Author: brian

there shouldn’t be thunderstorms in los angeles in october, but there was last night. sort of like how i probably shouldn’t have been standing out on my balcony — the one with the iron railing, on which my satellite dish is perched atop a 7-foot metal pole — watching lighting in amazement. because i was. for the first time since i can remember, i was laying in bed listening to rain and thunder. so i just couldn’t resist going out to watch for a few minutes. i thought i remembered hearing that lightning actually starts from the ground and goes up (turns out that is just one kind of lightning. some kinds come down. some just stay within the cloud), and i wondered if being hit by lightning would be such a bad way to die (turns out, again, that it’s only about 30% fatal or so, depending on your stats). the one thing i couldn’t find anywhere online were any stories of people trying to purposely end their lives by lightning strike, because that seems like an interesting decision to me.

not that i’d need to do that any time soon, because my week’s been downright great. although it sucks to lose our friend joe for two months while he’s off working on the crew of survivor in an undisclosed location, we did have an excellent going away party for him where we drank and danced til 4am (which was pizza time). and we saw a very decent lcd soundsystem show saturday, proving their dance-rock rocks even more in person. and then yesterday, oh sweet sunday afternoon, we visited the first non-illinois location of portillo’s, which we’re lucky enough to have only a half hour away near the border of LA and orange counties. holy mother was biting into that italian beef sandwich a moment of sweet ecstasy. i can’t believe no one else in the golden state offers anything like this, it’s just criminal. probably best that the only one that does is a bit of a drive though, because i ate triple my normal meal portion and am still, the next day, feeling very beefy overall.

finally, although it would be easiest to recycle everyone else’s recent fascination with clap your hands say yeah after we saw them play a great show last week. i could write about how i bought the cd and am listening to it in my car a lot and post a track as the pay day song, which would be so simple but tired. come on, everyone was on their jock back in like may (when we bought our concert tickets i think. how crazy is that?). instead i’m going to go wildly obscure and post a track i heard on the local showcase on indie 103.1 something like six months ago and never again, but managed to remember and recently look up, only to find it had finally been posted as an mp3. and one which i will do mighty six ninety the favor of sharing with all of you here. so please do check out “leave this world” for some nice killers-y pop with morrissey-esque vocals that all around kinda makes you want to whine about being sad about girls, just like the best pop rock should.

okay technically i posted this after the post below, but it was too funny to stick at the bottom of the other one. the new york freaking times wrote a whole article about beer pong and how dangerous it can be, going on to list all these college who ban drinking games and taking beer makers to task for promoting it.

did any of you ladies know that according to this, FORTY-FOUR percent of men play drinking games in the hopes of sexually manipulating other players? that stat doesn’t exclusively regard beer pong, but still, what a weird study to have conducted. of course, it’s not all bad — if you didn’t know how to play beer pong before, the article also helpfully explains the rules.

i should be posting more elaborately about all the big ideas i’ve been considering or all the hilarious adventures i’ve been having, but that takes more time than i have at this very moment when all i really wanted to do was give crazy love to the latest episode of tracks up the tree for being stupendously funny. the music was decent but the guys were going off. too good. download today and attempt not to let on to your coworkers that you’re laughing so hard at something playing through your headphones! it’s fun!

has anyone else noticed that in the ipod nano commercial that’s airing a lot lately with all those hands, when it gets to the part where one hand tries to steal it from the other, the thief hand is black and the ipod owning hand is white?

i mean, i’m sure it makes it visually easier to determine that the two hands don’t belong to the same person by making them of different colors, but you have to admit it’s funny that they cut it they way they did. i just noticed this over the weekend while watching football and everyone was making jokes all weekend about how anyone black probably has a whole bag of ipods they stole. also, interceptions by USC players easily become “grabbing a nano”.

great weekend, too. enjoy being 24, mike.

i usually absolve blogging at work under ready-made excuses of ‘keeping my mind sharp with some writing on a slow day’ or ‘a welcome break from a project that’s hard to work on all day’, but the past week i’ve been occupied and stimulated enough where that didn’t happen. now i’ve got blog-guilt and my little sister scolded me in the previous post’s comments. ouch.

so i will use this late evening post, written in lazy/cool state from my work-issue badass powerbook on my lap while i lounge in my leather chair while my personal dell laptop is only a few feet away playing the music through my bedroom stereo (this way i don’t have to lean forward, hence the lazy) feeling all hip cause i’m surrounded by so many electronics (hence the obvious cool), to jot down some of my recent sweet and unsweet moments, in my least favorite blog device, the dreaded List.

–before m83 took the stage at the free concert we saw this week down at USC (visiting your alma mater=weird), joe said to me, ‘these guys are going to destroy us’, and he was completely right. i’m really proud to have damaged my ears to the point where they don’t ring after concerts anymore, but that night they did because that shit was thick, loud, heavy, beautiful, and absolutely fantastic. must…buy…album.

–i cannot shake this stupid chest cold and if i die i’m going to feel so stupid for not going to see a doctor sooner. hopefully i can hold out until next week when i plan to have some professional make sure i don’t have aids or the whooping cough or something. if i piled all the tissue i’ve used in the past couple weeks together i bet it would roughly equal my body weight.

–if you haven’t seen the movie primer yet then wise up because that was probably the smartest and best-executed indie flick i’ve seen in a while, especially when i read it was made for 7 g’s. there’s a surely hot recommend, as opposed to thumbsucker, which i’m glad i saw at a free screening instead of paying for, and is more of a tepid endorsement.

–seeing the shining at a picnicky outdoor night screening in the hollywood cemetary was a way more fun experience, although the crowd dynamic was more drive-in movie than spooky night of terror than i was expecting. still fun to drink a tallboy in the grass on a cool LA evening though with hundreds of other movie nerds.

–yeah i guess it’s badass that human drummers performed the break drums from richard james classics on acoustica – alarm will sound performs aphex twin, but you know what, classical musicians performing ‘modern’ pieces always seemed gimmicky to me and the cold inhuman electronics of the originals is kind of part of the point, so sorry, this is going in the ‘downloaded, listened to, promptly deleted’ folder.

–i lost my keys, which NEVER happens to me, which drove me crazy and resulted in much anxiety and inconvenience last weekend. monday morning an hour before i was ready to go get copies made of my roommate’s at lunch, he called to tell me someone knocked on the door before he left that morning, and since he didn’t make it out in time all he heard was the door closing and the keys hitting the kitchen floor. how mysterious and creepy that someone had them for two days and then returned them monday at 9am, but they’re back and we haven’t been murdered or robbed yet so hey, sweet, huh?

–being stranded inside with no way to re-enter had i left the building wasn’t all bad, though. i may have missed my first beach volleyball sunday in around 10 weeks, but i finally got to see finding neverland the only way i swore i ever would — with my arm around a cute girl. the movie was also not bad and my masculinity remains safe. that was a good day.

–and oh my holy god was extras brilliant. there will be a definite rivalry this year against my old favorite arrested development for cleverest writing in a tv series and i can’t wait to see more. i had to force myself to stop laughing so much so i could hear the next joke following close behind each prior. damn, was it good.

–your reward for reading all of this, aside from all the wisdom on media choices, is being fully aware of what i’ve been up to for a week. and a fun game!

now i’m off to norcal this weekend for mike’s birthday. cheers.

yesterday afternoon a plane in LA screwed up its landing gear during the takeoff, so it had to fly around for a few hours then make an emergency crash landing right back here again. funny that since it was jetblue, who gives each passenger access to their own cable TV monitor, that each person could watch as the news covered the plane they were riding in up until just before they started the landing process. eat your heart out OJ.

the thing i was wondering last night is with us being to the point where almost everyone on board has a cell phone, how many of them turned it on do you think? either hoping to make a quick call to loved ones or potentially receive one. wondering what i’d do, mostly, because if i thought i was in a situation that could result in death, i’m fairly sure i would not make any attempts to hurriedly reach out to family and friends for a final farewell. i might even leave incoming calls to the voicemail, as cold as that sounds (however my resolve might waver in the face of seeing ‘parents’ on the little LCD at that particular moment). not only would i rather not involve them with the upset of that moment, i’m pretty sure i’d want to experience it alone with my own thoughts.

although given the opportunity to plan ahead, i think, i am all in favor of the method readers of dave eggers’ story, ‘notes for the story of a man who will not die alone’ from how we are hungry are familiar with: that is, gathering thousands of friends and family around to collectively rejoice at the exact moment of expiration of a life well-enjoyed. make it a party, not a tragedy.

[note: this was before watching my name is earl on tivo with friends, which has potential i think, in a raising arizona meets groundhog’s day kinda way, plus i gotta root for the jason lee based on mallrats alone.]

i just read somewhere that the average woman uses 7000 words per day, versus the 2000 words per day of men. is that even possible? what could all those extra words be about? surely there isn’t that much to say about shoes and manicures, is there? ha ha, misogyny is so funny.

i fell asleep last night at around 9:30, only to wake up at 10:00 and decide i had nothing going on really so i might as well go to bed. i’ve had this cold for a week now and it’s making me boring and annoying and i’m very sick of coughing. i mean, when you’re declining girls who want to come see you then things are not as they should be. how am i supposed to be a badass with all this phlegm? come on immune system, i know you’re better than this.

alright, it’s over. you can no longer think of yourself as just a grown up kid once your first friend gets married, and one of my silly friends had to go and get himself hitched this weekend, so i’m done. now no matter how hard i try there’s going to be this creeping sense in the back of my mind that i’m a full-on adult now and that’s just the way it goes.

yeah, the ceremony and the lunch was nice, although there was no dancing or drinking at the reception and we were back at my place by 3. and yeah, this friend was marrying his high school girlfriend of what, 8 years or something? so there could be a case made that this didn’t really count since they had such a huge headstart on all the rest of us… right? we didn’t even go anywhere near strippers at the bachelor party, so maybe this was sort of like the warm-up for a few years from now when everyone else hits this phase. just to make sure we know something about how this all works for when the big crazy ones start happening.

i know one thing, if you judge by the rest of the weekend, with its torrent of ‘that’s what she said’ jokes and 2am taco runs and general stupid guy fun (USC wins 70-17! what what?), you sure wouldn’t guess that we had advanced much since college, so i’m not too worried.

but hey, congrats dave and michelle!

apparently this blog is an alcoholic pogo stick written by a drudgery-fighting microwave. what are you?

maximo park – a certain trigger – 4 stars

the two cd’s i’ve listened to the most so far in september have coincided with the two shows i’ve seen most recently, the first being maximo park. as the show approached, i listened to my pirated copy of their album a bit more, trying to get into their music a little further for sing-along purposes. then last friday we showed up at the troubadour and i was suitably corrected in my evaluation from earlier this year that they were ‘just another okay british rock group like all the rest’. as i had begun to suspect on further listens, they are british, yes. and okay not entirely unlike all the rest. but they are a lot more fun to see and listen to than i thought. the songs are short and frantic, the keyboarding is a nice touch in place of a second guitar, and the lyrics are a bit smart-alecky to go with their sharp delivery. it wasn’t until i bought the album at the show (see, i’m an ethical pirate) and started listening to it every day in my car that i crossed the line into loving it though. although there’s not a lot of variation musically, almost every track on the album has a great line and a great little guitar stop that i find myself repeating the whole rest of the day. my other complaint is that i can’t for the life of me see why ‘graffitti’ was the first single, when i personally skip that track more often than not for catchier tunes like ‘once, a glimpse’ and ‘the coast is always changing’. then there’s my other favorite and this week’s pay day song, apply some pressure, which has the coolest circular verses that begin and end with the same punchy lines i am still working on being able to scream them effectively as i commute. damn enjoyable album.

the decemberists – picaresque – 5 stars

this is an even better story. i finally picked this album up a few weeks ago after several rounds of ‘have you heard this yet? it’s fucking good’ from friends and blogs all across the spectrum, and fell instantly in love. listened to it five times a day. read the lyrics and realized what the songs were about and their beautiful tragic stories and loved them more. i wanted so badly to get tickets to their show this week but found myself a bit short to spring for a concert that jumped up to 30 dollars with the help of my good friends at ticketmaster. so i contented myself with the cd and listened it into the ground.

then i get the flavorpill newsletter for this week and voila! a chance at salvation! i answer an easily google-able trivia question lickety split and BAM, within moments i am on a guest list and suddenly have a free date for me and a lady of my choice. the show was wonderful even if they only played about 4 songs from this album (their old shit is all so good too, i see an amoeba trip in my future), ‘sixteen military wives’ doesn’t sound as good without a trumpet, and i didn’t have 20 bucks to get their ‘flight of the mistle thrushes’ poster… damn, it was beautiful. but they did get everyone to sit on the floor for an accordion duel against a guy from the pogues whose name escapes me, and they did do ‘the mariner’s revenge song’ for an encore with giant whale jaw props, so overall it was still outstanding. plus it was free and i’m a winner.

and oh yeah, that album… so well written and richly arranged and full of theatricality. it’s not tough to imagine why this and the mountain goats will probably be my top picks for the year, because their storytelling is terrific.