a bit slow at work today so i’m prowling the internet for inspiration and info. clicked NY times of course, because you have to, and was greeted with a lead headline proclaiming:

RUMSFELD FACES GROWING REVOLT BY RETARD GENERALS

and i almost yelled out in laughter at the mental image of such a revolt by a horde of very slow-moving, formally-dressed generals who have overcome their disability.

but it said, “retired”, not “retard”, so i caught myself and just realized i’m stupid.

also, this week’s tiny showcase print (‘stereo friends’, doug boehm) was super badass cool. i wish i could pull a magic lever in my bedroom or something and get 20 dollars for random stuff like this. there are so many neat things in the world i’d love to have but never actually get because i spend all my money on food and drink too quickly. speaking of which, i am thirsty. have a good weekend.

i’m not going to get all reviewy again already because there’s no need to OD on my own half-explained opinions for why things are especially good. besides, i don’t have anything really interesting to say about this other than i’m enjoying it right now. but in terms of a pay day song i’m gonna have to go with a track from the new ghostface killah album fishscale. every time i hear the champ i want to get in a ring and punch someone. in the FACE.

i’ve also been playing around with what should i read next.com this week and i really like the idea. basically the same idea as amazon recommends, but with a really simple and clean format and not associated directly with any seller (at least not on it’s face). sure, i already see several improvements they could or should build in, but as is it’s kinda cool just to check out the favorites lists of people with whom you share several overlapping books. i think i went a little crazy taking down titles for my own personal ‘i should read that!’ list though… it’s exciting and daunting how little a dent i ever seem to put in that ever-growing thing.

okay, i was really hoping i’d have an excuse to go to the body shop and snap a picture or two before posting this, but i haven’t and i realized i might want to remember this later, so now is the time to write it down.

saturday night i may have killed my car.

or rather, the guy who made an illegal left turn from the southbound lane on highland crossing wilshire, where there is a slight curve making it so that someone going full speed in the northbound inner lane through a very much green light, such as myself, might not be able to see them until, say, the moment they yell “holy shit” and only get a chance to slow down halfway before plowing into the aforementioned guy and sending him spinning 180 degrees around the axis of his front end, as well as sliding across the pavement to tap a car waiting at the red light on wilshire — or at least, that’s what i think i saw through the smoky haze following the rapid deployment of both airbags. so technically he killed my car.

so now my poor matrix, whom i have loved dearly and taken on at least a dozen fondly remembered road trips, is sitting in a body shop in hollywood awaiting its verdict; ‘too much damage to be worth repairing’, or instead the alternate ‘lots of damage, and this might take a while…’

should be fine, since the other driver (a) was making an illegal left (those big red circles through the arrows do mean something, (b) was clearly witnessed by the other guy who got tapped as in the wrong, and oh yeah, (c) didn’t have a license and got his car impounded. but luckily the car’s owner, his relative, has insurance from what i gathered. whew. let’s hope i get the funds to either repair or replace, otherwise i’m gonna lose the otherwise calm demeanor allowed to me by the fact that neither myself or my girlfriend in the passenger seat were injured in any way.

and i promise to share a picture of my smashed up ride if i do end up having cause to go visit it (e.g. some sort of automotive last rites need to be performed or i need to sign something before they start operating).

i’m really digging this season of the sopranos so far. don’t read this if you’re waiting to watch it on tivo tonight, but the part where they had a tony, a gangster rapper and a lab scientist in a hospital room watching a boxing match and talking about schrodinger’s cat… man, that was priceless. spectacular writing.

in other written word news, i continue to somewhat enjoy/somewhat puzzle at chuck klosterman’s monthly column in spin, in which he discusses topics covered in bygone issues of spin (e.g. nirvana & grunge, smashing pumpkins & billy corrigan’s ego, or this month, nine inch nails & the rise of ‘industrial’ music). as someone who basically went through his teen years during the time during which the subjects of his reflections took place originally, i do get a nostalgic pleasure out of them, and he’s still very clever with references and wordplay. still, i can’t help feeling a little bad, because they almost paint a picture that he’s just slowly becoming washed up and irrelevant and stuck reminiscing about the prior decade because he’s not young enough to keep up with this one anymore — especially to the spin magazine readership which is supposedly looking for the latest in borderline-popular music. it’s equal parts depressing and amusing for someone like me who thinks he has a lot of talent to be wasting on almost-VH1 style flashback filler…

but that gets away from what i originally wanted to share, which is one of the moments in which he isn’t just getting starry-eyed over his unique take on why this or that 90’s phenomenon was never actually that cool. here he put down in a paragraph something i think is especially relevant in the race-to-obscurity world of pitchfork and an army of mp3 blogs that seem to hold all the power in indie music these days. (i figured it was okay to share a decent-sized chunk, since the march issue’s no long on newsstands and you can read the whole column on their site anyway…)

There are many people — in fact, you may be one of them — who devote much of their daily energy toward hearing about things first, even if those specific things don’t particularly matter. This has been exacerbated by technology; the degree to which a rock song is new has become nearly as important as how interesting it sounds, even though there’s no inherent advantage to hearing a song today as opposed to five weeks from now (when it will still sound exactly the same). I sometimes think it would be to my benefit if I never listened to any album until two years have passed since its release date. I suspect I would avoid a lot of crap whose only value is that most people haven’t heard it (yet).

haha, and that makes up for all the 90’s wankery you could possibly want to indulge in, chuck. bravo, bravo.

man, i have to say i am excited about 2006 right now. after what seemed like a down period in music, film, books, whatever — at least in terms of my experience of them, i hesitate to make sweeping generalizations for the rest of the world — i know that right now i’m feeling invigorated by all of them. i already went through a feast of moviegoing in the last few weeks, and i’ll get to a review of the latest and greatest of that set in a minute.

on top of that, i feel like, even if they aren’t all brand new, my ‘books to read’ list has blossomed by another handful of promising ones in just the last few days thanks mostly to powell’s and the bold type newsletter, and i can’t possibly read fast enough to keep up. then of course there are at least half a dozen albums, again, not all brand new, but recently galvanized as ‘must have’ through various interweb explorations, not the least of which is the new flaming lips album which comes out tuesday, and which is available for streaming in it entirety on their site right now. (excited!)… it seems much more soft bulletin in it’s oddness than the somewhat tamer yoshimi, which i am grateful for. you ought to go check it out. and on top of that, new stuff from the streets, the great b&s album… so yeah, i’m suddenly realizing i won’t have much spare time for a few months.

anyway, let’s finish out that glut of moviegoing…

brick – 5 stars

first off, you can only partially trust my opinion of this because as soon as i heard the word ‘noir’, i loved the idea of this movie without even seeing it. actually, i’ve been waiting to finally catch it since over a year ago when it played at sundance, and was so very very pleased to get passes to a sneak preview this week (for FREE, bitches. nyeah nyeah).

not to get all longwindedly analytical, but as a fan of bogey, chandler, et al, i mainly want to lay any fears you may have to rest at the idea of setting a noir crime flick in a high school setting. not only did it fall into a nice rhythm after the initial shock of hearing rapid-fire 40’s droll come out of the mouth of the kid from 3rd rock from the sun, but the trademark twisting and turning of a good detective novel were delivered on pretty successfully, even after a point when i thought it was going to let me down by being too obvious (they even fooled me, you see). there were all the key players in the form of the crime lord, the muscle, the authorities (the vice principal scene was classic, i tell ya!), and one hell of a femme fatale that has me thinking i really ought to be watching everwood. whew, she was smoldering.

i’d hate to spoil it for anyone by going on and on about it, even though i probably could for another several pages, but i’ll hold my tongue and just say if you’re any kind of a fan of the style, you really ought to check it out. the juxtaposition is totally captivating and entertaining and even at times bring in a few laughs when they give a wink to what they’re pulling off. don’t worry though, it’s not a farce, it’s a fully respectable gumshoe flick and destined to be a standout for the year, i think.

i had a strange feeling this morning that i’m running out of energy; like the whole concept of aging that i normally don’t care about at all was trying to make itself physically, undeniably felt so that i couldn’t pretend it was no big deal. i didn’t want to get out of bed and when i did, all i wanted to do was sit down. it was kinda scary for a few minutes until i remembered i just stayed up too late and hadn’t eaten very well the night before. and i should probably get some exercise, i’ve been pretty lazy lately.

tonight i plan to really buckle down on finishing a book i promised myself would be done by the end of the month. that only gives me a couple more nights, and it would be a shame to have to stay in friday night just to keep myself from calling me a liar. the main motivation is that there are so many OTHER books waiting in line to be read, i can’t be piddling around with this one for a whole month, that’s just ridiculous.

also, i saw on largehearted boy today (posted a while ago, but today is when i saw it) a link to another site’s 100 sci-fi books you need to read, and didn’t recognize a lot of them. which reminded me, i haven’t read a good classic sci-fi book in a while — maybe since i read dune in college? — and i’m long overdue, but i don’t even know which one to grab. i mean, i could always pick up yet another philip k dick story, but that just seems too easy, doesn’t it? if anyone has any suggestions let me know. in exchange, i’ll recommend a couple of my all-time favorites from that same list: neuromancer by william gibson, and cat’s cradle by kurt vonnegut. i mean, besides the obvious ones that everyone with a bookshelf has read, like 1984 and a brave new world. i’m leaning toward either clockwork orange or re-reading some hitchhikers guide, but please convince me to pick up something totally new. i’d be grateful.

there’s been a painful dearth of good movies out lately that weren’t serious oscar contenders (i.e., serious/dull/depressing dramatic films from late last year still being shown in hollywood theatres to bolster academy votes), and i’ve been dying to see some movies for ages. luckily, last weekend that came to a screeching halt with a two movie date in a row weekend, followed this weekend by another, and if i’m lucky a free screening of my most anticipated of the bunch on tuesday. but before i end up (hopefully) gushing about that one later this week, i’ll politely recommend you see any or all of the ones i’ve caught recently, in two sentences or less.

inside man – 3 stars

the problem with criminals and cops that are so cool and collected during the perfect heist, is that there ends up being so little opportunity for drama or tension. when everything goes off without a hitch, it’s slightly less fun to watch, even though it was still a cool robbery and a good movie, mostly because clive owen is a badass.

v for vendetta – 4 stars

the only reason this doesn’t get five stars — even though i liked it the best — is because as a film, it’s stuck between action classic (not enough action) and cool serpentine revolution drama (can’t imagine the twists are as powerful once you know them). but just because i reserve 5 stars for movies i’d watch again and again and don’t give half-points, doesn’t mean this movie wasn’t an exciting yet literate graphic novel adaptation i was proud to see pulled off, with the bonus goodness of ms. portman to boot.

thank you for smoking – 4 stars
some other reviews penalized this for not being hard-hitting enough when it could have made a stronger point, but i just saw it as an extremely successful comedy about a touchy subject. they may not have made a weighty social commentary but aaron eckhart’s character was excellently played and extremely funny, and the toes that are stepped on just make the jokes stronger.

i accomplished so much this weekend, it was really satisfying. for example, friday i think i ate a cheesesteak in around 4 minutes after missing lunch, then had my first irish car bomb that night for st. patricks day! or rather three. in about an hour. they were delicious. and i got rid of about 50 pesky bucks that were weighing me down by going out to an irish bar that night too, boy was that helpful!

more useful probalby was breaking my painfully long streak of having no good movies to go see, and doing it with a vengeance. saw v for vendetta and thank you for smoking on saturday and sunday respectively, which i will remark further on tomorrow perhaps.

most importantly though, we finally posted, reordered, and cleverly captioned our buenos aires photos, so you at least sort of know what we did and what it looked like. it kinda took forever but at least it’s done and we can put that whole ‘vacation’ mess behind us and get back to proper work, thank goodness.

oh, also we watched some of our friends run by us in the LA marathon on sunday. it was partly inspirational and partly guilt-inducinig, seeing as how we were sitting on a big couch eating potato chips in jen’s front yard while sweaty people crossed the 19-mile marker. does that make us jerks or just funny?

had a green bagel for breakfast and telling people i stole this shirt from a leprechaun. wish i had guinness not work right now