Category: Uncategorized

fantastic weekends like the one i just had feel even better because they’re so full of activity and good company, they just seem to stretch on longer than the average old weekends you’d just call ‘okay’. we capped madilyne’s visit off friday with a fun trip to the roost during which we took eachother’s pictures pretending to drive some stranger’s gargantuan convertible — do these people not expect this to happen when they leave the top down overnight, parked right there on the curb? then saturday’s gorgeous sunshiney afternoon prompted driving to amoeba and lunch with music up and windows down, and later a nice stroll up melrose because we just couldn’t get enough. tried to grab some shoes but wasn’t inspired by the wall of tired puma/adidas offerings, so i made a pilgrimmage sunday instead to the old trusted favorite and grabbed some gorgeous new grey & white vans. my feet love me right now. my stomach should too because i got the most excellent key lime milkshake ever right afterward with jess; if you’ve never been to cafe 50s you are missing the boat. and you do not want to miss the delicious milkshake boat, brother.

most of the rest of the time was spent with the unbeatable meghan, who i can’t get enough of lately. we caught the passion saturday which i will hold off commenting on until tomorrow, and then watched the oscars with a nice little crowd last night. i noticed myself throughout simply turning and thinking that yes, i actually do get to take this wonderful girl home with me — how great is that? and realizing that just that little thought is one of the best feelings ever.

so, yes. good weekend.

i was starting to feel like i was in a music lull; at least half of my favorite bands have stopped touring and are recording or resting this winter so i’m sitting at home neither hearing their shows or buying their new cds. weak shit. however, some extremely recent music-related developments have started me all a-twitter this fine friday morning.

like how about how i am about to be the proud holder of a free coachella ticket come may? that’s right, my coworker connections come through for me again and i get the hook up. dig that job of mine. sadly, i’ll probably only get a one-day pass for saturday, not both days, and technically there are more bands day two that i’m a fan of. not so thrilled to miss flaming lips AND 2 many dj’s AND cursive; but since i had to choose one of the two i figured i should probably head out to catch the pixies and secure the envy of the rest of the country who wishes they could. (and i guess seeing radiohead, wilco, and trail of dead for the first time among the dozens of others won’t be too bad either).

additionally, today is pay day and to battle the aforementioned musical blues — i can only listen to chutes too narrow so many times in a week, no matter how good it is — i’d say it’s high time for an amoeba trip. unless you have a better suggestion, i need to grab the new mountain goats and the elected cds before they’re old news.

oh and for the grand finale, charlie gets credit for first pointing me to the holy grail of music news: braid tour 2004!?! here’s me trying not to shiver with anticipation. they need to figure out those dates though so i can make sure i’m not out of the country or anything. i can see myself driving reasonable distances to catch at least two of these shows, considering they’re probably one of my two or three all-time favorite bands, but these things need to be accounted for in advance. if they could only talk hum into reuniting for the tour with them i’d go ahead and sign my soul over to whoever’s idea this all was.

instead perhaps i will keep my soul, and just switch the pay day song to braid, since for the first time since getting their cd i can listen to new nathan detroits and imagine getting to hear them play it in the near future, right in front of me. unbelievable.

back to normal colors. have to say i wasn’t really digging the grey.

the perks of being a wallflower – stephen chbosky – 4 stars

this month i spent reading books that i received as birthday gifts in january. this one even had to overcome an initial theft and re-send from amazon, and i’m glad it finally made it into my bookshelf as i’d already been meaning to read it for a while.

i tore through it at a pretty nice clip because not only was it very readable, the kid was so endearing and honest i wanted to make sure everything went okay for him. with the same appeal as any story of the weird kid who ends up with friends even though he’s still sorta weird but at least working on finding his place, parts of it reminded me exactly of that time of my life, and other parts reminded me of what i’m glad i didn’t have to deal with at that time of my life (i don’t think i ever cried in front of anyone, at least, no matter how rough it was). so despite perhaps lacking a larger profound meaning, the story does do a funny and touching job of reminding me it wasn’t just me who was scared and confused at 15.

kissing in manhattan – david schickler – 3 stars

another gift book, this one i hadn’t heard of before i unwrapped it. since it came from a sharp and savvy friend of mine though i gladly undertook it.

either because i’m just in a reading mood lately or because this was a little more addicting than i realized, it almost seemed over before i really got started. at first i was skeptical and it mostly seemed odd more than necessarily clever or gripping; but toward the end when the various short story characters came together in events that intertwined them, i started feeling invested. i think the book appeals more to the web of connected new yorkers and how their lives criss cross eachother, and having never lived there i assume part of the magic of this book was lost on me. so although it might not have been quite well-written or entertaining enough to overcome that hill and seem great to me, certain stories did have really striking premises and overall it was definitely worth the time for the hint at what i might be missing by choosing to live on the left coast.

TODAY IS GREY TUESDAY.

hence the uglification of the site.

read about the protest and support downhill battle here (several participants have already received cease and desist letters from EMI).

support dangermouse by checking him out here.

check out the one track i’m sharing from the grey album here.

or better yet, check a list of a hundred different places to download the whole thing on the grey tuesday site, or get it from p2p servers, or ask me to burn you a copy. honestly, it’s really really good.

from what the site says, hundreds of participants have helped this get some news coverage already as well, and it’s not even the end of the business day. good job, internet.

(back to normal pretty colors next time i post).

new developments since friday include such wonders as winning at poker (two dollars, ten cents), finishing another book (reviews coming up), and getting to see the big lebowski on a theatre screen at the new beverly. either some of the attendees were drinking or they were just rabid fans; personally, i’ve never felt the urge to whistle or whoop at a movie, even when my favorite scenes come on, but so they did. the best was when a guy a few seats over tried to do one of those loud fingers-in-mouth whistles and failed horribly, producing an embarrasing whiff and spittle sound. i had a hard time not laughing out loud right at him, and i think he saw me restraining my chuckles and looking at him across the aisle.

still an enjoyable night though, made moreso by my companions. it also proved a good trial on the compatibility of a group of my friends with my favorite new one — they all liked her and she had fun around them, which give me all the more reason to smile about the whole situation. we all know how key it is that she pass the friends test, right? i know how tragic it would be if my roommate’s girlfriend drove me insane (luckily she’s great), so when i bring home someone new and everyone gets along i’m pleased as punch. it gives me the feeling that this might actually work.

so prepare for the frequency of sappy-tinged posts to go up over the next little while. i haven’t been down this road in what seems like ages, so it’s refreshing and very novel to me right now. i’m almost confused by how well things are going, because how can it be real and have been this simple? i can only sit back and enjoy it i guess, and occasionally subject my website to these goofy paragraphs about how great it feels.

i think it hit me hardest returning to my car at one in the morning with so much jittery excitement — centered in my stomach but really all over — that i had to sit and catch my breath before starting the car and finding a cd that would live up to the moment i was in and attempting to drive home like a normally functioning person. the girl i rode the elevator up with once i was back in my building probably thought i was high standing there in my hooded sweatshirt sort of smiling and half-humming and barely noticing or caring that she was there (tall blonde girls probably aren’t used to this happening), but i don’t know if that’s quite the right word for the state i was in.

now trying to recall and write about it is getting me all fluttery again, which i like, but i won’t prolong because understatement is the probably the best route to go here. don’t want to spoil this feeling by trying to describe it — she is wonderful, i am thrilled. that’ll do for now.

lest you think my life is suddenly a fairy tale though, all is not peaches and cream: the return last night was beautifully shot but largely boring. if not for the positive association i’d say it was wholely a waste, however the essentially romantic backdrop of an empty theatre arrived at far too early was probably worth the ticket price, so still i can’t complain.

addendum to the danger mouse cd… apparently music activism group downhill battle is organizing a protest in support of the stricken record. grey tuesday is encouraging people all over the net to change their page colors to grey next tuesday the 24th, and join in posting the album to their site for any and all to download. there’s a good wired article regarding the backlash as well in which someone points out very rightly, ‘if it’s so amazing, why doesn’t EMI just sign the guy and make their share of money off this disc everybody already wants to buy?’

so since my site can easily go from black to grey for a day, and i’m not short on bandwidth or webspace these days, why not join the cause? check in next week for a special one-time-only, first-time-in-years color change. too exciting to imagine, i know.

dj danger mouse – the grey album – 4 stars

when i heard about this, i thought, ‘what a great idea, i better pick that up.’ when i heard it was getting banned and ordered all copies destroyed by whichever stores still had stock left, i thought, ‘what a damn shame, it sounded like a great idea and i missed out.’ then when my man tim posted a link to score the whole thing, i thought, ‘i’m not going to feel guilty now if they’re making it physically impossible for me to buy this legitimately . . . right click, save as, muthafucka!’

and that was only a couple days but a couple dozen listens ago. i’m not going to claim full authority on this since i don’t technically own the black or white albums this was drawn from. but i do know this little cd project has just earned a permanent place on my hip hop classics list alongside qbert and soulwax, because when i hear this i just want to party. it’s great. sure, a lot of it’s the strength of the rapping, but the full sound makes it the amount of fun it ends up being. break the law and listen to this if you haven’t already — it’s so worth it.

[now hearing this: the pay day song, change clothes, which even if you can’t be troubled with the rest of the album you should still hear. the breakdown at the end is excellent.]

i had an all-around unbelievable weekend. the addition of presidents day didn’t let me down either, i just had one more unbelievable day. not surprisingly that puts me in a great mood going into today, save for a twinge of regret that i’m back at the desk this morning.

i was going to try avoiding the list form on this, but it ended up looking really long and boring, and besides the pile up of unexpected, uncharacteristic, or just suprising high points of the weekend is more impactful as a list anyway:

i got a free copy of the chris cunningham directors label dvd from work, which i watched with my buddy pat after some in-n-out friday night, and which i am glad to have on my shelf considering his aphex twin videos would both sit comfortably on my top ten all-time music videos list.

i ended up going to a college party with some friends, which i only resigned my initial hesitation toward thanks to my pals skyy vodka and sprite one-liter. the three of us ended up having quite a fun and belligerent time.

while at the party, i ran into a girl who’d also graduated already, who was in one of my advertising classes and who i’d had a crush on but never talked to. she recognized me and gave me her phone number after we talked for a while, which was exciting and personally validating. she turned out to be a little strange though so between that and developments later in the weekend, i’m not sure i will end up calling her. sorry wendy!

saturday morning, i actually got a response to my post regarding indie 103 from the station’s programming director. surreal. crazy that he should end up here, but i am glad to have heard from him. if you’re interested in the exchange, his email and my response are right here.

i had a surprisingly splendid valentines day thanks entirely to my dearest jen; our plan of white wine and lost in translation was perfect, despite our getting drunk and sleepy before quite making it to the end of the movie. we even ended up doing something i’d sort of been wanting to do for ages but just never really found the right time to do . . . fondu. it was a very sexy experience, i must say. jen is the best.

our bar of choice was closed sunday night for some nba all-star related party, so we ended up in the diviest dive bar in hollywood, the powerhouse, where i helped drain my first pitcher of natural ice before we promptly left. then i lost at poker and went home and had a muffin.

i hosted an excellent barbeque monday though to make use of our day off, and it put me in a great mood. except for the moment of slow-motion horror as i dropped a stack of ten frozen burger patties off the side of our balcony, but that quickly passed into laughter. lots of friends came and ate and enjoyed themselves. it’s been too long, need to step up the barbeque frequency around here.

and if you can believe it, i crammed in one last great time afterward, and met up with a new girl. very promising. don’t want to jinx it because i think she’s cute.

[now hearing this: wilco, because their documentary renewed my interest in the album once i finally got around to seeing it.]

feel free to send love notes or leave comments declaring your crush on me. happy valentines.