Author: brian

the song of the week wasn’t working because of a bad filename. should be fixed now though, in case you were going mad with anticipation.

and a happy sunday to you.

take THAT, heaviest book i’ve probably ever read for my own pleasure. finally, i have scaled to the summit of the mountain known as infinite jest. it was a six-week journey and not exactly a walk in the park, but the hours paid off. very good book. i would have liked more of a tying up of ends before it finished, but i guess once you get to over a thousand pages you get to thinking you should just call it quits sometime soon, as a writer. just a theory. great book though.

storytime:

today i went to the beach with my lady and there was a family with a couple little girls on the sand not far from us. at one point, one of the little girls yelled in her father’s direction (he was behind us, facing toward the water and his daughter, playing catch with his son), “oh my god, look, a clown!” so of course i turned around and looked up behind us. on the bike path up the short hill from the beach was a person riding a bike, with brightly colored paper wrapped between its spokes, wearing mismatched clothes and a funny hat and with large bundles in a baskets at both front and back of the bike. i turned to my girlfriend, who had her head down tanning, and said, chuckling, “that’s not a clown. . . that’s a hobo.” the girl’s father was laughing too though, so i didn’t feel too bad. boy, was that funny. little kids crack me up.

[now hearing this: texas is the reason – do you know who you are? this cd holds classic status in my collection — i can never go too long without pulling it back out and giving it a listen, and tonight was one of those nights.]

oh, there is now a link on your right to a rough draft of a music reviewing project i have become a part of. it’s a good idea, i think: have two people review each album, so you get two points of view and less outright bias. like one of the other writers, my buddy spencer, said, “this way, if both people really like it, you know it’s probably something worth checking out, and if both people think it sucks, well . . .”

anyway, it’s only a rough draft of a site, and as far as the writing goes — well, we’re just getting started. i’d say we’re all pretty sharp guys though, so it’s pretty decent at least. i’d actually really like it though if someone read some of them and then emailed me and told me i really sucked ass — it would probably motiviate me to work harder.

[now hearing this: modest mouse – “dark center of the universe” . . . which reminds me; have you heard about the unlimited sunshine tour going on this summer? flaming lips with modest mouse and de la soul? how brilliant is that?]

“we are finished waiting for you!”

well, it’s later. later like tomorrow, but you weren’t that impatient, were you? later as in time for the song of the week, like i said before.

the new wilco cd is awesome, you might already know. well, when i was trying to figure out whether it was awesome or not i downloaded pieces of it to test-drive, and ended up with this live track, which is probably/maybe better than the recorded version. i like it a lot. so the song of the week is wilco’s i’m the man who loves you.

other things i like: days off from work. sadly though, today’s was unexpected and unfortunate. see, i got up in the morning, showered and ate and got in the car and departed, as if today were going to be a real and normal work day. of course, that didn’t seem to convince my automobile, who after being in california and under my charge for less than three weeks, decided as i stopped at a red light on the way to work this morning to just, well, die. one minute, motor running. slow to a stop at a red, engine sound goes briefly and slightly up, then down, down, down. nothing. can’t restart. i gave my thumb a blister trying, actually, while i was in the left northbound lane of la brea avenue, but that didn’t help. neither did the fact that i discovered just then that the switch to turn on the hazard lights had at some point been, well, removed i guess by the car’s previous caretakers, apparently.

i eventually coasted backward down the incline into the turn lane to at least keep people from honking, at which point a nice lady stopped and offered me a jump (for the battery, that is). so then i got to coast downhill backwards and left across two more lanes into a side street to try this, which didn’t help. luckily she let me call on her mobile phone to my own phone, and once my machine picked up i was able to assert to anyone in the apartment (i.e. roommate with car) that they should pick up my phone, because i needed help. which worked, and got me a ride home to make the important phone calls to parents, towing company, repair shop, etc., despite having to dodge giving a fiesty, very round so-called jazz musician a ride “out of this place” in exchange for ten bucks (that’s a whole different story though).

so now 300 dollars later, hopefully my car will be working again tomorrow afternoon. damn you timing belt. i ended up not getting to work though, which brings me back to where i started, which is that even though i lost a day’s pay and the use of a car and had to deal with a whole bunch of crap out of nowhere, at least i got the afternoon off, which i like.

now i’m hungry.

[now hearing this: song of the week.]

i’ve been writing less this week because i’ve been consuming words at a mad pace instead of pouring them out onto this page — that is, i’m trying to fly through the home stretch of the mighty infinite jest, and doing a good job considering the time i have to read while still maintaining normal social relations. on page 827 right now (out of 981 not including endnotes). my goal is to finish by saturday afternoon, which will be the exact six-week point from starting. an approximately 1100 page book in six weeks? calculator tells me that’s about 183 pages a week, which is not far off from one normal book a week, which means i’m doing just fine. especially considering the whole finals/moving/visiting father things that kept me from reading much during certain spots in there . . . i fucking rule.

since i’ve written little lately, i’ll continue without feeling longwinded.

we have this joke amongst a few of us that i think you will find fun to try out with your own circle of friends, perhaps, so i will share it. i have this friend, who is a girl, and who happens to be my girlfriend, whose last name starts with your typical irish prefix. she also happens to fall asleep and/or intentionally take naps pretty much all the time, so when she did this, i would call her “nappy mcnap” instead of her real name, because i’m so unbearably clever. this has since developed, over time and creative twisting, into a full-on compulsive habit of describing many of my friends. for example, when someone is being lazy, they are called “lazy mclazy”, and so on. eventually, this got boring, and so it’s gone farther to where the first and last words are not the same, making it even more fun and verbally showy. an example: my roommate left to go running, and i said, “later, joggy mcfitness!” a tired girlfriend can now be called “sleepy mcyawn”. see how much fun this gets to be? well i hope so, because i can’t stop. i’m a regular punny mcGENIUS.

but try it out and tell me it’s not funny. i dare you.

umm, song of the week later, after i read more.

[now hearing this: houston: “water” from head like a road map. this cd is seriously good.]

strange the things that get under your skin when you spend five days a week in an office setting. i never would have imagined myself as someone who gets annoyed at the littlest things here and there, like someone leaving a bunch of pages they’ve printed in the printer tray, just sitting there, all day long. but, there i am, slowly shaking my head and wondering who the irresponsible printer is.

also wishing it was time to eat the turkey & cheddar sandwich (on a kaiser roll — magnificent) waiting for me in the refrigerator.

[now hearing this: typey typey.]

two things i lack pretty much without fail: patriotism/nationalism for one, and its watered down substitute, loyalty to a local sports team for another. i’m sure i could dig up lots of scholarly essays on counties’ substitution for fanatic soccer-team devotion after the general decrease in international warfare, but i’m assuming the majority of readers get it without my having to find essays in my support.

anyway, the lakers are again plowing through the nba finals, and i cannot possibly muster up a single ounce of energy for caring. people left and right talking about this game, that shot, kobe this, shaq that . . . i just find it all so boring and silly. grown men that play a sport for a living and make more in a year than i’ll probably ever make in a decade is just kind of sad to me. more sad the more i think about it. but then i think of all the joy those big sweaty men bring to so many middle-aged guys with nothing better to care about, and . . . wait, i’m still sad.

and as far as patriotism, i’m only especially glad to be an american when it results in three day weekends. memorial day, to honor those who have fallen in war to protect our freedom, and if you’re me, to barbeque beef and enjoy a book and not go to work. also, to make another trip to cold stone creamery (cold stone combo #2: sweet cream ice cream w/ twix bar and caramel. holy dairy dessert, that was a delicious combination).

fantastic.

[now hearing this: back to the future on tbs. even fantasticker.]

i keep forgetting to write until the next day. maybe you could say i’m taking a day to digest everything before i lay it out in a public forum. really i just keep forgetting.

yesterday was far less eventful but still a wonderful thing. when you know monday isn’t a real monday, the weekend is even more fulfilling. i spent about 4 hours making a new mixtape for my cd-playerless car so i can avoid the pit that is broadcast radio and not get too sick of the mixtapes i already have. have to road test it more before i can tell if it’s good or not. other than that i read almost the entire day (outside a trip to the airport to drop off josh). the only other excursion was to ralph’s to pick up some of this new vanilla coke stuff for a taste test, after being reminded by justin. i have to say, it’s pretty damn good stuff. i was afraid there would no real detectable vanilla presence, but it’s pretty sweet. i’ve had a vanilla coke fetish for some time, and it’s good to know that i can buy it pre-bottled now and save myself a trip to denny’s or ed debevik’s or something. mmm.

today is for books and barbeques. outstanding.

yesterday was the shit. seriously, why can’t more days be like this? i went to work, which isn’t great, but is better when the first thing of the day is the friday breakfast meeting that includes breakfast. the bagel wasn’t great, but it was free, get it? plus it meant not sitting at my computer for that hour.

then, at one, instead of working at my desk for five more hours, i got to go to E3, which to the non-loser population means nothing, but to fans of video games is an exciting opportunity. for the undorky, E3 stands for electronic entertainment expo, and it’s held at the la convention center, and it’s the hugeass industry conference for all the video game makers. that means they have huge flashy displays, crazy lights, loud music, and most importantly, test-builds of all their upcoming game titles running on huge, expensive, very choice flat panel tv screens. yes, i’ve seen a bunch of games being played that won’t even be on the market until november or even later in some cases. didn’t play any because it’s more fun to watch people that are more or less proffessional game players testing out stuff and showing off what it can do. so that was awesome.

things to check out this fall, based on what i saw (for ps2, which is my system of choice): the getaway and star wars: bounty hunter. there were of course some expected things that are cool but not that exciting or revolutionary, like tony hawk 4, and some i will get just because they look fun but other people might not like as much at all, like superman: shadow of apokolips, batman: dark tomorrow, and a game based on evil dead. also, although they didn’t have the game on display at all, i did find out there will be a sequel to grand theft auto III out this fall too. hot damn. (if you’re dorky enough to want to find out more you should check out gamespot, they have a lot of E3 coverage over all platforms.)

oh, and after we left there at four i got to go straight home. short days are the shit too. i got to spend some quality time with my lady instead of working until six.

and THEN we went to see the rx bandits at the glass house, and as always they rocked the room. so much fun to see live. follow it with in-n-out burger and you can’t lose.

holy crap my friends are both hilarious and crazy.

both of these things were said within the last five minutes in my bedroom, by one roommate and one darling girlfriend:

“she’s like a mouseketeer: they never die, they just get older.”

and,

“frankie avalon, you son of a bitch.”