Author: brian

a very full week, including a beach party, two LA film fest screenings, and an upcoming trip to vegas for the weekend with TEN, count ’em, TEN college buddies. it may get a little unruly.

both of our selections from the fest turned out really well though. monday night we went to see the new chuck palahniuk adaptation, choke. it was cool seeing something that won’t be out until september, and i always love getting to hear a little bit about a movie afterward from a director. plus chuck as a surprise guest, which was a bonus. what a strange man, and an odd movie. good odd though, for sure. i’d say if you like things that are a bit dark and twisted, but funny — closer to rules of attraction than fight club maybe, even though i know i’m mixing controversial authors — you will enjoy this as i did. it’s definitely less stylized than a david fincher movie though, so don’t expect the same level of grittiness.

tuesday was a screening of spaced, the sitcom that birthed the team behind shaun of the dead and hot fuzz. that was just plain old fun and i pre-ordered the box set today so i could see the rest of the episodes now that they’re finally coming to the US.

speaking of pre-ordering, i don’t have to tell anyone anymore how excited i am about the upcoming batman movie. however, what you may not know is that they’re also doing a short anime film collection bridging the gap between the two movies (in the vein of the animatrix, which you may have heard of), called batman: gotham knight, and holy shit, i don’t think anything direct-to-dvd has or ever will made me this jittery with excitement. you KNOW i got the double-disc collector’s version of that shit.

been caught up in a new little project, so a lot of my computer screen time has been spent elsewhere. plus i haven’t had a whole lot of excitement to report. i mean, we did win once again at bar trivia on saturday, but that’s almost expected at this point. i’m fairly confident that of the dozen or so regulars that rotate on or off our team, no matter which five or six show up to play, we will be a force to be reckoned with. and i find the idea that as a whole my friends are smarter than the other people in the neighborhood extremely satisfying.

also caught the latest animation show (now in its fourth volume, to be specific) friday night, which i won’t go on too long about. basically i’m still a huge fan of the idea of showcasing great animated shorts you may never see otherwise, but this year’s batch was slightly disappointing. i got a sense very early on that an unnecessary percentage revolved around slapstick and/or violence, and had to tell myself not to be so cynical and just enjoy it. there were definitely some winners in there, but not their best showing overall.

i don’t usually make posts just to point to articles i read and enjoyed, but this camile paglia article on salon, covering the topics from ‘why not hilary’ to the current state of american feminism was so good i couldn’t resist.

she’s obviously a brilliant woman, and she gets so many things right, i was energized reading it. personally my heart is still with edwards, but i have to admit she’s got a good point with sebelius.

between an end-of-may new york trip and an end-of-june vegas trip coming up, i am going to have to make a concerted effort not to spend too much money. it think it will help that i’m currently very much into watching a bunch of episodes of bleach, and still playing the apparently never-ending GTA IV. with jessica leaving once again for work trips that will leave me home alone, it should be easy to stay in a live on the cheap in the intervening weeks.

of course, there are always things that threaten to come along and foil that. like the pretty much unmissable animation show which is coming to LA this friday (which reminds me… who wants to go? plans need to be made), although that’s just standard movie ticket price. the 12 dollar beers at last weekend’s cubs/dodgers game didn’t help much, and they couldn’t even pull out the win to make it worthwhile, the jerks.

plus i’m very curious about the pending releases of both the new, improved iphone and the hopefully cheaper, if not quite as cool samsung instinct, so i can upgrade from good phone with crappy internet/messaging to better phone with slightly better internet/messaging in the not-to-distant future. hrm. i have this problem where once i decide i want something, i find it really tough to put off going out and getting that thing. we’ll see how long my will can hold out on this issue, and just thank my lucky checkbook that i like my car and haven’t yet started considering upgrading that.

so… new york, huh? that was my first time there and i’ll say one thing, that place is really something. i think almost every meal we had was amazing. there is a shitload to do and see; we could go back several times and have plenty of options left. getting around is a snap, there’s so much great stuff is packed into such a dense city.

of course some of the things that make me afraid to ever try living there are the flip side of those same pluses. all our meals were on a vacation budget, and that place is expensive (13 bucks for a six pack? drinker, please). it’s a little overwhelming and made me feel small, walking between narrow buildings on sidewalks packed with people. and we had to wait forever for all the best stuff.

i’m not complaining, i think as a vacation it was awesome and i want to go back, for sure. but in a wider sense, since that’s the other big city you go to if you want to live in a huge metropolis, i think i ended up where i belong. new york would be kickass if you’re a dude in finance making lots of money and partying a lot just out of college, i imagine. so much going on, so much energy. but once you start slowing down and relaxing a bit, new york seems like it’d just be exhausting. whereas i am a very relaxed person by nature already, and i warmed instantly to the southern california vibe. plus, too many people in ties, and i’m not down with the dockers and neckwear crowd. i still dress like a college radio dj when i come to work every day and i like it that way.

so what did we do? i can describe it in a sentence: wake up late to go to a big lunch, walk around building up an appetite for a huge dinner, and then get drunk. except the one day where we went to coney island to ride the coaster, which was creaky as hell, and see the freak show, which was COOL as hell. since pretty much all we did was eat and drink, here is a list of the deliciousness in chronological order, for posterity:

— pdt: neat cocktails and gourmet hot dogs you get by going in through a ‘secret’ phone booth in a divey hot dog restaurant. the everything bagel hot dog with cream cheese was killer.

— clinton street bakery: spectacular omelet (goat cheese and bacon!), and jessica’s french toast, once covered in their maple/butter syrup, was swoon-worthy. plus i had beer with breakfast for the first time ever, even though breakfast was at 2:30.

— death & co: another speakeasy-style place with super-fancy cocktails and excellent ambiance, although i blew it with my drink choice. must return.

— max: decent italian is not hard to do, but this place was just unfair — we left in pain from not being able to stop eating, it was so far beyond just ‘good’. i even ordered the simplest thing ever, fettuccine with meat sauce, and i just… couldn’t… stop.

— 151 rivington: some whatever basement bar on the lower east side but we had a sweet corner spot and they played decent music.

— nice green bo: in chinatown, we had some savory dishes, but most importantly, we had dumplings they called ‘crab and pork tiny buns’ that were seriously magical. we finished our meal and were full, and yet, we had to order another plate of these because it seemed wrong not to.

— peter lugers: good steak. not end-the-world good like maybe it had been built up to be, but hell, a good steak is always a great thing.

— library: even better jukebox, hipper crowd, a bit dark and loud, but fun.

— brooklyn brewery: the ‘tour’ was really just a 10 minute spiel on their history and basic brewing, but then, we drank a lot of their beer for cheap and it was awesome.

— loreley: german food (kerspatzle MIT SPECK!) and huge steins of beer, again how can you go wrong? i will post a video from this soon to illustrate.

— grimaldi’s: if you think waiting over an hour for a pizza isn’t worth it, you are so, so wrong.

— shake shack: tried to go here on saturday but it was raining, so we looped back on our way out before catching the plane. again, an hour wait, but definitely on par with the best burgers i’ve had in LA.

i really wanted to weigh myself before and after this trip, but let’s just say i don’t need solid numbers to know that i need to make best friends with a treadmill and weight machine this month. GREAT TIME though. even greater because we went out with gino and sarah, met up with emily, matt, gabe and alexis while we were there… such a good idea. vacations are even better with friends. too bad it’s over and i’m broke now, but i guess what this pesky ‘job’ thing is for.

largely successful weekend. sarah’s birthday was a nice friday night at the roost. iron man saturday night was totally solid. monday was just a whole lot of lounging, some of which included hanging out with spencer now that he’s back in LA.

sunday’s beer pong barbecue was especially successful, in that the weather gnomes had been forecasting rain in the preceding days. once we got things going we not only avoided any rain, but even got a few solid hours of sunshine. summer, i declare thee officially kicked off. also, my notorious failure rate at these tournaments of my own planning was slightly alleviated; jessica and i made it to the top 8 before elimination, and ted and i even made it to the final four. some day, i swear, all these days of practicing will result in actual improved performance. at least i won at three-way poker after most everyone went home happily exhausted from a day of fun.

now i shall pack up my things and head tomorrow morning for a glorious vacation in new york city. cool people to hang out with, mostly sunny days predicted, and no agenda other than lots of great food and drinks. if you happen to have one killer new york food, drink, or fun spot that you absolutely recommend, please do share and i will see you next week, los angeles.

this weekend i started and finished a neat little book. john darnielle of the mountain goats, writing an entry in the 33 1/3 series. if you’re not familiar, these are great, small-size, maybe 100-page books devoted to classic albums. they’re deep-dives into some of the best albums ever made, by critics, fans, sometimes other musicians. this was my first dip into their very extensive pool — i think here are almost sixty out by now — and it was fantastic. not only because it was really interesting to see a longer piece by one of my favorite songwriters, but because for this particular one, on black sabbath’s master of reality, he tackled it in the form of a diary, written by a fictional sabbath fan in the 80’s who’s going through his own issues. the way the character related to the album made it impossible not to appreciate. very, very cool.

now i think i will be picking up the decemberists’ colin meloy on the replacements’ let it be in the very near future as well. and the neutral milk hotel one is apparently their best seller, so i imagine i’ll get around to that soon too.

i’ll probably be trying to catch iron man this weekend since i still haven’t, and leave a potential trip to see the new indiana jones movie for another time. i’m pretty hesitant, because a) i heard it’s about aliens, b) the ads all make it look super cheeseball (the “you’re a professor?”…”part time” exchange is on par with da vinci code‘s “i have to get to a library!” line in my mind), and a double-bolded, underlined, capitalized letter C) i fucking hate shia lebouf.

i mean i’ll give it a chance probably, but after seeing transformers, i can’t understand why anyone likes that guy. granted, that whole movie blew big time, so it’s not entirely his fault. but he seems like such a whiny twerp. how can you put him next to indy? especially after sarah showed me this youtube montage of his, shall we say, specialty, i just don’t see him doing anything but drag the movie down.

then of course spencer, the voice of reason, stepped in and reframed it for me as an expectations game. i realized that if i go in with the same attitude as i had for the die hard sequel, i should be okay… just be glad that after growing up watching them on TBS or USA, i’m finally going into a theatre to see an indiana jones movie, and as long as it feels like one, it’ll be at the very least a good time and even possibly a decent movie.

still, i’m definitely more excited to see robert downey jr. blowing things up than a 60-year-old harrison ford (is he 70 yet?), swinging from rafters.

then we came to the end – joshua ferris – 4 stars

[see mini-review by rolling over cover in the shelfari widget on the right.]

a lot of the books i read are about people who do jobs i wish i did. a lot of writers write about writers. some are about jobs so far different from my own, it’s interesting to get their perspective on life: soldiers, teachers, businessmen, even the unemployed. a lot of them shirk off the workdays of their main characters as the least interesting part of their lives to focus on their interpersonal relationships, or focus on the part of life we novel-readers can all relate too, childhood through our college years. i’ve read and enjoyed books that employ all of these settings.

this was my first time reading a novel not just about bland office life, but the very same industry i myself wake up every morning to contribute to. what a strange feeling. i’ll need to have a nice long discussion with another person not in the ad business to better see how our thoughts compare, but my guess is that it’s pretty simple; the observations and criticisms have a bit sharper bite that comes from knowing exactly what they mean.

despite the eerie familiarity, i did enjoy it quite a bit. the plural narration was a fresh way to come at it and probably the best way to underline the murmuring herd mentality that takes over among the group. their office fretting starts off funny and gets more pathetic as you get further drawn into their pettiness, but then you get moments of humanity that keep you from giving up on them. it’s not so much the silliness of the office as the angst of having a decent job and hoping you don’t lose it, while still wishing you had something more, better, different. and you certainly don’t have to work at an ad agency to relate to that.

quick post at the end of the day here. i missed another pay day song last time so here’s another double dose of songs from albums i am highly likely to buy next time i make a run to amoeba.

frightened rabbit – the modern leper

heard this first on blog fresh, and loved it instantly. i heard bits of the shout out louds’ more passionate singles; jessica said it reminded her a little bit of counting crows when i first played it for her. now as much as i try i can’t but hear that too, and yet i still plan to pick it up. and if i’m willing to do that despite connections to that rasta teddy-bear looking dude, you know it must be good.

throw me the statue – about to walk

this one i picked up from a KEXP podcast, and knowing nothing other than what i gleaned from a quick trip to their myspace page afterward, already cannot stop listening to this song. it’s got the same wordy wonder of casiotone for the painfully alone, whom i really dig, only with more instruments and texture. beauty.

enjoy yourselves while i finish up my day and go home to potentially finish my book tonight and have something to post about tomorrow.

things are going well in my world. i’m pleased that in the last week my candidate of choice seems to have finally become the inevitable choice for our party. i’m reading a pretty great book, my extensive time with GTA the past week has been thoroughly enjoyable. even forgetting sarah marshall was better than i thought it would be. same with the sushi place down the street we finally got around to trying.

plus a vacation on the horizon in only a few short weeks!

so what else is new? um, the new dark knight trailer makes it hard to sit still waiting for this movie. we’re having our annual beer pong tournament memorial day weekend, so i hope lots of people can come. they finally fixed the treadmills in our apartment gym, which means i can get back to regular exercise, which is both good and bad news. last night we made some surprisingly delicious burritos, which is never a bad thing.

for some reason though this week seems very ‘meh’. maybe it’s the not-quite-summer blues (or (may) greys, as it were)? maybe it’s because in the back of my mind i’m aware that several of my best friends are leaving LA in the near future or already left california; moving on to their own exciting next chapters, and i am not really.

or shit, maybe it’s because it’s past lunch time and i need a sandwich.