Author: brian

after a glorious year here at the robot house, we are all moving on to new places by the end of our lease this month. naturally to commemorate this disruption necessitated by finishing college, we had to throw our last disruptive college party. no themes, no fliers, and probably less than half the crowd than the last couple parties — this one was for us. i was telling my friend joe beforehand that i didn’t even care about the crowd that showed up; i just wanted to come home from the spoon show (which was pretty fun) and get outrageously drunk with my best friends before we move out.

mission accomplished. more tequila than i really needed, and a flowing keg as well, plus with fewer people there was no danger of shortages and i was pretty happy in no time. i had more fun at this party than at probably any other one this semester. and luckily digital devices were there to capture it.

then later in the night, after such highlights as sing-alongs, an all-house round of shots (including our non-drinking roommate!), and a girl’s hand catching on fire (yes, for real), me and joe decided for some reason to start wrestling in the back yard. i have no recollection why but i do remember a few little details such as his request that i get him an indie rock t-shirt before we got any further into it. perhaps we were fighting over whether or not postal service was better than death cab for cutie, or perhaps we were just really drunk. i do remember slinging scenester insults at him to the tune of “just give up and go home to listen to bright eyes”. mostly i remember laughing hysterically while it went on for a good 10 or 15 minutes. nor did i seem concerned at all with the fact that our back yard is gravel and i was getting scraped up, covered in dust, and splashed with beer from trying to drink between tackles. for documentation, see the photos below. and afterward, no hard feelings, just more laughing and drinking. great, great, can’t-believe-that-was-the-last-one-it-was-so-great time

oh and that last one was long before the drunken wrestling when i was still stylish and suave and communicating via magic mindbeams with josh. we’re sexy like that.

[now hearing this: ozma – ‘spending time’.]

i don’t know if this was nationwide news or not, but some poor confused old man drove his car through a crowd of people in santa monica at full speed and injured over 50 people, killing i think 8 of them. it’s a pretty terrible story, especially after you look at the photos.

one of my coworkers was out of the office at a shoot right down the block from there and said he actually saw some of the bodies. ugh. how can there not be a better way to make sure elderly drivers are still capable of driving safely? i’m sure this old man wasn’t a murderer, but it’s just so unfortunate that someone buying fruit yesterday is dead because someone else couldn’t think straight, even if it wasn’t age-related.

holy animated crap am i ever going to go see this.

an animation festival produced by don hertzfeldt and mike judge? yes please!

(i sure post a lot when i have nothing to do at work.)

“you’ve tried everything else — now give GOD a try!”

advertisejesus.com

i saw one of their bus benches on the way to work today. i don’t remember which bible passage it was, but i did remember their catchy domain name. i realize the animated gifs are pretty nice (how do they do that reflected wavy thing of jesus on the water? brilliant!), but they sort of make christianity seem like a pyramid scheme.

(i initially posted this on robot house but thought others would enjoy it here. i felt a little guilty repeating links and i had to confess up front.)

uh oh, it’s pay day song time again. and you know, i’ve pretty much decided after several streaming listens to the album, that sumday is really kind of boring. i do, however, really love the first track, now it’s on. not enough to buy the cd, but enough to listen to it four times daily.

[addendum: if you tried to download this last night/this morning, it was broken, but is now fixed. i blame my four year old home computer.]

i just want to take a moment to declare my respect for the people of this world, the many, varied and scattered individuals who have the bravery to go out in public in outright denial of common fashion sense. the fully developed sense of self that allows them to not just leave the house going fully against fashion trends, but with utter disregard for the constraining rules of simple tastefulness, is something more of us should aspire to. couldn’t the world benefit from more heroes of dress with the courage to stand tall with a bugle boy fanny pack strapped proudly across their midsection?

so this is just a quick tribute to the men who walk confidently with socks stuffed into sandals; to guys who wear capri pants and girls who wear sweat pants; to those that manage to fill out XL-sized looney tunes t-shirts; to those committed enough to wear same-colored shoes, pants, shirt, bandana and hat, all at the same time (that’s dedication!); and especially to white guys with cornrows. your laughter in the face of the common aesthetic is truly an inspiration.

oh, and also to the girl i saw in the mailroom who for the second day in a row has worn a white shirt and no bra to our air conditioned office. thanks.

[now hearing this: alkaline trio – “’97”]

sometimes i feel like it’d be a really cool way to meet someone if you just pulled up next to them in your car at a red light, thought they were cute, then started talking to them. i don’t think i’d often have that sort of opportunity though. but last night coming home from a trip to pink’s hot dogs i might have missed a chance (the brooklyn pastrami swiss dog is choice; i have a special place in my heart for food that is delicious the first bite then disgusting by the last bite. i think that place is located just next to my gradually clogging arteries).

it was one of those times where i was coincidentally driving the exact same speed as the person next to me and we had both turned and looked briefly at eachother. my two roommates who were in the car also happened to notice the girl in the lane to my left looking over our way. so being a proper showman, as we rolled slowly up to a red light, i turned and caught her looking at me again and gave a very exaggerated, startled double-take sort of look right at her to see if she’d laugh. i get bolder when i’m with my pals i think. so having stopped my car, i held eye contact for a second to see if she was going to react at all. it was dark, so in that second i couldn’t tell what sort of face she was making, and didn’t get a chance to figure it out because in looking at me she had almost rolled right into the car in front of her and suddenly and jerkily stepped on the brake. the three of us laughed quite a bit at this but the light turned green too soon for any amiable glances back in her direction over our shared moment of foolishness, and she turned left at the next intersection bringing our affair to a premature end.

so sad, those glimpses at what could have been. good full weekend all around though: watched a few dvd’s, beach trip, movie outing, bike ride, video games, hot dogs at pinks, drinking with the crew, donut dash at 1am… i’m proud to say that i make damn good use of those two days off work pretty much every week so far in my first few months of genuine employment. here’s to time well spent, eh?

[now hearing this: grandaddy – sumday.]

buying a really expensive television is pretty lavish, but to be fully bling bling, you have to take a limo to go buy a really expensive television.

at least, that’s the only way i can think of to explain why there was a limosine parked in front of the circuit city i stopped in this afternoon.

do limos have really stretched out trunks then too? if your car can hold 8 passengers wouldn’t your trunk need to accomodate them as well?

actually who cares about that. i was just picturing one of those stupid looking stretch escalades. those are awful. the only way an SUV limosine would be cool is if two guys on motorcycles busted out the back like it was an episode of fastlane or something.

[now hearing this: spoon – ‘take a walk’.]

cages – dave mckean

4 stars (out of 5)

so i like to pepper my reading schedule with a few comics, what are you going to do, beat me up? well i wouldn’t if i were you, because i own a copy of cages, which could easily double as a weapon seeing as how it is 500 pages long and roughly the dimensions of a phone book, not to mention hardcover as well. so i don’t think you want to be making fun of someone who could potentially reach for it and give you a swift concussion.

someone who, while you were in the dreamy state of newly-returned consciousness, would then politely point out to you the masterful talent that went into this behemoth visual work, from panels of traditional comic drawing to page-sized paintings or manipulated photography collages, and the sheer beauty of the whole thing that would easily dazzle anyone with the least hint of artistic appreciation.

someone who would then read you a selection just to cement his point, at which time the charmingly eccentric but believable characters would definitely convince you to take it all back and buy yourself a copy if it weren’t fifty dollars at retail, in which case you may just want to wait for a birthday or other gift-giving holiday and hope you have friends as generous as i do. just be sure they know well beforehand who your new favorite artist is.

yes, you definitely do not want to pick a fight with a person that has read cages, if you have any sense in you. it would be so much easier to just skip straight to reading the book on your own and save your forehead the bump.

the story itself might not take your breath away but the style and content of the images are well worth forgoing the potential pleasure one would imagine comes from beating up a comic book geek. and i won’t even tell you’ve crossed over.

[now hearing this: the roots – things fall apart.]

Super Fucking Rock Month has encountered a little bump. the jerks at the el rey (i refuse to believe it was spoon’s fault) switched that show from thursday next to friday next, which is the same night we already had reggie tickets. now we have to go and palm off the reggie tickets at the house of blues to some teenage girls with studded belts — hopefully in exchange for their phone numbers and the date of their 18th birthdays — then get back in the car and go to the el rey for spoon, then drive out of town to see reggie saturday night instead. what a hassle. so if anyone wants two tickets to reggie on friday july 18th, i’ll give them to you for what i paid, which is a fair price for a reggie show. you don’t even have to be hot, or 17. it just helps.

speaking of underage sexuality (i can see the search strings now) . . . i happened to see a commercial for mtv latin america at work today. it’s a baby being breast fed. then some sexy music comes on and the baby starts smiling up at his mother, then the baby’s little hand goes for the mother’s other breast and starts . . .[shudder] . . . yes, it’s what you fear. so i’m thinking, ‘wow, this is really gross and weird’. then the tag comes up at the end and it says: “i watched mtv once.”

what the hell does that mean? mtv makes kids want to fondle their mothers? i mean, i know foreign ads are usually more daring and don’t have the same restrictions ours do, but that’s just messed up. now when i want to get in touch with the pop culture trends of el salvador i’m going to have to turn somewhere else; i just can’t support that sort of organization.

[now hearing this: the pay day song floating down from upstairs. go roommate.]