Author: brian

i had myself a full, crazy weekend, and i loved it. friday my roommate’s old friend came in from new york so we used that excuse to go out to dinner and drinking and came back to end up throwing a shopping cart from our fourth floor balcony. i think the funnier part was not the actual throw, but when spencer was pushing it into our lobby on the way up and at the inquiry of the two people already there waiting for the elevator he responded with arms raised, ‘what, i guess i’m not all rich like you.’

saturday my brother had a break from marine training so he was in LA to see his visiting girlfriend and i took them to see spider-man 2 and get some delicious dinner at doughboy’s. the movie was better than the first one and had more raimi-esque moments, which i approved of, as i did the second cameo of kirsten dunst’s nipples. funny how they keep finding excuses to have scenes in cold, wet situations. on a side note, how can my little brother be going to fight a war that’s supposedly over? that’s kind of fucked up.

yesterday i had the most excellent summer barbeque — i wish you could have been there. we drank beer from 4pm to 1am and rode a nice buzz the whole way through without overdoing it, and had perfectly done bratwurst and lots of other good food, and everyone had a great time and lots of laughs. the words, ‘this is the best fourth of july ever’ were shouted enthusiastically, after we busted out the water balloon slingshot, pegged some PT cruisers at the dealership across the street, and yelled at people from my balcony. after dark we went up to the roof and climbed on top of the elevator encasement to get an extra 10 feet up and watch fireworks all along the horizon, and yelled at more people on other rooftops and balconies. today in the elevator a sign from the landlord said people on the roof shouldn’t make so much noise and ‘if you know who the bad guys are, to let us know.’ i’m a bad guy now! but come on, there are explosions going on all over the city and it’s a national holiday, why are people getting pissy over a little patriotic hoopla? life’s too short not to make some noise and have some belligerent fun now and then.

we also decided at 12 to walk to a bar and drink a beer there just for a change of pace but molly malone’s only had about six people in it so there were no cute girls and it was just kinda creepy so we drank the guinness and called it a night.

then today we took advantage of a beautiful beach day. it was 75 and sunny and ideal, except another lack of cute girls at that particular beach in playa del rey. a perfect, relaxing and satisfying day off though. now i’m doing some laundry before bed but someone ahead of me won’t get their shit out of the drier even though it’s done and i’m just waiting. i hate when people do that.

four. day. week. end.

yeah that’s right. after a four day frenzy of actual, stressful responsibility (when did i actually get to be in charge of stuff?), it is time for a long holiday. let’s go over the checklist. beach: hopefully. barbeque: definitely. beer: plentifully. sleeping in: gladly. spider-man 2: unreservedly. additional fun and frolic: certainly.

i love america.

weekend was outstanding. drank beer, lost at poker, drank more beer, kicked ass at a board game, had some delicious pizza. here are some movie reviews:

fahrenheit 9/11 – 3 stars

i could attempt to be one of legions with a ‘stance’ on this film, but whatever. some thoughts of mine include: “lots of brutal imagery…was that necessary or would i just prefer not to face the consequences of war?”, and “wow, even someone like myself who already dislikes bush and knows of his ties to major money-making interests can still learn about some new questionable relationships in my own government!”. there was “right, so he wasn’t fair and objective, but who the fuck expected him to be? get over it, please. use your own brain to filter here, people, just like you have to do with right-wing agenda news sources. duh.” but most of all there were just a lot of “if i were george bush, i would be so embarrassed by this film.” seriously, that guy just seems really really dim-witted to me. and i always vote the intellectual ticket.

but hey, it’s worth seeing once as a point of discussion. love it or hate it, you should use it as an opportunity to examine some facts on your own and i don’t know, maybe learn something before voting season.

napoleon dynamite – 4 stars

changing gears completely, this film won’t make you learn at all! honestly, there’s hardly even a plot!

what it will make you do though is laugh hysterically at some amazing characters. who needs a story when every scene is just an absurd caricature that gets you doubled over at dorky idaho residents with even dorkier relatives. i really really liked this movie, and those who i recommended it to after seeing it myself at a screening a month ago finally got a chance to take my advice and see how right i was. now you can too.

[now hearing this: new piebald still. it’s not so bad.]

infiltration of the LA film fest was a success… turns out it was free, and it was open to the public, and it wasn’t full when i got there. plus the movie was really educational and pretty good. i’d say 3 stars for the hunting of the president. not 3 because it wasn’t good, but 3 because it was a documentary after all. dry but great viewing, especially for those not politically aware enough during the whitewater/monicagate business to have been politically offended by it.

also, i do wonder why more hobos don’t attend these free movie screening events. would it be that hard for them to pick up an LA weekly (also free), find out where some ticketless entertainment would be, then ramble on over and have something to do for a few hours? maybe hobos just aren’t into movies as a rule. maybe i should talk to some hobos to find out, or invite one along next time i go to one.

but forget those sort of social dilemmas, who has the time when you could be watching this new sky captain trailer. that shit is HOT! if that movie were up against fahrenheit tonight it wouldn’t even be a contest — politics can bite my flying ace any day if we’re talking about a movie that looks this cool. i can’t wait for it.

as it is though, we’ll be doing two nights of power-liberalism and check out moore’s deal tonight i imagine. and have a beer. i really want to do that for sure.

the LA film fest is going on around the city pretty much without me. sure, it would have been cool to catch before sunrise or garden state a month early, but all the good stuff is sold out anyway i think.

which makes me wary about trying to get into one that’s been labelled a ‘free screening’ on their site. it could be because they don’t expect the filmgoers will want to go to more than one strongly political documentary, and everyone cool already went to the michael moore screening tuesday. i hope that’s the case, since i will be attempting to show up for the hunting of the president instead tonight at the regent showcase down la brea. let’s see that right wing attack machine at work! how dare our (intelligent, capable) president have sexual indiscretions. who wouldn’t much rather have an (inarticulate, damaging, fundamentalist) good ol’ christian boy running the show?

it’d sure be a shame if it was already full; i’d have to walk the whole five blocks back to my apartment like a chump.

[now hearing this: air america.]

last night was great for a tuesday. drove out to westwood to see my friend justin’s band augustus play their first show as a full band now that they finally have a drummer. it was pretty damn good for a group of guys just starting to perform together. i’m not really into that ‘new rock’ sort of kroq genre and it was still really decent. it’s great to see someone who’s been your roommate and friend for years up on a stage slamming on a bass guitar and totally enjoying himself.

then i jetted back to mike’s for a bit of a beer-tasting in preparation for the next keg for his kegbot. that was excellent too. some day when i’m older and have money to drink quality instead of quantity, i hope to be some sort of beer connoisseur who can use words like ‘hoppy’ and ‘malty’ when describing beers and actually know what that means. this was a decent first step. bring on the delicious dark porters!

also finished a book about a dragon the other night. i’ll give you a piece of my mind on that later.

speaking of focusing on the positive . . . who likes music?

piebald – all ears, all eyes, all the time – 3 stars

i’ll be honest, when i first popped in this cd, i was pissed. after falling utterly in love with this band after hearing their previous cd we are the only friends we have a few years ago, and going to a half-dozen fantastic live shows since then, i expected more. where was the same poppy goodness? where was the fun? where were the great hooky riffs? where was that simple addictive pleasure in every song?

so i was let down. it hurt at first but i didn’t give up on them. i listened over and over and started imagining them playing these songs during a live show. i’d always enjoyed what they did with their other material, how would it be to see them perform this stuff?

and so from there i decided the album was salvageable, because the 4 or 5 tracks that would work great live were actually pretty decent songs, even if the album isn’t great start to finish like the last one. i even saw them last week, and they did what i thought they would do, which is play the highlights from this album alongside a string of unstoppable classics. the show at the troubadour gets 5 big bright stars then — i haven’t danced around that much at a concert in a long time. the album, however, would be best suited to those who already own their better titles and want to complete their collection and/or sing along to those great new songs they’ll be playing at the shows. just means you get a few tracks you can do without.

for an example of what they did right, check out haven’t tried it — featuring travis on piano! i love this song even though certain people insist it sounds like carny music. sure was fun to sing along to, that’s all i have to say.

the biggest event of this weekend will go without elaboration here, because i’m not like that. i prefer to focus on the positive; you could say i’m an optimist no matter how cynical i can be. sometimes things that are great for a long time just can’t stay great forever. endings are unfortunate but inevitable, as we can probably all agree. this is why we remember the good times instead of dwelling on the fact that they’ve passed. and why i hope that no connections were permanently and completely broken, because cool people are hard to come by, plain and simple.

holy shit, over a week with no updates? that’s not very prompt of me.

so in brian news: i spent the last week mostly broke and avoiding expenditures. lots of time at home reading away — finished another book which i will tell you about soon. also watched a lot of sopranos i obtained by various unsavory means, and i think i’m addicted. watching 3 to 4 hour-long episodes of a single show in one day seems almost creepy for some reason.

but the easy highlight was going to see a show on friday put on by uncabaret called the other network. it’s a series they’re doing all through june and july at the knitting factory where they show great TV pilots that the geniuses of network television never saw fit to actually pick up and put on the air, with introductions by the writers. in the coming weeks there are various projects from the likes of bob odenkirk, robert smiegel, and conan o’brien, to name a few. what a great idea! maybe i’ll see you at one of the future shows.

this past friday though, they showed the amazing heat vision and jack, which you may or may not have heard is the story of jack black as the super-intelligent astronaut (he gets his powers from the sun) and his talking motorcycle, voiced by owen wilson. oh how i wish this had been a real show, but just having the chance to see the single half-hour pilot was amazing. i strongly suggest you take to your favorite P2P network and try to track this down, it is well, well worth it. shouldn’t be hard either, i had it myself for re-viewing the very next day. you, however, won’t have the pleasure of hearing dan harmon’s hilarious anecdotes, but you have to take what you can get.

a story from today. let’s call it “the decision“.

took a trip to the men’s room like i probably do half a dozen times a day — small capacity i guess. step up to the plate, as it were, and as i unzip there’s a small pop. what?

so i look down into the urinal and see the button to my pants sitting there on top of the blue rubber urinal mat. apart from the fact that i’ve never really understood what those are for — do they aid in stream dampening maybe? — i stand there simultaneously very aware of three things. one, it’s only two thirds of the way through the work day and i just lost my means of keeping my pants up. two, i still need to pee, but i also need that button back. and three. there’s a guy next to me.

so my split second decision making may not be sound in this situation, but my first concern was saving face in front of the guy next to me. in typical male restroom fashion, i had already made the hundred percent conscious effort not to turn toward him in even the slightest way while approaching, and therefore had no idea who it was. could have been the president of the company for all i could tell. so the ‘reach in and grab it quick!’ option was out. but so was the ‘pretend nothing happened’ route, because of reasons 1 and 2a above. tricky.

in my wisdom and due to what i saw as the fortunate circumstance of the button being on the upper left of the sloping urinal bowl mat, i settled on a plan. aim far right and minimize button infection while maintaining composure next to the possibly-important fellow at work next to me. stall, maybe shake off a little longer than normal, and wait for him to finish before me. flush, rinsing away the contaminants and relying on the urinal mat to keep the button from going down the drain — maybe that’s why it’s there? — and hope upon hope that i can grab it and wash it and my hands very thoroughly and quickly, not to mention before anyone else comes in or my pants fall down.

proving myself a lucky and intelligent strategist, that phase of the plan went smoothly and according to my scheme. of course, i still had to walk back to my desk with my hands in my pockets to prop up my jeans, and with the button in my pocket to be dealt with later. not having a needle and thread handy back there either, which perhaps i should bring to keep in a drawer in readiness for the next trouser incident, i was forced into using a binder clip to fasten the waistband closed for the next few hours, and subsequently hoping my untucked shirt wouldn’t drift up and give away the fact that my pants were being held together the same way as the monthly report i was carrying back from the copy room. thusly, i made it through the rest of the day. and with a few more washings of the hands, to be extra safe.

naturally, though, once home to my seamstress tools and the privacy needed to remedy the problem, i realize a small tragedy. the problem wasn’t the threads coming undone as i had assumed, but the plastic center of the button itself having broken (hence the popping sound i gather), rendering it completely useless and my unsanitary misadventure completely unnecessary. not to mention i’ll have to steal a button off some old coat from my closet before wearing these pants again.

good decision, brian. real good. plus, now i have a strange urge to look up the real purpose of urinal mats.