Author: brian

oh man, did i enjoy me a five-day thanksgiving break. it seemed my whole team at work was out last wednesday, so i just checked email a few times from home and got my holiday started early. let me tell you, i did very, very little for five whole days and it was pretty much glorious.

thanksgiving with jessica’s family was nice and delicious — ham AND chicken, but no turkey? less traditional, but i will not argue with having two meats in a single meal. i still don’t speak spanish so there were less jokes on my part, but they are very nice to me and we got to just relax and have a mom-cooked meal. i approve. jess also made some great pumpkin muffins i could have eaten about a dozen more of.

the rest of the weekend was spent almost entirely on or around the couch in our apartment. i played a lot of mirror’s edge, which i really liked. we watched a lot of movies we’ve seen before on cable. some people came over friday night to play an MXC drinking game (highly recommended) and rock band, some of the same people came over saturday to grill burgers, watch the USC game and go to little bar for trivia. we won’t talk about what place we came in, let’s just say we were not in top form due to what seemed like a single missed slot every round.

the only other thing i technically did today, as in the aforementioned sunday midnight don hertzfeldt show. he played all the greats and concluded with the new one, i am so proud of you, which is equally as good as the last one. i would have probably rather gone to the 7 or 9:30 show, and been able to convince someone to come with me than go alone to the midnight show, but i still say it was worth it. he was even generous enough to stay for a full q&a afterwards even though it was after 1am.

i didn’t blog because it was an almost purely veg-out in front of the tv weekend (if five days can even still qualify as a weekend), which was exactly what i wanted. the time i did spend at the computer i spent writing a review of penny arcade adventures episode two, if you happen to be interested in such things. and i’m backed up about three article ideas so please do keep checking back there if you’re at all enjoying my in-depth nerdery.

i think yesterday i was busying doing work almost every minute of the day. there was also some fancy cooking at home (the mushroom tart turned out lovely thanks, though i am always interested in there being more goat cheese if possible). all in all, a full tuesday, if not very storied.

but monday night there was a decemberists show, which i liked. i think jessica and i agreed it was not their best, perhaps due to energy levels, or song selection — though they did play ‘on the bus mall’ AND ‘engine driver’, two of my faves — or because it was a weeknight and i am getting too old to be super into something on a monday at 10pm.

my biggest gripe though is with the wiltern, which is a really nice place laid out terribly for standing room, general admission live music. any other place, everyone is on the same level, and the stage is raised above that to give everyone at least the chance of seeing over the crowd. or at the very least between the heads of the people in front of you. this trip, we were not there early enough to get nearer the front of any of the different tiers of space, and so we were standing almost level with the stage, and far away, and it made for difficult viewing. i normally don’t have a problem, being of average height, but this time even i was obstructed a lot of the time. to say nothing of jessica, who has a hard time at some normal shows, but at this one was almost entirely screwed. i’ve illustrated how dumb this setup is with this handy wiltern seating chart for tall and short people.

whose idea was this? it probably works great if you’re sitting in chairs, but what percentage of concerts that they put on have seats? are the wiltern architects all 6’2″? anyway, it was frustrating.

less so is the good news that the don hertzfeldt screening this weekend, which i tried to buy tickets to six weeks ago before they were on sale, then three weeks ago when they had gone on sale and sold out, has added a third show at midnight to which i quickly scooped up two tickets. now i just have to talk someone into going to a midnight movie with me on a sunday night.

also, i didn’t go to work today because no one else was, so i stayed home to sleep, launder, buy a pumpkin pie and play mirror’s edge. so far, mission accomplished.

as is custom every few months, i’m having a bit of guilt about not writing more, and so begins another spot of trying to write every day (or at least every weekday, when i’m sure to spend a certain amount of time in front of a computer. it’s an exercise in balancing the desire to have a fairly complete ongoing record of my days with not listing off boring minutia of no value. i’m fairly sure my life isn’t as mundane as it would appear by the fact that i go ten or more days without writing, just that i often don’t take the time to reflect on what really happened or went through my mind each day.

a couple things for today. one, we played poker saturday night, and it felt less boisterous than usual. fewer players, as our poker crew is starting to dwindle as people move away, and less drinking, as several of my friends have entered into a weight loss bet running through til january and every calorie counts. can’t be mad about either, but something’s missing. the real problem is trying to fill out the table, as i’m not making many new friends these days, and as it turns out a lot of people aren’t very into poker. especially women. i’d never really thought of it as a particularly manly game (when playing for a five dollar buy-in, anyway), but several attempts to involve more girls have fallen pretty flat. maybe the answer is to combine it with some other activity like a pot luck or wine tasting, and sneak a little poker workshop in to build their fundamentals and confidence when it comes to gambling?

the other is, i’m two weeks into a very remedial effort to stop smoking by the end of the year. near the beginning of the month, with eight weeks left in the year, i decided to start at 8 a day and cut one out every week until the end, with the goal of zero a day starting in january. so far it’s easy mostly but sometimes very difficult, ie when i’m bored and/or drinking. i think i’m addicted more to the break and excuse to go outside than i am to the smoke, but that could be the nicotine playing tricks on me. someone made a joke saturday about how repulsive smoking is, and i wonder if it really is completely disgusting and everyone has just been overly polite for the past few years. i also wonder if my current method is only going to make things worse as i look more and more forward to each of the decreasing smoke breaks per day, and then finally taking away that last precious one that’s been built up will be that much harder. i guess we’ll see as the days go by; though i cheated saturday by borrowing a couple from sunday, and ended up basically fine when i ran out early last night. the biggest problem is availability; like a candy dish, as long as it’s around you constantly indulge, but take it away and you don’t suffer terribly for want of candy.

this week?

my life slowed down enough to finally crank out an overdue election post at under culture. i did read an inhuman amount of news, but politics is not my job so i focused more on the pop culture side of the race, and i think i did a good job pulling in a bunch of interesting tidbits into one possibly decent essay. feel free to comment stating opinions to the contrary.

also, my mom requested holiday wish lists from all of us kids (which seems slightly strange to say at this age, as does using the word ‘kids’ when we’ve all graduated, entered the work force, and live all over the country), so we obliged. now jessica and i are fully converted to gift shopping mode even though it still rubs me the wrong way to see all the premature christmas ads on tv this early. if nothing else, we can spread the expenses over more weeks, and start a small pile of boxes in a corner to build anticipation for the trip.

between the two of us, we’ve opted to spend less on gifts and treat ourselves to a night of taste experiments at moto while we’re in chicago, which i’m really looking forward to. science plus food equals fun.

aaaaaand there’s not much else to report unless you’re curious about my hours spent playing fallout 3 or watching death note, which have occupied most of my spare time lately. the decemberists are playing a show on monday, so i have that to look forward to, and otherwise the coming weekend is wide open, so i am open to suggestions for good times.

i haven’t posted a new song in months and months, mostly because i’ve realized i’m no longer that ‘with it’ when it comes to music. my tastes have become so refined — in that they’re specific, not so much that they’re high-brow or pretentious — that i know what i like to within a 95% margin of error, and new bands have little chance of cracking my shell of selectivity. at this point, i discover one or two new bands a year that have any chance of sticking with me, and those often through some stroke of luck rather than effort.

for those interested, this year’s was frightened rabbit, and their cd is one of the few i’ve listened to repeatedly. you should buy it, it’s wonderful.

what i do know is what i already like, and that is the mountain goats. one of the only other musicians that has impressed me this year was their opening act a few weeks ago, kaki king (did you see the video a few posts ago? so f’ing cool).

together, the two made a six-song EP of nice new songs. unfortunately, you could only hear these songs a) at the live show, which was great, or b) by buying the vinyl-only album at the live show. i had cash aplenty at said show, but no record player at home, being of a modern digital-age temperament and born just past the point where i might own one out of nostalgia. this was frustrating to me, because as a loyal fan i wanted badly to pay these nice people for their lovely music. as evidence, i had recently purchased his digital download EP, satanic messiah, and gladly payed the requested amount for the privilege of hearing those songs. i was going crazy over the fact i had no such option in the case of the vinyl.

my solution is makeshift but hopefully suffices. a very nice friend of mine (who shall go unnamed) was kind enough to digitize his copy of the album and share with his fellow super-fan. i, not wanting to steal from one of my favorite musicians, decided to go back to the purchase/donation page for the other digital EP, and pay for that a second time. it’s less than the cost of the album at the show, but i’m not getting nice screen-printed cover art or covering the cost of manufacturing. i hope my karma is in balance.

especially because track one off of the vinyl release is a beautiful song, which would have been criminal to miss out on were it not for my fine friend. it’s not like anything he’s put out before, focused on kaki king’s sweet feminine voice instead of john darnielle’s distinct intensity, and you really have to hear it. i’m doing this as a short-term favor to friends, not an attempt to leak anything on a massive scale or drive traffic here (gave that up ages ago), so enjoy while you can.

another week poorly blogged. not only was it the most exciting night of the political year, but i’ve been super busy at work.

tuesday night was great, we had a solid dozen or so friends over, and spirits were high. as with everyone else, i am happy and hopeful that america made a good choice. pretty sad about proposition 8 going down, though i’m confident that justice will be served on that one in the coming months as well.

got to go to denver for just over 24 hours for work, and see almost none of it. the research facility was nice, and our hotel was decent (the decor in the lobby was memorable, at least). other than that, i was unable to form any opinion of the place other than it doesn’t feel very much like a big city. i think because the streets are wide and uncongested. and they have a crazy-ass airport.

it’s almost the end of college football season already. and my family is starting to exchange christmas gift ideas. the year will be over before we know it, and with it, the george bush era. i’m not normally a fan of time whizzing by so quickly, but in this case i think it’s probably for the best.

oh you poor, collapsing thing, i’ve been a jerk to you lately.

too busy with election news at every possible moment of computer time. seriously, i’m somewhat concerned that even if the heavens shine down on us come next week, i will still have a personal battle to fight against election news withdrawl. i check media outlets and other blogs several times a day. i watch countdown and the daily show religiously. what happens next week? i guess we can go back to laughing at what a miserable fuckup george bush is for a few more months, with the added comfort that it’ll all be over soon.

saw some excellent concerts last weekend; if you’ve ever wondered if girl talk live was a good idea, i’m here to tell you not to. as i captioned my twitter photo, you’ll never see so many white people jumping up and down with that much enthusiasm. dance party central. if you missed it (ie if you’re ALL of our friends who wimped out, bunch of babies), shame on you.

mountain goats show sunday, equally great. for once in a great long time, the opening act was supremely talented and enjoyable and convinced me to buy her cd. if you’ve never heard of kaki king, you should watch this video and at the very least revel in her skillful hands.

super talented and super cute. and if i were the type who went fishing for blog traffic, i would be mourning the fact that i didn’t whip out my iphone and take a photo or two when she took her shirt off for the last song (as promised earlier in the set but not believed, by me at least). i think the audience all respected her too much — or all the lonely single indie nerds were too in love with her — to take advantage of the situation. too bad they probably didn’t know any better at the time.

otherwise… well, i’ve been catching up on tv at home with jessica and working fairly hard. writing has not been a major part of my week lately, and that’s a shame. although i did find time to write a review of a game i DIDN’T want to play, sort of. and i’m working on another good post, just need to find some time to write it.

if you’re hurting for good stuff to read that isn’t election-related, however, might i suggest you geek out on spencer’s four part horror series over at under culture. it’s long, but exhaustive, and dare i say, right on the money. and if you’re anything like me — that is, shamefully behind on your horror education — it will teach you some serious lessons and give you a good half-dozen movies to bump up on your netflix queue.

decent weekend. nick and norah on friday made for a nice date night. saturday, SC beat the other team so bad we essentially stopped watching in favor of beer pong. sunday we went mini-golfing, which i haven’t done in years, for stacey’s birthday, and i won out of our group. who rules? of course, i lost to jessica at both skee-ball and pop-a-shot basketball, but who’s counting. i maintained my manhood ratio with a solid air hockey performance.

also had my first iphone frustration this weekend. saturday night, i stopped by our friend joe’s housewarming party and neglected to write down the apartment number. everyone i tried to call, i connected just long enough to say, ‘hey it’s brian, i forgot…’ and then it disconnected and said, ‘call failed’. same thing the next morning. turned out i just needed to power it off and restart, proving the old IT guy adage right once again. odd glitch, hopefully this is an isolated incident and not the beginning of justifiable regret.

also planning a little election night party at our place on this, the last day of voter registration in california, and a mere two weeks before election eve. can’t wait to celebrate and/or start planning our escape plan together. responding to the email, jen said, “i’ll bring champaigne, to either toast a victory or break over my own head to put me out of my misery.” fun times, indeed.

missing: brian. sorry, friends!

catching up in a few sentences, vacation was great, austin’s a fantastic city, one of the few i’ve been to i could imagine myself living in if given the opportunity. ACL is great fun compared to the ordeal that is coachella, even if there are slightly fewer, less exciting bands. since i’ve been home, i got my wisdom teeth out and they are finally starting to feel good enough where i don’t have to be careful eating. i’ve played a fair bit of rock band 2 and watched a lot of TV.

currently my roomie/girlfriend is on a business trip across town in downtown LA for work, staying in a hotel 25 minutes from our apartment, which is kinda weird for me. there’s good reason, but it’s still funny to me that i miss someone who’s still within cab fare distance.

now that my major vacation for the season is over it’s all about looking forward to holidays i guess; i know about a dozen people with birthdays or other parties this month, we went to knott’s scary farm for haunted houses last weekend, and there’s that election thing in the way, but then we get into christmas trip countdown mode. nice.

Last day of vacation in Austin checking out some cool shops, buying t-
shirts and music — the geek power of waterloo records is high. Check
out their rad 33 1/3 rack (I picked up the let it be volume by colin
meloy). Then over to the Ginger Man with 100 beers on tap and some
darts before we head off for a fancy goodbye dinner. Great week!