Saturday night, Early March

When are the Ides. again? I've been told, but I always forget.

Here's some stuff I did this weekend, just to show that I do stuff that's not writing, or obsessing about writing.

So I have a friend who does reviews of plays and such, and this weekend he took me to see Arthur Miller's play, "The Price." Pre-reading noted that this is not considered one of Miller's masterpieces, but after watching, we both agreed that we found it really interesting. It deals with life regrets, unrealized ambitions and how much blame we have to assume for why they remained unrealized despite our circumstances. It talked about what is obligation, where our boundaries should be in helping other people, and about the difficulty of starting something new at an older age. It basically covered all the things that I spend a lot of time considering.

It was a little too long. It was like watching the director's cut of a Judd Apatow movie. Some things are just better trimmed down a little.

But I really enjoyed it.

On the way home, (I was taking Laurel Canyon, since the freeway exit was a nightmare for four days as they set up for the Academy Awards on Hollywood), I passed a car in the middle of the road with it's hazards on. Like everyone else, I whizzed past, but then thought "I should have stopped." I figure maybe we could push the car to the side of the road or something. So I had this little conversation with myself for a minute or so, then spend another minute looking for a place to turn around, and headed back up the hill. By the time I arrived, another car had also stopped, and the guy was on the phone. The car seems undamaged, but the driver was passed out at the steering wheel. Maybe he'd had a heart attack or something?

The emergency vehicles arrived, with sirens and lights, and still the driver didn't move. Until a fireman opened the car door and tapped him on the shoulder. And he WOKE UP. It was weird. I didn't stick around for details. He was probably drunk, although severe narcolepsy would be more interesting to report. But even drunk, weird that he thought to turn on his hazards before passing out, right?

At home, Paul and Saf and I decided to check out the new(ish) sensation, Chat Roullete, for the first time. If you don't know (which I didn't until recently) it is a video chat interface where you just "spin" and then talk to whatever random person is at the other end. The rumor is that this is 75% men exposing themselves, but we didn't actually find evidence of this. I was a little disappointed that the interface wasn't more like (or anything like) a roulette wheel.