over the weekend i looked down from my balcony to see a guy, who was on break from working at the jeep dealership behind our place, sitting in the alley drinking a beer on his break. and this was at 1pm, mind you. i’m not sure if that guy is awesome or if i feel bad for him.

i got blisters on two of my toes from the hot sand at the beach yesterday. what the hell, it’s SAND. you’re not supposed to be able to literally burn your feet from walking on the ground. that’s messed up, right? if i didn’t enjoy the beach so much i might be mad, but i know it only hurts me because it loves me.

and i just found out today that i have a meeting at 6pm wednesday in vegas, which means i also have a paid-for hotel room in vegas wednesday night, and paid-for airfare to and from. that means no expenses to cover and any gambling gains are instant profit! danger, bank account, danger!

i wish i could say i’m going to go home and do constructive things tonight, or even just cultural things like watch the oscar-award-winning film ray from netflix, but i know full well all i really want to do is play video games and drink root beer.

not that this podcasting thing is new to a lot of people, but i know for me it took the feature being automatically added to my itunes to make it worth the trouble. now that it’s such a snap, i’m finally realizing what a great system it is. plus, i have some friends who do one that is actually worth listening to every week, and that just got me off and running.

yes, that’s right, i actually know the brilliant minds behind talk news america (TNA for short. [chuckle]). and since they’re even listed on the itunes store and everything, you can easily track them down and subscribe yourself. it’s just so simple!

they’ve got down, i feel, what podcasting should be. not a couple of yahoos babbling and playing some hit-and-miss musical selections. we’re talking a tight, weekly piece that’s under 20 minutes; well written, acted, and edited; and the best part: hilarious. it’s also the first news/humor program in public radio format — at least that i’ve heard of, correct me if i’m wrong — that can play in the satiric realm of the onion or the daily show and pull it off. in the past couple months i’ve been consistently impressed, and not only because they’re my friends, it’s just a really cool idea done well. check them out and get some good laughs on the ipod next time you’re commuting… and if you don’t get the podcasting thing don’t worry, you could just go to their site and either download the mp3 files straight up or stream them from there. so worth it.

but not to be all favortism, i’ve also stumbled upon a few of those yahoos playing music that aren’t so bad either. today i’ve been listening to tracks up the tree and getting a kick out of these two dudes. they play indie music that’s freely available on the net and are actually funny in between instead of just listening to themselves talk. offbeat instead of annoying, at least so far. tracked this one down from a link on odeo.

another hot one is radio clash, a mashup podcast from the UK that’s pretty great too. on the way home today i was listening to an episode from a week or two ago that started out with an eminem “just lose it” over polka mix that blew my mind. the guy doesn’t do the mixing but sure does track down some cool shit. this one was actually listed in spin magazine’s recent list of top podcasts, so i can’t claim too much credit for finding it, but still.

so anyway, if you’re lazy, here are the RSS links for the three shows above to just paste right into your itunes ‘open stream’ window (although it’d be more gentlemanly to visit their sites and check them out, of course):
talk news america rss
tracks up the tree rss
radio clash rss

and let me know if there are any more you like, because now i’m totally geeking out over this stuff this week.

even though i was only gone 7 days i didn’t stop for more than a few minutes at any point along there and as a result, it felt like i was gone for ages and totally drained of juice. i crashed hard sunday night and when i walked into the office yesterday morning it was like being back from summer vacation and not being able to believe you’re back in this place. except if this were school i’d have all these sweet new pens and binders, whereas here i just had an overfull inbox to catch up with. boooring. today i think i’m feeling more adjusted and overall ready to deal with not being on vacation though. i had a delicious cheeseburger for lunch and my head felt like it was on straight and securely instead of tenuously rolling about trying to make it through a whole day.

last night i played halo with my roommate and his coworker buddies that were over and completely owned them in every way, mostly because they don’t really know how to play that well. i told one of them it’s best not to stand out in the middle of the arena without moving if he didn’t want to get shot, then turned around and saw that he had fallen asleep during the game. how do you totally pass out during a video game? it’s constant sensory stimulation! that blew my mind. if i remember correctly, he woke up a minute later, moved his character to a more secluded corner, and dozed right back off. now that’s pro gaming strategy.

also, the sky here is bluer and the clouds more alive, which i like (via mobile).

still in chicago trying my best to cram in as much as i can into about 72 hours worth of time on the home turf. baseball game, improv, wrigleyville bars all check so far. i have just slightly too many friends to be able to comfortable squeeze into this amount of days and have time left over to jet out and see the family, which is proving inconvenient and accidentally rude to those i haven’t set up time with. sorry so much if this was you, honestly i haven’t sat still for more than 10 minutes since i’ve been here.

can’t wait until i’m old enough (i.e. rich enough) to get a hotel room and a rental car and leisurely visit whoever whenever instead of hopping trains from here to there to visit this and that person and hope it all works out. plus: air conditioning in chicago’s version of august would be pretty choice come afternoon time. whew.

i’m sitting in a 10th floor hotel room looking out at the chicago skyline right now, and it’s pretty exciting. i like being back in the home state, it’s undeniable. i just get this odd feeling of comfort from the familiar types of trees and air and accents. plus i had white castle last night for the first time in over a year. now that’s a great homecoming.

so since i’m here conferencing and getting foolishly drunk with my coworkers i get to post from my shiny new powerbook g4, which i just got from work on friday. it’s gorgeous and silver and widescreen and fast. but the dvd player isn’t working because it needs an administrator to set the region code and therefore is useless as in-flight entertainment. blast!

oh and someone be a dear and buy me the new statistics album. i downloaded the pay day song, “final broadcast“, from their site last week and am all about it right now. it’s like this one guy is still holding out on that old-school emo style that’s kinda like far — sappy lyrics and heavy-ish guitars. enough of this dance-punk garage-rock crap already, let’s get back to whining about being lonely, because that rocks much harder.

i spent something like 14 hours over two days this weekend at the beach, making me feel more so-cal than i ever have. though between the excellent barbeque/bonfire and some intense volleyball action, i probably absorbed more radiation than i have in months prior, resulting in a nice case of molting. luckily once i’ve completed the cycle there should be a sexy, tan new brian underneath, and hopefully i can use the old husk to distract predators.

so has anyone done any digging on itunes yet for some podcasts that are consistently good? i’ve poked around a few that were mostly disappointing so far, although i do like the spin magazine one — a nice convenient 15 minutes per week of featured new bands, no bullshit. not always A quality but at least it’s digestible.

and thirdly, i just started dave eggers’ how we are hungry last night, and i feel like i’m lucky just to be reading it, it’s so elaborately bound. how can they possibly be making any money on those things when they have to pay to build in like two straps and textured inner covers and raised outer cover designs? is the paperback version going to just come with a five dollar bill taped to the back so they can keep the same profit margin?

how weird seeing the writer of one of your top five albums since 2000 ride by on a bike. (travis from piebald via phone.)

alright, never mind that first-ever moblog thing from yesterday, i was just geeking out over advancing technologies for a minute there. yes, it was really easy and convenient, but it’s sadly limited by the amount of characters i can send from my sprint PCS mail address by phone, which is 160. that’s like two sentences. when do i, mr. brian word-breath, ever confine myself to two sentences? now maybe if i can figure out how to make sure the picture thing will fit on the page right…

anyhow, i owe a bit of mention to the always lovely michelle who came out to LA to visit last weekend, and who i enjoyed seeing again very much. it’s nice to keep people on the ‘as cool as ever’ list even if you haven’t spent a day with them in six years, as opposed to having to realize that some people just don’t hold up over time. that list, by the way, i will not be disclosing.

we saw willy wonka friday which i am hesitant to recommend with enthusiasm, but you really ought to see sometime just for the reworking of the oompa loompa numbers. they are downright crazy-awesome-out there. that elfman, i tell ya.

for a better movie, if you just happen to have three hours to fill, check out robert altman’s short cuts. watched that last night with the roommate and i thought the impressively powerful scenes amid the swirl of bland moments and intersecting lives made it an excellent film, well-acted and directed. gino was more of the camp that it was a terribly boring waste of his life with no real point or message even if there were a few good scenes. guess you’ll have to see it to weigh in.

look out world, brian just figured out how to blog from his mobile phone. this post is boring because it’s just a test, jerks.