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oh man oh man oh man. if i were a spoiled child of a plastic surgeon or maybe had a wacky millionaire uncle, this piece of brilliance would have just immediately shot up to the top of my holiday wishlist. all five seasons of six feet under in one subterranean-soil-looking box with fake grass on top. maybe if i sell some old crap i can convert it into this gem… [sigh]. one can only dream.

honestly, there has to be a way i can supplement my income for even six months or something, just to pay off some debt, pick up a PS3, then maybe throw this puppy in and move on with my life. right? this is the internet age! people make a living selling t-shirts. i heard a segment on npr the other morning about two sisters who started a business out of their garage selling rubber balls as gifts by mail, with greetings on them like, ‘hope you have a ball with your new bouncing baby boy’ or a get well one that says ‘i’m sure you’ll bounce right back!’. it honestly CANNOT be that hard.

if you have any ideas or want to brainstorm with me on one, honestly, let me know and i have half a mind to go for it, just so i can tell my credit cards to bite me before gleefully cutting them in half.

well, it’s that time of year again. only earlier this time, since all those message-board-reading music nerd friends of mine went and got a leg up last year. so to prevent early leaks from influencing, we have started even farther out from the actual event. that, and created a whole separate blog to dedicate to the geeky, the obsessive, the totally great…

the coachella pool

2007 edition went live just today. anyone want in who i didn’t already email about this?

after all this pre-holiday new video game system launch craziness, with some nutcases (haha, couldn’t help it) even waiting hours, even days, to get their hands on a new game player, i have to say i almost feel left out. not that i envy people in new york getting rained on while camping out on a cold sidewalk for several days just to get a new playstation, but come on, if i had done the same here in los angeles, it’d be more like a vacation with video games at the end. sitting around with a bunch of other nerds in the sunshine for a few days would be a trip, don’t you think? although doing it just for the privilege of buying a 600 dollar piece of electronics kind of makes it insane.

anyway, this is why i have guitar hero. i have played all three now though, through work or various friends, and i have to say i have a very tough decision to make in the next few months when my budget recovers from buying christmas gifts. tough call!

for anyone who might be curious, the mini-thanksgiving at my place went swimmingly, with our dear chef ollie coming through like a champ on the turkey, potatoes, gravy, stuffing, and other grown-up stuff. it was a delicious feast indeed. not that my homemade mozzarella sticks were anything to slouch at, or the pies i picked up disappointing in any way. overall we were stuffed and happy, as one should be after a good holiday. hope yours was equally excellent.

well here comes the holiday season, eh? some friends and i not doing the family thing this week are going to attempt our own thanksgiving feast, in my apartment no less, so i have the pleasure of heading home after our half-day of work to clean my kitchen. now THAT’S how you spend free time. although more paramount is procuring a couple of pumpkin pies, the contribution my lack of cooking skills has prompted me to promise the gathering.

of course, the only upside of not being able to fly home for turkey day is that you are free to add your own flair to the meal, which i am hoping to do with a generous equipment loan from our friend lawrence. that’s right, i’m making homemade mozzarella sticks for thanksgiving dinner and there’s nothing you can do about it other than be jealous. or come over and try some, i guess.

as far as what i’ve been doing lately, well, USC football is swell, heroes keeps getting better, i’m almost through guitar hero II, and i will forgo writing a review for the prestige because the opinions on it are so varied i’m not going to record mine for fear of rebuke. i really liked it to the tune of 4/5, i’d say, but am not sure my position is defensible.

and oh yes, i think i’ve finally found my new band to really like for this year. see, every year i like to get into one new band that i can say i really really like, and so far this year i hadn’t heard any album to convince me to adopt its creators into that list. mostly just stuff that was decent to good.

however, when we saw the thermals open for cursive a couple weeks ago i was really pleasantly surprised at how much i liked them, considering i almost never hear an opening band that’s a pleasant surprise and not just an hour to be endured on the way to much better music. so this week i finally got around to grabbing their latest album the body the blood the machine and it’s pretty great. i haven’t listened to a band this punky in a while and it feels good. i’m especially obsessed with the single ‘a pillar of salt‘, because that guitar lick running throughout is HOT i tell ya. anyway, check out some pay day song action and get it lodged in your brain like i have.

oh man, i almost forgot to write down the weird thing that happened monday night (other than my tivo being a dick and not recording heroes in HD just because i hadn’t deleted a couple old episodes. sombitch!). see, all day sunday i saw roadie-type dudes setting up scaffolding and other weird shit in an empty fomer car dealership across la brea from our apartment building, which we have a full clear view of from our balconies. i figured maybe they were going to use the place to film a movie or commercial or something.

then monday night i get home from work and see the place all lit up in blue and some crazy projections on the front of the building announcing it was a party for helio. there was even one of those backdrops where they do red carpet photos, and after a little checking, apparently it was a launch party with a bunch of b-celebrity guests, which i could have easily gawked at had i known they would be showing up and either owned binoculars or gone to the trouble to go down to street level.

much more amusing though was how loud it got around 11pm. i told jessica, who was sitting with me in my room, that ‘some live band’ must be playing. then she sort of froze and listened for a second and suddenly half shouted, “HEY, THAT’S BECK!” as she bolted to go open the door to hear better.

so with my sliding doors open, we sort of got a free live beck party set — just without the benefit of being able to see anything — as the music drifted up and across the road. a little more initiative and we maybe could have gone down and peeked through windows, or even snuck in perhaps. instead we just lied in bed and listened for a while, which is something i bet most people have never got to do during a live beck show anyway, so it was pretty great. he was even nice enough to wrap up around 12 so we could go to sleep.

i actually havent’ been shredding as much as i may have liked this week, with some socializing going and getting in the way. this weekend though i fully expect to destroy my fingertips in the pursuit of guitar heroism.

last night was a particularly unexpected treat, as the passes jessica signed us up for to go to a free screening of tenacious d and the pick of destiny turned out to be for the actual hollywood premiere at grauman’s chinese. after extensive line-waiting, we not only got into the movie (reviewed below), but had a handful of funny star sitings. we saw a surprisingly gray-haired ben stiller from a distance while waiting in line. i almost tripped over andy dick posing for a photo with a little kid crossing the back of the theatre to get to our seats (he later sat right in front of us for the movie). spotted john c. reilly spotted chatting in the back of the theatre. almost missed jeremy piven as he passed us toward the mens’ room on our way out, where we also were followed by a tuxedoed paul f. tompkins. then as i was pulling out of the theatre’s parking garage, i also caught hugh hefner posing for a photo with his three blonde lady friends (i think they were there for some fancy concert going on at the kodak amphitheatre the same night). oh, and of course the highlight was jack black and kyle gass coming down the aisle to introduce the film, wearing royal red robes, crowns, and carrying scepters, before thanking us for coming to see the best movie of all time.

borat: cultural learnings… – 3 stars

tenacious d and the pick of destiny – 4 stars

i meant to post my thoughts on seeing borat last weekend but now that i’ve seen both they kind of go together review-wise, as both started as short sketches on a late-night hbo series, and have been translated into full-length comedies. both fall prey to a little bit of the natural difficulty in stretching a short, hilarious bit into a full and satisfying story arc, in that there are a few slow parts that just aren’t that funny where they have to bridge one great segment and the next somehow, but overall it felt a little less forced in the D movie, probably because there was no facade of reality to maintain. it was okay for jb and kg to make sudden and seemingly unwarranted jumps to the next plot point, because that’s just how their characters work, but less so for borat to do completely irrational things as if he’s not just from eastern europe but also just an imbecile.

overall, both had some downright hilarious moments. granted, borat had some more high-minded moments of satire, but i think it also relied a lot on shock value for its humor in several places (i’ll leave you to discover the unpleasantly hairy specifics if you haven’t already), or went so far as to make you stop laughing at the gall of some of the people he interviews. while it’s definitely more ambitious, i definitely didn’t think it warrants any of the ‘best comedy in ages’ distinctions some of the press have been using.

the D movie for the most part nailed the tone of the really well-done tv specials, in that these guys are obviously a joke to everyone, but the way they take their soont-to-be rock stardom so seriously makes them endlessly laughable. it’s not nearly as cheesy and crotch-hit slap-sticky as the tv ads make it out to be, and jack black reprises his fame-launching personality here pretty perfectly, relieving my fear that he might have walked away from it now that he’s ‘moved on’ career-wise.

i told spencer today that sure, if you go in looking to criticize it cynically for not really covering new territory or some bits falling short (e.g. the sasquatch bit), you can. but if you go in looking to have a good time, you really will. i’d liken it almost to wayne’s world, in that it’s a thin plot holding together some really classic segments, only this time with a seriously excellent original soundtrack of tenacious d tunes.

the main difference between the two, for me, is that if i waited a couple weeks and watched borat again, i’m pretty sure i’d laugh less now that the surprise element is gone. where with tenacious D, i’d probably catch more of the clever lyrics in their songs, and pick up on more great nuances to the funny characters (one i did notice: ben stiller’s cameo as the guitar store guy is SO DEAD ON, especially in the hairdo and the way he walks. i swear he studied a genuine guitar center clerk for a week just to nail that one bit). and to me, that’s what makes truly great comedy stand apart, is that it lasts. for the same reason 40 year old virgin easily outlasts most of wedding crashers, i could keep watching it and keep enjoying it just as much. so for that reason, i’d say see both, but if you have to pick one i’d actually go against conventional wisdom and go with the D.

if you find yourself near a newstand this week, just happen to flip through the november 13th issue of a certain major business publication to page 57, and if your eyesight is sharp, you may recognize one of the hip young professionals pictured there, awkwardly trying to pose nonchalantly with his colleagues.

you may also wonder why he would wear a purple t-shirt on a day when such a photo is going to be taken. i can only assure you that he obviously had no idea when he went in to work that morning that he would find himself being the subject of press coverage, if you can qualify a tiny square centimeter of photography (no name mentioned in caption) as actual media attention.

exciting nonetheless. if you add this to the CBS blog link last week, does that make me a rising star?

first off, if you’re any kind of friend of mine and reading this, you better be voting today, or have voted already. i’m proudly wearing my cheesy little sticker and bugging everyone i talk to today and you blog readers are no different.

if you’re still trying to decide and you’re a los angeles or at least california voter, there’s a nice list of various endorsements from lots of newspapers and organizations in the LA times. i also found this LA weekly ballot proposition rundown extremely helpful. anyway, get on it, people.

the only one i will personally endorse is Yes on 87. clean energy initiatives are gonna be so hot in the future and if we get in on the ground floor the whole state benefits, even if there’s a small short-term sacrifice. and if people say it’ll drive away oil industry jobs, that’s bullshit. as long as there’s any oil in california, companies are gonna stay here to get at it. it’s not like there’s lots of other places for them to go instead.

in non-news-related-news, don’t expect much else out of me this week. other than some breaks to watch serial television programs — new heroes! two new episodes of the sure-to-be-terrible fourth season of the O.C which totally jumped the shark last season! the ‘so much better it’s like night and day’ freaks and geeks on netflix! — there’s really only one thing i’ll be doing this week, thanks to the early arrival of my pre-ordered guitar hero II. i got to spend all last night with it, and it’s great, but you don’t really need to know the depths of my obsession with nailing solos in the video game version of ‘carry on my wayward son’, for example. just know i’ll be in a state of fingertip-numbing nerd bliss for the next several days.

more music posts than i know what to do with lately, but it’s been a concerty few weeks over here. last night we caught voxtrot at the troubadour, and i have to say, they are a very very good band. i’d only heard one of their ep’s, raised by wolves, before last night, and liked it pretty well. but the set also pulled from their newer EP mothers, sisters, daughters & wives as well as brand new stuff from their early-2007 full length, and it was all excellent. strong lyrics, lots of energy, and a really great sound. i was especially pleasantly surprised with the bouncy piano-driven track soft & warm, so check out that pay day song and look forward to buying their album like me as soon as it is commercially available.

speaking of which, i have a long overdue (and probably utterly obvious) review to turn in…

the decemberists – the crane wife – 5 stars

alright, so next to john darnielle, my hugest musical man-crush in the world is probably directed at colin melloy, so it’s no wonder that i adore this album. but even were i not all in hetero-love with the man, i could make an objective case for this being a splendid album.

overall, their strength consists mainly of finely honing and then expertly executing on an extremely specific and focused aesthetic. with each album i’ve heard, they’ve only polished, fleshed-out, and perfected that style. although the influences are many and obvious, as everyone can see the romantic novel and celtic sea chantey threads showing easily through the majority of their output, they really take that historical grounding and make it their own in a way no one can touch.

i’d even argue that no band sounds the way the decemberists do (and if you disagree, please let me know, because i want to get those other bands’ albums too), and that the sound which they are completely owning right now is a beautiful, lyrical, grand type of sound most bands just can’t pull off this well. the crane wife‘s huge, 10-plus minute songs are easily two of it’s best, and never approach falling victim to the fast-forward button so many extra-long songs miss out to. and if this album has more variation in the style of it’s songs, i’d say that it’s only a sign that colin and friends are finding out the full breadth of space their style can live in and still remain fully true to who they are as a band. from pretty string accompaniments to groovy bass lines, it’s all just showing their confidence in putting forward their own vision of great music and storytelling, and i have to say i’m eating it up and waiting for seconds.