Free in-n-out truck for lunch! Today is a good day.
also we held on to the football game in washington, i got to see mike who was down from SF, i got fully wasted at alex’s birthday party (which i haven’t done in a while… thanks for the great party alex!), mostly because i kept losing at asshole. then sunday i got to rock some halo despite my gimped machine thanks to a generous loaner from dan. so the weekend was excellent too.
how sad is this?
monday afternoon i decided to finally take some time and make me some new ringtones. i’ve got the wonderful samsung ‘blade’ phone with sprint, so i went to this sprint users site where they tell you how to take your own mp3s and turn them into ringtones, and upload them to your phone, all for free.
i’ve had the same ring (‘comin’ home’ by hum, the namesake of this site) since i got this phone maybe a year and a half ago, and i figured it was time to switch it up. so i made me a decemberists’ ‘sixteen military wives’ and a mountain goats’ ‘no children’ ring too. that was four whole days ago, and i have yet to receive a single phone call in that entire time. come on people, i want to hear some triumphant trumpets or some pounding pianos!
speaking briefly of hum, i think jessica and i are among possibly only a handful of people in the united states that recognized their song ‘stars’ was used in some recent cadillac commercials. i give her full credit; she absolutely called it a few moments before i did. another reason we’re meant to be.
and lastly, a new pay day song is well overdue, so take my advice if you haven’t already and go get the latest new pornographers album. on first listen i didn’t like it quite as much as twin cinema and felt a bit of disappointment, but it grows on me more every time. and the flute assault on all the things that go to make heaven and earth (great song, bad title) is a nice touch to one of the more energetic songs on the album that keeps getting stuck in my head.
it’s definitely getting to feel like fall. i was invited to go to a halloween event. the sun’s below the horizon now when i leave work for the day. i thought about putting on a jacket last weekend. and there are so many new tv shows to watch again. we’ll see how many of them keep me past the first couple trial episodes.
i keep saying, ‘tokyo is coming up, better start looking for things to do there’, and not doing that. it’s only four weeks from saturday. i have a feeling it’ll be the week before and i’ll be scrambling just to write down the exchange rate and figure out how to get from the airplane to the place we’re staying. must get on that.
oh, and i got new shoes like i said i would. the pair i’m wearing right now feel funny, either because they’re so new, or because my right foot is slightly wider than my left and means that one shoe of the pair technically doesn’t fit. troubling.
WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS? was it harvesting all those little sisters in bioshock? was that unforgivable? jesus, and at the very MOMENT i turned it on, before i even got the shrink wrap off the fresh new copy of halo 3 i picked up at best buy on the way home?
this is what injustice looks like, especially since this is the SECOND time in less than a year of xbox ownership this has happened. FUCK YOU, XBOX! your halo 3 KILLED my 360 and now i’m in red ring purgatory of death for a MONTH? AGAIN!? utter bullshit.
a couple things.
i just caught this trailer for southland tales, the new flick by the guy who made donnie darko. if you said to me, ‘it’s a movie about the end of the world starring the rock, sarah michelle gellar, sean william scott, and justin timberlake’, i’d be guaranteed to laugh in your face. but watching the trailer, it looks really interesting, and amazingly, potentially really good. i think a really admirable quality in a director is to take very average actors and bring out the performances no one ever thought they were capable of in a well-written story (the difference between jessica alba in sin city and jessica alba in good luck chuck or fantastic four, for example). although i’ll admit i always thought the rock had a lot of charisma and could really break out if he finally stars in an actually good film. i’ll definitely be keeping my eyes on this one.
over the weekend of course, the USC football team whipped up again, and we had a great time hanging out drinking beers, talking shit and watching them stomp on washington state. but i realized sunday when i watched the 3rd quarter of the bears game, that i am a really spoiled sports fan. the only team i watch religiously is my college football team that plays 12 or so games a year and has won about 95% of them over the past four or five years. watching the bears screw up and turn a close game into a blowout in a single quarter just made me sad, but also guilty for not being a very well-rounded person used to the disappointment a lot of better sports lovers must feel on a regular basis. i’m so sheltered in my trojan bubble. could it be symptomatic of an overall level of comfort, contentment and security in my life that is making me a weaker man? maybe i should become a bruin fan for a while to put some hair on my chest (TAKE THAT TED YOU UCLA FUCK!–inside joke).
then a final nerd note: last night, i finally finished bioshock on my xbox. hooooooooly fuck. up to now, i’ve been hesitant to plunge as far as doing lengthy game reviews on here to reserve myself from going fully geek-core (‘far too late,’ i hear you saying, and yet i cling to dignity…), but i think this one might merit it. i’d get into it right now but this post is already too long. i’ll just say two things: i’m glad i finished it before getting distracted by the halo 3 storm, and again — hooooooly fuck.
every time i’ve finished a book in the past few months, i’ve thought, ‘i should write something about that. i haven’t reviewed a book in ages’. then as they piled up on my desk, ‘oh man, these reviews are going to get shorter and less thoughtful and get consolidated into a “summer reading” list for sure’.
now that summer’s practically over (seriously? when did it even start, and it’s over sunday?), i guess i better do this for real. the funny thing is that most of the non-comic picks were actually terrible choices as far as fitting the classic idea of a summer read. but then again, i’ve only been to the beach three times this summer and i live in freaking southern california.
anyway, to be as concise as possible, here are three-sentence reviews and ratings of some very good books.
summer reading 2007
blood meridian – cormac mccarthy – 3 stars
this guy can write descriptive prose about a desert landscape for pages upon well-crafted pages. he really makes you feel how hellish it is, but then, by empathizing with the characters, you too just grow despondent and feel like a dried-out husk. i appreciate the talent, but wish the totally captivating judge holden got a higher page-count so it wasn’t essentially a chore with occasional violent moments of excitement.
marvel 1602 – neil gaiman – 4 stars
like my all-time favorite, the sandman, this takes existing mythologies and weaves them together in strange new ways. seeing olde tyme versions of the x-men, fantastic four, daredevil, et al on an adventure together was great fun, and the art was beautifully fitting for the setting. although i enjoyed it immensely as a gaiman fan, i can recognize that unlike sandman, the new story pulled together out of these existing threads isn’t necessarily one of his best.
god is not great – christopher hitchens – 5 stars
i could catch hell (pun!) for enjoying this as much as i did, because yes, the critics are right, this isn’t going to change anyone’s mind, it’s preaching to the choir. being the choir, however, i found its cataloguing of the myriad sins and shortcomings of religion in general to be handy fodder for conversation and an entertaining read, if not an exhaustive indictment. hitchens is a very intelligent and pithy guy, and i found myself chuckling, nodding in agreement, or gasping quite often, which as far as books go means it was a good one.
ronin – frank miller – 3 stars
one of frank miller’s earliest graphic novels, the visual and storytelling style that matured into brilliance with dark knight or sin city shows its beginnings here. the book was a thoughtful and unexpected gift from my brother for being in his wedding, so i had never heard much about it before reading it. it’s a little raw and rambling compared to his later stuff, but a nice addition to the miller section of my comics shelf.
the trial – franz kafka – 5 stars
i totally respect and adore a story that can be simple in the telling and still hold huge, profound, complex ideas. essentially an existential parable on life and death and fighting against hopelessness — at least that’s how i took it — i could say so much more but i’ll save it for next time we get deep over some late night beers. instead i’ll just share my favorite line, paraphrased since i don’t have the book in front of me: “is there no way to have a life outside the trial?”
the black dahlia – james ellroy – 4 stars
another great one only slightly clouded by expectation. the characters and story are fleshed out really well and once it picks up steam you can’t put it down from one draw-dropper to the next until it reaches its brutal finish. i guess the only problem is that part of me wants every detective story to read like chandler, whereas this is much darker and seems to take less joy in itself; only a minor personal tick against an otherwise fantastic book.
in case you were wondering…
ira glass was excellent and inspiring.
USC kicked ass last weekend.
beer pong was really fun and my girlfriend is amazing at it.
i haven’t stopped reading, in fact, i’ve read a lot lately, so…
i have a lot of summer books i’m going to write short reviews of soon.
and, i’m putting asterisks on my books to read list for a bunch i just bought this weekend and can’t wait to start, in case you’re shopping way too early for christmas.
our tokyo trip is less than seven weeks away and we’re looking for suggestions if you have any.
i’m getting at least one new pair of shoes soon, because mine are shot.
the lives of others was really good. so is tell me you love me.
i still haven’t finished bioshock, but i should have, because it’s one of the best video games ever.
work is still really busy and lately, challenging, hence the underwhelming blog presence.
cheers!
finally saw hot fuzz last night — or rather, finally saw it for real — and that was good stuff. maybe a little uneven in terms of lengthy buildup and huge payoff and not quite as loveable as shaun of the dead, but still really enjoyable. i wonder what their next movie project might be… a monster movie? a western? a sci-fi? there has to be another classic genre that could use a love letter with a touch of comedic parody.
there should be more to write about but i’m working a lot. can’t wait for this weekend though, where not only will there be an honest-to-goodness USC football game against a ranked team, but we’re also going to see one of my heroes, ira glass, speak on campus. at first i thought, ‘oh, shit, we’re going to some artsy intellectual talk and we’re going to be surrounded by drunk meatheads’. but then i realized the team is in nebraska this week, not to mention the game will still be going on when the show starts. scratch that mental picture of douchey frat guys throwing half-full red cups at poor, bespectacled public radio guy, thank goodness.
caught bill maher from a week or two ago on the tivo last night. halfway through this clip is a conversation about how naive the american people are for buying all the crap that politicians shovel for them, and john mellencamp defends their right to be naive, saying, ‘they’re honest, and they believe that people are generally honest with them’.
this is SO horribly wrong-headed i wish they had discussed it more — i think bill maher was so flabbergasted he didn’t even know what to say other than ‘that’s crazy’. but defending general ignorance as an ideal of purity in good old fashioned folks is ridiculous. i can totally give him the idea that no one wants to live in a world where no one trusts anything that anyone tells them, but accepting everything at face value is totally ridiculous. there’s a difference between trusting everyone outright, which will just get you picked up by a guy in a van who says he wants to give you candy, and having the basic mechanism of deciding who deserves your trust before believing what they want you to believe in their political speeches. as bill retorts, ‘there’s something to telling people, “be more cynical. it’s better than going through life swindled.”‘
days, you are so full lately. the trip to san fran was excellent as usual. flying up for the first time instead of road tripping it worked out nicely. taking the bart from the planes to our designated meet-up spot couldn’t have been smoother, and the flights were painless (except for the attendant on the way up who refused to get me two drinks when i asked for them. ‘we’ll see if we have time’ is no excuse, lady! don’t deny me my in-flight relaxation!). although i can’t say part of me didn’t miss the nice drive up the 5 rockin’ the ipod and patiently approaching the kettleman city in-n-out burger…
right from our arrival we set right about our task: drinking beer for most of our waking hours. over the course of a couple days we stopped by several cool little spots for more than several drinks. zeitgeist in particular was a lot of fun, sort of a hipster/biker version of a beer hall with a nice backyard vibe, all those picnic tables lined up and full of people draining pitchers of all those tasty local microbrews… oh, what a time. we managed to escape the super-heat of LA and enjoy the cool san francisco afternoons with a pre-usc-football bbq as well. even snuck in some beer pong. overall, it was outstanding.
plus i finally got to make that amoeba trip i’ve been planning to make for weeks. okkervil river is good as expected, i’m still enjoying the beirut and thinking i should have bought the full album and not just the new ep, and the new pornographers disc is different but great in its own ways too. the surprise though was the ratatat i picked up on a bit of a whim after seeing them open for daft punk a few weeks back. i don’t think i’ve listened this much to an instrumental band in, well, maybe ever. check out this pay day song and tell me it doesn’t get you rocking and strutting down the street. also perfect for bumping in the car, it’s called lex and it’s killer.
oh yeah; labor day it was hot and we were lazy and after trying to have a barbeque for like an hour we instead went and hung out in our apartment pool for a few hours, then came home and were lazy some more. that’s what national holidays are for though so i don’t feel bad in the least.