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if for some reason you were anticipating needing me tonight or tomorrow, be warned, i am on my way out for a camping trip in death valley. just for tonight — so i’ll be back to celebrate the lord’s ascendance tomorrow, thank heaven — unless the death part of that valley happens to be more literal than i had guessed.

of course, i can’t imagine anyone needing me too badly, since i spent my friday night doing nothing but drinking beers and watching tv in my living room with gino and justin. which, i would like to point out, was in no way lame or pathetic. who needs bars or clubs or friends or girls when you have maximum extreme elimination challenge?

so i think it’s time to own up to it: i have a total writer-crush on chuck klosterman. i can’t get enough of his stuff as a reader, and i wish i could be one tenth as clever and widely published as a writer.

it started innocently enough — as a result of working in the industry i do, i get lots of free magazines, and i picked up an issue of spin. stumbling upon his article “give me centrism or give me death” a few months back, i was an instant fan. partially because his style reminds me a lot of a friend of mine whose writing i love, maybe. but mostly because of the core beauty they both touch on. the writing is hilarious in a way where the more you get his references, the more you’re rewarded with his punchlines. and it all feels like you were just sitting around bullshitting with someone who knows way more about pop culture than you do, and is way better at drawing the funniest connections and analyses out of the tangled web than you could ever hope to be. all done with a voice that’s natural and hysterical at the same time.

so i started looking forward to his subsequent columns in spin, once i realized he was a regular. last month, he even did a regular column PLUS a full article on the “rock n roll holiday escape”, a cruise he covered featuring evening concerts by the rock legends REO speedwagon, styx, and journey. my favorite passage from that one:

mature concertgoers will politely sit through the new material just so they can hear “don’t stop believin'” for the 4,000th time. this is the nature of classic rock in the present tense; if you want to hear the songs you like, you have to pretend the band’s contemporary material still matters. it’s akin to sitting through a boring conversation with someone because you know you’re probably going to have sex when that person finally shuts up.

of course it took me a while to realize that hey, this guy might also be the author of some great books as well, which i could purchase and read to savor more of his brilliance. if only i wasn’t knee deep in a book already, i’d go on a little kloster-spree right now, and give my informed opinion on those too. but when i’m reading blurbs of praise from the likes of bret easton ellis and david byrne, i’m not really that worried.

plus, this gives adoring fans the opportunity to shower me with these gifts, should they want to admit their own writer-crushes on yours truly.

fallen quite behind here, but that’s what happens when you have old friends in town… you’re too busy living it up to sit around a damn laptop computer. so i’ve been out eating and drinking for most of the last week and it was delicious and fun and expensive, but hey, that’s life. plus we went to some fun bars and strolled melrose and i got beat by the slimmest possible margin at pictionary over which i am still bitter. and in the end, i was late dropping them off for their train and i still have one of their camera cases here on my desk. all the marks of a great trip though, right guys? hopefully they had fun while they were here like i did hosting them.

so the roscoe’s chicken and waffles and the dresden and all those vintage stores kept me away from my precious collapsing, so now what? well, i am not in new york like i thought i might be. slightly sad, if the trip itinerary hadn’t been compressed into red-eye monday, errands tuesday followed by another red-eye. at least this way i can feel like i only got slighted out of a pain in the ass, which is fine, instead of a chance to meet up with friends and see a new city. there will be time for that later.

let’s see, what else… how about a new party-loving pay day song to celebrate my return here and commemorate this week’s party being over? or, instead, to get looking forward to next week’s party. i mean, have you heard this lcd soundsystem cd? it’s so alive you can’t help but move. find me the man who can keep a steady chin while listening to tribulations, and i’ll pay for the coffin he must sleep in.

that is, i would if i didn’t have to spend two bills on getting cavities filled this morning. damn you, delicious soda and four years of dental negligence.

whose life is this? tonight i am in the nicest hotel room i have ever been in, or may ever be in, frankly, in dallas, texas of all places. this is my first overnight business trip. i was asked more than a dozen times in the first hour if i ‘needed anything else’. i was served tea and cake on a tray in my room shortly after checking in this evening, by a man in a tuxedo. and let’s not go into the mind-blowing steak dinner we were treated to by the people we were here to see and do business with. who am i? oh, and also i found out today that i may have to/get to go to new york for two nights next week. when did i become this kind of guy?

or wait, on a totally different page, saturday night. i’ve been to parties. themed parties with specialty drinking events (sake bombing, in this case), sure. but just because it was agreed upon beforehand, it became okay to strip down to underwear after a few rounds? because that was the theme? and then to dance all night in boxers, with girls in their underwear? and to kiss a cute girl on the dancefloor who happened to also be someone’s ex, and have said ex come up behind me and literally carry me off and dump me out the front door, my clothes back inside behind the locked door? i can’t even say i’m used to the possibility of getting to kiss a pretty girl so suddenly like that, much less there being a physical (albeit slightly comical) confrontation afterward. again, how did i become this person?

frankly, i do not care at all. in either case, i really like this person, and i want to be more like him instead of less. he should have some good stories to tell and fun times ahead, and i need to spend more time with him.

(and never mind sunday, which was actually the least out of the ordinary, but still a strangely great night out, just less of a good story. in the end, i think i’m going to focus on the week ahead, and try keeping up the good streak of surprising myself.)

fun couple days here. thursday night was a coworker’s going away party and many drinks. i dominated on several games of bar shuffleboard with my partner until we were embarrassingly defeated by our two interns. ouch. although the defeat does allow one to focus on your friends and your budweiser.

last night’s futureheads show at the henry fonda was almost as fun — very similar to their last show, only this time i knew the words and there were more people.

afterward we got two giant slices of pizza on hollywood boulevard in a little stand down the road that turned out to be a weirdo haven. halfway through eating, what we assumed was a homeless guy wiped down a few tables, presumably negotiated a few dollars for his service from the guys running the place, then took off on a motor scooter that was parked right there in the store. the whole scene was almost scary enough to make me wonder if i should even be eating the pizza i was given. but as i told joe, that’s essentially the reason i love living in a big city. adventure!

on the way to work this morning i was driving behind a truck whose license plate holder read, “warning: in case of rapture…this car will be unmanned.”

it’s strange how something can be so incredibly funny and at the same time make me so very sad.

being moderately political, i am interested in tomorrow’s mayoral election for the city of los angeles. of course, since local politics don’t get as much coverage in my favorite news sources, i still have to examine my choices a bit before making my decisions, putting me in about the same boat as one of the young men interviewed for one of today’s LA times articles i looked to for help:

“I have to do some last-minute research,” said Luis Cisneros, 19, who was walking down Cesar Chavez Avenue on Sunday seeking help for his ailing pet cockatiel.

now that’s what i call journalism. the LA times doesn’t just grab sound bites, it grabs bites of LIFE! makes those stories live and breathe — and hopefully, helps those cockatiels to see another day.

a couple quick things because i had too much fun writing that oprah one to bury it beneath less-interesting writing.

one, i saw a video from the band on! air! library! and now i have a crush on their singer. the music seemed alright.

two, i also saw a video for mastodon, and they could crush me. i am excited though because i’m going to see them next month, and their cd is good.

i’m not gonna go all hipster-who-can-appreciate-metal on you and write a full review, i’m just gonna say i love how metal dudes can get away with writing 13 minute operatic guitar songs about loneliness and defeat but also reference things like infinite abysses and mountains and thunder and monsters. indie rock just can’t pull that off. and so, the pay day song, hearts alive. rock on.

oprah winfrey scares me. did i ever tell you that? no, it’s not in the ‘intimidated by a powerful african american woman’ way you might think, which would be politically incorrect, but at least sort of grounded in reality. oprah’s her own special case. i fear her control over the massive audiences of daytime tv-watching women that tune in religiously to her feel-good, you-go-girl piece of crap tv show for warm feelings and celebrity gossip. they’ll read her book club picks (as a sidenote, i was especially delighted when i heard about the jonathan franzen drama when he expressed honor at being picked but also ambivalence, accusing her of picking some good books but also “enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself…” way to strike back!). they’ll probably try out whatever bath oils or other crap her on-air experts recommend or place in their gift bags. they’ll probably buy compact discs by whatever crappy singer comes on and seems so nice when oprah asks them about their family. all in all, the woman has an unhealthy influence on the minds of the average american female, and that just plain freaks me out.

but why do i share this now, you ask? well, because far from being satisfied with the puppet strings that extend to every housewife’s television set each afternoon, i’m beginning to fear that oprah is now set on taking over hollywood as well. not only the institution and factory for american film, but the city itself, which i call home. before, she was just a boring tv personality who aired at 11am or something, when i am safely far away from my television. but now, i am constantly assaulted by her propaganda while driving across my own fair city! on my daily commute, i pass TWO enormous oprah faces on full-sized billboards, her monstrous coif humorously extending above the board on a wooden cutout, and a large blue box updated daily (yes, daily!) with the subject of the episode to air the next day at 3pm. i should not know what time oprah winfrey airs, or that today’s episode is about ashton kutcher’s party mishaps, people. this i find truly unfair.

and in addition to those, which i am sure are in more than those two places i drive past each morning trying not to recoil, i also pass no less than five assorted billboards, bus shelters, bench ads, and other signs advertising ‘oprah winfrey presents their eyes were watching god‘. sure, it’s halle berry’s beautiful face, but her name isn’t anywhere on the billboard, curiously enough. with the new long hair, i didn’t even realize it was her until about the third week. so when you add that omnipresent power play to the fact that for some reason last week’s oscars included more shots of oprah winfrey’s reactions than clint eastwood, who only, you know, directed the best picture of the year — yes, i will admit that i am getting a bit of a shiver at the thought of what comes next.

please oprah, please… you can have a slice of the cheesy hollywood blockbuster pie, fine. i’m not a huge fan anyway. just promise me — promise! — you won’t keep assimilating until we have nothing left untainted by the sugar coated glaze of soccer mom sappiness. i was hoping to exit this life under more graceful circumstances than a violent plot to unseat the queen of daytime.

ong bak: the thai warrior – 4 stars

movies have been good to me this week. after the animation show, only a couple days later i planned on getting a bunch of the guys together and going to check out this excellent kung-fu movie, which i’d been looking forward to ever since i saw the crazy cool trailer a couple months ago. it was going to be a glorious night of extreme maleness: in-n-out burger, ass-kicking, and ideally with a beer-drinking wrap-up.

well, more than half of the normal crew was busy ‘working’, or going to ‘parties’ or ‘birthdays’ or ‘washing their panties’ or something, so it ended up just being me and my buddy ted, but you know what, the fact that an objective party may have perceived it as a man-date couldn’t stop us. we went. the fact that some weird loser with a headband and goatee thought that in-n-out burger was an american idol audition, singing some R&B hits, possibly of his own creation, couldn’t stop us. we chowed those burgers. and it was worth it, because when that movie started and that skinny asian dude began beating all manner of hell out of everyone that came near him, both of us joined the rest of the crowd in cheering loudly and enjoying every unbelievable minute. i mean kill bill, house of flying daggers, that stuff is amazing. but that stuff is also imagination. here, we’re talking about someone with a jaw-dropping physical talent that the camera can only hope to capture in a way that does it justice. so if you don’t live in LA or NY and can’t get to one of the whopping two places in town showing this, do yourself a favor and write down the name, and wait for netflix to save the day. sure, the plot is kinda silly and there isn’t a lot of ‘acting’, so much as blows to the head. but since when does that really matter to the real beef-eating action fan?

as a matter of fact, i was so satisfied by the high-flying beatdowns that when ted and i went to a bar afterward, we didn’t even worry about being surrounded by tall douchebags hitting on girls in tanktops. we sat at the bar, drank our scotch, ignored two girls that were standing right next to us for about 10 minutes, and talked about kung fu and money. sometimes you have to forget about distractions and focus on the priorities, you know?