Category: Uncategorized

remiss, perhaps, but so productive outside of my bloggy boundaries! for example, i finally snapped some pics of our new pad for any family and friends too far away to come to our housewarming, in case you’re interested.

also, i’ve done a fair bit of cool stuff at work in the last week. i’ve been reading a fair amount. we went out for drinks on tuesday and couldn’t remember to save our lives the chorus to that cheesy bryan adams song from that robin hood movie — turns out it was, ‘everything i do (i do it for you)’, when all we could remember was the meat loaf song. duh, you say, how can you forget those years of couples skating? yes, i was rightly ashamed, but luckily a phone call to stacy and we had our answer in three seconds. she didn’t even blink. i’d say that’s what friends are for.

and last night i TOTALLY invented the lazarus vector and saved all the trees in arcadia, for any nerds keeping tabs on progress through rapture. yes, i am a bit obsessed at the moment, but was kindly reminded last night by pat how soon halo 3 is coming, which could change EVERYTHING.

been busy all this week, doing a mostly blogging-related project, as it turns out. so my own has sat idly by. what’s up?

this new kanye/daft punk video is a neat piece of film for a mostly just okay song. kanye’s one of the coolest mofo’s on the planet (those glasses! holy shit), daft punk are digital gods, so this collaboration should have blown my mind. i think the problem is that the song itself lacks any real moment of bigness or release. it’s just all sheen and no passion, totally missing the part that makes you want to get up and dance like the amazing trumpets on ‘testify’ from the last album, still his best single, i think.

saw superbad last weekend too (even snuck in some *ahem* beverages to help us enjoy the show, which turned out to be 100% perfect for the movie’s story) and meant to review it at length. thinking on it more though, there’s not a lot that needs to be said: it’s a hilarious and honest high school movie. if you think you’ll like it based on the other apatow crew’s movies or any of the trailers, you’re right, you will have a very good time laughing with these dudes. think i still liked knocked up slightly better though, perhaps because i’m a grown up now?

also picked up and started diving in to bioshock (holy shit!), and finished up a book i’ve been reading (excellent read), but i can get into those things more later.

all through high school and college, i carried a little 3×4 inch notebook in my pocket where i kept important lists of things, addresses, weird ideas i had to write down, girls phone numbers (in theory), and what have you. i think over a decade i probably drove two or three of these into the ground, then would meticulously copy all important contents into a new version when the duct tape and rubber bands just weren’t enough to hold it together anymore.

anyway, since maturing into less-baggy, large-pocketed clothing, and giving away that pocket space to a pack of cigarettes, i’ve since stopped carrying this notebook, and it resides more comfortably now in my backpack. the only problem being that it’s not always with me any more, and therefore less reliable for reference.

one of the things i always used it for was to keep a running list of books i wanted to read, so that i would never show up the book store with no ideas, or come across something that looked really interesting for later and then forget completely.

well, since this is the digital age — and also because my brother recently pointed out this information might be more useful if made public when gift-giving occasions arise — i finally transcribed the list in web form to put up here. it’s kind of scary, because now that it’s not tiny scrawls in a notebook, it looks a lot more formidable, to the tune of 54 books. 92 if you count comics. and of course, those are just the ones i took the time to write down, i’m sure i could easily double that with a trip to any of your garden variety ‘best books ever written’ type lists.

the problem is that for the past few years i’ve been averaging somewhere around 20 per year. so even if i stop visiting websites about books, watching shows where interesting authors might appear, or discussing anything writing-related with any of my smart reader friends, it would still take me several years to ‘catch up’. shit, my netflix list is hovering around 200, and even if i average one per week that’s four years. and then there are those video games that pop up to steal my life away now and then… and the fall TV season…

think my employers would mind if i quit coming in to work for about a year or so?

i haven’t posted a new track in ages because of a new music drought i’m going through, but i think an amoeba trip is pending now that the new okkervil river album is out. instead of waiting to get that and posting another song off there, since i already put up one of those a month ago, i’ll share the song that’ll probably inspire a companion purchase: the wonderful beirut track, elephant gun. it has a shared fanciful quality with certain decemberists songs via the trumpet, and also the soundtrack to amelie with its old-european flavor. could do without the drawn out ending, but if you catch the video like i did the other day on subterranean, you get to forgo that little epilogue and also see some great moustaches and a bunch of gypsy-looking people do crazy dances. it’s good stuff, trust me.

stardust – 4 stars

like previously mentioned here, there was no way i could have missed the first major film adaptation of a book by one of my favorite writers — even if it’s one of his strories i haven’t got around to reading yet (embarrassing!). so yes, i went in with pretty high expectations. but i’m happy to report that those expectations, although not entirely met, weren’t much let down either, which made me really happy.

skipping over the princess bride-meets-harry potter type stuff that could populate a full review on it’s own, yes, it’s a fairy tale story with magic and lots of special effects. in fact, my only complaint would be that some of the effects sequences went on much longer than they needed to, when it was the story and characters that were so much fun i wish they had more time to play in.

the hero is an extremely likeable, somewhat goofy young guy trying to figure himself out, and the falling star girl he meets played by claire danes is clever and adorable. watching their adventures, and of course their eventual romantic moments, could have been totallly cheesy if it were another romantic comedy with kate hudson, but instead was totally charming and sweet.

what pushed it over the edge was the well-balanced mix of dry british sophisticated humor with some childish wonder that reminded you to not take your fairy-tale glasses off, start trying to think about things too rationally and ruin it all. add on the excellent supporting cast, like ricky gervais in his typical genious style of banter, robert de niro in a hilariously a-typical role i won’t dare spoil for you, and a band of ghostly dead princes always hovering around enjoying the show themselves make for a great storybook experience that was just fun to relax and enjoy. if you’re not too grown-up to let yourself have a good time with a movie like this, i highly suggest you go out and see it.

and take a pretty girl too if you can, the way the star-girl ‘lights up’ when she’s happy is so cute you’re totally going to want to kiss someone afterward.

back from san diego, which was, as expected, several days of interesting followed by several nights of far too many drinks and not enough hours sleeping. i’ll say this though, it was far wilder and later and crazier last year in miami. san diego was nice but it had that very orange county/disneyland feel to it for a city. it’s like a city that’s still a suburb somehow.

now that i’m back i have to go straight to another night out for a departing coworker. i need a beerless night, please help!

i don’t really count last night because there was still the exhaustion of driving back from SD, and i spent an hour putting together our freshly arrived cd shelves from smart furniture. so modular, it’s genious! the only problem being that i have more cds than i thought, and it’s awfully close to full already. luckily that can be easily solved by thinning out the crappy old stuff in the collection or an easy shelf expansion pack! you can even design your own!

well, i’ll be down in san diego for a quick whirlwind conference thing for work from tonight to wednesday afternoon, so don’t expect much from me til later this week, when i can complain about having had too many drinks and not enough sleep. should be fun and interesting even though i’m looking forward to the end of the week when i’ll be back home and jessica will be back from her work trip as well so we can do some lounging together after a week apart. aaawww, precious.

so, after six years of blogging as of a few weeks ago (SIX!), i’m still at it, which is impressive. and i’ve had the same design since college, which was just over four years ago. that’s okay, i really like this layout, color scheme, etc. it’s staying for the long haul.

the only thing i felt slightly guilty about as the years passed was keeping a picture from my senior year in college as the ‘about the author’ picture. like i was misrepresenting myself, living in the past, etc. so i finally tracked down a more recent photo, which you will now see if you let your eyeballs drift slightly up and to the right.

the thing is, it looks almost totally the same. i’m wearing a jacket in this one. you can’t see my shoes. appropriately, i’m holding a cheeseburger.

now the question is: does the similarity between that and the old one speak well of me — “he really knows who he is, he’s true to himself, even though he’s grown as a person he’s still the same fun kid at heart, he hasn’t gained inordinate amounts of weight as he’s rolled through his beer-guzzling mid-20’s”? or is it kind of sad that in terms of appearance i’ve changed so little — “try a new haircut, maybe? facial hair? better clothes that maybe weren’t bought at a thrift store? anything? you’re stuck in a rut, man!”?

as you can tell i personally don’t wrestle with this problem at all; i mean, i do still write in my online journal every week which i don’t see a lot of the 30-year-olds i know doing. but who cares, i kind of love who i was in college so in most ways i’m sticking to it for as long as i can. and a lot of the change since then has been internal and positive, so why fix what’s not broken. but i am curious if this is fear of change or realization of having achieved some level of ideal balance. and hey, at least i bought a new jacket since 2003.

now that our place is pretty much settled i have this strong urge to just go home every night and enjoy being able to sit there and relax, and it’s something i’m going to have to consciously fight so as not to become boring. i told myself the month of july i would try to go out less for purely financial reasons with all the costs associated with moving, but that month is about to end, so my excuse is not really valid any more. i will not become a permanent funcher! to that end, i’m denying my inner laziness and going out tonight, friday night, and hopefully saturday night. balance will be achieved again, and i will resume being the social butterfly who is not too old to party. honest.

oh, and here are some other things i forgot to add yesterday when i got carried away reading about joker face-painting stunts…

first, this guy takes a century-old form of grafitti — the writing of things on dusty car windows — and blows the roof off of it. will dirty car art be the new tagging?

also, i am totally printing some of these out to keep in my glovebox as we speak. brilliant and funny without the rudeness of car horns or dangers of road rage: you park like an asshole tickets. i love that they distinguish “diagonal parking — cool car” and “diagonal parking — not so cool car”. that second one must hurt the most.

a little weekend recap and some monday coolness…

friday night’s maximo park show at the el rey was pretty great. we timed it perfectly so we didn’t have to endure a single note of sub-par openers after our short walk from some warm-up drinks at gino’s new place just around the corner. i realized i’ve absorbed a lot more of the songs off the new album than i’d thought, and hearing them live did seem to make them come a live a little more. still prefer the previous album overall, but i wouldn’t sell the new one too short. it held up pretty well.

saturday was all about apartment shopping, and after that and a few online orders today, we’ll officially have all the furniture we’ve been looking for. then we went out to a nice anniversary dinner at cube (which i just reviewed for yelp as well, if you click down on that map there), which blew our tastebuds away. delicious fancy cheeses, surprisingly yummy rabbit-sausage ragu — that’s right, we ate bunny sauce! — and some choice ravioli with a fine bottle of wine from our trip to wine country in the spring. oh my, it was heaven, and we went home happy.

this morning i came across the new dark knight teaser trailer, which is excellent in buildup and dangling how the joker will sound in the next movie (answer: pretty much PERFECT for this incarnation of batman).

it was originally posted at whysoserious.com, which has been replaced with more of their continued viral marketing trickery based on a stunt they pulled at comicon. it sounds really cool, and i wish i could have been there for it. i’d link to a place where you can read more about it, but i haven’t found a complete report anywhere.

this is the best one so far, but basically defaced dollar bills (george washington in face paint) led people to the previous version of that website, which you got the code to by calling a number from a sky-writing message over the con ending in “HA HA”. then you went through some puzzles as a try-out to be in joker’s gang, leading to a location where you got face-painted like the new joker (the participants of which are shown on the current version of the whysoserious site). finally, one of them was even hauled into a truck and ‘killed’ and pictures of his dead body were posted on that same site. of course, all this is gone now and replaced with that rent-a-clown thing, so it’s a shame you can’t go back and follow it yourself anymore. oh well, the crazy interweb can be fleeting and not all total coolness lasts forever.