Author: brian

so i go to in-n-out with a couple friends. i drop them off at their place and head back home (south on la brea from sunset). i pull up to a red light and stop. i look around at the people in the cars around me, as usual — nothing interesting. i look to my right at the people getting out of the car parked right next to me against the curb. ooo, hot girls. and she looks like . . .

no way. impossible. of course, there is a huge man looking very bodyguard-esque escorting her and her friend into the shop there. and there are a few paprazzi across the intersection . . .

oh my god i actually did see britney spears from like 10 yards away. not even at some red-carpet hollywood star-watching thing, on a regular old sidewalk a few miles from my apartment. and she looked right at me when she was closing her car door. she made me get honked at when the light turned green because i was not paying attention at all. i laughed most of the rest of the way home because i didn’t believe that really just happened to me.

living in los angeles is so weird. and SEXY!

too bad it wasn’t living in chicago which would mean i could drive down to champaign this weekend for furnacefest and see my favorite band of ALL TIME who has the nerve to play a REUNION SHOW halfway across the country from here (or 300 dollars of short-notice-airfare from here, in more practical terms) after being broken up for several YEARS. now that would be sexy. anyone who lives in driving distance and happens to videotape their set will garner my undying love and an adequately substancial financial compensation as well; no fooling. any midwesterners who are tempted by this email me for more details and agreements can be made, you lucky bastards.

{addendum: i don’t know how i got birmingham and champaign mixed up, but gabe tipped me off and the sad thing is it’s equally far away and i know even fewer people in birmingham. meaning zero. but the invitation stands all the same.}

[now hearing this: headin’ home to go wifi! i can download new music again and be all cultured and shit! and have something new to name-drop in this post-script next time!]

wireless card: received!

minor obstacle of incompetent mailman: overcome!

set-up and implementation: imminent!

more posting: later tonight!

i bet you didn’t know i had a little doohickey for music, did you? that’s cause i was a little dry in the cd-buying department for a while, but then with the excitement of Super Fucking Rock Month i just had too much music to process. so having had a little time to reflect, here are some cds i’ve picked up in conjunction with all those great concerts:

spoon – a series of sneaks (mp3) – ?? stars

i know this is an awful way to start off this post, but it’s the most honest one: i only listened to this cd once, and that was on the way home from the concert in my car while i was also having a conversation with joe, so i really have no opinion on this. it was just the worst time to try to get into a new cd, with packing and moving and all. i have always really liked the song ‘metal detektor’ though and i can only assume i will feel the same way about this cd as the other spoon cd’s — it’s good but not favorite-good. time will tell.

rilo kiley – take offs and landings (mp3s) – 3 stars

jenny lewis single-handedly broke my aversion to girl-fronted bands by simply writing some fantastic songs. her voice is such a pleasure to listen to and the lyrics are genuinely good. the live show convinced me more than anything to buy their newer album the execution of all things a few months ago — which is even better than this disc — because they are just so good in person, but a second show prompted me to buy this older album. sure, i had to go to amoeba to get it because they didn’t have any at the merch table (why not, i will never know), but there are enough great tracks on this cd, especially ‘wires and waves’, to make it worth grabbing. all the charm of the band that attracts me so much with just slightly less rock than execution, is all.

piebald – rock revolution ep (mp3s) – 3 stars

i looooove piebald. i adore piebald live sets. they’re just a really fun band to see and hear. so the piebald/ozma show at the troubadour last week was about as good as they come (see below for more), topped only by last year’s hey mercedes/piebald shows with koufax opening. although their set didn’t contain a single song off this ep and was instead chock full of all their greats (‘location is everything’! ‘just a simple plan’!) and at least 5 new songs which were all really great, i bought this because i like buying things from my favorite bands, and this was the only cd i wanted i didn’t already have. for five bucks it’s not bad: you get a version of ‘american hearts’ where he sings bostonian for “you’re part of it…” which is more like “you’re PAAHT of it…”, and you get a few other decent b-sides, even if one of them is a sort of corny one about van halen. but if you’re stingy and not a collector, you can just save the cash for a new bright eyes shirt and download the definite best song off the release, ‘they don’t understand us at the academy’, from mp3.com (link above). not doing at least that would be plain foolish.

ozma – spending time on the borderline (mp3s, sweet ass video) – 4 stars

up there on the ‘bands that are probably better live than recorded’ list is ozma, for sure. i like almost all of their songs, but on a stage they tend to rock a lot more than they do on a cd. not to say i don’t like listening to them that way either — cause it’s still solid stuff. it’s poppy and full of sing-a-long choruses and great riffs with some keyboards thrown in to increase the bounce factor. i probably have listened to this several times daily since i bought it with no signs of slowing. you might want to check out the song of the week for a demonstration, or watch their cool video. the real ticket is seeing them play though, because the lyrics get belted out and the guitars get shredded on in ways i guess they just couldn’t capture in a recording, and it’s all a great, clean sound. maybe they’re really picky with sound guys, but somehow their tunes always seem really crisp and well put together, and seeing their little guitar player jose jump around doesn’t hurt either.

ted leo – a notably absent tyranny of distance review

who plays a show and sells absolutely no merchandise? not a single scrap? i go to this show fully intending to give up 10 or 12 bucks for some of the great tunes i just heard, and i CAN’T, cause there’s no one selling anything. i don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. so twice now i will have had to go to a record store post-show because i couldn’t do what i wanted to do most, and buy cd’s right from the bands so i know they’re getting my money. ah well, i dig checking out record shoppers anyway.

since we don’t have cable (yet?) at the new place, instead of flipping to comedy central and cartoon network to watch my two favorite shows at night, my new roommate and i were flipping through the rabbit-ear-enabled channels we do get the other night in our boredom. we watched the last half of an episode of dharma and greg which was hilarious in a way because after they were fighting (oh no!), they made up and it was very cute (can you believe it!?), but as they were driving home together they, you know, swerved to miss a deer and ramped an embankment and rolled their car about 4 times down the road.

what the fuck is that about!? i doubled over laughing at that one — is that what you call a plot twist? dharma and greg are stupid jerks. and so are the makers of dharma and greg. if i ever hear something advertising, “from the makers of dharma and greg…” i’m going to specifically watch educational programming instead of that show, just to show them. i mean, have you ever seen that show extreme engineering? sure, it loses a few points for the overused ‘extreme’ in the title, but it does gain a lot more for being awesome. and not being full of or written by stupid jerks.

[now hearing this: me still not having internet access at home and typing quickly so i can blog and still leave soon. laterrrrrrr.]

don’t worry, i’m fine. no net access at home just yet (i ordered a wireless card for my laptop today — the wifi revolution is here!), and an actual workload this last week have just kept me a little too busy to write during the day, that’s all. so if the load goes down or my connection at home goes up you’ll hear a lot more soon. and maybe i’ll put up some pictures of my sweet new apartment which i spent all weekend arranging just right and making feel like home.

but a modern hipster’s home is not home until it’s connected to the internet, now is it.

[now hearing this: the only slightly late but understandably so pay day song, light years will burn, which is off ozma’s new cd. i’ll explain why i picked this in my next spectacular post, just you wait.]

resolving tenant/landlord issues has got to be the most annoying and stress-causing thing i’ve come across. no, i didn’t take a picture or send a notarized letter regarding the hairline cracks in the window and loose strands in your 10-year-old carpet when i moved in, so naturally i’d love to pay for those problems now that i’m moving out. it’s going to be like paying another month’s rent, only without any benefit to me whatsoever!

i’ve been moving and worrying for the past week, so i am feeling awful. i think the anxiety may have caused me to get an eye infection but i’m going to give it another day to see if it’s just that my tension has simply caused my eyeballs to want to burst and not the result of any foreign bodies making their home there. i don’t feel like i have a home at the moment because the old place is empty and the new place isn’t really unpacked yet. i just want to go home and sleep more because i had a really nice dream last night i wish i hadn’t awakened from so early on in it’s progression.

[exhale.]

seeing ted leo last night was pretty fun though.

busy. moving. partying. enjoying. anticipating. leaving. depressing.

later.

this one’s a little overdue because i was hoping to pair it up with league of extraordinary gentlemen for a summer blockbuster comparison, but with the moving out process, that excursion just doesn’t seem to be happening. so we’ll just get down to it.

the pirates of the caribbean: the curse of the black pearl – 5 stars (out of 5)

what can i say, i love pirates. but no, i can say more than that, because i didn’t just like this so much because pirates is my favorite ride at disneyland and i still have a jolly roger flying from atop the lamp stand in my bedroom. i liked this movie because as everyone else who remarks on this film has stated, johnny depp plays a deliciously enjoyable scoundrel of a character. he’s funny and eccentric and smooth and daring all at different moments, with such a rich personality that every moment he’s on screen i was smiling. then there’s the excellent geoffrey rush who had less screen time to work with but is just a cool actor across the board. good swordfighting sequences, fun ship battles, an adventurous story that wasn’t a facile excuse for action scenes but a real plot i was really compelled by . . . it was fun the whole time through. extra points awarded for using CGI to add special touches and not to support your whole film (hear that, matrix?), and a ravishing romantic lead in keira knightly i certainly would have died at sea for as well. if the dvd is out by christmas then put it on my list.

(my only complaint is the title is too long. but does it suggest a sequel? i may be able to forgive in that case.)

and a few from my recent netflixin’:

o brother, where art thou? – 5 stars

i’m not going to pretend that i don’t have a non-sexual crush on the cohen brothers already after the big lebowski and miller’s crossing, but this only cemented it even more. i swear to god if i could write a script like that, even if no one ever produced the movie, i would be happy just creating something so delightfully vernacular and fun. in all three of these, i just love hearing words come out of the characters’ mouths, every line is so expertly crafted. excellent appearances by john goodman in this one too, plus excellent uses of the phrase ‘olde tyme’ — pronounced in three syllables of course. you know what, why don’t we just rename this list of reviews “brian’s early christmas list”.

secretary – 4 stars

if i were going to break down and resort to decimal ratings — which i’m not — i’d put this at 4 and a half, but it was just a little bit disturbing to give a full five. don’t get me wrong, the creepiness was definitely part of what made it a great movie, i admit that for sure. i was squirming in my chair watching it until it dawned on me that this was simply a love story, and a good one. the movie is funny and endearing while it’s unsettling, but in the end it’s still just a new twist on a romance film. and i think part of the accomplishment here is daring you to accept it as just that, which i’m just about okay doing after digesting it. still, it gets that point (or half a point) off because james spader whispers all his lines which drives me insane.

[now hearing this: recover – ceci n’est pas recover.]

my housemate (for the next week at least) wrote a pretty great essay/journal entry on the RIAA problems and digital piracy. i can’t imagine writing something that long on this page, so i’ll just condense my thoughts down to this, as several of my housemates have agreed: i just like to try before i buy.

i don’t see why downloading a few mp3’s is any different than a test drive really. who would buy a car without testing it out? why should i buy a cd without getting a feel for what it’s going to be like? and you can’t trust just a single song, because the rest of the album could be crap, just like you can’t trust only seeing the car from the outside, because it could drive like a schoolbus.

wait, new idea: i’m gonna start a band called ‘drive like a schoolbus’ and when our hit cd comes out i’ll sue your ass for sharing mp3’s and get even richer. i can’t wait!

if you know me very well, you may be wondering if the idea of a new sandman collection coming out is enough to make me wet myself with excitement.

well let me put your fears to rest and say you have nothing to worry about; although i do not envy whoever’s job it is to mop up the floor of whichever comic book store i decide to visit when it actually comes out in september.

[now hearing this: a stream of the new fountains of wayne. it’s so something, i just haven’t decided what yet.]