Category: Uncategorized

another busy week down the drain, and i think the end of the craziness is in sight here pretty soon. the massive project that’s been keeping me so occupied is slowly wrapping up bit by bit and that, my friends, is exciting. less so is that one of my cool coworkers is leaving the company. what’s with trying new things, honestly? wouldn’t it be so much more fun to stay here and not put us in danger of getting a lame replacement for our team? he obviously wasn’t thinking of us when he made the decision.

on the plus side though, i caught the newest installment of the animation show thursday night with gino, and boy oh boy…

the animation show 2005 – 5 stars

suckers for animation like me will of course be sold instantly on seeing another feature-length collection of the best in recent animated shorts. fans of plympton, for example, get his oscar-nominated ‘guard dog’ piece. don hertzfeldt fanatics, of which i know several, will get to see the debut of his amazing new piece ‘the meaning of life’, which from a craftsmanship standpoint is unbelievable, even if it’s slightly less outwardly humorous than his hilarious previous work. the rest of the show was almost uniformly impressive though, with some beautiful artistic pieces, lots of laughs, and some really dark, interesting ideas presented in a nice mix of styles. across the board, one of the best ways to spend two hours, as far as bang for your buck. you can’t beat the variety and talent wrapped up in the animation show, so go check it out if you can. and hopefully they’ll keep doing this regularly to all our benefit.

a nice long weekend in the bag, i find myself with a few extra hours at the end of today with time to reflect. normally it’s sunday night and i’ve been trying to cram as much fun or personal business in, i cling to the last few weekend minutes too tenaciously to pause in consideration. with that whole extra day, i was able to fit in a full weekend with my buddies, a sunday evening of reading and an excellent ted leo show at the el rey, visit the lady friend today for an afternoon of lounging (not as boring as it sounds), and watch the very decent mystic river this evening on tivo.

so what i’m thinking are a few things. obviously, as usual, i had a great time with all my friends assembled here at the apartment for a couple nights this weekend. i have more fun with those few people than i ever seem to have doing anything else; and all we were doing was eating and drinking and hanging out at my place. so that doesn’t require any thinking over. those guys are just great.

but maybe it’s a combination of the rain, long hours at work, other work-related drama, not seeing the girl as often as i might like, and being kinda broke lately that makes me feel strange and restless and dissatisfied tonight. i was telling her today, if my life is a wave, with peaks and troughs (pre-calculus? sine curves, anyone?), i am very aware of feeling at a low point right now. in energy, excitement, and overall positive feeling. the tough part as usual is finding some deliberate way of starting the upward motion again. which is tough, considering i just went on a great snowboarding getaway a few weeks ago, went to several great concerts in the past month, had a great valentines day with a girl i’m crazy about (even if she may not fully know it)…

so what’s left to do to make it better? i mean, i can’t afford a drug habit right now — otherwise i’m basically out of ideas. here’s hoping a four day work week will be enough to get things started.

pay day song time. and may i say that this pay day does not adequately measure the amount of extra work i’ve been doing lately, having put in several 10, even a few 12+ hour days in over the last week. stupid ‘salary’. and luckily i love my job, otherwise i imagine i’d be one pissed off and possibly murderous employee. as is, i’m mostly just burned out and a little frustrated.

so let’s pick a tune that fits for this week, one of my favorite fed-up-with-working songs, still we let it choke us. i thought about going with ‘everybody’s working for the weak’ by hey mercedes, but i don’t really work for the weak, and it’s tough to listen to hey mercedes this particular week without wanting to shed a tear, knowing they just broke up. so instead i went with the as yet unbroken piebald instead.

the good news though is that valentines day was a swimming success, i thought, and she seemed to as well. the sushi was delicious, the martinis were fancy, the gift was well received and the wine finished. to me at least, the night was wonderful. so i’m feeling pretty good about that. now if only i had time to enjoy the inevitable lovin’ that should come from pulling off a nice evening like that — then i’d be in a great mood.

and all the usual hearts to you. happy valentines day, everybody! let’s try to find the right balance between the bitterness of single people and the cheesiness of the already-coupled, and band together in not buying too much hallmark crap no one needs or wants.

i wish i could report a better demeanor today, but i worked something like 16 hours this weekend — 13 of them spanning from 10am to 12:30am on saturday. thus, i had a weekend that was largely exhausting, stressful and unfun, which has also resulted in me catching a cold and feeling all around kinda foul. i’m afraid too that all that work brought me down for the only bright spot of the weekend, when i got to see my lovely lady friend. or even worse, that i will not be in top form for my secret plans this evening.

i refuse to let this happen though and plan on rallying the energy and good cheer in order to be my fully charming self for the night. after all, i’ve had about the last 3 or 4 valentines days off, so i had better step up now. otherwise it might be another 5 before i get my next chance.

i feel so special and lucky that out of the two whole shows the mountain goats played this season, one of them was in LA at the echo. you better believe i was there last night too, and of course they killed it. i love that man, honestly. his songs knock me down with their bittersweet power and i have yet to hear one i don’t like. most are even better live. and when they upgraded from guitar-and-bass (love that bassist/backing vocal guy, by the way. very good complement to the main man) to a full four piece, adding electric guitar and a drummer, to play ‘palmcorder yanja’… we’re talking rock and roll dance party of greatness. me and joe loved it — except that they didn’t play ‘no children’ because, as john said on stage, ‘i didn’t bring my machine that i hook up to my guitar to play it’, whatever that means — but a better indicator might be that our friend dan, who had never even heard their songs and came along for the hell of it, admitted afterward that it was ‘really fucking good’. that’s what i’m talking about.

so now i have another new year’s resolution that is way late but still: collect all the mountain goats LP’s that are available on CD. i think there are like 9 or something. wish i had thought of that before my birthday.

also very notably: i think this will be the first valentines day i am excited about in approximately five years. about fucking time, cupid you little bitch.

in less fun news, i think i had the first nightmare analogous to a real life situation i’ve had in years last night. in the dream i borrowed my aunt’s SUV, then took it out in hollywood where my friends trashed it and set the inside on fire. and i couldn’t stop them for some reason, but felt slightly better because at least it was parked and on fire while a 20-car pileup happened in a nearby intersection (?). then i had to tell my aunt it was my fault, in front of my parents, and felt like a totally dumb and helpless jackass for letting it happen, and had to pay for it by refinancing all my student loans through some guy in canada. believe it or not though, these events have a rough figurative correlation with a situation at work here this week. have fun guessing how that one works out.

so after years of blogging, the system worked. as you may or may not have read on the ‘about’ page, one of the cool things, i think, about having a publicly available personal website is that it’s so easy for old friends to get in touch, should they ever get the inclination. for those with the courage to use their full name in their web exploits (and the self-censorship to not let that get them in trouble), your site becomes the best possible of phonebook entries. as a matter of fact, i am pretty much the brian longtin on the internet right now, and i’m sort of weirdly proud of that, for some reason. or i just have a non-common name, luckily.

either way, an old high school friend randomly emailed me a few months ago out of the blue, or that is, in the wake of a five-year high school reunion i was unable to attend that prompted some curiousity on her part, and then we were in touch again, just like that. easy as pie and surprisingly not awkward.

then, there’s more! because that same ‘about’ page also offers a drink to those who stop by looking for me and go so far as to let me know they’ve done so. and look, this old friend was in LA on a business trip this week, and emailed me yesterday morning suggesting we get together that very night for a drink. and in a matter of hours, there we were, catching up and enjoying eachother’s conversation in a random bar/restaurant in the very happening LA peripheral known as monrovia, california. it was a great time, and i was so happy she wrote to me and it came together.

say what you will about stalkers, hackers, perverts, whatever you like that goes on thanks to the internet. as i told her over the drinks we were having last night, i am totally convinced that the positive social value of having some sort of presence on the internet most definitely outweighs the potential drawbacks.

so to rachel i say thanks for getting in touch and hanging out, and to this website i say, ‘it finally worked just like i said it could!’ how cool is that?

yesterday’s super bowl was pretty fun because none of us actually cared about the game and thus arbitrarily assigned an even number of ‘fans’ to each team, who then began talking major shit on the opposing ‘fans’ for no reason other than it was fun. i don’t think i could have named three players on the eagles before yesterday, but i sure did curse those damn patriots when they scored. and intercepted. and generally did much better. luckily, as only a fan-for-the-day, i was able to let go of the pain of loss within a matter of minutes. the beer and nachos also helped. plus, did you catch american dad a bit later? i’m unsure if i loved it, but i did laugh plenty, so that’s a start.

then this morning i awoke with unusual ease — none of that normal fumbling around and cursing that i had to get out of bed — and on the way to work stopped at an intersection opposite a car being pinned down at gunpoint by three squad cars and at least 5 or 6 officers. i don’t know what that guy had done, but i hope he didn’t make any rash moves and get blown away. i guess i’ll never know, the light changed and i had to make a turn.

a few things are a bit overdue.

firstly, a new pay day song. cursive, where are you? i’m hoping holed up somewhere, feverishly writing your next brilliant album, right? no tour in sight, no new material… well, except for a re-release of your single on vinyl with some b-sides. and since i’m starved for kasher & co. and don’t own a record player (am i still allowed to be indie-rock?), i had to, um, borrow those extra tracks from some internet friends. now at least i get to pound my desk along to once until you give me some hint there will be new stuff to look forward to.

and additionally, it’s time for a state of the union here at collapsing. except mine won’t be filled with patriotic hot air and distorted caricatures of how to make the world a better place. mine is a simple mission to step forward and upward. into a new place and a new pursuit. one which will absolutely one hundred percent for sure make the world a better place. create jobs and hunt down those that would harm us, while keeping us safe at home. but not really any of those things as much as just an overdue expansion on what i think this site could and should be.

a short burst of fiction.

that’s right, we now have page number two. time to try something new here. but don’t worry; the main page is not going to be cut back in any way, and the new programs will be rolled out with zero tax increases to the american people.

freedom freedom god liberty america future children hope etcetera.

back safe from my weekend in tahoe. snowboarding was excellent and drinking was abundant. everyone on the trip was cool, and persisted in referring to me as ed norton (there is some resemblance, apparently). toward the end of day two i even got airborne on a few occasions — intentionally, i might add.

today i took off as well to sleep in and recuperate before heading back to work tomorrow. in the leisurely and beautiful afternoon, i did some book shopping and caught million dollar baby at the grove, which was a really good flick even if sort of typical in that oscar-nominated-drama sort of way, then walked home in the 70-degree sunsetting evening.

take that all you non-californians; i can go snowboarding one day and stroll down the road in a t-shirt the next, all in my very own state.

i’m realizing that as good an idea as it is, i might live to regret my “enjoy, enjoy, enjoy” resolution for 2005.

over the weekend i drank four nights in a row. followed that up with two nights out to dinner (and, sure, a drink or two). i have to try to remember to take a couple hours off to at least do laundry before i leave tomorrow morning to go to tahoe for the weekend, for a daily three-day boarding/drinking regimen that should be completely fun-tastic. as will finally seeing gabe again after two long years, which i can’t wait to do.

my only concern is that if i keep at this, i may not need to worry about resolutions for next year — my blaze of glory will come and go and leave only a fatally bright flash behind me, as i vaporize in a cloud of white hot excitement. ironically, i finally signed up for a 401k program just yesterday, which made me feel old and pointedly non-thrilling. maybe i should just party to death before the deductions start on my next paycheck so as not to waste resources.

but lifestyle ruminations aside, let’s focus on the important thing. i’m going to tahoe this weekend! isn’t that weird? i feel richer just saying it. “i’m going to tahoe for the weekend.” of course, i’ll probably be sleeping in a potato sack on some dude’s floor, and subsisting on bottled water and french fries, but these are minor details. i’m going to tahoe this weekend.