[addendum: sloppy blogging i guess. must have been that single coors light i had last night — silver bullet right through the brain. anyhow, i fixed the wayward tags on both the best-of link and the pay day song link. all is well. or should be. funny how one misplaced word can make a whole webpage turn invisible.]
Category: Uncategorized
it’s thursday and i’m in a great mood. went to a fun lawrence arms/the ghost show last night to meet up with a girl who turned out to be as cute as i remembered, thankfully. we originally met before thanksgiving and only yesterday managed to find a time to see eachother again — i had honestly begun to doubt if i would even recognize her. but it went well and i think i will see her sooner than two months from now this time.
and tonight i’ve got plans to get trashed courtesy of stuff magazine with some coworkers. i love when publications wining and dining my coworkers trickles down to little old me.
so to further my good mood, how about some goodies? like this hilarious comic from the LA weekly a few weeks back. i love the one with scott baio. or how about a new pay day song finally? it’s the first two tracks from the cursive album i picked as 2003’s best cd. they kind of need to go together to work, so i did a little CoolEditing and now they are one: the ugly organist/some red handed slight of hand. oh, and let’s not forget the near-end to the best of 2003, the best movies. i’ll give you a hint: vin diesel is, surprisingly, absent from this year’s list.
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did i happen to mention my birthday is a week from saturday? oh no? well guess what? that’s right, you are absolutely free to send gifts in the form of electronic gift certificates, cash donations, physical packaged presents (email if you need an address to send the strippers to). and i guess i’d accept just plain birthday notes as well. but if you’re only excuse is not being able to think of anything there’s a gift box of suggestions in the sidebar on the right. let’s see if we can’t make 23 the best year yet, eh? those resolutions might help, and as it turns out i might be going out with two different girls two nights this week. both at least slightly older than me. one a coworker. and it’s only week 3 of 52 — not bad for an old dog, eh? well i guess we’ll see afterward. i’ll let you know. in the meantime, let’s get one step closer to kissing last year goodbye with part three of best of 2003…
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best line out of this issue of vice magazine, from the article on using cyanide to capture tropical fish for sale as pets:
“With 65 tons of cyanide getting sprayed on a single Philippine reef every year, these “fishermen” are killing the ocean, all the fish, and even the mermaids and ghosts from shipwrecks”.
goddamn, that’s funny.
i can’t believe i came home after working until 10pm, and still used my only two free waking hours to update a website. is that more or less depressing than if i had come home and drank alone? well either way, here’s part two of best of 2003 week…
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well, i did it just like i planned, which i find impressive. last year it took me almost until february. but to conserve space and not make it seem too overwhelming, it seemed best to spread them out over the whole week, and put tehm into cute little popup windows. that way you don’t have to even bother if you don’t care, and i can still pop on here and tell a quick story if i have to without taking up too much space. so here’s part one of best of 2003 week, just click below to check it out.
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decent weekend. rilo kiley acoustic show last night at the troubadour was amazing. it takes a hell of a band to play a whole set with only two people and their guitars (and the occaisional keyboard) and have my rapt attention every single second, but those are just great songs. what a good band.
and i’m finishing up some lists, so i will get back to you tomorrow.
my easiest new year’s resolution i think will be to post my list of last year’s favorites by next week. for real. i imagine sunday afternoon would be perfect for that sort of thing, and since this week i’m on the ‘be gentle on the checking account after beating it senseless with christmas shopping’ budget, some nice stay-at-home writing and html coding might be just the ticket.
but since that’s not really a resolution in the make-myself-better, try-new-things, improve-my-life-and-the-lives-of-others tradition of most resolutions, i figured i’d better share the other real ones. especially since having them officially recorded might make me stick to them better. this way i can check back and say, ‘oh yeah, i don’t want to chicken out on all those great ideas or 2004 will be the year of failure’.
so, some things i will make a serious and dedicated effort to do this year:
— read an average of 2 or more books a month.
for the third year running, since i started keeping track. shouldn’t be hard, i reckon.
— write here regularly, become better writer, try writing something that isn’t a weblog post.
yeah, like that isn’t on everyone’s list in the blog world.
— talk to more people who aren’t already my friends.
i’m sick of avoiding eye contact or exchanges with strangers. of course, if they avoid me, at least i did my part. i just feel like i’m missing out on a lot of interesting stuff by minding my own business all the time.
— much more importantly: actually talk to girls instead of just looking.
this is key. rejection is better than inaction. stop assuming or inventing obstacles (better known as excuses).
— more quantifiably: get at least one number per month.
to be voided of course in months following the successful follow-up of getting a number, the seemingly inconceivable ‘becoming involved with someone’. i’d love to just find someone worth sticking with and not have to collect any numbers at all, but either way — this should be the year of the ladies.
— a sub-goal of the previous: get at least one number from someone i meet at a concert.
my friend/ex-girlfriend in orlando went out on a limb and gave her number to some guy on her way out the door of a show last month; now they’re all in love and i’m so happy for her. and bitter, of course, because i’ve always, always wanted that to happen to me and so far, no luck. well, someone needs to put their money where their mouth is or just quit his whining.
other piddly things i should do but won’t necessarily be sad if i don’t:
— ride my bike more, and more regularly
— learn to cook more real food
things that i won’t necessarily go out of my way to do but could very well happen and would be fun, don’t you think?:
— cross an ocean.
— sleep with someone who works at my office.
(but not the same department, that would be tacky.)
— visit new american cities i’ve never seen.
top picks: new york city, seattle, or austin for SXSW maybe?
— have an affair with an older woman.
i’ve never been older by even a month than any girls i’ve dated, but that’s not really what i meant by ‘older’. if any 27-35 year-old foxy professional women read this and were waiting for the time to speak up, here it is.
that ought to do it, right? aside from the whole ‘be a good person, tell my friends and family i love them, hug a puppy blah blah’ kind of stuff, which goes without saying. i say lofty goals make for lofty achievements. aim for the stars to reach the moon, right? should be a good year.
[now hearing this: some beatles cd’s i got for christmas, filling in the gaping hole in my music background. did you guys know this band is really good? nuts, huh?]
it’s been a tough week back, oh man. yesterday i was at an hour-and-a-half long, company-billed lunch, and happened to see john cusack walk right past our table. john cusack! that is definitely my best star sighting yet.
today i had to spend an hour and a half listening to music in my car while i drove something out to our client at a shoot, which came with the side benefit of getting to see jet li, and this time not just in a restaurant, but actually filming a kung fu sequence. damn, that guy moves like lightning and could easily kill me for sure.
so yeah, my job is really hard.
my dorky/compulsive side is working on a list of my favorite things of last year. i imagine they’ll line up more or less with the other losers who feel the same need, but still, for posterity, you know? i don’t know about you, but i don’t really get a sense of how long a year is until i flip through all my old ticket stubs and suddenly recall things that seem like years ago and were really just april.
i was going to hold off on posting until i finished those too, but then i thought i should probably get down something on the past two weeks of my life before i forget. again, posterity, you know? my memory is pretty crappy unless i relate things to other people, even if they are cyber people. so this will be more for me than anything, but you’re welcome to see what i’ve been up to if you want.
some interesting things that happened over what seemed like a very long two weeks, in a list form just like i usually say i’m not a lazy enough writer to use:
— went to a minor league hockey game with my dad (go aeros?). caught a tennis ball thrown from the ice with one hand, but still didn’t win anything. thanks for nothing, #3.
— had ‘real texas barbeque’ before the game, and found it not quite as good as the texas barbeque stand in downtown LA we love (who catered our graduation party, even). thanks for nothing, texas.
— got to see my excellent friend virginia in houston all the way from baltimore. found the city on a saturday more or less boring and ended up making fun of people we walked past in a mall.
— had to pay 25 bucks to get home from the airport because i was the first one back into town and didn’t bother looking up if the metro rails would be running that late. vowed never to do that again. one of my fellow shuttle van riders lived right across the street and went to my school. isn’t that weird?
— waited for an hour to pull into the airport to pick up dominic. safety is such a pain in the ass sometimes. good thing he’s worth it.
— drank, played poker. drank more. stayed up late, slept in late.
— drank way too much new year’s eve. split my lip when i ran into mike face first. threw up everything i’d eaten in 2003. passed out utterly after crawling from the bathroom to our friend’s bedroom floor, but not before following someone’s advice that i should probably take my shirt off first. they seemed to have a point at the time.
— made a big batch of chili new year’s day, had a great time watching the rose bowl with my friends and eating and not drinking at all and handing out christmas presents.
— drove josh to the airport to see him off for his year or more trip around the world. that sure was a weird feeling. good luck buddy, we’ll miss the shit out of you.
— urged our friend to ask a girl at one of my favorite LA bars, the roost, if she was straight or not in exchange for six dollars. she seemed too beautiful to possibly be interested in any sort of male. turned out we were wrong. hopefully i’ll see her around there again someday.
— saw taxi driver on the big screen at the new beverly. that movie is so cool.
— spent over an hour getting into the airport to pick up justin. safety still overrated. urged friend this time to ask if two girls at in-n-out were of age or not. once again, they checked out. new years resolution: stop assuming there is an impenetrable barrier around any girl i’m attracted to.
— had to buy a new plunger because the old one didn’t have enough suction power. we’ll leave the details out of this one.
— oddly though, in the elevator on the way back, one of my fellow tennants was carrying what was easily 50 rolls of toilet paper. seriously, he had one of those huge 20 packs under his arm, and was carrying full plastic bags in each hand. i thought the bags at least were groceries at first, but nope — aaaaaall toilet paper.
— said goodbye last night to dom, the only guy around whom i feel the need to watch the elimidate/5th wheel back-to-back combo, after enjoying his company all week. i love that man.
now it’s back to the grind for a while, looks like. although it won’t be so bad once i remember how to wake up at 7:30 instead of noon.