility here at LW, but it’s time to move on. there are a few options on the table.

1. company1: I’ve had a few interviews with company1 to go and work as an interaction designer. the upside is that this would be a great job with really smart people. the downside is that it means moving to SF. which is fine, but all things being equal i woudl like to stay in NY i think. company1 is supposed to get back to me soon about realistic chances.

2. company2: I have an offer from company2 on the table to work in NY. the salary is decent, and i get 20 days of vacation a year. but the job isn’t really what i want to be doing, it’s a step forward, but probably not in the right direction. for those of you who are familiar with the DragonLance books, this job is sort of like deciding to level up as a Knight of the Crown instead of trying to become a Knight of the Sword or Rose. ok, i’m sure no one got that.

3. company3: company3 would actually be mloco LLC. basically i would incorporate and try to make a go of being an independent contractor, doing websites, audio, video work, etc… the plus to this is that if i could make a living of this, it would be awesome. the minus is that it’s very scary, and probably doesn’t involve me making all that much money. I had an interview for a teaching job that would go well with this, but i didn’t go to it for reasons i now cannot fathom.

4. option 4 is that i do nothing, stay at LW, and keep on truckin. i hate this option.

right now i think if i get an offer from company1, i’ll take it. I might turn down company2 regardless, and try to make a go of my own company. if i’m not going to do it now, i don’t know when i will…

Site

If you haven’t seen this yet, i recommend taking it for a test drive. Basically you can enter an artist or song, and it searches for other songs that are similar in structure and style of music to the one that you’ve chosen. Some of the tracks are right on, others are a less so. The crap I got from putting in “don’t fear the reaper” is making me wonder if i even like that song.