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My main homegirl Jodi sent me another of those amusing email questionnaires! Of course, since I’m averse to adding to other folks spam collections, I’ll just go ahead and respond online so everybody can read how I’m a freak.
- What time is it? Well, this is in intriguing way to start a list. As of right now it’s 10:42, although by the time I finish it will probably be much later. It turned out to be 11:06.
- Name as it appears on your birth certificate? Senor Cardgage. Oh wait, sorry, no. Matthew David Hearn.
- Any nicknames? The Hearn, Waffy, “That Sexy Guy With Great Hair.”
- Parents’ names? Unfortunately, they’re in the witness protection program, but I can tell you that one of them was previously named “Alphonse.”
- Candles appeared on your last birthday cake? I think you’re asking my age. I didn’t have a birthday cake. (I prefer pie.) I’m 26.
- Date that you regularly blow them out? I like to let them burn for a few months before I get to them. It’s kinda like the olympic torch; we get special gas-powered candles. Leaves a funny aftertaste in the frosting, though. Anyway: August 27th.
- Pets? I think we started with 1 cat. Now we have like 11. My house smells like pee.
- Tattoos? Not much of a drummer, personally. Oh, you meant skin art. Got me a cowboy hat and geeeeeeeeetar on my shoulder. It’s why I spend so much time shirtless. That and my incredible ab.
- How much do you love your job or jobs? Computers: Like the work, like the people (mostly), hate the company. Music: All about it. Can’t get enough. Anybody wanna hire a full-time choral singer and pay me like 80 grand? That’d be rad.
- Ever had a car accident? My attorneys have advised me not to mention details. (Short answer: yes.)
- Your fault? Most DEFINITELY not. I’m an excellent, an excellent driver. Excellent.
- Favorite vacation spot? Any warm, uncrowded beach, where I can drink heavily and bodysurf.
- Ever been to Africa? Nope. Not a huge fan of populations of AIDS-ridden poor people. That probably sounds selfish, because it is.
- Ever Stolen anything? Just the hearts of ladies (and mens) worldwide. ::wink::
- Croutons or Bacon bits? Oh, you gotta go with the bacon bits there. I’m on the Atkins joint, so Croutons are out, and I have a love for bacon that’s only rivaled by my love for middle-aged grandmothers.
- 2-door or 4-door? Not particularly picky on this point. My truck has 4 doors, but if I ever got around to fixing up a 1987 Monte Carlo SS Aerosport, it would have two doors. And a MONSTROUS engine.
- Coffee or juice? I like both, but juice is out (Atkins again) ’cause of all the sugar. I drink coffee, although not often recently because I’ve been singing so much and caffeine plays with one’s vocal cords.
- Favorite Salad? Tossed. I PREFER SYRUP.
- Favorite type of car? Large trucks, medium-sized muscle cars, and massive 1972 Pontiac Grand Villes in hideous colors.
- Favorite type of movies? Comedies, action, porn. I mean . . . not porn. I would never watch that kind of thing. It makes your eyes bleed!
- Favorite Holiday? Christmas. Thanksgiving is a close second, but Christmas RULES. I love presents.
- Favorite Food? Beef. Pretty much any form, although medium-rare prime rib is better than sex.
- Favorite day of the week? Today.
- Favorite song? Not sure. Right now, probably “From This Day On” from Brigadoon (Get your tickets now! 478 3355!). I tend to get attached to songs that I sing for one reason or another.
- Favorite TV Show? Probably Family Guy, although Sports Center and Band of Brothers also could be tops.
- Toothpaste? Would I like some? Probably. I taste like cat butt right now.
- Most recently read book? Uh…Stalker, by whatshername. Just a fluff murder mystery. I’m also working on a book about Hold-’em poker.
- Perfume/Cologne: Can’t stand the stuff. Clogs my nose up. Sarah sprays on some kind of flowery crap from time to time and my whole head just fills with mucus. BAD TIMES.
- Favorite scent? Cotton candy and scotch. (You should hung out, maaaaan!)
- Favorite Fast Food place? Right now, Taco Bell. If only ’cause each soft taco, if you just eat the innards and throw away the shell, has only one net carb. So I eat 8 in a sitting.
- When was your last hospital stay? Hm. I’ve never stayed overnight, but I did have to sleep there for a half hour or so while I was getting an EEG in 1991. (I had fainted in health class, so they thought I had a seizure, although in reality they were talking about surgery on testicles and I ::THUD::
What happened? I was in the middle of a parenthetical aside and I woke up on the floor in the fetal position with my thumb in my mouth. Weird. Oh well, moving on.
- How many times did you fail your driver’s license? I assume this means my driver’s license TEST. Ah, gotta love English and the people that speak it. Anyway, I never failed, although getting a license in Delaware is roughly as difficult as finding a heroin dealer in Newark.
- Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Two possible paths: 1) living here in Delaware, suffering at some computer job, have a couple of cool kids that I’m teaching to snap Sarah’s bra, and doing some musical stuff on the side. 2) Touring as a professional actor or musician. No, I’m not drunk again.
- What do you do when you’re bored? Work on my house; answer questionnaires.
How about it? Do I get the job? Oh, wait. Sorry, got confused. I must’ve hit my head when I was typing about testicular surgery earlie-::THUD::
What you are looking at over on the right is a map of a portion of New Castle County. It lists my 4 primary locations for the next 6 weeks: My Office, The Data Center, My Criznib (that’s my house, for the un-Snoop-initiated), and Aldersgate United Methodist Church (where we have Brigadoon rehearsals (get your tickets now! 478 3355!)).
You may notice that some of the roads have been over-colored with pink or red. This is to show you where construction is happening near me.
That’s right, every single major road I use to get to any destination! WOOHOO!
I’m pretty sure that DelDOT found out I was moving to New Castle and they had a big board meeting about it. Apparently everybody that I ever pissed off in my life (all four of them, including my wife) is on the board, and figured the best way to get vengeance was to make sure I could never drive anywhere again.
Here’s a little more detail (speaking of which, you can click the picture to look at the large version if it’s hard to read): the red sections are parts that are currently under full construction, including road closures, sign holders, the works. The roads with pink on them are roads that are either under periodic construction (every few days, they inexplicably close a lane of 95 all the way through Wilmington and do some kind of jackhammering at the bridges. I have no idea why.), or are scheduled to be worked on later this year (like when they basically shut down Route 1 south of 273. I almost cried when I heard that).
The real fun is when things happen like what went down Tuesday night. Bill had let us out of rehearsal early, around 9:50, so I got in the truck and headed south, down 95, to my usual exit at Route 1, which was closed. Dammit. So I get off at 273 East, which was open, but a little slow. Then slower. Then stopped.
Up at the front of the line, just at the top of the hill, was a massive dump truck that had inexplicably halted, with no way for anyone to get around. It had broken down.
It was at this point that I realized how badly I had to pee.
Eventually, some good Samaritans walked down to the exit and started routing traffic away from 273 East so we could slowly back our way down and take 273W and make a U-turn. I consider these people to be the coolest people of all times, even eclipsing me and Dustin Diamond.
Okay, sorry for the extended (and highly stupid) rant. I just had to let it out. So that I can stop crying, and stuff.
Tomorrow: day off to clean out the garage! I do have some pretty artsy-fartsy pictures to upload, and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have a sizeable collection of Brigadoon shots from tonight’s rehearsal. If I find time I’ll get them uploaded.
New Brigadoon pictures! Just an update of 5, though. If you already saw the previous nine, you can skip ahead to the new ones by clicking this jaunpiece, or if you weren’t paying attention when I posted the original set, you can click this defness to view them all.
Textual update tomorrow. Subject: road construction, and why it SUH-UCKS.
Can someone please explain to me America’s fixation with not-so-great singers? I’m not talking about Kelly Clarkson, although pop stars as a rule usually do reach a level of suckage normally only approached the experimental prototype Bissell built a few years ago that runs on weapons-grade plutonium. No, I’m talking about actual “classical” singers, like Ronan Tynan and Andrea Bocelli.
I was just listening to a recording of Bocelli singing “Con Te Partiro,” and it was, well, bad. I guess he must be putting all kinds of emotion into the performance that I can’t sense, because all I noticed was that he kinda sounded like a 74 Datsun. He was wheezing, and hitting high notes with a technique that he clearly developed in an effort to sound as much like canine flatulence as possible.
Ronan Tynan, of course, is the famous “Irish” tenor that sings at all the important Yankee games. He also performed a few numbers at President Reagan’s funeral, most notably a version of Ave Maria that put me to sleep. His voice itself isn’t that horrific, but he sings with all the energy of a corpse. Not to mention that every time I see him he appears to have gained 30 pounds; if he starts waving around a snotty white handkerchief I’m gonna try to hire a hit man.
I do think that Josh Groban is pretty decent, although every time I hear about him I picture a massive lizard being interviewed by a horribly un-politically-correct John Candy with slanty eyes.
What I really can’t figure is what’s up with Americans recently that they’re suddenly into this pseudo-classical stuff. The best I can figure is that it’s all just pretentiousness, which is something I know about, because you don’t get more pretentious than I. (I own leather pants.) I mean, get a person a Josh Groban CD and they’re all “Wow! I’ve wanted to listen to him for ages!” Get him a CD of King’s College Cambridge singing an evensong, and they’re all “Uh . . . cool. I, um, sure do like organ music.” What the hell, yo? I guess the average American just wouldn’t recognize decent music if it bit him on the butt.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go sort my Toto bootlegs.
Oh, MAN. I have to stop listening to the voices in my head. Especially when those voices say, “Hey, Jared’s got a point, we should go to Hooters.”
At 9pm on a Sunday night.
Let’s set the stage: Sarah leaves town at 4pm to spend the next few days in Dover. I decide to celebrate this fact with 1 or 8 gin-and-tonics. Jared, who came up for the Blue-Gold Game on Saturday, is present. We play a few video games, watch some TV, when it happens.
Hooters commercial.
And the seed is sown. I hastily run a razor over my face (with no shaving cream, just water, which turned out to be one of the first mistakes), rub on some deodorant, and put on my muscle shirt. (Don’t ask. Just . . . don’t.) The actual visit was uneventful; we had some brews, some wings, some laughs with the waitress, and headed home. Jared was remarkably sober (Oh right, he hadn’t been pouring Tanqueray down his throat for 6 hours!), so we made it home with no incidents other than the fact that singing “Insomniac,” and hitting the 4-measure F# at the end, is not recommended by the American Dental Association.
I then went to bed, entered oblivion, and dreamt of embarrassments past.
I don’t think I actually woke up. I still have the sense of dreaming, although really it’s more of a nightmare, as I feel as if somebody is pounding a golden railroad spike into the base of my skull. And then peeing on it.
I had forgotten to activate my alarm last night, so I awoke this morning at approximately 9:45 when Discover card called to tell me they wanted to increase my credit limit (from $6500 to $7000 . . . wow! Color me honored!). Luckily I only missed about half of my Monday morning meeting, and almost nobody else was there either; I’m not sure why, as I didn’t see any of them at Hooters last night.
Not that I’d have remembered if I did.
* * * WEIRD DREAM ALERT!!! * * *
I need some analysis again. This one is just bizarre, but strangely enough it kinda makes sense, I think, although not to me, and probably not to anybody with an ounce of sanity remaining.
Inexplicably, I’m at an obstetrician’s office with Sarah and a friend of ours (who will remain nameless), who are both with child. (In the dream. In real life, neither of them are pregnant, to the best of my knowledge.) Then later it turns out Sarah’s NOT pregnant, and in fact is no longer there with us; I’m just there to talk about how long it takes for someone to get knocked up once they go off the pill. Our other friend IS pregnant (again, only in the dream), although why I’m there with her instead of her husband, I don’t quite understand.
Also it comes out that Sarah and I have moved in with the other couple in some kind of townhome, but the other couple is having a new house built somewhere in Chester County and they’ll be moving in there in a couple of months.
Then I think I must have woken up a little bit, because the dream switched gears. Suddenly I’m living by myself in a farmhouse somewhere rural. I remember going to a church nearby for some kind of meeting, at which Dean Peggy (the dean at the Cathedral Church of Saint John) may have been present. Then I got into some kind of old red Ford pickup, drove back to the farm, and changed into a strange tuxedo that made me look like a priest, to sing some kind of concert.
Then I woke up because one of the cats was vomiting under the bed. What does it all mean? (The dream, not the puking.)
Brigadoon pictures are up! A couple warnings:
- The pictures are pretty big, in many cases, and I saved them in the highest quality JPG format. If you’re on dialup, be prepared for some significant download times. I may fix this in the future; I may not. I’m lazy like that.
- There are two pictures of me in the current set of 9. I know nobody wants to see that, but my ego knows no bounds so I put them in anyway. Deal with it. Or merely avert your gaze. Whatever you gotta do.
- I used a cheap and easy gallery-maker to make the HTML, and it’s not in a format that I like at all. I’m sure I’ll change it later to something much easier on the eyes, but for right now just work with me. I don’t have time for a lot of editing today and I wanted to get this posted. Expect the design, and URLs, to change probably by Monday.
- Some of the pictures are kinda dim and blurry, because we rehearse in a large space and my flash isn’t powerful enough to reach more than 15 or 20 feet away. Sorry about that. Hopefully I’ll have some nice pictures when we get to Longwood and we’re under the lighting, but that’s a month away.
I guess that’s about it. Have a superb weekend.
Why yes, of COURSE I forgot to take my camera to rehearsal last night and get pictures! And I think you know why this is: I’m a dumbass. I swear to you I’ll Thursday. (Last night would have, of course, been the best possible time to do it, since I ran a few scenes and then sat around watching the chorus learn a dance routine.)
Anyway, rehearsals continue. I’m pretty much off book at this point, and I’m marginally less stiff. Hopefully by mid-July I’ll be gallivanting around the stage like some kind of massive, horribly palsied Fred Astaire! Good times for all, that is. Good times.
As added evidence that I’m an idiot, I also forgot to take my camera to a wedding we went to on Saturday. As a result of me forgetting my good ol’ pitcher-taker, it turned out to be the most hilarious wedding of all time, at least from the point of view of superb hairstyles from 1984. I would go into more detail, but I never know who’s going to randomly happen upon my website; these folks were really really nice and I don’t care to insult them. (Three important phrases: “Steve Perry,” “shaved-head-braided-ponytail,” and “horrific combover.”)
The primary thing that made the bride and groom cool was the fact that they had chocolate cake with real icing (as opposed to that hideous crap that most supermarket bakeries have been using for a while; I think it has sour cream and chicken stock and crap in it), which means my diet went straight into the crapper as I feasted on four pieces of cake. Ouch.
It got worse: the following day we had dinner with my parents, and my mother was kind enough to make whoopie pies. A whoopie pie, for those of you who were born and raised in Cambodia, is two cookies of soft devil’s food cake held together by fluffy white sugar cream. I ate 7. I think I gained 11 pounds last weekend.
Okay, sorry about the crappy update today. I can’t guarantee I’ll have more tomorrow, but if I don’t have Brigadoon pictures by Friday you have my permission to beat me with a garden hose. Meanwhile, Brian actually posted to his website twice in the past week, and Monday’s post is worth a giggle or twelve.
I’m working another all night outage tonight!!! Let the running diary begin . . .
- 2317 – Well, I’ve been here at the data center for about a half an hour, got all my stuff set up, haven’t started hallucinating yet. Annoyingly, I’ve actually been working since about 6pm, since the guys on the SAN (Storage Area Network; basically, they have massive amounts of disk that they allocate to my servers and attach to them via fiberoptic cable) team are doing a change that requires me to periodically check a couple of servers to make sure they haven’t disconnected all my disk. Of course, my servers are working fine, because HP is the bomb. The NT boxes, as usual, are having all kinds of issues. So I was stuck on the phone for 5 hours for no reason. Not good times. Horrible times. Depressing times.
At least I was at home; it gave me time to tune the piano a little bit. I got it about half done, although it’s not exactly accurate because I lack the necessary mutes to tune individual strings exactly (which I have just ordered from Ebay; I love Ebay). After moving it twice since it was last tuned (in about April of 2000), and having it finally end up in a very dry house, it’s dropped about a half step low. So I’m gonna just get it back to actual concert pitch, and then have trusty Pete Mayforth come out and temper it properly.
Of course, Lord knows when I’ll actually be able to finish it up, since I’ll be stuck here all night, sleeping tomorrow morning, and then going to various parental units’ homes tomorrow for a day of fatherly homage. I’ll need beer, and plenty of it.
- 2359 – Nothing like typing “Oops . . .” to a coworker over AIM and have him think he’s going to have a myocardial infarction. (At the time, I was performing a possibly destructive change to a production server.) Good times . . . good times over here.
- 0100 – Eyes starting to get heavy. I’m not sure if the coffee I drank has done any good. I don’t even have the usual diahrrea or anything. Perhaps a large Pepsi is in order.
I should’ve brought a hip flask full of gin. I have some excellent gin at home. I can’t remember what kind, but it’s got a little dancing dude on the front; Gordon’s maybe? Gilbey’s? Gilbert Grape? Oh well. (SAY THANK YOU GILBERT!)
- 0158 – Second cup of coffee, and my innards are starting to squirm from all the caffeine. In other news, it’s hot in here. I’m going to take off my clothes.
Much better.
Okay, so all I took off was a sweater I put on to enter the raised floor (which is kept at a temperature of about 60 degrees F). It was a sexy sweater, too, all vertical ribs making me look hell of slender. You should be sad I took it off, but happy that more of my skin is exposed.
Looks like we actually might get out of here early. Not sure, though. All the work appears to be done on our part, but as usual the DBAs (DataBase Administrators) have to test a bunch of crap and we have to wait until they’re done.
- 0203 – Yay! Milo’s up!
matthearndotcom: I’ve decided I need a tuba.
matthearndotcom: A guy played one at the memorial service this (yesterday) morning.
MiloBloom34: you should have beaten him up and stolen his.
matthearndotcom: You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a guy playing “Amazing Grace” and some showtunes on a C tuba.
matthearndotcom: I couldn’t have beaten him up; he was really cute.
(Plus his mom had just died, so it probably would be bad form.)
- 0207 – I really do want a tuba, though. Somebody hook me up, as I am poor. (I also need my garage cleaned.)
- 0234 – Holy crap. I’m going home. This is good news for me, I suppose, although it means this particularly diary doesn’t get all that interesting, because I haven’t yet begun to hallucinate, which really is the bread and butter of all quality writing. Next time I’ll bring some Quaaludes to the data center with me. (Do they actually still make Quaaludes? I dunno. Better ask Dad.)
Hey look, Walter’s sprouted horns. Good times. Good night!
I was HOPING to have a bunch of great pictures of Brigadoon rehearsal to share with y’all today, but unfortunately they keep expecting me to actually PARTICIPATE in the rehearsal. And I find it hard to stay in character when I’m also taking pictures of my costars. So I’m afraid you’ll just have to wait. Next time I’ll try and remember to just give the camera to Sarah and have her discreetly snap some shots, maybe even some video. Unfortunately, my camera doesn’t do sound.
Although, now that I think of it, that’s probably a good thing, since you won’t be able to hear the sound of Sarah’s teeth gnashing while I get my love on with Jennifer and Arianne. (The latter plays Jane Ashton, Tommy’s fiancee in New York; I don’t think I mentioned her in my Brigadoon update earlier this week, for which I am greatly remiss. Arianne Langsam is HILARIOUS. She is also extremely good looking, and highly flirtatious. I get to spend the entire show making time with attractive women other than my wife. Life is good . . . life is very good.)
As of last night, we pretty much have all the scenes staged, and I’m actually about 90% off book. Those of you that have worked with me on shows in the past (which would be high school) are probably wondering what’s come over me, since back then I was notorious for not learning my lines until about 2 weeks before show opened, and even then I would mostly paraphrase, which went over very well with my costars who are trying to listen for cues that I never gave them.
Well, dammit, this is the new Matt Hearn, and he’s taking his job seriously! It helps that many of my costars are semi-professional actors; Jennifer won some actual acting awards for work she did out in Indiana (although now she probably thinks I’m a stalker for looking up that stuff; hey, whaddayawant, I sit in front of a computer all day and Google people). Dave (playing Tommy’s hunting buddy Jeff) has been almost entirely off book since the first rehearsal. There’s not any real pressure on me yet, but I sure feel like a schmuck if I’m the only guy wandering aimlessly around the stage with a book in my hand. So I spend all day looking at my script instead of, you know, doing my actual paying jorb. Nobody’s noticed yet, of course.
Speaking of my jorb, I had my annual performance review a few weeks back; apparently I am highly rad. I’ve been the Technical Lead for one of our smaller clients for a few months now, and apparently the client has been greatly pleased with my efforts. Plus, it has been noticed that every time somebody is sick or busy on a day when they have SMOD (Systems Manager O’ the Day) duties, I cover for them.
I still probably won’t get a raise, though. ARGH.
Of course, “Technical Lead” is something I definitely enjoy having on my resume. I should get my Sun certification, then I’d be all kinds of groovalicious and pulling down mad bizank.
Or maybe my Broadway career will finally take off. Not that I knew I wanted one until, uh, this month.
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