Author: brian

saturday’s valentines date turned out pretty cute. we made each other t-shirts over at fresh pressed, which was pretty cool (and were told by the owner that the lady ahead of us who’d brought two young boys with her was in fact a rock singer whose name may rhyme with Phiz Lair… we thought she looked familiar…). i have to grab the pictures from jessica’s camera so you can see our handywork. then we had a sweet little dinner at the charming la dolce vita. that was good solid too. sunday we did nothing and monday we had a barbeque with beer pong and rock band and superbad

the rest of the week has been pretty slow though. jessica was gone for a night and i realized quickly that it’s just a bit weird now being home alone for a whole night. a little too still, a little too quiet once i turn off the tv. april is going to suck, because she’ll be gone a lot more. maybe i can rent a puppy?

still meaning to go out and pick up copies of february’s hit albums from the ‘goats and the ‘chips, but until then a substitute pay day song to get you looking forward to march… when we’ll be blessed with some new music from we are scientists. stumbled on this first single last week and it’s getting a fair shake on the ipod, so i thought i’d let you join in the short wait to the full album. after hours may be a bit less kinetic than some of the hits off the last album, but i still think they’re all over the basic power-pop framework. fingers crossed the rest turns out this catchy.

(you can also check out their entertaining video here; i really appreciate their injection of an improv-comedy sensibility into their promos and other filmed projects. you can tell they’re just some dudes having a good time.)

yesterday, in what i can only hope was a non-valentine-related occurrence, i saw a dog with red painted toenails. not even a fancy poodle, where it would kind of make sense (would it though?), but a medium-sized, brownish, rascally-looking dog. too confused to even laugh, i was sadly not able to act fast enough to snap a photo either. the poor thing. how would peta feel about this situation?

anyway, happy valentine’s day, friends.

i am allowed to be excited by this holiday on some level because i have a special lady. we may not buy into all the cheesiness, but do see it as a good occasion to go out to a fancy dinner and be sappy, and that ain’t so bad. today at work a bunch of girls were emitting various giggles and squeals as they compared the floral arrangements they received from delivery men; that’s the part i’m not so into.

the very first year, we made the mutual decision to move our date night out to saturday to avoid the crowds and be able to fully enjoy our fill of wine. tonight she’s making a lovely meal at home so we don’t get gouged or treated badly by nerve-wracked wait-staff. that will be nice. last year, i cooked the ‘day of’ dinner, and she picked the saturday night special date location. we take turns. it’s a good system. i am fully content with our tradition.

cloverfield – 5 stars

i wondered aloud to jessica on the way home if this film was conceived before the fall of 2001 and postponed due to sensitivity, or in the years since, now that an acceptable distance has grown between that terrifying incident and the present in which this film occurs. a quick wikipedia check seems to suggest the latter, as well as including a summary of what various critics thought of the comparisons between this monster movie and those monstrous realities.

if you ask me, anyone who uses the parallels in plot and imagery as an excuse to dismiss this movie is missing the point, because this movie isn’t about ‘a horrible thing that happens to some poor new yorkers, that sorta resembles real events’. that would have been in poor taste, and yes, cheap.

but this is a movie about fear, plain and simple. the current world climate of anxiety feeding into it is merely a symptom of the times; it’s only one factor that contributes to the overwhelming, confusing state of pure terror these characters find themselves in.

through a well-executed handheld style that embodies that confusion, you’re sucked right into this emotional rollercoaster for 90 minutes of nail-biting and breath-holding. the building moments of ‘what’s happening here?’ uneasiness turn into ‘oh my god this is bad’ grief and sadness. the ‘what the fuck do we do now?’ uncertainty slowly becomes a ‘this is crazy but i have to get through this’ intensity.

seeing — or in most cases, barely glimpsing; or only seeing once it’s too late — exactly what you’d see if you were trapped as they are by the circumstances serves to translate the fear better than any monster or horror movie since the blinking dot snuck up on the unfortunate alien crew member. i left this movie literally exhausted and shaky from how much i felt every brutal beat of this story in my own body.

the obvious blair witch comparison both helps and hurts this movie; i’ll admit to really liking that film as well for pulling me in and truly scaring me. but i’d describe that as an experiment in unsettling creepiness, the fear of the unknown. here, it becomes clear very quickly that what you’re afraid of, what you’re running from, hiding from, fighting off successfully or unsuccessfully, is right there, in your face, and real no matter how much you wish it was a nightmare. as far as telling a full and satisfying story, this film far surpasses its predecessor.

a real credit to the people behind this project. a brilliant concept — monster movie from the perspective of the man on the street running in terror — was pulled off impressively when it could have been a disappointment. a genre so full of predictably ‘unpredictable’ scare moments or token gore is given a refreshing jolt of real emotion. and even the monster itself is new and interesting. kudos all around.

one word to the wise though. if you leave the theatre right after this movie and go up to the grove parking garage, as we did, watch out for an oncoming car driving over some metal grating and making a loud THUMP THUMP noise as it passes; you might almost shit your pants and look around you for explosions. the movie’s that good.

it was a good weekend. our team took a second straight victory at little bar’s trivia night saturday, with knowledge of such things as ‘movies with the word “black” in the title’, ‘famous people named jane’, miscellaneous theatre and plant-related questions, and a bunch of popular actors’ early, lesser-known roles. it was a glorious triumph.

then last night, i finally finished an outer-space RPG on the xbox i’ve been playing for weeks and weeks. the one you may have seen misinformed news anchors decrying for it’s ‘explicit sexual content’… which was really about 10 seconds of tactfully-angled foreplay less arousing than even the tamest of prime-time romantic scenes. silly reactionary media. the game was actually terrific. more so the farther in i got, getting more addicting and compelling with every chapter. check it out if your nerdy sci-fi itch needs scratching between seasons of battlestar galactica. 5 out of 5 and ready for the sequel whenever they want to crank that out.

we also tried a new combination on the ol’ panini griller — chicken breasts marinated in lawry’s baja sauce with chipotle basil pesto, roasted red peppers and goat cheese. sooooo good. though i’m thinking maybe a meltier, gentler cheese might be a slightly better choice for next time to go with such a powerfully tasty sauce. lots of experimenting to be done with that thing.

the latest episode of the wire, of course, continued to blow me away. only a handfull of episodes in, and i’m already preparing to grieve for the loss of one of the best shows in forever ever.

oh and also there was this movie we saw…

why yes, i have heard the new mountain goats album, in case you were wondering. i’m still chewing on it after a half-dozen or so listens. it’s good, for sure. i’ll probably write something more reviewish next week after picking up the full physical package and digesting the songs a bit more (along with the hot chip album i was not able to pick up at their postponed-due-to-illness show this week [single tear], which i have also given several listens).

but naturally, i couldn’t resist sharing the impressively verbal video that popped up this week as soon as i found it — in which his famously wordy lyrics are transformed into a visual maze through a nice long bit of single-shot fun. try not to get dizzy reading along to one of the best songs off the new album, ‘sax rohmer #1’.

so my guy didn’t win in the primary yesterday. at least, not here. he did alright for himself over all, and still has a lot of momentum going in to next time, but i’m a little sad california didn’t step up and go for the fresh face versus the established one. but still hopeful. in fact, since my vote didn’t seem to help out terribly, i even took it upon myself to make my first donation to this race this morning as a consolation prize. you’re welcome, america.

the weird thing is with the amount of time i spent on my couch listening to inane commentary on CNN last night waiting for results to come in, you’d think i was being drafted into the race myself. they treat it like a sport, which i guess is how you keep it interesting in a race-to-the-finish kind of way, but at the same time it’s just endless repetition of essentially baseless opinions by supposed experts. i know it’s doing me no good to watch, i’m not gaining any better an understanding of who will win. i’m especially not getting any better insight into WHY one should win over the other. even the speeches from the candidates are recycled. and yet i can’t… look… away…

i finally shut it off and watched the hilariously bad jon stewart/stephen colbert/conan o’brien crossover, which i only wish they had done when they had writers. i love the new generation of late night kings, but man do they look silly doing an extended slapstick routine. and yet i can’t… look… away…

meet this week’s little bar trivia champions! yes, my smart friends and i, led by our large-brained friends alex and peter, took home the crown (and the 20 dollar gift certificate). mostly thanks to our knowledge of paintings and southern states. i’d like to think it was also in part due to my team-naming idea — that is, stealing matt’s method of coming up with an offensive pop culture reference to use. and so, ‘the orphaned spears children’ were victorious.

um, super bowl was okay i guess. no stand-out great commercials. i prefer more offense in my super bowl, personally, although i did enjoy the intensity in the fourth quarter. the highlight was probably lawrence’s deep fried snickers bars.

and today i voted in the primary for barack obama and ‘yes’ on all those indian gaming propositions. i mean, i like gambling, who am i to say no to anyone asking for more of it?

more importantly, i hope more people decide to put their trust in what i see as ‘the new guard’ versus falling back on ‘the old guard’ when it comes to the next party candidate. when it comes down to it, a lot of the policies are similar and it’s a matter of nuance that either could still help shape as a prominent member of the senate. but at the end of the day, do we want to take a big step forward and elect a fresh, inspiring new face, or continue the dynastic trend of two families governing the country between them for the bulk of my lifetime? not that it’s the only reason i’m pro-obama, but i do feel strongly that no one immediately related to a president should be eligible for office. it just smacks of washington-insider power-mongering. and i’m sorry, but the same goes for spouses. if there’s going to be a first woman president, doesn’t it cheapen it a little that she had to be the wife of a president that served before her?

i’m a little bummed though; my ‘i voted!’ sticker fell off while i was driving to work from the polling place this morning and fell beneath the seat of my car. now no one knows how much i care about democracy!

you’re anxiously awaiting an update on the birthday shenanigans, i’m sure. i was just waiting until i’d sorted through the hundreds of pictures we took over the course of the weekend (with bonus new years pictures), so you could also see the fun for yourself.

what can i even say? every year i get older it seems like our birthdays get more and more fun. it started off real good with the lovely gift of flight of the conchords on thursday, dinner with fellow birthday girl diane and friends, followed by a secret surprise trip to the airport (jessica: ‘um, we may have to leave dinner when i tell you, because you have another present we have to pick up at a certain time’). i was forced to stand facing away from the arrivals until i was suddenly surrounded by gabe and matt, who’d flown in all the way from new york just to hang out for the birthday fun. super fun birthday moment number one. we went home and had some drinks and played rock band until much later than we should have.

friday we were supposed to wake up early and go snowboarding, but since they got in late and we stayed up later, we ended up not making it until early afternoon — what with the hunting for required snow chains and eating of del taco and what have you. still, good to get some time on the slopes in and get out of town for a few hours before heading back for the big party that night. super fun birthday moment number two.

then we showered up, rocked out a bit more, and headed out. we knew it would be a good night as soon as we got into the cab, having all downed a can of sparks, and started singing along to the oldies station. you’d think it was karaoke the amount of heart we put into butchering ‘i will survive’ on the way to santa monica. super fun birthday moment number three.

we made it in, ordered up some cheese steaks that were totally decent, and began with the drinking and partying. now let me just set the scene: the bar is a few steps below ground (hence the name 14 below, i guess), set behind a divey sports bar and next to a swanky lounge bar. it’s one square room with a big bar, and a long rectangle room with a stage. by about and hour or so in, we had at least half-filled both rooms with very nearly all of our favorite people in LA, except of course for our tragically sick mising fifth birthday buddy gino. not to mention dom flew in from san fran, madilyne and her boyfriend kyle drove down from vegas, and we brought some east coast representation with us. gabe and matt even had to wear shirts with my picture on them for losing their bet that the illini would win the rose bowl versus USC. basically, the scene was spectacular. super fun birthday moment number four.

things got underway with a bevy of shots, beers, and mingling, until the bomb who is dj out of controller, our friend ted, stepped up to his electronic tables and proceeded to knock us on our asses with killer dance music. just the right mix of indie/hipster-compatible tunes (republica? blur? nice!), remixes (matt and kim v flosstradamus? chromeo v MSTRKRFT? fucking A!), and cool electronic pop (daft punk and lcd never disappoint). the music was loud, the floor was bumping, ted had a grin on his face a mile wide, and i think i have him to thank entirely for not drinking so much i’d puke — we were too busy dancing to get as drunk as we could have. super fun party moment number five.

then we got cupcakes! and my card was signed by lots of nice people. and it had a picture inside of my gift: a set of not one, but TWO official, portable, foldable beer pong tables to replace my crappy old home made one. as you can imagine, i was quite excited. super fun birthday moment number six.

we made it home with much gratitude to the ride from stacy, then stayed up later, drank more, and played more rock band. jessica even did shots, that girl can party. super fun birthday moment number seven.

the next day we grabbed in-n-out, went to amoeba (picked up some superbad, hot fuzz and patton oswalt), then went to see rambo with all the guys. that, i’ll save for its own post tomorrow, but it was fun as hell, i’ll say that much. but even better when followed up with a test drive of the new beer pong tables back at justin and josh’s place. super fun birthday moment number eight.

it had to be one of the best birthday weekends on record. i was exhausted and happy and already looking forward to next time. matt coined the perfect term for it saturday morning over burgers: post-party depression. where all you can think of is how much fun you had last night and how you wish it was still going on. but as you can tell by the length of this post, i had an amazing time and am super grateful to everyone that participated. there’s no possible way that year 27 won’t be the best one so far.

oh and as you may have noticed, them there best of lists are out of the way, thankfully. anything i missed? every time i make those i get this pang of guilt knowing there were probably excellent books, albums, or movies that i just totally missed. please correct my ignorance if you are able.

last night was a fun laid back evening of drinks with justin, whose birthday was yesterday. it’s tradition to do a shot as the clock strikes twelve for the official passing of the birthday torch, so we played some darts and had some beers at the cozy inn leading up to midnight.

the weird part was that, the cozy being probably our favorite down-to-earth, divey type bar in los angeles, it was exceedingly weird when b-list celebrity andy dick walked in and sat down at the bar with a couple friends.

of all the places in los angeles i frequent, where i am partially on the lookout for fun celebrity sightings, the cozy inn ranks near the very bottom of the list — along with my neighborhood grocery store (which has also, surprisingly, allowed me to walk past such luminaries as ‘that lem guy from ‘the shield’‘ and ‘that dude from the show ‘numb3rs’ who also played neil’s brother in ‘freaks and geeks’‘) and the jack in the box drive-thru line (as yet, no sightings). i’ll give him credit though; it’s a damn great place to grab a beer.

then on the way out, some girls pulled in asking for the address of the bar to make sure they were in the right place, and when told, ‘not sure, but andy dick is in there!’, responded that one of them was ‘his girl’, so this was definitely the right place.

oh los angeles, you’re so funny.

why hello there late 20’s, nice to meet you! what’s that? oh you’re so funny. you know, based on first impressions, and i hope you take this as a compliment, you remind me a lot of my old friend mid 20’s, except with a little more confidence and wisdom. i know we’ll be spending a lot of time together over the next few years, and i can already tell we’re going to get along just fine. it’s so exciting to make new friends.

and yes, if you’re up for some fun — which i think by the look in your eye you usually are — you should definitely come along to our big birthday party tomorrow night! it’s gonna be crazy good times. the bar even has us blocked out as a private party on their calendar. how important and awesome does that make us?