Category: Uncategorized

it took me almost an hour yesterday just to find out what time the debate started thursday night. what’s your problem, news networks? then of course, having found out it starts at 6, i wouldn’t be surprised if i missed most of it because i haven’t left work at 5:30 in roughly the entire time i’ve worked here. how am i supposed to be an informed voter now?

also, i found out i have one more reason to get cable this fall: entourage. extremely funny and it’s so nice to see jeremy piven getting a chance to cut loose his hilarity. plus shows set in the town i live in are fun to watch for familiar landmarks, and all the women are unbelievable, but those are just small perks. mostly it’s like people say, sort of swingers the series except the guys are successful and wealthy instead of kind of sad.

so, i’m back safe from my trip to prague. and if you’re dying to hear all about it, i’m sorry but i couldn’t possibly fit all the fun goings-on into digestible blog form. i did have a great time, did lots of good eating and drinking for not a lot of money, got to catch up with and hang out with josh, wandered the city a lot and saw lots of cool people and sights. i’m working on getting a functioning photo gallery up for that and other recent trips, which i’ll announce once it’s operational, so maybe that’ll tell more if this isn’t enough.

to fill in for long stories though, and to help me someday in the future remember the long stories that go with each of these things, i will give a brief list of things i saw of note:

— holy shrine of human bones

— old, beautiful castle with old, beautiful church (and 287 steps to climb to its tower)

— lots of other old, beautiful things

— a cool marionnette show

— largest dance club in central europe (5 floors! beautiful women! american pop music!)

— cool bars: secret lounge, marquis de sade, bombay (sort of–at least it was open late on sunday night)

— half the cool restaurants/bars being in underground basements for some reason we never pinned down

— stupid drunk american girl dancing on a table

— stupid drunk group of british dudes saying loudly and stereotypically, “oi, we jus’ come from a pub!”

— lots of other groups of drunk british guys, and restaurants/bars with “no stag groups!!!” signs in the window to ward them off

— several guys trying awfully hard to get us to come to their strip club

— their strip club, for about 5 seconds … sad, not sexy

— several girls offering us sex (“you know blowjob?”); several guys offering us marijuana (“you smoke joint?”)

— people in the hostile trying to get action when we walked in … sorry!

— those same people actually being the coolest english-speakers we met while there

— people in the hostile who were unbearably obnoxious … “i’m not usually retarded, amsterdam did this to me,” is not an excuse

— my first flambeed entree. my steak was on fire!

— absinthe, which we drank, and i purchased from a very nice girl who led us into their little winery/spirit shop. she described it as ‘making you a little strange in your brain’

— the waittress i wanted to marry where we got lunch one day

— the waittress i wanted to marry at the bar where we drank the last night

— the amazing german girl i danced with at a bar, which also had a waittress i wanted to marry

— the very fat man i sat next to on the 10 hour flight home

— the customs officers who stopped me for questioning for some reason they didn’t tell me, but which made me very nervous, and didn’t even result in a search of my bags for some reason. not that i’d ever smuggle anything questionable home from a winery/spirit shop

and even with all that, it’s good to be back.

to those that read on a weekly-or-so basis: do you ever think about the relationship your occasional perusal bears on my daily life? not that i write every day, but say in a good week i do three or four, and so the reader on a 10 day cycle maybe misses a few entries here or there unless truly dilligent and sure to digest every post since her/his last visit. if that’s the case, okay. if not, you’re missing every 3rd passage or so, which amounts to maybe days, weeks of my life as described here. i could be going through crises, having adventures, pondering minutia that you had never even thought of, and it’d all just slip right by you. meanwhile you are developing a two-thirds-formed idea of who i am and what i do with myself, which as the entries increase in total number, become farther and farther from the actual complete picture presented here (nevermind the philosophical discussion that could involve, i.e. ‘you can never really know anyone completely’ or ‘by observing something you change it inherently’, etc.). what i’m getting at is, for those that only visit now and again, i could drop off the map for a decent amount of time and you wouldn’t even notice. sort of implies a weird detachment in this supposedly intimate medium attempts to bring about; which oddly reflects the actual real-life dynamic of friendships… can you ever fully keep up with what’s going on in even your best friend’s life? what do we really know about eachother at all?

to those that read daily or almost-daily: i know i don’t post as often as i should or would like to, but this time i have an excuse. i will be abroad for about a week having an adventure in prague with my dear friend josh. all that nonsense above was really just a pretentious lead in to the equivalent of an out-of-the-office auto-reply. gotcha!

see you next week… xo, –brian

sky captain and the world of tomorrow – 4 stars

the problem with a movie like this is that i know full well the reasons i absolutely loved it could be the same reasons other people find it absolutely pointless and boring. the good thing, however, is that those are the sort of people that i shouldn’t really be too concerned about.

sure, they can tell me how the plot was a little thin and comic-booky, what with the “oh if we only knew where the bad guys were…” followed immediately by the vital clue that led them straight there. to that, i would slap them in the face and point out that OF COURSE it’s comic-booky, can you not tell that this is the most fully realized pulp-comic-inspired film to come out since the invention of the computer?

they could go on to talk about how the whole movie looked all weird and fake, to which i’d probably kick them in the shin and ask them what part about imaginative masterpiece they don’t understand. and if they wanted me to stop inflicting them with minor damages, they would have to shut up and admit that this was a gorgeously executed and delightful adventure film that goes where movies like dick tracy and the rocketeer — also personal favorites — tried to go too. sky captain just happens to do it more whole-heartedly, more vividly, and more successfully. if that sounds as exciting to you as it was to me, then not only would you like this movie, but i bet we’d get along pretty well. want to hang out?

kind of tired. i’ve continued to be busy and work hard lately.

extremely excited. i’m leaving to visit prague, and my best friend not currently in this state, on tuesday. that’s like two days away.

pleased overall. today was pay day and i got a free, delicious shack burger from the shack in playa. mmm, spicy sausage on a burger.

somewhat fixated. this new black keys song 10am automatic is so damn good i keep listening to it over and over again. hence, it’s the pay day song. i need to get that cd.

getting sleepy. time to go to bed i think and maybe go out tomorrow night instead of staying home and watching a dateline special, “sigfried and roy: the miracle”. the kicker: he still loves the tiger. plus they wouldn’t even show the actual footage, and very obviously danced around the whole gay thing in the way every single statement or question was worded. ‘best friends’, ‘share a house together’, ‘together night and day’… just say it: LOVERS, okay?

want to hear what i did today? well, i started off the day going to a photo shoot where we took pictures of a beautiful woman in her underwear and splattered with mud (not only was it really hot, but she was a great sport about it). she was actually a really cool, friendly person too and even had lunch with us afterward instead of leaving as soon as possible, and knew more about football than i do.

then in the afternoon i went to the second part of the photo shoot in the desert hills which led to me getting to ride an offroad mini-ATV. i had of course never done this before, and it was possibly more fun than the morning activities. or just a different kind of fun. a lot like riding a jet ski which i did once several years ago, only on dirt, and this time i even caught a little air once or twice. i was so hardcore — and afterward, dusty.

tonight i just had some pizza and watched family guy, which was fun too, but just less exciting. however, i am pausing to write this while reading the amazing adventures of kavalier and clay, which is very good so far. and even if you never read this book, i recommend you drop by a bookstore and at least read the passage that begins, “only i have one question. what is a comic book?” on page 74 of the paperback version, and ends, “that is a comic book.” several paragraphs later, on page 78 as a matter of fact. it’s one of the most lovingly constructed and captivating passages i’ve read in any book this year. of course there might be better ones later on in this very book, but i just haven’t gotten to them yet.

all in all, a good day.

haven’t worked until 10pm in a while; i was starting to miss it. of course honestly i don’t mind, except that i get home and before i know it it’s time to go to bed. if only i could stretch the day out so i worked longer but still had the same amount of alert hours afterward for my leisurely pursuits. that hot shots golf game isn’t going to unlock all the secret characters itself, you know. nor is kavalier and clay going to get read on its own.

it’s alright, maybe a vanilla coke and some rock and roll ought to set me straight and before you know it, it’ll be friday night and i’ll have a cocktail in my hand demanding one of my friends pick better songs on the jukebox at the well.

whose life has been awesome lately? you know all that talk about how great the three day weekend was gonna be? yeah, topped it. hanging out with dom friday night was excellent as usual because we drank whiskey on the corner of some street in the hollywood hills, went to a party with dudes in some crazy 80’s band from the future — or so the guy said, anyway — and got carney’s the next day. nice.

then i left town at 3:30pm saturday, drove to vegas where beginning at 9pm i drank a lot of cheap drinks followed by a lot of free drinks, ended up winning 50 bucks on the night (possibly the only time i’ve ever had a 100 dollar bill in my wallet) and having the best time vegas has ever showed me — even if that last link doesn’t imply what i wish it did.

maybe because we didn’t even bother sleeping or paying for a room like a sucker but drove back at about 4am once our buzz had worn off and everything was still on a high note. so we cranked some tunes and made it home safe then slept most of sunday.

recharged, had a fabulous barbeque monday and reveled once again in our awesome friends. and the beer they brought over.

i just checked the dictionary on how to spell ‘reveled’ and apparently it’s correct with one OR two L’s. how fucked up is that.

(that it’s variously correct, not that i looked it up. i’m just studious, is all.)

i would talk more about something pithy or profound or pop-culturey but my work week’s been really busy and i’m still exhausted from last weekend while worrying about going to bed early so i have energy for the coming weekend. such trying times, i know.

PS… did i mention i’m going to prague in less than two weeks from today? what’s up europe? what’s up transatlantic travel? what’s up josh?!

what a nutty, busy, enjoyable week. the verdict is in, i officially really enjoy my job even more since being promoted. having responsibilities, though sometimes daunting and often time-consuming (i worked til 8pm every night this week without even noticing), does make employment more rewarding. and i’m doing some cool stuff lately that makes me feel smart and useful. good stuff.

however, i am feeling a bit taxed, so the weekend will be a welcome dose of off-time. and you know me, i’m not one to waste it. tomorrow night minus the bear show at the troubadour, saturday night las vegas, sunday night rest, monday night barbeque. i’ll see you there.

oh and also check out a minus the bear song off their new EP for the slightly late pay day song. ninjas are so cool.

so, in case you missed it, the party we had friday night put most of the social events i’ve been to this year to shame. it’s like all our coolest friends showed up and invited each of their coolest friends, and some of those people brought their fun and/or sexy friends along as well. i knew less than half of the attendees and it was fully a blast. now we’re already looking forward to the next one. that, and getting our carpet shampooed.

the problem with parties at home though is that i drink an awful lot and lose a lot of the details. and since no one took pictures either, i have to rely on my normal backup, which is quizzing my friends who were hopefully less drunk than i was about what happened. so, based on their various debriefs, i have put together some good points that i had no idea about based in my own memory.

— not one, but two people puked off our fifth floor balcony. splashy.

— people were wrestling on my bedroom floor.

— there was a major screaming fight between two guests. one of them cried and stole my sweatshirt and walked home. everyone is friends again now; my sweatshirt will be returned.

— i danced, apparently, quite a bit.

— a cute girl i had a crush on was making out with some dude with bad facial hair. too bad about that, huh.

— another cute girl with a cute hat told my friend she found me cute.

— yet another cute girl spent the night here and is a great kisser (okay, that one i knew on my own)

— the last guest (besides the one sleeping over) didn’t leave until after 4am. at least i think so… at that point all the remaining witnesses were too drunk to remember exactly what time it was.

— the neighbor had to go to work at 5am, or so she told me the next evening after complaining about not being able to sleep because of all the people on our balcony right outside her window. she was very nice about it though, i actually felt sort of guilty. of course not for long, because i had so much fun at that party i feel bad for other people’s parties for not trying as hard.

and next weekend’s a holiday so you know what that means — barbeque. solid.