Author: briancollapsing

aw man… i wrote this 5 paragraph blog and posted it to a downed server, never to get it back. now i have to try to remember what it said. i’ll do what i can.

saturday night when we were walking along the pier area in san francisco, we passed a cigar shop, and all the hip kids who just bought cigars were standing around in front smoking them. but it wasn’t just a bunch of guys who wanted to look like mobsters or something, there were some cute girls standing there, smoking cigars with their mixed crowd of friends. i thought this was so gross and wrong. ugh. i even commented on how i would never, ever, ever hit on a girl smoking a cigar no matter how cute she was. yuck. i just don’t think that’s right.

then last night, after we get home and my girlfriend finally returns my call, she says i should come over and hang out with her and her friends janelle and dave who she’d been out to dinner with, hence the delay in calling back. i said okay. she said i could just walk over and she could drop down her keys from the balcony. i asked if they were going to be out there so she’d see me coming, and she said yeah, they’d be out on the balcony smoking the cigars they just bought. aaaaaah! i guess they stopped at a cigar store in westwood after dinner at the in-n-out there. i told her to call me after they finished with that business, which she did, and when i did come over later it smelled bad in there and just giving her a hello kiss almost made me cough. blech.

now i’m sorry if any girl who happens to read this is offended by what might be a sexist or offensive remark. but cigars are smelly and nasty when guys smoke them, and girls smoking them is just disgusting to me. yuck yuck yuck. not that i’d hate a girl just for that, but wow, it’s a turn off to the extreme. i couldn’t believe the coincidence though. night one: girls + cigars = nausea. night two: girlfriend + cigar. it was too weird. yuck. so take note ladies, don’t let me catch you with the stogies if you want to win my heart.

now it’s about 11;30 and i haven’t technically done any work yet today. not bad, huh? some may say it’s because no one has come up to me and told me what i should work on, some that it’s because i haven’t gone up to mr. bossman and asked if there was anything i should be working on… it’s all a matter of perspective. i’m thinking it might be very possible to make it all the way to lunch without doing anything but listening to music. the only productive thing i’ve really done today was finally find a good mp3 player for macs. on the advice of my pal mike, i downloaded itunes from the apple website, and it seems to be able to serve all my needs for the low low price of nothing. score.

in other news, i guess the hey mercedes cd has been pushed back to an as yet undetermined release date. aw nuts. i was hoping it’d be out before the vagrant tour hit LA, so i could get it to rev me up for the show. i guess it’s still a possibility — i’ll keep my fingers crossed. and no matter when it comes out i’m still gonna jump for joy when i get it. i’m excited. and for now at least my new rx bandits cd should come today. two of them, in fact. that’s right, captain kangaroo, if you’re reading this, you got the hook up homey. it’ll be on it’s way to you tomorrow. rock on in australia josh.

hey everybody, i’m back safe and sound. the bay bridge didn’t collapse while we crossed it, the spicy chicken wings didn’t kill me, and the drive wasn’t in any way catastrophic. it was a lot of fun, too! i’ll give a quick summary for the fans.

friday we left around two and the six and a half hour drive wasn’t awful but i was sore and glad when it ended. when i saw my roommate once we pulled up to his house i was shocked at his massive amount of hair. when i last saw him he had blue-dyed slightly puffy hair, but now he has the most excellent head of black rock hair. i’m a bit jealous. picture carrot top, only black hair, a little less curly, a little more puffy, and maybe a little bit less hair volume. add hip black thick framed glasses and you have my buddy mike, who has some major style going. it was really good to spend the weekend with him, he’s great.

so we went to the chicken place and i knocked down an order of nuclear chicken wings (nuclear is step four on the seven step spiciness scale) as did the rest of our crew (mike, me, roommate dustin, roommate dominic, his schoolyear roommate kay, and mike’s friend ali). sadly, dom and kay got traditional wings, a lowly two on the spicy scale, and we made fun of dominic for not being a man the whole rest of the weekend. we even started calling him “traddy”, short for traditional. that’s extra funny if you go to USC but it’s not worth explaining why.

we went mini-golfing afterward which was big fun and hilarious since we didn’t keep score, and mike lost his ball in a bush after a crazy shot and had to borrow for the back nine (can you say that about mini-golf?). after the sporting we went and saw a 1am show of planet of the apes which was very very cool even if it wasn’t as amazing as i hoped. estella warren is hot, charleton heston’s cameo (as thade’s father) was pretty great, and tim burton makes rad movies. it was obviously one of his movies too judging by the ending. you’ll see.

saturday we got some burgers, watched the meet the parents dvd at mike’s house, which wasn’t great but which ben stiller saves to some extent, i think. later we drove to berkely to pick someone up, then drove into san francisco. berkely was nice and made me envious cause they’re in a really nice area and usc is not. san francisco seems a lot nicer than LA too. we walked around in the city, then went to the pier to get ice cream, and see some seals chillin’. that was weird but we had a good time there too.

today it was grab food and drive home, basically. this time it only took five and a half hours. score.

it was a weekend full of laughs and goodness, and i’m super glad i went. i’m sure there are plenty of funny things that happened that wouldn’t be as funny written out so i’ll spare this from being any longer and probably hit the blog machine again tomorrow at work. nighty night.

hey, everything’s back to working again! was going to post more yesterday but it just wouldn’t go through. what’s done is done, let’s just forget the whole thing.

today everything seems to be tip top, and even the template editor is working again. smashing. added some more bands to take advantage of that fact, and as always i’m always open to new blog friends who want to share.

so here’s the scoop on my weekend upcoming (because last night wasn’t worth recalling, as far as i can do so). i’m going on a drive up to the bay area! it was very suddenly sprung upon me that we should go visit my schooltime roommate mike who lives near san jose by my summertime roommate dominic who lives in the bedroom next to mine. not one to turn down an adventure i declared my support for the trip and now we’re leaving in a few hours to make the five hour journey. on tap for the evening after the long drive is a stop at the best chicken wing joint i’ve ever been to and after we recover from the atomic sauce, a late viewing of the coolest movie of the summer. well, the second part is only a conjecture. we’ll see how it turns out. but how can you doubt the combined cinematic powerhouses of outstanding director tim burton and guy-who-looks-good-topless mark wahlberg? haha. well i’m excited is all.

unfortunately (or not) this weekend is also when my girlfriend was supposed to move from summer apartment to school year apartment, and now i’m not going to be around to help her move, or to spend her first weekend of truly free time in weeks since her job has been taking up most of her life. i could hardly stay home and shirk my roommate like that, and it’s not my fault that after this, her first weekend of freedom, she happens to be going on a family trip for a week or more, but somehow she ends up really upset that i won’t be here for a mere 50 hours (approx.). i’m saying i agree it’s bad timing and i’m sorry it happened like this, and she says she knows she’s the one who’s leaving again soon, so theoretically things should be okay. but okay usually doesn’t mean crying. either i don’t understand girls at all or my particular girl is just more emotional than the rest. if anyone has any clue and wants to fill me in please feel free.

i goofed up. the singer from the hippos sings on the jimmy eat world track “if you don’t, don’t”, not “hear you me”. i’m a fool, i apologize.

i know what would set me straight. a nice sandwich from subway. where’s that delivery guy?

246 minutes to the weekend!

it’s thursday! that means i’m 7 and a half hours (and counting) away from a weekend. and if anyone asks me to work tomorrow, i have plans, okay?

for not going anywhere last night, or even really doing anything, my night seemed awfully eventful. not awful in a bad way though. first of all, in a “my new jimmy eat world cd came today” way. yeah, it was waiting in the mailbox like i knew it would be. rock and roll. so i excitedly popped it in an listened closely… and here begins my review. at first listen my impression was more or less “this isn’t nearly as good as clarity” (don’t worry it gets better). there didn’t seem to be any songs as beautiful as some of the great track on clarity like for me this is heaven or the last track, goodbye sky harbor, which i think is 13 minutes worth of a masterpiece. but even the first time through i had to say the title track is pretty rocking and some of the other songs had catchy melodies. this is obviously a more poppy cd then clarity was, and i for one try not to fault a band for going in new directions as long as they do a good job and don’t lose all of what made them good. so initially i was disappointed somewhat. but i came back after a bit and put it in again, this time listening less closely and not scrutinizing. i think i was writing emails or something at the same time. and for some reason that time i really liked it. a lot. this is what i decided at that point: clarity was outstanding. really amazing. so even though this cd doesn’t reach the same pinnacle, being a couple clicks down from that is still damn good. and this cd is pretty damn good, i say. a few of the tracks stand out as really strong and catchy, and maybe there are a few i could do without (get it faster just doesn’t do it for me), but that’s totally forgiveable from a band that’s as talented and passionate as this one. i’m still a fan and this cd is definitely going to get heavy rotation from me for the next few months. can’t wait to see them play here in a few weeks (they’re taking a rest from supporting blink 182 to play two show in pomona, ca…lucky me!) plus, as a final note, i noticed that ariel rechtshaid, lead singer from one of my favorite bands the hippos, did some guest vocals on “hear you me”, which is a really pretty song and gets more so the more times i listen. good for him!

so that’s that. oh, i also watched my roommate’s dvd of hackers with him, which was fun because angelina jolie wears the coolest clothes and has great hair and record-breaking amounts of makeup in that movie, and it’s about computers, but from the mid-nineties, so all her friends of jealous of her new laptop with a “28.8 kilobits per second modem!” lucky her. i also did some reading and had dominic burn me a copy of castor’s self titled first cd which is out of print but which you can download from emusic. so it’s not stealing, because castor still gets royalties. which they heartily deserve.

hey look at that, it’s still thursday and at posting only 6.7 hours left until the weekend. score. if i didn’t feel like i’d written plenty already, i’d write about what’s on tap for this weekend (trip?), but i should save something for later otherwise i’ll have a very dull afternoon.

the only good thing abour right now is that i’m not hungry anymore. the problem is that lunch is already behind me though. see, the pre-lunch stretch of the workday always goes by faster than the post-lunch one. and usually we have a pretty late lunch around here, almost always after one pm. that means the dragging post-lunch stretch could be as short as three hours. but today it was already over by 12:30, and although i’ve tried hard to extend the downtime by doing some browsing and blog-reading, it’s only 1:15 and i have nothing to do now but work. this makes me unhappy, and if i didn’t have some good tunes to escape with i’d certainly be lost. completely gone. every day this week has seemed to take longer than it should to be over. does that mean i’m having a bad week, or am i to the point in the summer where i’ve just had enough of working full days and need to get out of here as soon as i can? i wish it was the first one, because then next week would be better. but i know in my gut that it’s the second one, and the whole next 4 weeks or so i get to (have to) work here are just going to be increasingly more grating on my sense of well-being. will i ever have a job where i don’t spend half of my mental capacity wishing i was doing something else? it’s probably best not to think about that.

ooooh, i just heard my name on the radio. well, on the internet radio at least. i had to request a jimmy eat world song off the new album because it hasn’t come in the mail yet. but i have no fear, it’ll be here for today for sure. this radio show is really good though, if you read this before noon c.s.t. you should check it out. sarah, you rock.

it’s quarter to eleven and i’m already hungry. no that’s not the title of a song, that’s the truth. what’s wrong here? that bowl of froot loops just didn’t do it for me this morning i guess. haha. froot. i can’t not laugh at that.

okay, here’s the problem i have today with the world: if you’re a business that deals with consumers, how can you only accept phone calls between nine and five? don’t most consumers work during those hours? and unless you’re going to phone in about your personal life during work, which i don’t want to do in this case, when exactly are you supposed to talk to these nuts? i have to call someone about my student loan situation, but they’re closed when i get home from work, and not open all the way up until i leave for work. silly company. i hate you. if i didn’t have friday off to take care of this you’d get an angry voice mail a day until you were open when i called.

back to the rock from sarah. it’s sooo good. i hope she reads this and appreciates the plug.

and i hope i can find a candy bar or something soon because i’m starving!

christopher guest and his cohorts are brilliant. is he working on a new movie? he should be because i love him. if you can, you have to track down the dvd of best in show, and watch the deleted scene about “the original cabin”. i almost had a situation, i laughed so hard. and i’d hate to stain our nice couch.

you know what, those digiorno frozen pizzas really are pretty similar to delivery pizzas. they didn’t just make that up.

nobody worry, the movie quotes weren’t meant to cause a headache. they’re obscure geek lines that cool people shouldn’t really know. star wars (a new hope, episode iii, that is) and mystery men respectively. speaking of star wars — even though i wasn’t really — i read in an interview with kevin smith, or maybe it was just an article about jay and silent bob strike back, that mark hamill turns down any star wars related appearances or cameos as a rule basically (he did do a guest voice on the simpsons, mind you), but he jumped at the chance to play a star wars knockoff character in the movie within the movie about bluntman and chronic. what a great guy. he was really funny too, nice job. (that’s me rubbing in that i got to see an advanced screening and you didn’t. who wants to touch me? i said who wants to fuckin’ touch me!?… i can’t stop quoting movies now, nice work).

off to visit a lady then come back and hit the hay. tomorrow’s wednesday!

wow, it’s not nearly as late in the day as it should be by this time. how long have i been here? i was born here you know… you’re gonna die here you know…

at least best in show came in the mail today. or rather yesterday, and i picked it up today from the mailroom. so i can watch that sometime soon and have a good laugh. i’m especially looking forward to the deleted scenes, and perhaps most of all a commentary with christopher guest and eugene levy. they’re too funny for words.

so today, since the imac from hell i usually use is getting attention from the more computer-inclined guy here, i’m at the desk of the girl who doesn’t come in on tuesdays. sure, the computer is faster and works like it’s supposed to, but i’m on the exact opposite end of the room, and i’m at someone else’s desk, and the chair is different, and it’s just so WEIRD in here. scary and weird.

and it’s only tuesday. ugh, something needs to be done.

okay, can you get those two movie lines? anyone? maybe that’ll spruce up my day.

after waiting forever for a copy of electra 2000 by hum to show up on half.com or ebay, i get the good sense to check parasol last week and of course they had it. the printing with the bonus track and everything. awesome. so that came today and i’m listening to it and thinking i should have bought it a long time ago cause it’s good. so good.

so are waffles. my roommate dominic likes to have waffle parties and invite as many people over as he can muster, and whip out the waffle iron and make waffles for dinner. just let me use the word waffle one more time because it’s fun to say and see in print.

anyway, some people came over, we ate, we laughed, we had a good time. it seems like our usual circle of friends isn’t really very large, so times like this when you have an excuse to invite friends of friends over are good for some fresh conversation. especially when some of them are cute girls. (i have a weakness for cute girls, you see).

so now i’m filled up (from waffles) and happy, and chatting up some friends online for a bit. computers are great for this reason at least, say what you will. i have friends all over the country since this whole going away to college thing, and i don’t really like talking on the phone much, so if it weren’t for instant messenger and email i wouldn’t be in touch with a lot of really great people. thank you, al gore, for inventing the internet. you’re a decent guy no matter what technically less than the majority of the voting population said about you.

see you in the morning at work everybody!