the darjeeling limited – 2 stars

nothing’s more sad than seeing an artist you used to love get less and less good at the things that made you love them. i ADORE rushmore as a film, because it was a quirky love story told in a visually interesting way. i really liked tenenbaums too, because it was a quirky portrait of a family full of great characters, even if there wasn’t quite as much of a satisfying story arc.

i think from there it’s gone downhill, as mr. anderson has since devolved in terms of storytelling and spiraled out of control into his own quirky visual style of film-making. i was pretty strongly disappointed with life aquatic because as much as i wanted to like it, i was honestly bored by it. i’ve been told, ‘but the style matched so well with the emotions of the character’, to which i counter, ‘yes, but i didn’t like the character either. that’s the problem.’

with darjeeling, which is at least only 90 minutes, i find the same problems continuing to disappoint me. instead of applying his stylish eye for detail to a strong narrative, all you really get for your 12 bucks is an hour and a half of some spoiled rich people aimlessly trying to ‘figure themselves out’, who you don’t necessarily like or care about in the beginning, and who the script never bothers making you care much about by the end.

it looks nice and there’s good music, but when the slow motion dancing happens at the end of rushmore it feels like a triumphant moment. when the same visual trick gets dragged out with three brothers running in slow motion to catch a train in darjeeling, i was mostly just glad it meant the movie was over.

i know i should be saying, ‘not much to talk about because all i’ve been doing is playing halo’, but that’s not the case, actually. i mean, aside from working a lot and sifting through all the fall tv shows trying to weed out the ones not worth following (reaper was the first to go… sorry kevin smith but i think it’s aimed more at 13 year olds than me), i’ve got a whole new time suck. i picked up a game called skate.

it works a lot like i imagine skateboarding does in real life; when you get it in your head that you have to nail a certain trick in a certain place, you can easily spend hours just trying that one thing over, and over, and over. and over again. until you finally get it. one example you can even see on the internet, since they also incorporate a feature where once you do finally nail something, you can save and even upload it for public viewing.

anyway, since i never got to be much of a skateboarder in real life, this game is intensely satisfying to me. and every night after jessica has gone to bed this week, i have been perfecting my flip trick to grind to manual combos with much thumb flickery. it’s pretty much awesome.

now, we weekend.

On the train i almost missed this morning for a work trip. Forgot my book, my magazine, my psp, my ds, have my ipod and laptop but left my headphones sitting on my desk at home. There's only so much power point one can stand per train ride, so now i'm staring mostly at this, because i also wasn't smart enough to pick a seat on the ocean-facing side. Ugh. It's only tuesday.

xbox red ring purgatory update:
customer service call made: 9/26
coffin received: 10/2
coffin sent back: 10/3
arrived at service center: ??
fixed box sent: ??
fixed box received: ??

so we’ll see how that goes. can it beat the one full month mark and show up before i leave the country on vacation? stay tuned!

speaking of which, i found the most excellent tourist activity for japan yesterday. can you guess? of course you can’t! who would have thought you could go to a NINJA MUSEUM?

Free in-n-out truck for lunch! Today is a good day.

also we held on to the football game in washington, i got to see mike who was down from SF, i got fully wasted at alex’s birthday party (which i haven’t done in a while… thanks for the great party alex!), mostly because i kept losing at asshole. then sunday i got to rock some halo despite my gimped machine thanks to a generous loaner from dan. so the weekend was excellent too.

how sad is this?

monday afternoon i decided to finally take some time and make me some new ringtones. i’ve got the wonderful samsung ‘blade’ phone with sprint, so i went to this sprint users site where they tell you how to take your own mp3s and turn them into ringtones, and upload them to your phone, all for free.

i’ve had the same ring (‘comin’ home’ by hum, the namesake of this site) since i got this phone maybe a year and a half ago, and i figured it was time to switch it up. so i made me a decemberists’ ‘sixteen military wives’ and a mountain goats’ ‘no children’ ring too. that was four whole days ago, and i have yet to receive a single phone call in that entire time. come on people, i want to hear some triumphant trumpets or some pounding pianos!

speaking briefly of hum, i think jessica and i are among possibly only a handful of people in the united states that recognized their song ‘stars’ was used in some recent cadillac commercials. i give her full credit; she absolutely called it a few moments before i did. another reason we’re meant to be.

and lastly, a new pay day song is well overdue, so take my advice if you haven’t already and go get the latest new pornographers album. on first listen i didn’t like it quite as much as twin cinema and felt a bit of disappointment, but it grows on me more every time. and the flute assault on all the things that go to make heaven and earth (great song, bad title) is a nice touch to one of the more energetic songs on the album that keeps getting stuck in my head.

it’s definitely getting to feel like fall. i was invited to go to a halloween event. the sun’s below the horizon now when i leave work for the day. i thought about putting on a jacket last weekend. and there are so many new tv shows to watch again. we’ll see how many of them keep me past the first couple trial episodes.

i keep saying, ‘tokyo is coming up, better start looking for things to do there’, and not doing that. it’s only four weeks from saturday. i have a feeling it’ll be the week before and i’ll be scrambling just to write down the exchange rate and figure out how to get from the airplane to the place we’re staying. must get on that.

oh, and i got new shoes like i said i would. the pair i’m wearing right now feel funny, either because they’re so new, or because my right foot is slightly wider than my left and means that one shoe of the pair technically doesn’t fit. troubling.

WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS? was it harvesting all those little sisters in bioshock? was that unforgivable? jesus, and at the very MOMENT i turned it on, before i even got the shrink wrap off the fresh new copy of halo 3 i picked up at best buy on the way home?

this is what injustice looks like, especially since this is the SECOND time in less than a year of xbox ownership this has happened. FUCK YOU, XBOX! your halo 3 KILLED my 360 and now i’m in red ring purgatory of death for a MONTH? AGAIN!? utter bullshit.

a couple things.

i just caught this trailer for southland tales, the new flick by the guy who made donnie darko. if you said to me, ‘it’s a movie about the end of the world starring the rock, sarah michelle gellar, sean william scott, and justin timberlake’, i’d be guaranteed to laugh in your face. but watching the trailer, it looks really interesting, and amazingly, potentially really good. i think a really admirable quality in a director is to take very average actors and bring out the performances no one ever thought they were capable of in a well-written story (the difference between jessica alba in sin city and jessica alba in good luck chuck or fantastic four, for example). although i’ll admit i always thought the rock had a lot of charisma and could really break out if he finally stars in an actually good film. i’ll definitely be keeping my eyes on this one.

over the weekend of course, the USC football team whipped up again, and we had a great time hanging out drinking beers, talking shit and watching them stomp on washington state. but i realized sunday when i watched the 3rd quarter of the bears game, that i am a really spoiled sports fan. the only team i watch religiously is my college football team that plays 12 or so games a year and has won about 95% of them over the past four or five years. watching the bears screw up and turn a close game into a blowout in a single quarter just made me sad, but also guilty for not being a very well-rounded person used to the disappointment a lot of better sports lovers must feel on a regular basis. i’m so sheltered in my trojan bubble. could it be symptomatic of an overall level of comfort, contentment and security in my life that is making me a weaker man? maybe i should become a bruin fan for a while to put some hair on my chest (TAKE THAT TED YOU UCLA FUCK!–inside joke).

then a final nerd note: last night, i finally finished bioshock on my xbox. hooooooooly fuck. up to now, i’ve been hesitant to plunge as far as doing lengthy game reviews on here to reserve myself from going fully geek-core (‘far too late,’ i hear you saying, and yet i cling to dignity…), but i think this one might merit it. i’d get into it right now but this post is already too long. i’ll just say two things: i’m glad i finished it before getting distracted by the halo 3 storm, and again — hooooooly fuck.

every time i’ve finished a book in the past few months, i’ve thought, ‘i should write something about that. i haven’t reviewed a book in ages’. then as they piled up on my desk, ‘oh man, these reviews are going to get shorter and less thoughtful and get consolidated into a “summer reading” list for sure’.

now that summer’s practically over (seriously? when did it even start, and it’s over sunday?), i guess i better do this for real. the funny thing is that most of the non-comic picks were actually terrible choices as far as fitting the classic idea of a summer read. but then again, i’ve only been to the beach three times this summer and i live in freaking southern california.

anyway, to be as concise as possible, here are three-sentence reviews and ratings of some very good books.

summer reading 2007

blood meridian – cormac mccarthy – 3 stars

this guy can write descriptive prose about a desert landscape for pages upon well-crafted pages. he really makes you feel how hellish it is, but then, by empathizing with the characters, you too just grow despondent and feel like a dried-out husk. i appreciate the talent, but wish the totally captivating judge holden got a higher page-count so it wasn’t essentially a chore with occasional violent moments of excitement.

marvel 1602 – neil gaiman – 4 stars

like my all-time favorite, the sandman, this takes existing mythologies and weaves them together in strange new ways. seeing olde tyme versions of the x-men, fantastic four, daredevil, et al on an adventure together was great fun, and the art was beautifully fitting for the setting. although i enjoyed it immensely as a gaiman fan, i can recognize that unlike sandman, the new story pulled together out of these existing threads isn’t necessarily one of his best.

god is not great – christopher hitchens – 5 stars

i could catch hell (pun!) for enjoying this as much as i did, because yes, the critics are right, this isn’t going to change anyone’s mind, it’s preaching to the choir. being the choir, however, i found its cataloguing of the myriad sins and shortcomings of religion in general to be handy fodder for conversation and an entertaining read, if not an exhaustive indictment. hitchens is a very intelligent and pithy guy, and i found myself chuckling, nodding in agreement, or gasping quite often, which as far as books go means it was a good one.

ronin – frank miller – 3 stars

one of frank miller’s earliest graphic novels, the visual and storytelling style that matured into brilliance with dark knight or sin city shows its beginnings here. the book was a thoughtful and unexpected gift from my brother for being in his wedding, so i had never heard much about it before reading it. it’s a little raw and rambling compared to his later stuff, but a nice addition to the miller section of my comics shelf.

the trial – franz kafka – 5 stars

i totally respect and adore a story that can be simple in the telling and still hold huge, profound, complex ideas. essentially an existential parable on life and death and fighting against hopelessness — at least that’s how i took it — i could say so much more but i’ll save it for next time we get deep over some late night beers. instead i’ll just share my favorite line, paraphrased since i don’t have the book in front of me: “is there no way to have a life outside the trial?”

the black dahlia – james ellroy – 4 stars

another great one only slightly clouded by expectation. the characters and story are fleshed out really well and once it picks up steam you can’t put it down from one draw-dropper to the next until it reaches its brutal finish. i guess the only problem is that part of me wants every detective story to read like chandler, whereas this is much darker and seems to take less joy in itself; only a minor personal tick against an otherwise fantastic book.