most important thing first…

COACHELLA POOL 2008 BEGINS NOW.

music-loving readers, please direct yourselves to the season’s best opportunity to prove your taste-maker status, talk mad shit on other hip concert-goers , and win their money to pay for your rock and roll lifestyle.

in other news, college football is almost over, which is a let down — fuck UCLA! to honor its passing, i think some serious beer pong and nacho cheese are in order, which we plan to make happen in a serious way.

at work this week we also found out a bit of disappointing news that will essentially be a breaking point between my career up to now, and my career moving forward. not necessarily in a terrible way, but certainly in a substantial one. more on that as it develops. the important thing is that no, i am not looking for a new job, which would be a pain in the ass.

oh and lest we not forget the pay day song, i have to tell you it’s rare that a song is so stuck in my head that i have a hard time getting to sleep. but the cheesily catchy chorus to muscles current internet hit, sweaty has taken hold of me this week in a serious way. that amount of unabashed dopey fun cannot be ignored, and i encourage you to give it a few tries before dismissing it as stupid to work its way into the very pleasure center of your dance-party cortex.

Awwww… Our first christmas tree together in the new apartment. So precious! (please ignore the nerdy collectibles in the background)

oh, what a holiday weekend. i do love the long breaks where we don’t have to travel or do too much and just get to hang around lazily a bulk of the time. it’s a glorious feeling.

not that we didn’t get out plenty. for the half day on wednesday stacy and i were sitting on the patio at el toro with a taco and a beer by 2 o’clock, then playing beer pong at a bar on melrose called el guapo in the evening with jessica. thursday we had the yummy thanksgiving dinner at jessica’s house, then closed out with drinks and christmas carols on the stereo over at gino’s. then saturday i managed to squeeze in a football game & pizza with the guys before heading out for korean bbq and karaoke (again, already) later that night, during which jessica had so many drinks she started stumbling around and babbling a little bit, which was adorable.

yeah, friday and sunday we did almost nothing, except start the christmas shopping — all online though. you couldn’t pay me to fight those crazy people that go to all the stores at 4am just to save 50 bucks on a laptop or whatever other crazy deal they think they might get.

other than that, i spent an unfortunate amount of time trying to finish some really punishing sequences in the skateboarding videogame that owns my soul, skate. i literally tried for nearly three hours to do a certain 30-second run of tricks that just NEVER…CAME…TOGETHER. oh, it was brutal. i still haven’t done it. but i did skip past it to some other things and after a long break for dinner and dexter with the ‘family’ (jess, gino, and sarah), i went back in for a different one and at least this time after trying for two hours i finally succeeded. whew.

anyway, back to work — but for only three weeks until the next break. excellent.

well, let’s just go with beirut again for the pay day song. their latest album is the only newish thing i’ve been listening to at all lately, and i have to say i’ve found myself softly moaning/wailing the refrain from a sunday smile to myself fairly often. it’s strange because at first i found that section of the song almost annoying, but then it ended up being the one that stuck hardest into my mind.

and speaking of sunday smiles, here is what i did this weekend:

no country for old men – 5 stars

this is a tough one, because it’s easy to see why most reviews of this movie could easily be, ‘a great first two thirds of a movie that ends in a disappointing non-ending’. and my first gut reaction at the pivotal moment was very much just that.

but i’m an open-minded guy, willing to see the reasoning for what might be controversial choices in telling what up to a point seemed like a fairly straightforward suspense story. plus, i love and respect the coen brothers, so my first instinct is to see the good in what they’re doing instead of dismissing it.

getting the less contentious parts out of the way first, the majority of the film is an excellent thriller. the bad guy is one of the baddest you’ll ever see, and he fucking sells it like no other. even if you don’t love the movie, it’s worth seeing just for this guy’s pure, cold-hearted deadliness. plus the supporting characters all have the coens’ famously rich local dialect and vernacular, this time of working class texans. the scenes are shot beautifully whether they’re in the wide-open brush or seedy motel rooms. and tommy lee jones is rarely a let down when taken seriously. his part adds enormously to digesting the actions of the evil character he’s after.

then there’s this breaking point, which i won’t spoil, but which throws all your expectations of how a thriller is supposed to end out the window. not in the ‘twist ending’ kind of way like seven or sixth sense; more in a way that just sidesteps entirely what you think this type of movie owes you in its final act. and that’s where the great acting and character of TLJ comes to the forefront to really sell the path the story goes for its last bit.

in the end, the satisfaction you get isn’t the tying up of a narrative arc like you’re expecting over the course of the movie. the satisfaction is in the emotional reaction to what’s happened, what you wanted to see happen, and what didn’t happen at all. you may walk out, like i did, mulling over what you just saw and finding it a little difficult to process. i think that’s part of the point. but one thing you certainly can’t say is that it wasn’t a powerful, memorable film, for which i found myself loving it despite even my own inner protests.

i finally did it! all the tokyo pictures are up!

there is extensive caption text — maybe i went overboard, so what? — mostly because i didn’t want to forget anything we did and not be able to tell about it later. no one anywhere is under any obligation to read it all, but there are definitely some great photos to check out.

i’m kind of scratching my head right now for a pay day song, seeing as how that’s today, cause i haven’t been listening to anything new at all in weekks. i guess i should stop being so lazy.

speaking of which, captioning all those tokyo photos, to actually explain what they’re pictures of, takes some work, i’ll tell you that right now. i think i’m about three quarters done, so maybe tonight i’ll finish and post up the link.

last night we watched my newly received dvd of everything will be ok by don hertzfeldt, which i knew was awesome from seeing back at the last animation show, but which i was thoroughly reminded of upon reviewing. man, that guy can do a lot of cool stuff without a computer. it’s so funny and sad at the same time, i love it.

tomorrow is a business trip — hours of driving for a one-hour meeting, oh boy — but thankfully coming home to a nice game of poker with the buddies. saturday, who knows what, there’s no USC football game to watch. i might get desperate and read a book instead of being drunk by 5pm… weird.

okay right out i can’t help but link this excellent book-shirt (pointed out by this excellent book-blog). it’s so incredibly insider/nerdy/tempting considering the number of people who have read infinite jest, and of them the number who would even remember this as a reference. i admit, i wouldn’t have got it myself — loved the book, but have a terrible memory for details in literature — if not for the help of the unique name on the back that managed to stick in my mind.

in conversation last night, i brought up what i thought an odd detail in the medical profession. let’s say someone you know recommends an, *ahem*, lady-doctor (not as in female practitioner; as in doctor specializing in the needs of women) to all her friends. then you know for a fact that there’s an older woman out there somewhere who has seen the special areas of half the girls in your social circle. of course, girls may not find this amusing at all, as i do. perhaps i’ve been watching too much curb your enthusiasm lately. moreover, what if you lived in a very small town; you’d know that the local doctor was the only person in town who’s seen everyone’s genitals! how awkward.

yes, i am back safely from vacation. have been since tuesday, actually.

yes, the six day post-vacation vacation at home was wonderfully lazy. nary a computer was touched other than to get movie times.

yes, american gangster was good, if a little less badass, more biographical, than expected. no departed, that’s for sure.

also, wristcutters was quite good. i’d give them both four stars.

naturally, i’m back to work this week. it’s weird after two away.

boy, local stores were sure hasty with the christmas decorations. so i went and made a list (newly updated!), mostly for family, unless you’re feeling generous.

of course, there are many trip photos. i am currently sorting and captioning.

and yes, normal blogging will resume shortly. there is plenty to talk about.

TOKYO TIME: 4:34PM, MONDAY

well it’s the last full day of the trip, tomorrow we pretty much wake up, pack, and hop a bus to the airport for all that fun and the lovely 10 hour flight. ugh. it’ll be fun boarding a plane at 3 in the afternoon tuesday then landing at 7:30 the morning we left. we’re marty mcfly-in’ it back to LA!

sadly we didn’t make it to the ninja museum today, we just didn’t think we could get up early enough to make it there and back in a reasonable amount of time. yesterday was fun walking around harajuku to see some elaborately dressed teenagers and the huge crowds in all the shops. i even finally got to buy some stuff of my own that i might actually be able to wear. one thing we’ve noticed about the style of dress here is that either it’s very conservative/professional, or the young people are so super-trendy none of the stores they shop in carry anything i could wear without feeling foolish. lots of very busy prints — i saw shirts with entire badly-translated poems written all over them — or very very short skirts or shorts for the girls that a normal non-bony, non-asian girl would feel really self-conscious wearing. we did get some cool knick knacks though.

today i have to admit we were kind of spent, so all we did was stop by another center in ikebukuro, where we went to a gyoza stadium (all-dumpling food court, mmm), and an ice cream city both inside a place called namjatown that was a bit like a chucky cheese’s for japanese kids. sadly, not a lot of fun since it entirely lacked any english directions on any of the activities. tonight i think we have one nice big traditional japanese ten-course meal planned where you sit on floor mats while you eat, then we’re pretty much done. not looking forward to the long plane ride, but i am looking forward to having almost a week of time off when we get back to the states to specifically NOT spend all day every day walking around, and just lounging, relaxing, catching up on tv shows waiting on the tivo, playing some video games, and eating wonderful american food.

not to mention, of course, putting up the LOADS of pictures we took. soon you will see why we are so exhausted after our 8 days here. see you soon, los angeles!

TOKYO TIME: 11:05AM SATURDAY

so we’re getting close to the end and faring much better with successful activities, although we still seem to be foiled in about half of the things we want to do. only now we’ve just learned to accept it and roll with it. tried to return to the palace gardens again and they had closed about an hour before, so we went to tokyo tower instead. tried to go wednesday night to a bar we saw in a book we borrowed from jen, and couldn’t find it, so we went to another bar. that bar was a late-night only bar and wouldn’t even let us in at 10:00, so we went to a great funky/artsy american bar and had a great time. thursday we went to get lunch at a sushi place from another guidebook, to find out it had been turned into a familymart convenience store, so we went to the sushi place two doors down and it was awesome. then yesterday we looked and looked for a ‘maid cafe’ in akihabara, finally found the one i saw online, and it wasn’t open for lunch, so we ended up at some other one we just happened to see from the street on the 7th floor of a building a few blocks away… man, those places are so weird and cute-overloaded. sadly they didn’t let you take pictures though, but their website might give you some idea.

we’ve had more success stories though too, like making it to the super-funky church restuarant called ‘christon cafe’ where we ate bizarre versions of american food — my ‘fried pizza’ looked sort of like a calzone, but was really doughy and only contained tomato sauce and a runny egg inside instead of anything you’d think of as pizza-related. we’ve seen the famous shibuya crossing both in daylight and at night. we rode a train out to the suburbs and saw a huge buddha statue from 1252AD, and even went inside it. we strolled the electronics area in akihabara and stumbled into a cool hobby shop where i got another batman figure and some final fantasy VII ‘potion’ (i.e. soda) i’m not sure if i should even try to drink, and also mistook a place called ‘pop-life’ for a music/movie/comics store instead of the 7 floors of sex toys and pornography it actually was. also, we went to a cool discount store called don quijote where i got a neat butane jet lighter that looks vaguely like a lightsabre.

and then, of course, last night was kara-fucking-oke. oh man. but since you really need the pictures to get a feel for that, let’s just say that was an outrageous success thanks largely to the ‘all you can drink’ option…

couple more days to go, hopefully featuring the base of mt. fuji; the wild costume stylings of the teenagers in harajuku; a traditional sitting-on-floor-mats, 10-course japanese dinner; and if we’re really ambitious (and the weather cooperates) monday, closing out with the ninja museum, which we discovered is over three hours away and may not be practical. i mean, it is japan, technically there should be ninjas pretty much all over the place, and no need to take that long of a train ride, right?