decent weekend. rilo kiley acoustic show last night at the troubadour was amazing. it takes a hell of a band to play a whole set with only two people and their guitars (and the occaisional keyboard) and have my rapt attention every single second, but those are just great songs. what a good band.
and i’m finishing up some lists, so i will get back to you tomorrow.
my easiest new year’s resolution i think will be to post my list of last year’s favorites by next week. for real. i imagine sunday afternoon would be perfect for that sort of thing, and since this week i’m on the ‘be gentle on the checking account after beating it senseless with christmas shopping’ budget, some nice stay-at-home writing and html coding might be just the ticket.
but since that’s not really a resolution in the make-myself-better, try-new-things, improve-my-life-and-the-lives-of-others tradition of most resolutions, i figured i’d better share the other real ones. especially since having them officially recorded might make me stick to them better. this way i can check back and say, ‘oh yeah, i don’t want to chicken out on all those great ideas or 2004 will be the year of failure’.
so, some things i will make a serious and dedicated effort to do this year:
— read an average of 2 or more books a month.
for the third year running, since i started keeping track. shouldn’t be hard, i reckon.
— write here regularly, become better writer, try writing something that isn’t a weblog post.
yeah, like that isn’t on everyone’s list in the blog world.
— talk to more people who aren’t already my friends.
i’m sick of avoiding eye contact or exchanges with strangers. of course, if they avoid me, at least i did my part. i just feel like i’m missing out on a lot of interesting stuff by minding my own business all the time.
— much more importantly: actually talk to girls instead of just looking.
this is key. rejection is better than inaction. stop assuming or inventing obstacles (better known as excuses).
— more quantifiably: get at least one number per month.
to be voided of course in months following the successful follow-up of getting a number, the seemingly inconceivable ‘becoming involved with someone’. i’d love to just find someone worth sticking with and not have to collect any numbers at all, but either way — this should be the year of the ladies.
— a sub-goal of the previous: get at least one number from someone i meet at a concert.
my friend/ex-girlfriend in orlando went out on a limb and gave her number to some guy on her way out the door of a show last month; now they’re all in love and i’m so happy for her. and bitter, of course, because i’ve always, always wanted that to happen to me and so far, no luck. well, someone needs to put their money where their mouth is or just quit his whining.
other piddly things i should do but won’t necessarily be sad if i don’t:
— ride my bike more, and more regularly
— learn to cook more real food
things that i won’t necessarily go out of my way to do but could very well happen and would be fun, don’t you think?:
— cross an ocean.
— sleep with someone who works at my office.
(but not the same department, that would be tacky.)
— visit new american cities i’ve never seen.
top picks: new york city, seattle, or austin for SXSW maybe?
— have an affair with an older woman.
i’ve never been older by even a month than any girls i’ve dated, but that’s not really what i meant by ‘older’. if any 27-35 year-old foxy professional women read this and were waiting for the time to speak up, here it is.
that ought to do it, right? aside from the whole ‘be a good person, tell my friends and family i love them, hug a puppy blah blah’ kind of stuff, which goes without saying. i say lofty goals make for lofty achievements. aim for the stars to reach the moon, right? should be a good year.
[now hearing this: some beatles cd’s i got for christmas, filling in the gaping hole in my music background. did you guys know this band is really good? nuts, huh?]
it’s been a tough week back, oh man. yesterday i was at an hour-and-a-half long, company-billed lunch, and happened to see john cusack walk right past our table. john cusack! that is definitely my best star sighting yet.
today i had to spend an hour and a half listening to music in my car while i drove something out to our client at a shoot, which came with the side benefit of getting to see jet li, and this time not just in a restaurant, but actually filming a kung fu sequence. damn, that guy moves like lightning and could easily kill me for sure.
so yeah, my job is really hard.
my dorky/compulsive side is working on a list of my favorite things of last year. i imagine they’ll line up more or less with the other losers who feel the same need, but still, for posterity, you know? i don’t know about you, but i don’t really get a sense of how long a year is until i flip through all my old ticket stubs and suddenly recall things that seem like years ago and were really just april.
i was going to hold off on posting until i finished those too, but then i thought i should probably get down something on the past two weeks of my life before i forget. again, posterity, you know? my memory is pretty crappy unless i relate things to other people, even if they are cyber people. so this will be more for me than anything, but you’re welcome to see what i’ve been up to if you want.
some interesting things that happened over what seemed like a very long two weeks, in a list form just like i usually say i’m not a lazy enough writer to use:
— went to a minor league hockey game with my dad (go aeros?). caught a tennis ball thrown from the ice with one hand, but still didn’t win anything. thanks for nothing, #3.
— had ‘real texas barbeque’ before the game, and found it not quite as good as the texas barbeque stand in downtown LA we love (who catered our graduation party, even). thanks for nothing, texas.
— got to see my excellent friend virginia in houston all the way from baltimore. found the city on a saturday more or less boring and ended up making fun of people we walked past in a mall.
— had to pay 25 bucks to get home from the airport because i was the first one back into town and didn’t bother looking up if the metro rails would be running that late. vowed never to do that again. one of my fellow shuttle van riders lived right across the street and went to my school. isn’t that weird?
— waited for an hour to pull into the airport to pick up dominic. safety is such a pain in the ass sometimes. good thing he’s worth it.
— drank, played poker. drank more. stayed up late, slept in late.
— drank way too much new year’s eve. split my lip when i ran into mike face first. threw up everything i’d eaten in 2003. passed out utterly after crawling from the bathroom to our friend’s bedroom floor, but not before following someone’s advice that i should probably take my shirt off first. they seemed to have a point at the time.
— made a big batch of chili new year’s day, had a great time watching the rose bowl with my friends and eating and not drinking at all and handing out christmas presents.
— drove josh to the airport to see him off for his year or more trip around the world. that sure was a weird feeling. good luck buddy, we’ll miss the shit out of you.
— urged our friend to ask a girl at one of my favorite LA bars, the roost, if she was straight or not in exchange for six dollars. she seemed too beautiful to possibly be interested in any sort of male. turned out we were wrong. hopefully i’ll see her around there again someday.
— saw taxi driver on the big screen at the new beverly. that movie is so cool.
— spent over an hour getting into the airport to pick up justin. safety still overrated. urged friend this time to ask if two girls at in-n-out were of age or not. once again, they checked out. new years resolution: stop assuming there is an impenetrable barrier around any girl i’m attracted to.
— had to buy a new plunger because the old one didn’t have enough suction power. we’ll leave the details out of this one.
— oddly though, in the elevator on the way back, one of my fellow tennants was carrying what was easily 50 rolls of toilet paper. seriously, he had one of those huge 20 packs under his arm, and was carrying full plastic bags in each hand. i thought the bags at least were groceries at first, but nope — aaaaaall toilet paper.
— said goodbye last night to dom, the only guy around whom i feel the need to watch the elimidate/5th wheel back-to-back combo, after enjoying his company all week. i love that man.
now it’s back to the grind for a while, looks like. although it won’t be so bad once i remember how to wake up at 7:30 instead of noon.
back in LA.
glad to be here.
had fun it texas.
my family is great.
plenty to say.
too much fun to be had to say it now.
merry christmas and a happy new year.
[best of 2003 coming in january.]
i’m thirsty right now. that reminds me of how at work they suddenly started cutting the concentrated orange juice that they have in the mornings, and what a heartbreak that was. i can’t believe they’d just suddenly decide to put twice as much water in, as if we wouldn’t notice. or maybe the cafeteria guy whose job it is just can’t read the directions? either way it saddens me every single day i get a glass hoping it’s back to it’s sweet, delicious normality again and finding instead that i have to weep over a glass of H2Orange. yuck.
first off, regarding sky captain . . . the badass trailer is now online. just try to tell me it doesn’t look amazing. i’ll slap you like a bitch.
also, today was my last day of work before the holiday break. 16 whole days before i go back to work…it’s almost like being in college! only i get a paycheck while i’m gone! take that, ya stupid university.
tomorrow i fly home to my parents’ house for a week of warm fuzzy family feelings and whatnot. i’m excited. in a week i come back for a week of fun and frolic with my fabulous friends. i’m extra excited about that too. but first, i have to do some laundry, because if santa catches me freeballin’ cause i’m out of boxer shorts, i might get put on the naughty list, and i can’t risk it. i want some goodies. then i have to go to josh’s party and hopefully stand by and watch as every girl gives him play since he’ll be gone for almost two years. maybe i can catch some spillover action somehow. let’s cross our fingers, eh?
[now hearing this: the new shins that i finally picked up after everyone in the world with thick-rimmed glasses said it was totally the best ever. and hey look, they were sorta right — i love the fact that in ‘so says i’ he references thomas moore. is that pretentious or just nerdy and cute?]
lord of the rings: return of the king – 5 stars
i actually did manage to make it out to opening night on this one after thinking i wouldn’t. i’ll break it down simply like this: after a full day of work, waking up that morning in the 7am hour as usual, and not sitting down until 11:30pm for this film to start, which the running time put its finish right around 3am, i did not have any problem at all staying awake. i never once started yawning or shifting around wishing it would hurry up and get on with it. i was excited for that long, at that time of day, and any film that can pass the three hour mark without feeling too long already gets high marks. the film is just plain good, and i’d say easily the best of its genre (epic battle/adventure films, that is). really wonderful. and my only complaint was the very last scene seeming unnecessary, but that was like a whole minute, maybe. and one out of 200 seeming off isn’t a bad ratio, so i forgive them.
a few addendum — the trailers were great too! you could tell they knew every geek in the country is going to see this film; i think at least half the films felt like they were based on either asimov or philip k. dick stories. but then… but THEN! i didn’t even know there was a spider man 2 trailer out, so suddenly realizing i was watching one was excellent. i LOVE superhero movies done right, and this one rides high in that crowd.
but that wasn’t all! i had heard some buzz about a movie called sky captain and the world of tomorrow, and the amazing trailer that has yet to be posted anywhere. so when we got to see that too, i was shivering with excitement. now there’s another film right up my alley. it sort of has the same stylized war-era comics feel that i really liked in the rocketeer, only this time multiplied by ten and way, way better done. i cannot wait to see how that film turns out.
oh and also, i think i might have been sitting next to thora birch in the theatre as well. i’m about 75% sure it was her, but she was so busy making out with another girl i couldn’t get a good look at her. not really though, it was just dark and i didn’t want to stare (and i guess i was technically sitting next to her backpack, which was on a seat between me and her, but it was a very nice backpack, so i think it still counts).
oh my god, is this a fucking joke? “madonna endorses clark as ‘natural born leader'” said the link on the front page of cnn.com this afternoon. how embarrassing for them.
i didn’t mean yesterday’s post to be all negative though. i forgot to mention the positive stuff, like a really fun office party saturday night. open bar from 8-1 in a really nice club and hanging out with all the cool people i work with mixed with talking to some cool people i normally don’t. that was a really good night and i looked cool in a tie for once.
and saturday, i may have been a little disappointed coming out of big fish, but i sure wasn’t going in. not just because i still had high hopes for the movie, but because we had just seen michael bolton! that’s right we did. he was sitting next to the food court of the shopping center, signing cd’s and getting pictures taken with the sadly short little line of people who had gathered to take part. now that’s a weekend highlight right there; i can’t believe i almost forgot to brag about it. it was very very hard to resist calling out lines from office space as we walked past him to go to the theatre . . . but i guess we were just too nice to embarrass that no-talent ass clown who started winning grammies.
[now hearing this: piebald.]
the last few days have been a little disappointing.
sunday i went to see big fish with some friends. beforehand we went to baja fresh for some food, and i swear those were probably the worst tacos i’d had in 2003, sneaking right in before the deadline. good job guys; you really pulled it together and beat out the strongest contender up until now, the office cafeteria. a real cinderella story, those terrible soggy bland excuses for california/mexican. and that was an 8 dollar lunch! screw those chumps.
the movie itself, while not bad — and admittedly almost making me cry in the end, which is a rare thing indeed — was not quite as great as i’d hoped it would be. i wanted it to stir me like edward scissorhands did, when it sort of fell a bit flat like mars attacks did, although it was a little more solid than that. but maybe it’s an issue of the main character being in love with winona ryder versus jessica lange; it’s just not the same.
monday didn’t help any. i think someone stole a package i was waiting for because the packing slip, which should have been inside a box with about 50 dollars worth of christmas presents i ordered, was somehow sticking half out of my mailbox when i got home last night, not attached or near or indicating the location of an actual package in any way. that certainly made me angry. sorry friends, you get nothing this year. fucking grinches.
and to top it off, i was hoping to sit down to a killer gangster movie with de niro and connery last night, but popped in the untouchables to realize that it was more of a corny cop movie with kevin costner. i don’t think he had a single line of dialogue that didn’t seem inappropriate, badly delivered, or just wimpy for someone playing a ‘hardened gangbuster’. he came storming out of a house after shooting someone and actually said, ‘what is this, a game?’. it was embarrassing. i need to watch miller’s crossing again.
tonight i’m going to have to make up for it somehow, either with delicious food or high quality entertainment. (please advise if applicable).
after seeing the trailer and reading the reviews, i have to say that i will use my last 8 dollars this weekend to see big fish, come hell or high water. it looks so much like the tim burton movie we’ve been missing for years.
plus i’m dying for a decent romantic film — especially one that’s a little… off. but i think that’s how i like them. intolerable cruelty was only 10 percent romantic, really, and that’s the last movie about love that did anything for me, so i anticipate something to finally hit the spot.
but first priority: two nights of free drinking courtesy of my Benevolent Employers. hopefully all the money that doesn’t go into our salaries will be channelled into the open bar tab, because i haven’t had a drop of the spirits in over two weeks. i sure hope something embarrassing happens to someone, even if it has to be me. merry christmas!