Filed by Bil at 8:44 pm under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read, The Media
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So - as I took a break from preparing for the future to take a glance at what’s happening in the present, I couldn’t help but notice World Cup scores. Team USA is out, but for once in our lifetime, we got closer to the cup than England, France, and Italy did. Had I been paying closer attention to Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates, I might have known that sooner.

But something struck me: I didn’t need to know that any sooner than I did. Its relevance to my life is pretty low. The World Cup is just something I take a mild interest in every four years.
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Filed by Bil at 4:58 pm under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read
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I’ve been thinking about poetry lately. It’s true it sounds differently when you speak it aloud than when read inside your mind. It also sounds differently when you whisper it to yourself than when you shout it to a crowd.

I discovered the magic of whispering poetry quietly out loud for one’s own self this afternoon. I’m in the laundromat, and I whispered some poetry to myself between two noisy washing machines because I didn’t want anybody else to hear me. That would have been, you know, weird and embarrassing.

What I heard was mine and mine alone, and somehow it felt like now it existed in reality instead of just on a page. Funny, too, how it feels like if I knew anybody else had heard it, that would have depreciated the solidity of the words in the universe, as though if other people heard it, too, then it would have been just some collective dream instead of my own tangible experience. Funny, I say, because that’s pretty much the definition of crazy. But I know how I feel, and I won’t back down.

Also, I’ve discovered Darwin Deez. The weirdness and the beauty just keep coming.

Filed by Lance at 6:00 pm under General, Hatemail, Love, Stuff to Read, The Arts, The Media
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I ran across THXTHXTHX [via], and thought it’s really interesting. Thank-you-note-blog. An Anti-Hatemail!

Filed by Lance at 3:35 pm under General, Hatemail, Shameless Plugs, Stuff to Read, The Arts
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Here is every Hatemail we recorded last Sunday, presented in a slightly different format for your visual delight:

Filed by Lance at 10:41 pm under General, Love, Religion, Stuff to Read, The Arts
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I remember a story told about one of my favorite composers, Arvo Pärt, that when he was just beginning his career, he went to see a monk. He told the monk, “I would like to learn to write prayers, because I think it could help my music.”

The monk said, “No, no. Every prayer has already been written.”
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Filed by Bil at 2:16 pm under Shameless Plugs, Stuff to Read
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I only check my mail once every three or four days or so. My mailbox is hard to see, so I tend to forget about it, and when I do remember, it’s usually late at night when I don’t feel like descending three flights of stairs just to throw out a bunch of junk mail.

So this weekend when I finally remembered to check it, I discovered I had received what I’ve been anticipating for what feels like a year: Pith Magazine, containing my poem in print and my $5 paycheck for said poem. Hell. Yes.
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Filed by Bil at 10:46 pm under Fightin' Words, Stuff to Read
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Returning to the sentiment that journalism in the iPhone age is a constant battle between quality and quantity, I would like to point out sports journalism hasn’t suffered any, because it’s pretty much always sucked, and there has always been too much of it.

Florida HS football team defends 83-0 rout
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Filed by Bil at 12:44 pm under Shameless Plugs, Stuff to Read, The Arts
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I’ve got a lot of reading to do — there are two plays from other people upon which I actually have a direct effect in the coming months, so I’d really better get started. But I wanted to jot something down about what I’ve been seeing recently. I feel like lately, I’ve been seeing plenty of theatrical productions, some of it good, some of it not so good. Some of it was so bad that it’s still fresh in my mind even though I saw it months and months ago. The one great thing about both good and bad plays I see is that they inspire me to do better.

I’m especially inspired and very excited – VERY excited – about Dream Theatre’s upcoming production, “The Black Duckling,” in which I play a hopeless romantic poet. It’s an excellent script, and I feel as eager about this role as any other I can remember. It’s a silent melodrama, so it’s a new kind of challenge, and I get to wear a sweet beret. What more can an actor ask for than a new challenge and hip headwear?
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Filed by Lance at 2:53 pm under Fightin' Words, General, Pop Culture, Stuff to Read, The Arts
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This is, of course, the only appropriate music to accompany this post:

Thanks to all the time I have riding the ‘L,’ I recently finished Homer’s Illiad for the first time (I didn’t actually read it in high school when I was supposed to… did you?) I kept being impressed by Diomedes’ epithet: “Diomedes of the great war-cry.” In ancient warfare, when it wasn’t just click-and-dead, you had to really want to kill the other guy, that is, had to really want to take a piece of bronze or iron and cut the other guy’s skin off his bones. A war-cry was an essential part of keeping the veterans focused, and the young guys from wetting themselves and running. Or at least from running.
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