Author: briancollapsing

birthday turned out to be pretty great thanks to some secret surprises delivered on behalf of my friend shannon by two of her girlfriends here (one of them my raquetball nemesis — whom i will obliterate in the near future, mark my words). now this was fantastic because, well, for one, shannon’s in italy and the fact she went so out of her way was very touching. and secondly: cheesecake. hot damn do i love me some cheesecake. that girl sure knows what she’s doing. so getting great presents and a birthday cake from a girl overseas can kinda turn a birthday into a big deal all of the sudden, and i ended the day very happy.

now i have to get this class crap out of the way so i can come home and play final fantasy X. my favorite part of that game so far? i got to change the main character’s name to brian, and one of the magical monsters’ name to josh (my roommate) because it has weird piercings like he does.

non-birthday-related: someone called my top ten from yesterday from “truly inspired”, which leads me to believe that he must be brilliant, because it takes one to know one and it works both ways in this case. visit lovelettertypewriter, collapsing friend #17.

wow, 17. that’s huge.

yeah, and if anything worthwhile happens for this birthday (not looking very likely at this point, will have to wait until Super Large Double Birthday Bash on saturday night for any real fun, i’m afraid), i’ll let you know.

just so you don’t think it’s a total loss though, i did get a chef’s hat for my birthday today. and final fantasy X. my friends kick ass.

it’s for real. i’m 21 now. click on the box to send me birthday wishes. i will reply with an address to which you can send your expensive gifts.

happy birthday to me. now i better get drinking.

oh heavens it’s wednesday and time for a new song of the week, isn’t it? well before i quite get to it, i really have to make a confession first. so in list form, here i bare my soul and name a new song of the week:

ten or so reasons (the first ten or so i could think of, not the top ten or ten chronological reasons) why i love j. robbins; by brian longtin:

1: engineered, mixed, produced* and played extra percussion for braid’s frame and canvas.

2: produced and played additional strings and percussion for texas is the reasons’s do you know who you are?

3: wrote, sang, played guitar and other instruments, produced, recorded, mixed, and even did some graphic design for burning airlines’ mission control!

4: produced and mixed the stereo’s three hundred

5: produced, recorded, engineered and mixed shiner’s the egg

6: produced and mixed the dismemberment plan’s emergency & i

7: wrote, sang, played guitar and other instruments, recorded and mixed burning airlines’ identikit

8: produced the promise ring’s nothing feels good

9: produced, recorded, lent extra vocals to hey mercedes’ everynight fire works

10: burning airlines live, september 14th 2001 (my first time seeing them live; an outstanding show)

and 11, hence the “or so”, is jawbox. i just picked up for your own special sweetheart at amoeba this weekend, and it’s great, of course. another case of the “why didn’t i listen to this band a long time ago” predicament, but better late than never. so after all this beating around the bush and praising of musical brilliance, the song of the week is chicago piano. thank you and goodnight.

*in some cases he wasn’t the sole producer, although often he was; and either way, he could kick your ass.

so i turn 21 in only 7 hours now and that’s scary. like i said before: holy crap.

but enough about that (until later). what else happened today? not a lot. i got five pieces of mail, four of them birthday-related, yesterday afternoon, and today nothing but a box of contact lenses i ordered monday. and although i’m duly impressed with the speed of their arrival, it’s not a very exciting thing to receive the day before your birthday.

oh, and i didn’t actually open any of the birthday-related mail yet, because it’s not my birthday yet.

and i went in and picked up my last check today, which i was projecting would be awkward and painful, but was really quick and painless and fine. my boss was happy to see me, and said she missed me, and asked how i was; it was all very nice. i’m glad there are no hard feelings (or at least if there were she kept them to herself and didn’t spoil my day. heh.) so i’m cashed out and done with that place.

oh, and it has been decided as of last night there will be a party here saturday to honor the passage out of childhood for both myself and my pal justin (who turned 21 today, quel coincidence!) this saturday in my apartment. if you read this, well, you must be interested enough in my life to stop by for a drink if you’re in the neighborhood, so please do so. world travelers are also welcome to traverse nations to attend because this is a once in a lifetime event (for me, that is — how good a time you have is up to you).

the guy behind me at the post office today smelled terrible. i don’t know how a man can smell so bad. it boggles the imagination.

the speech went well this morning, i think. i opened with a quote from waking life, and after i finished and sat down, the girl next to me asked, “what movie did you say that was from?” [i told her], “oh, is that one of those indie movies?” that was cute.

and now in half an hour my first radio show of the year. since i have no interns, there will be no one to laugh at me when i stand up and play air guitar, and i can therefor rock unimpeded. if you’re interested, visit the site and you can listen in. and if you’re not, well, i’m just going to have to have fun without you.

oh oh oh! also, my belated christmas present from roommate dustin came: the wet hot american summer DVD. post-radio-show screening at my place if you’re interested. funny funny fun fun.

and i turn 21 in less than 30 hours. holy crap.

radio meeting went not too badly, and i found out that now my time slot is tuesdays from 7-9 PST. set your clocks for college radio rock. or not, because honestly i don’t care what you do. (i’m trying out this “disinterested” attitude of getting people interested in me. how’s it working?)

i finally finished reading darwin yesterday and now i’m free to continue reading love in the time of cholera, and i just had to quote this little passage for my friends abroad this spring:

nevertheless, when she returned home overwhelmed by so many experiences, tired of traveling, drowsy with her pregnancy, the first thing she was asked in the port was what she thought of the marvels of europe, and she summed up many months of bliss with four words of caribbean slang:

“it’s not so much.”

that’s funny. i like this book. i’d like to finish it too, because i have three others stacked up waiting to be read and about a half dozen i’d like to buy soon. my small, slow brain be damned, i say.

more tomorrow (well, later today) probably, like a reminder to listen in to my show. you know, if you want to. see if i care.

i’ve spent most of the day writing a 5-7 minute speech for my business communications class tomorrow, with the help of the drukqs cd playing in the background (truly though-provoking), a break for batman on cartoon network, and some wild cherry pepsi. what a day, what a day. i think the speech turned out pretty well though, and i thought about posting it here but it might be a little too cheesy for that. perhaps if i look at it more later i won’t think that anymore and i’ll share my eloquent piece of rhetoric with the world. probably not though.

i am mighty glad i didn’t have class today though, which is only spoiled by the fact that i have to go to a KSCR meeting tonight to find out when my radio time slot will be this semester. i like being a part of the radio station an all, but the meetings are always a pain because some people just loooove to talk. and talk and talk and talk. and this is counter to my plan to barbeque tonight, because i’m a hungry fella. guess it’ll have to wait a few hours. but i will have my cheeseburgers, believe you me.

josh and i just took a trip for cheeseburgers and record store cruising. since we had to take the bus, we had to make a night out of it, but it was a good time. honestly, putting an in and out burger and an amoeba music within a few blocks of eachother was the best thing to happen to me this semester. we grabbed some tasty burgers and then spent well over an hour in the record store. they just have so much great stuff! new and used. i got an ultimate fakebook and a jawbox cd, and josh went nuts and bought 8 cd’s because his conscience is catching up with him for having burned copies of cds by bands he really likes. it’s okay for him to go so crazy though because he got free money this week — but that’s his story to tell, not mine.

anyway, we were there forever, and looked at cool art concert posters and everything, then took the bus home. this was the funny part. on the way south back to campus, there was a guy across from us who sneezed really hard. into his hand. josh pointed this out to me whispering, “so that guy just blew a huge thing of snot into his hand, and now he’s staring at it — i wonder what he’s going to do about it.” so we watched him, and he kind of just put his hand in his lap for a minute, then brought it back up and looked at it again. i told josh he should go for either the rub on the pant leg, or maybe just rub it out between his two palms until it dried up and crumbled off. josh said if it were him, he’d go for wiping it on the shirt. neither one of us would have considered (we agreed afterward) doing what this guy did though. HE LICKED IT CLEAN! i couldn’t believe it. it was so hard not to bust out laughing. apparently that wasn’t enough for him either, because he went digging for more, and licked THAT clean too! it honestly blew my mind. i therefore dubbed this guy “mr. slurpy”.

now i’m not usually prone to toilet humor, but seeing this happen was too funny not to share. i hope you forgive me for this small break from the usually classy collapsing.

also: i sure am glad martin luther king jr. changed the world and i get to honor his memory all day tomorrow by not going to school. we’re even going to have a barbeque i think, since it’s california and you can do that in january here. take that, rest of country.

see you tomorrow when i wake up at about noon.

back from a midnight showing of waking life just now, and upon second viewing i’m confirmed in the fact it’s the coolest movie of last year. it lost none of its charm the second time, for me — just a little bit of the wonderment, naturally, since i knew what i was getting. i hope it comes out on dvd sometime soon.

we also watched the godfather tonight, earlier, and man is that a great one too. the baptism/murder montage at the end always makes me delight in the possibilities of film. and you know what else i like? on nights where i just enjoy things this wonderful, just sit back and soak things in that are so delightful and impressive, it’s a lot easier to not have anyone to come home to (or come home with, i guess). if only art and literature and cinema could fulfill all my basic needs for companionship, i’d have the easiest time of completing myself.

finding a person to fill that function, even for a finite interval, is proving much more difficult.