This Link is Posted Mostly to Remind Me of Where to Go With Questions Like This (And I Make My First Horror Movie Reference in over Six Months)

This is what's been on my mind a lot lately:

Whether to buy property or to continue renting.

A stressful but fun conundrum. Plus, I get to use all sorts of quirky economic calculators. Bad-case scenario: become a living version of the The Money Pit, only I don't have anywhere near the liquidity for Danny Aiello to bail my ass out. Best-case scenario: a nice looking place like the one in Poltergeist, but without the graveyard foundation and demonic spirits. Here's the problems. With buying, I can't help but think that something unforseen will rise to the surface and wreak havoc. Not ghosts or flying furniture, but water heaters that explode or a roof that was weaker than it appeared. On renting: I don't believe I have to answer to some outdated stereotype of being an "adult" by owning property. Also, if I'd been an "adult" and bought property a couple of years ago like many advised I should, I'd be rather up the crapper now financially. Renting is safer and more mobile, but it's also shitty. I'm tired of having so much of my environment out of my control. I'm tired of not being able to truly and totally work on my own space. I do want my own house just to have it be my own and make it into a home. I just don't want it to haunt me in the real and imagined sense.

Firewall's Still Being Nice...And This is About Music...in case anyone's watching

Amazing. I can still write and post here. This will have to be hit and run because I'm working on four publications simultaneously and the firewall might bite me in the ass at any minute. For Edmond, my best friend (and anyone else who was alive and young in the '80s), what happens when you somehow revisit the music you couldn't get enough of during our teenage years? What happens when you listen and the past comes back up in images and feelings, or even lyrics? Take New Order, which I just heard on satellite radio, or The Cure (coming to Chicago in May), and other such favored "alternatives" that we listened to, or maybe the so-called "harder" stuff like Skinny Puppy, the Dead Kennedys, Boston, or eighties Metallica: what do you feel when you hear? I'm sometimes embarassed by the overwhelming dramatized cheese of the music in that era, because I flung myself full-force into some of those songs. Other times, I feel defensive and self-important. It was the 80's, dammit! That was my youth and that was the sweet time of goth-rock, hair bands who wore makeup, and other such androgyny. "That-was-my-time-and-I-loved-it-and-piss-on-anyone-who-doesn't-love-the-eighties-or-wasn't-alive-to-hear-the-coolness." Usually, head-shaking follows these thoughts. Still, I gotta feel the love, because of memory attached to music, regardless of cheese level. Wonder what imbedded attachments are being formed to this generation's crap? I hope Fall Out Boy never inspires a contemplative moment.

Whether It Will Last...

My place of employment (where I am a copywriter; I'm actually being paid to write which astounds me) normally blocks Blogger through their firewall, but for whatever reason, I'm able to sign in during writing hours for the first time in months. No guarantee it will last, so I'll use this time for an update.

Biggest personal update: my wife and I welcomed our first child on October 1, 2007. He's beautiful and it's been utterly exhausting. There's no way to properly describe how tired one gets with a newborn, but I found I could function for 36 hours straight. Granted, I was irritable, exhausted, and insane but I was functional at a basic level. Luckily, the little guy is really good-looking and has a terrific personality. Other updates: the Factory Theater rolls on. Dirty Diamonds was a critical and commercial success. It was part of the Best of 2007 in the Chicago Tribune, selected as a Metromix pick, and received great attention from audiences and critics. Timeout also gave Siskel and Ebert a nice write-up alongside some history of the Factory. I'm very proud to be in the ensemble of such a fine company.

Having a newborn in the family has completely erased any semblance of my previous existence, but I guess that's sort of supposed to happen. He was a long and painful time coming, and adusting to him along with keeping other stuff in order takes a lot of time. Still, I try to keep abreast of writing, theater, and movies, but all of that has slipped back a bit. Best movie I can recommend now is Juno, but I haven't seen many, so there may be some good movies I'm missing. Writing-wise, Pulp Friday is being developed into a play, and Clarity in Amsterdam was never published but a few things can certainly be fixed within it.

Hopefully, there will be more entries here soon. What say you, firewall?