Bleep My Dad Says

Over the weekend I was at Tara's brother's apartment assembling some Ikea furniture and I had the absolute pleasure of watching like 6 episodes of Shit My Dad Says. My God, this show is pretty awful. I liken it to a train wreck. It's terrible, but you can't look away. But, I really think we can make this a learning experience and I will discuss ways the show could improve itself.

I remember earlier in the Fall when this show was about to premier. I was actually a little excited about it, feeling it had some potential. Then Phil and Jordan watched the Pilot and said it was bad, so I never attempted to watch it. I don't remember what they said they didn't like about the show, but I would say the son Henry is the weakest part of the show, both the actor and the character. The actor isn't good and a bit stiff. From my research (wikipedia) a different actor played him originally in the pilot, but was recast with the current actor. At first I thought maybe the actual guy who started the Twitter site was playing himself, which would account for the bad acting, but that is not the case. I don't understand why the show went with this guy if they could cast pretty much anyone they wanted. I've seen performers at the Upright Citizen's Brigade Theater who could do a better job.

Next, the character of Henry isn't very developed. Really the only thing he has going for him is that he's always butting heads with his father, played by William Shatner. I didn't see the pilot during my marathon, so maybe this it's mentioned there, but I really don't get a sense of who this guy is or what his ambitions are. I guess he wants to be a writer. I think he needs to join a bowling league or something. Also, I know the show is about the relationship between him and his father, but I feel like that's preventing Henry from growing. His story-lines are too dependent on the dad and I think that will really wear thin and they'll start to run out of fresh ideas. If the character of Henry were eliminated from the show, I don't think we would miss too much.

The other characters I feel are pretty decently developed for a sitcom. William Shatner is pretty good and I think a wise casting choice. And then there is Henry's brother and sister-in-law played by Mad TV alumni Will Sasso and Nicole Sullivan, respectively. These characters are fairly developed. My criticisms with them is #1) in most episodes they seem have their own separate story and don't really feel part of the cast. They're just a B story. It seems like the writers tried to fix this by having them sell their condo and moving in with the Dad too, making them interact more with the rest of the family. I can see why they did this, but I'm not sure if it was a good idea or not. #2) I've never been a big Mad TV fan, I've always been an SNL man, but I believe Sasso and Sullivan are considered to be two of the best cast members. However, I feel like there's a lot of missed comedy opportunities in having them play these boring characters. The characters should be a bit more wacky to take advantage of that. It's like casting Jim Carrey to play Ben Stein. Why would you do it?

Lastly, my other criticism is the jokes are mostly bad. The writing could be a lot better. But what can you do? Hopefully as the show continues, the writing will pick up.

2009, 2010, wanna make a record of how I felt then.

Best Accomplishment:

Moving in with Tara. Definitely.

Best CD:

This year was a great year for music. New stuff that came out:

Jenny and Johnny/I'm Having Fun Now

Spoon/Transference

Tim Kasher/The Game of Monogamy

Broken Social Scene/Forgiveness Rock Record

The National/High Violet

Two other albums that came out that I haven't listened to yet:

Belle and Sebastian/Write About Love

Arcade Fire/The Suburbs

There were even a few other albums that came out I'd like to check out like Sufjan Stevens and Menomena.

My album of the year (oh, oh) for 2010 is:

Tim Kasher/The Game of Monogamy! I wrote an entry about this earlier this year. I also liked The National album a lot. And I'm really looking forward to the Belle and Sebastian and Arcade Fire albums.

Worst CD:

Spoon/Transference. The album wasn't really that bad, it just seemed kinda boring and forgettable. Their last album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, was really good. I also wasn't that thrilled with Jenny and Johnny. It's grown on me a bit, but definitely the weakest of Jenny's solo albums.

Best Concert:

Since Tim Kasher was my album of the year, it makes sense Tim Kasher would be my concert of the year. I saw him at the Barbary in Philly. I wrote about that earlier this year.

Other concerts from this year:

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson (I wrote about that too)

Scissor Sisters

Yikes, I really need to go to more concerts.

Best Movie:

Inception

True Grit

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

Hot Tub Time Machine

MacGruber

MegaMind

Cyrus

Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields

I was pretty impressed by Inception, so that's my Best Movie.

Worst Movie:

Nothing really comes to mind, but I thought Cyrus was going to be a little better.

Best Book:

I really sucked at reading books this year. I read Lowboy by John Wray. It was disappointing. I also read Sal's novel.

Best TV Show:

I caught up on a lot of old TV shows this year. I watched the new Battlestar Galactica series in its entirety, finally finished Veronica Mars season 3, all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender, seasons 4, 5 and 7 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, two anime shows Cowboy Bebop and Trigun, and watched almost all of Dexter, just finishing the current season now in January 2011. Earlier in 2010 I caught up on Community, watching the first half of the season in 2 days.

2010 also brought the final season of LOST, which overall, was pretty disappointing.

Best current comedy: Community

Best current drama: Dexter

Favorite New Place:

The Creek and the Cave in Long Island City. Close to home and free comedy!

Best Celebrity Encounter:

I saw the lead singer of The Scissor Sisters on the street near my office in July. I only knew it was him because Tara and I had gone to show 2 days earlier.

When Jordan and Melissa visited in September we walked around Central Park and we saw a sweaty Al Roker jog by us.

Ron and I went to a comedy club and we saw Colin Quinn, Darrell Hammond, Jim Norton and Nick Dipola perform. I also saw Reggie Watts at The Creek and the Cave. He's a big up and comer.

Best Trip:

The trip Tara and I took to DC in November was a lot of fun. The people we stayed with had a house party and we played games and drank. Going to Atlanta for Christmas was fun too, we got to see the Coke Museum, the Aquarium and Stone Mountain. I made a few trips to Philly, the Banyan reunion in March was pretty crazy. We also spent the 4th of July with Phil and Catie in Boston and again with Jordan and Melissa. And in April I went to Florida for my cousin's wedding.

Random Thing I Learned:

All in the Family was set in Astoria.

Best Blog Entry:

My Skip Day blog entry was pretty fun, I'd like to write more like that. I didn't write too much personal stuff this year.

Person of the Year:

Tara Zoltek of course! for changing my life.

Douche Bag of the Year: I added this category last year cause I was really pissed off at Glenn Beck. I don't really have anybody in my life who really pisses me off, so I'll just saw Sarah Palin this year.

New Friend Award:

Uhhh, this is tough. I don't think I really made any new friends this year. We hung out with Tara's friends Kristen and Sonya a bit, as well as the people in Tara's book club. 2010 was a pretty boring year for me, haha. Oh, and I hung out with Brian Small's roommate Tabitha a few times.

Party of the Year:

The Banyan reunion was crazy and a lot of fun. St. Patrick's Day in Hoboken was a good time too.

Biggest Disappointment:

One thing in particular that stands out is I wish I had gone to the Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros show in July. Someone posted on Facebook about going to the show and that tickets would sellout pretty fast. I wish I had gone.

Greatest memory of the past year:

The Christmas trip to Atlanta was a lot of fun.

Theme of the Year:

Growing up. Moving in with Tara, being responsible, having a job, and all that.

Quote of the Year:

"You look me in the eye and tell me that's not a sandwich."

and the best quote is "I sent you a bottle of sparkling apple juice to your house. Did you get it?"

Biggest wish for 2011:

Find some employment. And watch all of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

Anything to look forward to:

Phil and Catie's wedding! I'll be going to a few weddings next year. Tara gets her Masters. Possibly going to Austin. Possibly going to europe (finally!)

Politics 2011

What a great time to finally post some political thoughts then the day the 112th Congress is sworn in. I'm still pretty upset the Dems lost the House. They had a lot of missed opportunities, and I definitely think they should have won a few more Senate seats.

I predict the Republican's Health Care repeal won't pass.

The 2012 Presidential race will be heating up soon. I really wonder if Palin will run. She has absolutely no chance of winning. As of now, I think Obama can still be re-elected. As long as the economy is better, he will. I think some Republicans underestimate how popular he still is. I'll try to write more about the 2012 race soon. I will say I predict Rick Santorum will be the first Republican to announce a bid for Presidency.

I never written about The Tea Party, but I really despise them. They are nothing more then a bunch of uninformed, racist liars.

More thoughts soon.

2010 was a bastard of a year.

Another gone forever. Another year of wasted potential. These are due by December 31st, and I mean it this year people!

I am adding two new categories this year:

Best Trip and Random Thing I Learned.

Best Accomplishment:

Best CD:

Worst CD:

Best Concert:

Best Movie:

Worst Movie:

Best Book:

Best TV Show:

Favorite New Place:

Best Blog Entry:

Person of the Year:.

Douche Bag of the Year:

New Friend Award:

Party of the Year:

Best Celebrity Encounter:

Biggest Disappointment:

Greatest memory of the past year:

Theme of the Year:

Quote of the Year:

Biggest wish for 2010:

Anything to look forward to:

December Checklist

It's that time of year again when I realize there's only one month left of the year and I haven't accomplished very much. Here is a list of things I would like to do before the end of the year:

Finish writing the rough draft of my Pilot. I have about 17 pages written so far.

Write at least 2 sketches.

Write my long overdue politics blog entry.

Actually finish my 2010 year in review blog on December 31st.

Try standup open mic again, and this time be more prepared.

Go to Atlanta for Christmas. Since we already bought our plane tickets, I'm pretty sure this one will happen.

Can I do it all? Only time will tell!

Skip Day

I've had this recurring dream over the past few years. It's a bit bizarre. I dream I'm back in high school and it's a Friday. It's 5th period. And I'm skipping Band class. And it feels so good. haha. Why do I keep dreaming this? What does it mean? Lately the dream has changed a bit. The setting is earlier in the week, like Tuesday. And it's just me realizing Friday is Band Day and I'm going to skip it. And it gives me such hope. Then I wake up and disappointingly realize I'm 26 and I won't be able to skip Band on Friday.

Back in high school, I didn't even skip band that much. I think I only did it twice and I was senior. Once I got a pass to go work in the computer lab on my Computer Programming class work (nerd!) and the 2nd time I just didn't go to band, I probably also went to the computer lab. It was hard to get work down at school. Phil and I both foolishly sacrificed our study halls halfway through the school year for Creative Writing and to be Computer Lab monitors.

What does this dream represent? That I long for something to look forward to? That I had really grown to dislike Band during my junior and senior years? I don't feel very unhappy in my life. I'm not one of those people who are constantly looking forward to the weekend. One thing that irks me is when people will post Facebook statuses asking 'Is it the weekend yet?' and it's only Monday. These people must be really unhappy with their lives and jobs. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand being excited for the weekend if there's something significant coming up.

I also think about sick days. If I remember correctly, I only skipped days of high school a handful of times. Once in 9th grade, the day after our weekend performance of The Wizard of Oz; once in 11th grade, and twice senior year. Senior skip day was fun. I went to school that day, and since the majority of my class was missing, we didn't do much the whole day. Then I skipped another day later in the week. haha. I had two days off that week. The other day I skipped was the Monday after Anything Goes.

Skip Days were fun. I had a tradition of having a coke float when I was home all day. But high school was my only chance at skipping. In college I hardly skipped at all. In fact, the first time I skipped a class in college was during the spring semester of my junior year. I can't believe I had gone through 5 semesters without missing a class. And the only reason I even missed that first class was because we were filming the Intro for The Too Late Show. By the time I got back to campus, it was already 20 minutes into my Wednesday night class, so I felt it would be too awkward if I went in.

As the demands for The Too Late Show increased, classes often got sacrificed. One morning we were having huge technical issues with Joey Heid's computer and I stayed with him, missing my Intro to Computer Science class. Luckily that class was really easy and don't think the Prof took attendance. Another time I skipped it so I could make a Rilo Kiley mix CD. haha.

Senior year came, and one time I skipped my boring Anthropology class because I had to walk all the way down town to the post office to buy stamps to mail my electric bill. And another time I had to skip my Political Science classes because Dr. Mendoza was on the verge of a heart attack.

It's such a shame there's no skip days in real life.

Church of Tim Kasher

October the 4th I traveled to Philly to see Tim Kasher play at The Barbary, a renowned hipster bar. The show was pretty great and the new songs sounded awesome. I forget the opening guy’s name. He was kinda weird and probably drunk. Tim played practically the entire album as well as ‘Driftwood’ and ‘You’re No Fool’. My only complaint about the show was his album hadn’t been released yet, so I didn’t really know the new songs. But they still sounded really good live. I bought the album at the show though, for 10 bucks and 2 days before the release!

Here is my review for Tim Kasher’s first solo album “The Game of Monogamy”.

The album starts off with the Monogamy Overture, an instrumental piece, followed by A Grown Man. A Grown Man is an alright song, it sounded better live. The album really starts with the 3rd track I’m Afraid I’m Gonna Die Here, where Tim spews out everything that’s been on his mind.

The next song, Strays, it probably my favorite song on the album. Cold Love, the first single off the album, isn’t a bad song, but it was meant to be a single and is one of the weaker songs on the album. And finally, Monogamy is a pretty interesting song that gets right to the heart of what the album is about.

I feel like this album will only get better as time goes on and as I get older I’ll identify with it more and more. I like this album a lot.

Don't you, forget about me.

Hey blog--long time,

Tara and I saw The Scissor Sisters recently. Then two days later I saw the lead singer on the street about a block from office. Crazy! Good thing I went to the concert, or I would not have known it was him.

I finished watching The Last Airbender Show this weekend. The full title of the show is actually Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I didn't want to confuse it with that awful James Cameron movie I will never see. Anyway, the show was pretty great and I recommend watching it. Maybe I will tell you more about it one day. I heard the movie was pretty bad, and I don't think I'll be seeing it.

I saw Inception a few weeks ago. A lot later then everyone else did. I liked it a lot. I probably had a few minor criticisms, mostly about the end, but I thought the first hour and 45 minutes was pretty solid. My complaint really is that the ending dragged a bit and took too long to get the climax.

A few weeks ago I actually considered getting a Twitter account. But I decided Twitter is still really stupid. And profoundly confuses me. I'm having a hard time standing Facebook so as it is, and have lost of lot of interest in that.

Blog, have I ever told you about how much I hate the music stores in NYC? I have tried to get the new Jenny and Johnny album twice, with no luck. I will try one more time, braving the elements and venturing into Williamsburg. If that doesn't work, I may have to surrender and finally buy my music on, uhh, itunes. Or maybe buy it from Amazon. I miss Philly where I could practically see the album I wanted to buy inside the windows of Repo Records.

I believe my goal for this blog was to write about various media I liked or didn't like, and I'm sure I've offended all zero of you who read my blog. I guess I kinda failed at that. New shows I'm looking forward to this fall are S@#$ My Dad Says, Running Wilde, and probably Outsourced, which seems like a good premise, but also slightly racist.

We haven't talked since the LOST finale. I like the finale when I watched it, but I feel looking back on it, I may not like it as much. I watched to try to re-watch it. I'll probably re-watch the entire series sometime. The entire last season of LOST really annoyed me. There is an 11 minute epilogue on the DVD that I watched online. In it, they answer or at least somewhat address like 10 unanswered questions from the series. That's really annoying. Why didn't they just make the whole last season like that? When you think about it, like a 3rd of the last season was pretty much pointless. I'm not going to get into too many details now, since I know Maria probably hasn't seen LOST season 6 in Ghana.

I'm think about what show I want to watch next. I'm really leaning towards Angel. And I think Tara and I might start Dexter soon. Plus, I still really want to dive into Twin Peaks soon.

I should really hook my blog up to my Facebook. (but I won't) and then never log on to Facebook again.

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson

I first learned about Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson (MBAR henceforth) when Phil gave me a copy of his self titled EP and first album, Summer of Fear. I listened to the EP first and was hooked. The first song Buriedfed is amazing with energy and emotion. The rest of the album is great and carries the emotion, but I guess my small criticism would be I wanted more songs bursting with energy like the opening track.

I finally got a chance to listen to Summer of Fear (both albums are off Saddle Creek By the way) a couple weeks ago in anticipation for seeing him live. I finally got my wish about the energy, as this album rocks out with a lot of energy. My only minor criticism with this album is for some reason MBAR sings at a higher pitch instead of the deeper voice from the EP. It reminds me of Elvis Costello from the Carpetbagger song off of Jenny Lewis' solo album. But no matter, his voice has grown on me.

Phil and I were hoping to attend the show at Le Poisson Rouge on March 10th, but Phil was unable to make it, so I had to go solo. I was really excited because I haven't been to a show in a while. Doors opened at 10:30, which seemed late to me. Most shows I've gone to in Philly would end around 11. The first band was Shilpa Ray and her Happy Hookers. This was a pretty entertaining band live. I'm not sure if I would enjoy their album though. The lead woman (Shilpa Ray?) had a lot of energy and would often scream while playing her table accordion thing. This is fine live, but I don't know if I would like an album with a lot of screaming. Granted it was energetic, happy screaming and not screamo. Good live band.

The next band was called Suckers I believe. It seemed everybody was there for them. They were also pretty good, but I was starting to loose energy. It was starting to get pretty late and I had to hold my heavy winter coat.

MBAR finally went on 12:45. That's pretty late. The crowd emptied out a lot by then. I was getting tired, so I had to go sit down on a stool for part of the show. Jeez, I used to make fun of people who would sit during shows. I will say in my defense it was 1 in the morning. And I haven't been to a show like 4 months. Anyway, it was just MBAR by himself, playing guitar or keyboard. I guess another guy was supposed to show up, presumably a drummer, but the guy stopped answering his calls and didn't show. I guess this kinda limited him in what he could play, since he couldn't play a lot of the rocking songs. He played a lot of songs I didn't know, which was surprising, but I guess he kinda had to. It was cool to see him in this intimate, acoustic setting. Especially if he becomes more popular. But I hope next time he has a band.

I highly recommend his two albums. Check them out!

2009: Destiny Called

This is really late this year. Meh.

Best Accomplishment:

Finally moving to New York. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this for a while, but I am definitely meant to be here. There are so many opportunities here. Taking the sketch writing class was also pretty helpful. Meeting Tara. And finally driving across the country was great and something I always wanted to do.

Best CD:

This one is pretty tough. Nothing really blew me away this year. I had a conversation with Ron about this back in the Fall how there wasn’t really anything going on musically that was exciting people. I may have to come back to this one some day, but I will say two albums I liked a lot were Fantasies by Metric and Curse Your Branches by David Bazan. They are both pretty great, but I don’t know if I would call them Album of the Year. Maybe after I listen to some other stuff from 2009, I’ll have a better answer.

Worst CD:

I don’t really have an answer for this one.

Best Concert:

Best Concert of oh nine was Bishop Allen at The Williamsburg Music Hall with Jordan. I saw BA 4 times this year and that was the best one. I wish I had seen more shows this year. I also saw, with Jordan, The Get Up Kids, AC Newmen, Human Highway, and a David Bazan house show. Also, I got to see Weezer for free so that was awesome!

Best Movie:

Inglourious Basterds. It lived up to the hype.

Worst Movie:

I didn’t see a lot of movies this year. Tough to say what my worst movie was. I guess I would say Watchmen. Although I didn’t hate the movie, I feel like I don’t remember it too fondly either. I would like to see the director’s cut one day though.

Best Book:

I once again sucked at reading this year. I think I’ve just been reading a lot of bad books I couldn’t finish. My book of the year is A Confederacy of Dunces. I also liked The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao a lot.

Best TV Show:

I guess best new TV show I started watching is Parks and Recreation. Recently I’ve been watching a lot of new stuff, but that’s in 2010.

Favorite New Place:

I really like The Alligator Lounge in Williamsburg. I hate to admit this, but I also like Williamsburg in general. Astoria is kinda nice too.

Best Blog Entry:

Nothing stands out as being my favorite blog entry of the past year. I guess that means I need to write more blogs. It’s a shame I never wrote about my cross country trip.

Person of the Year:

Jordan Mollot! Jordan influenced my life in so many ways this year and traveling across country with him was a blast.

Douche Bag of the Year:

Glen Beck. What an embarrassment to this country.

New Friend Award:

John Krawiec. I’ve gotten to know him pretty well this year at work.

Party of the Year:

Party of the year was Alan Carroll’s birthday. Other parties were St. Patrick’s Day in Hoboken, Brian Small’s party in April, and a Christmas party with Tara in December.

Best Celebrity Encounter:

Jordan and I saw the girl who plays the receptionist on 30 Rock at Best Buy. Jordan and I also Jenny Slate’s show at the UCB. Oh, and Ellie Kemper was in the crowd at a UCB show.

Biggest Disappointment:

I worked a lot and didn’t really get to do too many fun things during the week.

What one thing about the past year would you change:

Probably the same as the above, worked a little less.

Greatest memory of the past year:

The thing I’ll probably remember the most this year was meeting Tara.

Theme of the Year:

The theme of the year was SetUp. I think a lot of things that happened this year are all setting up some big things for 2010.

Quote of the Year:

“I don’t know what to tell you, Chris.”

Biggest wish for 2010:

Keep pursuing my comedy dreams.

Anything to look forward to:

I would like to travel more. I would really like to visit LA. and if Chris moves to Cincinnati soon, I’ll probably go visit him. I would still like to go to Germany soon too, haha. I’m going to try to keep writing. Maybe write one sketch a week. My cousin is getting married in April in Florida and I think I’m going to go down for the wedding.

Roger Ebert

This is a pretty amazing article about Roger Ebert. I knew that he had surgery and oral cancer, but I don't think I was aware that he had had his lower jaw removed.

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/roger-ebert-0310

I'm going to try to update my blog more often. Yeah, I saw that every year. I'm almost done with my 2009 survey, I will post that soon.

Oh Nein

Alright Kids, time to start wrapping this year up. Here is the outline for the 6th annual Dusty Kaster Year in Review Survey Thingy. I added 2 new categories this year. Favorite New Place and Douche Bag of the Year.


Best Accomplishment:

Best CD:

Worst CD:

Best Concert:

Best Movie:

Worst Movie:

Best Book:

Best TV Show:

Favorite New Place:

Best Blog Entry:

Person of the Year:

Douche Bag of the Year:

New Friend Award:

Party of the Year:

Best Celebrity Encounter:

Biggest Disappointment:

What one thing about the past year would you change:

Greatest memory of the past year:

Theme of the Year:

Quote of the Year:

Biggest wish for 2010:

Anything to look forward to:

Thanksgiving is Thanksliving

I have to say, this was one of the best trips home in quite a while. Usually I am so very bored, but not this time.

I spent some time with the family. Friday was my Mem's 83rd birthday, so we went out to eat. It was a good time.

I saw a lot of friends too. Flip, Alex, Maggie (who is recovering), Chris, Sydney, Wolfgang and Kim. I briefly talked to Kelly B. friday night and we left Alan a ridiculous voice mail. Saturday, Kim, Wolfgang and I went to Steve Smith's bar in Pottsville, Trippin Billie. Tomorrow when I'm in Philly I'll probably see Heather too.

It's so nice to be home and relax and see friends and catch up. I feel better and recharged. I guess we can think of this as our 7 1/2 year reunion, ha.

I haven't mentioned it here, but I've been taking a sketch writing class at the UCB. It's going pretty well. I'll hopefully take some more classes next year. and I would like to start posting my sketched here.

I guess this entry had a point. It sounded better in my head.

Bored

I am home for Labour Day weekend. I am so bored right now. With my wacky work schedule and proniess to napping, I am not going to fall asleep anytime soon. Thank God for the internet. How did I live here for 18 years? I don't think I could ever live here again.

sigh.

Confessions of a Shop-a-holic

If there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that I love shopping. In fact, there's nothing I like more then going to a mall. Oh wait, no I don't. I hate going to malls. Why do I bring this up? I have no idea, but I think that Dunkin Donuts coffee I had 2 hours ago has finally started to kick in.

I'm really bad at getting Christmas presents. I don't know why. Maybe it's all the pressure and obligation to have to buy people crap. I would much rather put some thought into getting a person a meaningful gift and surprising them with it. I think that makes it better. I have decided this year, I'm just going to sit down around December 10th and go on to Amazon or something and do all my Christmas shopping there and have it delivered. Screw going to a mall, or even places in general.

Sooo much has changed since I last talked to you, Blogspot. I now have a nice, shinny MacBook Pro! Who would have ever thought I'd have a Macbook? Remember when I used to really hate Macs? But there is so much I can do on this. I wish I had time and/or wasn't lazy so I could really start playing with it. I don't even know where FreeCell is. Actually, it probably doesn't have FreeCell, because those snobby, intellectual types who have Macbooks are too busy reading the Huffington Post and the New Yorker to have time to be playing FreeCell. El Oh El.

Jordan and I recently did America. Which reminds me, I need to finish posting those pictures on facebook, and maybe one day write a series of Blogs about the trip. Blog! Jordan returned home this week because he forgot his tooth brush, so it was almost like he never left.

Earlier this month, my roommate and I moved to Astoria, like I foretold. It is pretty nice there. Muuuuch better then Sunset Park.

I can't believe the summer is winding down already. It feels like it just finally got started. I think September will be pretty warm though. I didn't go to the beach at all. I did go to the Coney Island boardwalk once though. I'm fine with that.

A lot of my friends have birthday's in August. There are like 4 within a span of about a week. That's crazy. I'm really good at remember people's birthday months and usually when in the month their birthday is, like the beginning, middle, or end. Actually, I'm pretty good at remembering things in general. I recently realized I can name more current US senators then I can current professional football players. I can probably name between 50-60 senators, but I could only get about 3 footballers. Michael Vick. Brett Farve, and.... Ben Rothlesburger? Is he a person? That's it.

The Astoria Solution

Michael Jackson died today. That's weird.

Anyway, it looks like me and my roommate are going to move to Astoria, and I'm pretty pleased with that. I'm not a huge fan... well, fan, of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Aside from Williamsburg, I don't really care about Brooklyn, which seems surprising. I thought I would be all about it. It's too long of a commute to Manhattan. My apartment is okay, but I definitely need more space and it would be nice to not live in a building with shady guys smoking... probably joints on the stairs. And our apartment's layout is kinda dumb. The fridge door always hits the oven, and the shower head is in the middle of the tub, as opposed to the end of the tub like every other single shower in the entire world, so the bathroom floor usually gets wet.

I heard that someone who used to work at BBC used to walk home every day to Astoria over the bridge, which got me thinking, maybe I could do that. or, better yet, maybe.... I...could... ride...my...bike!!!!! It would be so great to not have to ride the subway anymore, as I am sooo over it. It'd probably be pretty hard to actually ride around Mid-town, so I'd probably have to walk the bike, but that's okay. A monthly subway pass is going to go up to 89 dollars a month. I could forgo that and only pay as I go. Even if I spent 60 dollars a month, I could use that other 29 towards a nicer apartment. I would definitely spend a little more on rent if I could down on the subway costs. And I think I can find a farely decent but cheap place in Astoria.

I've only been to Astoria once, but it seemed like an okay place, as long as you live near the subway, and where we're looking, there are a lot of subway lines.

100 Days.

First, to answer your burning question, did I write 100 pages of script in the month of April? No, as you could expect. I think I wrote 2 pages. Bummer.

Last week, President Obama and I celebrated 100 days at our new jobs. I remember fondly on January 20th as I hurried around Philadelphia's Chinatown to find a television screen and at about 11:55 am, ran into the Greyhound station to see Aretha Franklin's hat and the end of Biden being sworn in. I cheered with everyone else in the station as Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in as the countries first good president in 40 years. I listened to his Inaugural address for a few minutes and then bolted to the Chinatown bus to arrive in New York for my first day at BBC...

So, after 100 days, how am I doing? I miss Philly a lot. Probably not as much now as when I first moved here. But I do miss my friends and a lot of things in Philly. If I were to win the lottery, I'd move back to Philly in a heartbeat and be content with visiting NYC once a month or so. Other then job oppertunities and shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, I really don't see anything that New York offers that Philly doesn't, except in Philly it's more convienient and cheaper. But, I'm here to stay as long as I want to keep following this dream of making a stupid TV show one day.

I'm almost ready to say that I would be pretty happy if I never had to ride the New York City subway system ever again in my life. I wouldn't mind doing it maybe twice a week, but every day can be annoying and it takes sooo long from to get to Manhattan from lower Brooklyn. I probably spend a good hour and a half every day on the subway. Plus, they want to raise the month pass from $81 to $104. Ridiculous. And then their ad campaign for this is "For $104 a month, you'd think they'd have a pool and a sauna down there." No. Shut the hell the up. For an extra 23 bucks a month there should be a pool down there. I also heard they are planning on cutting some services because they can't afford them. Ughhh. I wish I could bike to work.

On the other hand, there have been a lot of good and cool things about moving here. I see Jordan at least once a week, which is awesome. We've only gone to the UCB theatre once, but I'm sure we'll be going more often before he leaves. There definitely tons of job oppertunities here for me. I've been pretty swamped lately with work, but if anything ever happened, there are lots of other production companies I could try to work at, where in Philly there wasn't much, and when someone would have a show, there's lots of competition for it.

There are a few people from Bloomsburg here. I've been trying to meet up with them. I haven't seen them in years. But it's hard with my schedule and stuff, I kinda gave up. I should try again. There are so many things to see and do here and I've barely started.

In the Garage Where I Belong

no one hears me sing this song.

This is about all of you.
This is about none of you.

I'm sorry I'm not what you are looking for.
But I didn't expect you to disappear like that picture from Back to the Future.

Dear Jesus,

I keep trying to come back to You. But when stunts are pulled like what just happened, it gets harder for me to do so. It gets harder for me to do a lot of things. Maybe we should have a one-on-one soon. How about in my dreams? Hopefully, You can tell me what You want. I think You already know what I want.

Love,
Dustin

P.S. Who is this Beth girl?

There's No Place Like Home

I've been meaning to update for a while, so I'll talk about going home for Easter. After sleeping for about 3 hours, I woke up on Friday, gathered up all my stuff and managed to catch the 12pm train from Penn Station to Harrisburg, PA. Since the train took me down to Philly and then up to Harrisburg, next time I'll just take my beloved Chinatown bus to Philly. It'll be a lot cheaper.

On my train ride down, I took a seat next to a large bag and a coat. I wondered who they belong to? After a few stops on the train, no one came to claim them, so I wondered what happened to their own. While at the Trenton stop, this young girl got on the train and was very frantic, having just barely made the train with her enormous suitcase. I helped her lift it on to a cart. After a couple minutes, she came back, not being able to find a seat, and asked if anyone was sitting next to me. Well, those of you who know me will probably not be surprised as i quickly grabbed the belongings in the seat next to me, threw them up top, and said "no, this seat is open". ha. she was pretty young. A freshman in college.

(the woman who owed the stuff came back towards the end of the trip and picked it up. Where had she been and why did she leave her stuff there?)

I got off the train and soon my Dad picked me and we headed home. Later that night, me and Mom got new LG VU phones, which is kinda exactly like an iphone except it costs a lot less. While we were at the Frackville Mall, I saw several security guards. This was pretty weird, because I have never seen a security guard there before. And more importantly, how is this mall even still open? a lot of the stores are vacated. Which makes the security guards even more weird.

Saturday night, Phil and I went to Maggie's house where we played Lego Indiana Jones. Chris and Sydney joined us and we all had a good time.

Sunday was Easter, and my sister managed to find 2 hours to stop in for dinner and then leave immediately to go back to school. Later in the day, I went with my parents to Williams Valley to the cemetery. We saw Maggie's parents there. My dad went to high school with Maggie's dad and they have the exact same birthday. I saw where (I think) 3 of my great-great grandparents are buried. I also learned my maternal grandmother was named after her maternal grandmother, so I learned a lot about my great-great grandparents this weekend.

So for those of you playing at home, the linage goes: Dustin Kaster-Edward Kaster-Edward Kaster-John Kaster-Jacob Kaster (I saw his tombstone). Is he the one who came over from Germany?

100 Pages

This website, http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/ is hosting a challenge to everyone who signs up to write 100 pages of script during the month of April. I can do that, right? Any ideas?