I guess the one thing I really miss, though, is getting to smell a woman's hair. So, in lieu of risking getting punched for trying it again, I came upon a perfect solution. I bought a sample bottle of some Finess Moisturizing Shampoo for Dry Coarse Hair and washed a small towel with it. Now, not only is the towel softer and more touchable, but things don't seem so lonely when I cry myself to sleep every night.

So, I went back and bought a couple more. I also picked up some M&M's because I wanted the bear to have bigger brown eyes than the original chocolate chips. [Who'd have believed that in 2 gas-station-sized snack-bags there would be exactly 2 brown M&M's?] So I ripped another bear heart out, took some photos, and created some merchandise on my CafePress JayceLand store. The gist of the cards, postcards, stickers, and mugs you can buy is based off the image to the right. Hopefully it's not just me who thinks that's pretty damn funny. I also set up a Heartbroken Bear page which I'll probably harass people with links to in the near future.

Best of all, though, is that I got to eat another cookie.

I thought I'd throw a bone to all those geographiles out there. I surmise that love triangles don't work too well because, given love triangle ABC, if relationship BC becomes closer, the angle at A gets smaller, but more importantly, the ratio of AB:BC or AC:BC gets larger and one person is essentially left out. The only successful such relationship is when the ratios AB:BC:CA are close to 1 — ergo an equilateral triangular relationship — but attempting to maintain that would cause a restriction on any attempt to reduce any one of the distances of line segments AB, BC, or CA, so it is only the rare case when AB:BC:CA is close to 1 by accident.

And as a final thought on the matter, last year (on the phone on October 12, 2004 at 7:12 p.m. to be exact) I came up with a saying that I thought applies to love and I made a note to quote it ... too bad it's so non sequitur: "you don't get to have any honey if you are afraid of getting stung by a bee." No, really, it's completely original.

So ... on to your regularly scheduled blog of events.

Last Thursday I got out to George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) to see some of those "outsider films." This time it was Phil Chambliss' films. First up was The Devil's Helper about a couple hunters who cut a deal with the devil's "helper." Next was The Mr. Visit Show which is about a "live" TV show with Mr. Visit who came around to provoke the proprietor of a bird daycare. Finally was Chambliss' nearly feature-length Pink Christmas. It's about a couple guys who discover that the barber is having an affair with the sheriff's wife while he's out of town for the holidays so they decide to try and blackmail the barber. In all, the films were dreamlike and nearly surreal. It's interesting that they feel a lot like early silent films — before people had established techniques to convey information. I wouldn't go seek them out to watch them again, but it was definitely worth seeing once.

Before heading to a couple parties later on, I made it out to the show at Christ Church of Rochester (141 East Ave.) on Saturday. The acoustics are really to die for there (or kill for, as I was about to do with the guy eating carrots behind me) and I gather that Jesus himself hangs around there. [Come on — let's see you resist a bad joke like that.] First up was Autumn In Halifax or as most people say, "Dave," addressing the solitary performer. He had a more appreciative crowd than last time and really nailed home his mellow acoustic with digital loops and subtle effects. Otto Hauser was next and also did a great job with his variety of excellent complex and subtle acoustic. Finally up was Kelli Hicks whose minimal acoustic style was a great fit for the exemplary acoustics.

For everyone's songs, I kept my eyes closed to focus on the sound more. It mostly helped, but I was just waiting for someone to try and "wake me up" which thankfully didn't happen. During Kelli's last song on the autoharp ("the people's instrument") I had an unusual visualization of cartoon-like clouds inflating and filling the room starting behind the pipe organ. I snapped out of it for a second to rational thought and almost lost the visualization, which then changed so I could only perceive the clouds as their volume crossed through the floor and walls.

That was pretty fucking cool.

On Monday I made it to the Dryden at George Eastman House (900 East Ave.) to see the "Suprise Cinema." The film was Bu san (Good Bye Dragon Inn) which is a Taiwanese film that Jim Healy said he saw at The Toronto International Film Festival. In all, there is just 12 lines of dialog and it's otherwise just people watching Long men ke zhen (Dragon Inn) which is a swordplay-and-martial-arts film that Jim likened to the American sword-and-sorcerer genre.

Essentially the film laments the loss of the cinema-going experience and the strange social construct it is. The movie was fascinating — steadily paced at a very slow rate. I thought Jim's observation was quite apt: that the film is shot from the perspective of the screen, but I'd amplify that it's the theater's view of its patrons — as if the theater itself had a soul (or ghost as the minimal dialog suggests.) Plus, the first few shots were quite disconcerting as they were taking from the perspective of the audience at the screen in such a way that it nearly perfectly gave the illusion that you were in the on-screen theater in addition to and/or rather than the one you were in.

On Tuesday night I went out to The Bug Jar (219 Monroe Ave.) again. I got there as Autumn In Halifax was playing — again — and yes, just a few days from the last show. Next was Somebody's Closet which is this groove-rock band that somewhat disconcertingly is missing a bass player (consisting of only keyboards, guitar, drums, and vocals.) Even more disconcerting is that while they are technically very good, it seemed they were missing the ability to connect to the audience. Admittedly I'm tough to crack with groove-rock (which I otherwise don't like) but I was actually looking forward to being unable to resist dancing with this band, only to shrug off the very thought during their performance. Finally up was Tristeza which is this strange combination of ambient band and rock band — the two guitarists, bassist, and keyboardist maintain what would be nearly ambient-styled melodies while the drummer punches it up to a rock level ... in all a satisfyingly interesting combination to watch.

Now go buy stuff at my CafePress store.

• La mala educación (Bad Education, at The Little) - A couple guys are sexually abused as children in Spain.
• Les Choristes (The Chorus, at The Little) - A teacher at a boy's boarding school uses music to make it all better.
• Hitch - The sweet story of an otherwise likable guy who teaches un-likable men to trick women into liking them.
• Pooh's Heffalump Movie - Only Disney knows how long you can milk a bear.