In a fortnight, Season Four of Mad Men starts up. If I burn through an episode of Season Three a day, I can be all primed for the debut.

Mad Men’s official website is here, which contains sneak peaks and cast interviews, recaps and full episodes from last season as well as a cocktail guide. The official iPhone app can be downloaded here.

AMC brilliantly whipped up interest and hype last summer before its Season Three premiere by allowing users to “Mad Men Yourself” which just about everyone on the planet did. The avatars were able to be used on Facebook and Twitter and everybody was a cartoon character for a while. If you were one of the few that didn’t, you can still do it here.

Bring it on, Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce!

From brendee, whom I met doing the fabulous 2007 New York City Blarg Crawl.

I know I haven’t written anything in a while, what with working 55-hours a week and all (gotta make up for all that $ I didn’t make last year). And while exciting things have been happening at The Orchard, I didn’t want to bore you with that or turn this into a fanboy-obsessed blog. So I was thinking that tonight when I got home after both work shifts that I would possibly write about

Last Saturday. I caught a whiff on Twitter that Rana Sobhany, the world’s first iPad DJ, was going to be “spinning” a set at Bluebrain, a special night at The Fridge, which is a new (to me at least) little art gallery on Capitol Hill. I was working last that night but I tweeted her and she said she wasn’t going on until 11 or so and that worked with my timetable of getting back on The Hill. The show included a downloadable iPhone app where the audience could twist the knobs and affect the sound output of the DJ, but unfortunately I missed that portion of the art show. But on the good side, I got in without paying the $5 cover. Rana was on when I got there and I listened and grooved to the rest of her set. It was pretty poppy but still fun. I talked with her afterwards and she seems like a nice person, really warm and conversational. There was some other fun art showing there too, and a live painting in process that anyone could add to. Fun.

Or I could have written about

Last Sunday. Eric H, sky mattress extraordinaire, art curator and sometimes blogger, was celebrating his 40th birthday. And what better way to do that than to get 30 friends together, start them drinking mimosas at 11:00 am and then throw them into a disco bus and take them out to the Virginia wine country for the afternoon? Some bottles of champagne made it onto the bus and there was a wide selection of yummy nibblies being passed around. We stopped at two wineries, sampled some wine, bought some wine and sat out in the hot sun. The 2nd winery had lawn bowling setup under some shady trees and that provided some recreation as well as relief from the sun. Needless to say, knowing this crowd, we all had a good wine buzz going by the time we rolled back into DC. Then topping the evening off with La Lomita? Perfect.

Or I could have written about

Today. I’ve been thinking about Mom all day, as this would have been her 73rd birthday. I miss you Mom, not only today but everyday.

And then this happened:

I’m biking down Maryland Avenue, on my way from the full-time to the part-time. Apparently I am not paying too much attention to the road as I hit a major bump and am sent flailing head-first over the bike, at 20 mph. I crash down on the pavement in a twisted heap with the bike twisting up my legs so that when I realized I’ve stopped on the street I’m not sure which way I’m facing and I cannot move. I remember at that moment being in extreme pain, yelling out “Fuck! Fuuuuuck!” and having visions of dropping florescent lighting tubes from four-story buildings, tomatoes and what it would feel like when you think you’re standing in your life and all of a sudden the walls, ceiling and floor get stripped away and you’re then standing on nothing in darkness wondering where the fuck everything went.

Luckily the kind folk who live on Maryland Ave came to my rescue. An older gentleman from across the street, who had seen the whole crash happen, came over and helped me untangle myself from the bike and get me to stand up and get out of the street and onto the sidewalk. A woman came out of her house asking if I was okay and went back in to get me a bottle of water and a wet towel. After realizing I was basically okay with only flesh wounds (no broken bones, no head injuries) and telling them I was only going one more block down the street they reluctantly left but took many thanks with them.

I hobbled on down to The School and immediately looked for a first aid kit, finding supplies and getting into the shower to rinse the blood (and hopefully the gravel too) off and clean my wounds. My left elbow and left knee took the worst of the fall, which is weird because I think I remember the wheel turning left as I fell, meaning I would have fallen on my right side. I guess it all happened so quickly those details might not be clear.

So I’m pretty beat up but at least no broken bones in this old body and thankfully there were no cars directly behind me that might have run me over. As the man from across the street said “It may hurt now but you’ll really feel it in the morning”. That’s what I’m afraid of.

It’s supposed to be 70 degrees outside today and, according to Facebook and Twitter feeds, people are pretty excited about it.

I could care less; I’m not going outside.

I guess if I had a job and had to be couped up inside all day then maybe I’d be excited about some warmer weather. But it brings no sunshine into my world even though I could go and sit outside all day if I wanted to. The thing is, I don’t want to.

Instead, I’m scouring job posting sites and finding wonderful gems like this one:

Title: Graphic layout
Description: Seeking a person for with graphic layout experience to assist a non profit organization. If you have worked on a magazine that would be a plus. This is a contract position and I need someone who can start immediately. Very pleasant work environment and nice people to work for.

Yes, that’s the entire ad placement. Obviously this is either a shitty job or the person posting it has no idea what they’re talking about. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. And this is about as good as I can find. And since unemployment benefits ran out over a month ago, something has to be done to get some money flowing in, even if it’s some shitty job that someone without nearly twenty years of experience can do.

Have you ever met someone, someone who said  ”I know you, you’re ____ ______” and you started dating seeing each other more often and the best date you’ve ever had in your life was his idea to come over to your house & order pizza & play MYST and you thought the was the absolute most romantic thing ever and then all of a sudden you’re not talking and you send packages to him that are returned with the USPS-issued stamp of UNCLAIMED all over it and you try to pretend everything is okay and then you travel to his new city to see his art show and even though you know it’s over you come home feeling like an idiot and crying the entire flight and then you call him on his birthday the next year and unload everything you’ve been feeling and five years later you’re vacationing in the new town he lives in and you agree to meet him and you dress like a total idiot because you’re so nervous and meet him at a pub and pretend like everything’s okay, which it is, but you still find yourself looking at his Twitter feed ten years after that last trip and understanding how obvious it was that someone like him could never end up with someone like you because you’re the one doing a late night google search and that you are, without a doubt, the last thing on his mind, and you also realize that people like him will never, ever, end up with people like you because (according to the exhaustive search) he’s ended up with someone that has drive, interests and a steady career and who is someone that is stable and has no destructive habits and is open and honest and accepts his partner’s faults and admits his own while at the same time allows his partners interests to flourish and all the while you, in the existence you’ve created for yourself is on a slow steady track of decline and it seems that regardless how hard you try you’re never going to be as fruitful as you were two, five or ten years ago and you wonder what your future will be like as this person you occasionally think of buys a house, obtains more pets and sharpens more skills, and all your future is going to consisting of is a 30% paycut in a tedious job that you’ll hate from day one and be forced to stay in for the next twenty years because who is going to hire a middle-aged man skilled in a dying profession and what is there to look forward in that?

I have.

Last Saturday during the beginning of the SNOwhatever I kept getting emails from Matt Alber and Tom Goss concerning their show that evening. It turns out the original venue had cancelled the appearance but Matt and Tom didn’t want to call the event and found an alternative venue, St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church. Since Matt’s music can get a little acoustic and atmospheric, I thought this would be a great place to see it.

When I got there it turns out the show was in their fellowship hall instead of their main sanctuary and I was a little disappointed about that, but I still got a seat in the 2nd row in the center. I was giddy!

I recognized Tom and spoke with him before the show and he thanked me for coming out. I wasn’t that familiar with Tom’s music but after seeing his performance (guitar) I’m a fan now.

Then, came the moment when Matt (!) came out to do his part of the show and it was great to be that close while Matt was performing. He was also pretty jovial with the intimate audience which is always entertaining. After the show, I had to go up and talk to Matt and simply thanked him for his songs, the perspective he wrote them from and how all us little queer boys felt that way growing up. While introducing myself I mentioned futurejunkie on Twitter and he’s like “Oh yeah, futurejunkie!” which of course made me melt right there on the spot.

Here are two clips of Matt during the show, “End of The World” and “Field Trip Buddy” (my favorite). They sang a duet of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” but at that point my iPhone battery was dying and I couldn’t record it. Dang, but it was beautiful.

Thanks for a great show, guys!

Scruffy crooner Matt Alber finally hits the East Coast, not counting one-off publicity/fundraising shows in New York. The “tour” isn’t substantial by any means but he is coming to DC (yay!).

The first show is January 18 in NYC with Celisse Henderson. He shoots down to Va Beach and then Balmer, hon, before coming to the District on his birthday, February 6. He’s teaming up with singer Tom Goss (who I’m unfamiliar with) and playing at Delaski Theater in Adams Morgan. I’ve never heard of this theater but bought a ticket anyway and I’m excited to go. After the DC gig he heads down to Florida for a few gigs sans Mr. Goss. Hopefully he’ll add some mid-Atlantic cities to this tour, check out all the latest at his website, mattalber.com.

In my excitement of learning of the tour and purchasing an immediate ticket, I tweeted my excitement and received a personal tweet back from Mr. Alber. <swoon>

Either I’ve gotten too lazy or to old to go out and enjoy playing in the snow. We’re getting about 18″ already here and it’s still coming down. I was originally planning to go and do early Christmas with the fam today but that was wisely cancelled. I’m not about to get all bundled up and take a walk around the block with this much height of snow, even if the sidewalk snow is packed down, which I really doubt it is.

This storm, along with Tiger Woods, is why people shouldn’t start doing “Best of…” lists until the year is actually finished. Go December!

Funny trending topics on Twitter today are #snowpocalypse, #snowmageddon and @snOwMG.

Here are some pix, including the buried red Zipcar that I originally scheduled today.

Can you see how frequently I’m writing here? Answer: not very. Or at least that’s how it seems to me. With nothing going on to really write about, except resume sending-out and that can get pretty dull real quickly, well, there’s nothing to really write about.

A blogger friend I mostly keep in touch with through Twitter started mentioning the hashtag #NaNoWriMo. I clicked on it and saw that others were tagging it at as well but I couldn’t figure out what it was by their tweets. A quick google search provided the answer I was looking for.

Did you know that November is National Novel Writing Month? Well it is. Look it up. It’s an online project where writers “feverishly” pound out a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. That’s 1,666 words a day. The outlook on it is not to edit and not to think about it too much. Just write. They even say “it’s about quantity, not quality.” So while it’s not supposed to be stream of consciousness (although I guess it could be) the idea is to write without knowing where your characters are going, but for you to keep going with the writing.

In 2008 5% of the 119,000 who entered finished the lofty goal of 50,000 words. Seeing as how I started already a day behind (November 2) I really doubt I will finish successfully. 1,666 words a day, every day, is a lot of tappity-tapping. We’ll see how it goes. If I can finish with 20,000 words I think that would even be an accomplishment. I’ll post a downloadable pdf once it’s complete and you can read the missing plot and lack of character arcs for yourself.

So, to recap:

What: Writing one 50,000-word novel from scratch in a month’s time.

Who: You! We can’t do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let’s write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together.

Why: The reasons are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

When: You can sign up anytime to add your name to the roster and browse the forums. Writing begins November 1. To be added to the official list of winners, you must reach the 50,000-word mark by November 30 at midnight. Once your novel has been verified by our web-based team of robotic word counters, the partying begins.

If you’d like to join the madness yourself, please link your author name to “futurejunkie” so I can see how far behind you are as well.

More on Nitevisions, the Duran offspring band and some speculation of a Spandau Ballet offspring band and a new battle that could reign supreme on the UK pop charts can be found here and their Twitter feed is here. In America maybe the closest pop battle we’ve had would maybe be Madonna vs Michael Jackson in the 80s? Unlike the Brit counterparts of the early 80s and mid 90s (Blur and Oasis battling it out for Britpop) there wasn’t a lot of public mudslinging, just a race to see how could sell more albums. Maybe a Britney vs Christina battle comes to mind? Possibly. I guess times have changed now and they let others do their mudslinging for them.

Here’s the infamous battle on Pop Quiz between Duran and Spandau: