The Voices in Frank's Head

Earlier in the week, I posted about the song "Next Ex-Girlfriend" by Bowling for Soup perfectly sums up how I feel about dating at this particular moment. Well, since then, I have met a young woman who is perfect candidate. Sometimes God really does answer my prayers.

Many people over the years have attempted to pass something off as “the latest, coolest thing” when it was - in fact - undeniably and irrefutable lame. After years of repressing my desire to mock these people, it has finally reached the point where I feel a need to compile a list of things that are not, never have been and never will – under any circumstances – be considered cool. People usually embarrass themselves by trying to convince others that something on my list is “the latest, coolest thing”. By putting this list into the public realm, everyone at least gets fair warning before people laugh at you. This list, of course, is a work in progress. If anyone sees something on this list has the potential to be cool, you are welcome to site an example of when it happened. Please include at least one authoritative witness ( i.e. , an independent observer and not one of the participants) who saw it and thought that it was at least moderately cool. Without further ado, I give you Fra...

Blah! It's 2 a.m. I was in bed a little while ago. For most folks, going to bed is a simple, uncomplicated affair. For me, it usually means that a bunch of thoughts start running around in my head. (Well, they're always running around in my head. That's why this blog is entitled "The Voices in Frank's Head".) Anyway, the prevailing thought in my mental loop today involved the fact that I write one of the highest ranked blogs on the subject of "dating in your 30s". I'm currently number 10 out of 1,230,000. In spite of this, I haven't been on an actual date in three, almost four, months. Irony! This is my definition of irony. The fact of the matter is that I haven't been on a date because I haven't come across anyone that I actually wanted to go on a date with. And it's not like I'm not meeting people either. I'm out around town at least three nights a week, sometimes more. I meet women. I just haven't met a...

The good folks at Model D - occasional publishers of my writing - held an event this past Thursday. It was another installment of their regular speaker series, this one focusing on "Hollywood and the Detroit Film Boom". Since then, no fewer than six people have asked what I thought about the event. I figure it's time for me to just put my thoughts out on my blog. Overall, I thought it was a very good presentation, featuring Tony Wenson from the Michigan Film Office , Jill Ferrari from the Wayne County Executive's Office and Eric Tungate from the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation . Close to two hundred people showed up at the Anderson Auditorium at the College for Creative Studies for this event. They ranged from industry insiders to students to random people off the street. The three people who presented managed to walk a very fine line. They went into enough detail, and with enough complexity, that the professionals in the room didn't feel like it wa...

I entered this world at 3:57 a.m. on August 20, 1970, which means that today is my birthday. I was lying in bed a moment ago; not quite able to get to sleep. My mind was pondering too many things all at once. Partly to assuage my own anxiety that I haven't accomplished enough at this point in my life, and partly as a mental exercise, I started making a mental list of all that I've seen, done or accomplished in my life that would be truly noteworthy. It wasn't long before this list became too long for me to keep track of in my own head. Since I still couldn't sleep - and the mental list probably was keeping me awake - I decided to compose all of these thoughts in one blog entry. This will, of course, be a fairly long entry. It's a recap of 38 years worth of existence, after all. Rather than go into every point, I'll just record some of the things that most people don't already know about me. In my 38 years on this planet, I published my own novel. It n...

I was reading a friend's blog this evening. She talked about how is overwhelmed with the various social networking sites and how they make her feel like leaving society entirely to live in solitude. I agree there are so many of these sites that it can be overwhelming at times. I've learned to ignore most of them. However, I do see some profound value in them. For starters, I saw The Other Boleyn Girl in a friend's Netflix queue. I probably wouldn't have ever watched it on my own. However, since I knew that my friend liked and that there's a certain overlap in the films we like, I made a point of watching it. And I loved it. I never would've watched if I hadn't seen it on her Netflix queue. The preview just didn't grab me when I saw it in the theater. However, once I saw it, I loved the film. Facebook has enabled me to keep up with various people that I knew in high school, that I've seen around town or that I've worked on one project or ...

Marlies Dekkers Lingerie Exhibit was in the Netherlands last month. I meant to blog about it when it happened but, well, every time I started to I simply got distracted. The fact of the matter is that she makes Victoria's Secret and most other purveyors of women's lingerie seem boring and un-inspired. Exhibit A is this argument can be found below: Anyway, the rest of her collection can be found at MarliesDekkers.nl .

Today would have been Alfred Hitchcock's 109th birthday. Where ever he is, I hope he still gets to see some really great movies. If there's any justice in the world, when he reached the Pearly Gates a little over 28 years ago, I hope that St. Peter handed him an Academy Award to make up for all of the Oscars that he should have won. Happy birthday, Mr. Hitchcock!

AP is reporting that Russian jets are bombing targets in Georgia for the second day in a row. As one observer after another has opined, this is the beginning of the Russians' attempt to regain their Soviet-ear domination. I can't help but think that if we didn't have so much of our military committed to Iraq at the moment, we'd be able to stop their expansion dead in its tracks. I also can't help but what will happen if Sen. John McCain is elected this November and we do stay in Iraq for another 100 years, thereby allowing every other wanna-be dictator on the planet to run around un-checked.

I use Yahoo Web Hosting for my production company's web site . One of the things that they do is give me a report of how many other sites have a link to my site. For the longest time, that number stood at 3. Then it went down to 2. And then to 1. I was mildly worried about this trend; wondering what I could do about it. But then it jumped up to 1,574 last Wednesday. From 1 to 1,574. Pretty much overnight. And that number has held for a few days now. I haven't made any changes to my site nor have I done anything in the past week that would make me unusually popular. However, Yahoo insists that 1,573 new sites have link to my site in the past week. I have this suspicion that these numbers are screwed up. I'm just don't know in which direction their screwed up. Was Yahoo under-reporting the numbers before or are they over-reporting now? Anyway, these are the things that the various voices in my head are wondering about this morning.

When I saw the newspaper this morning, with its headline that Detroit's Mayor Kwame M. Kilpatrick would waive his right to a preliminary examination, I was proud of him for the first time in months. The on-going criminal proceedings have dragged on for months already; as a result, Detroit's economic recovery has stalled and is slipping backwards. The fact that he waived his preliminary examination would shave a month or more off of this prolonged ordeal. I was going to log on and write a blog post commending the Mayor for his decision. However, I've spent most of this morning in a series of meeting and didn't have a chance to sit down at a computer. And then it happened. Judge Robert Giles sent Mayor Kilpatrick to jail. I'm still pleased that the Mayor waived his right to a preliminary examination. However, let's face facts, that story will be buried and largely ignored by the fact that he is spending tonight in a jail cell.

Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick survived a three-way challenge in the Democratic primary yesterday ; winning 39.1% of the vote. Of course, the interesting thing - at least, in my opinion - is that 60.9% of the Democratic primary voters in her district voted against a rather entrenched incumbent. Congresswoman Kilpatrick now goes on to face a Republican challenger in the November election, Edward Gubrics . In any other election year, the November election would almost be a formality because the district has such a strong Democratic base. However, this time around - with so many voters infuriated with both the Congresswoman and her son - I think that this has become an election that the Republicans can actually win. I'll assume, for sake of argument, that 100% of those who voted for Congresswoman Kilpatrick come back to vote for her in November. They, however, can't vote twice in November and there won't be a third person in the race to split the vote. What all ...

Keira Knightley recently told the news media that she doesn't want movie producers to airbrush photos of her to make it look like she has larger breasts than she really does. Her breasts admittedly are quite small. When it came to the Pirates of the Caribbean movies , for example, all of the publicity photos and movie posters of Keira Knightley featured breasts that were digitally enhanced. She reportedly approved of it before, but has changed her mind when it comes to her more recent projects. I have to say that I completely support her in this one. I don't think anyone should manipulate Keira Knightley's breasts. Well, except to bring them closer to me. But I digress.