Category: Uncategorized

back in LA.

glad to be here.

had fun it texas.

my family is great.

plenty to say.

too much fun to be had to say it now.

merry christmas and a happy new year.

[best of 2003 coming in january.]

i’m thirsty right now. that reminds me of how at work they suddenly started cutting the concentrated orange juice that they have in the mornings, and what a heartbreak that was. i can’t believe they’d just suddenly decide to put twice as much water in, as if we wouldn’t notice. or maybe the cafeteria guy whose job it is just can’t read the directions? either way it saddens me every single day i get a glass hoping it’s back to it’s sweet, delicious normality again and finding instead that i have to weep over a glass of H2Orange. yuck.

first off, regarding sky captain . . . the badass trailer is now online. just try to tell me it doesn’t look amazing. i’ll slap you like a bitch.

also, today was my last day of work before the holiday break. 16 whole days before i go back to work…it’s almost like being in college! only i get a paycheck while i’m gone! take that, ya stupid university.

tomorrow i fly home to my parents’ house for a week of warm fuzzy family feelings and whatnot. i’m excited. in a week i come back for a week of fun and frolic with my fabulous friends. i’m extra excited about that too. but first, i have to do some laundry, because if santa catches me freeballin’ cause i’m out of boxer shorts, i might get put on the naughty list, and i can’t risk it. i want some goodies. then i have to go to josh’s party and hopefully stand by and watch as every girl gives him play since he’ll be gone for almost two years. maybe i can catch some spillover action somehow. let’s cross our fingers, eh?

[now hearing this: the new shins that i finally picked up after everyone in the world with thick-rimmed glasses said it was totally the best ever. and hey look, they were sorta right — i love the fact that in ‘so says i’ he references thomas moore. is that pretentious or just nerdy and cute?]

lord of the rings: return of the king – 5 stars

i actually did manage to make it out to opening night on this one after thinking i wouldn’t. i’ll break it down simply like this: after a full day of work, waking up that morning in the 7am hour as usual, and not sitting down until 11:30pm for this film to start, which the running time put its finish right around 3am, i did not have any problem at all staying awake. i never once started yawning or shifting around wishing it would hurry up and get on with it. i was excited for that long, at that time of day, and any film that can pass the three hour mark without feeling too long already gets high marks. the film is just plain good, and i’d say easily the best of its genre (epic battle/adventure films, that is). really wonderful. and my only complaint was the very last scene seeming unnecessary, but that was like a whole minute, maybe. and one out of 200 seeming off isn’t a bad ratio, so i forgive them.

a few addendum — the trailers were great too! you could tell they knew every geek in the country is going to see this film; i think at least half the films felt like they were based on either asimov or philip k. dick stories. but then… but THEN! i didn’t even know there was a spider man 2 trailer out, so suddenly realizing i was watching one was excellent. i LOVE superhero movies done right, and this one rides high in that crowd.

but that wasn’t all! i had heard some buzz about a movie called sky captain and the world of tomorrow, and the amazing trailer that has yet to be posted anywhere. so when we got to see that too, i was shivering with excitement. now there’s another film right up my alley. it sort of has the same stylized war-era comics feel that i really liked in the rocketeer, only this time multiplied by ten and way, way better done. i cannot wait to see how that film turns out.

oh and also, i think i might have been sitting next to thora birch in the theatre as well. i’m about 75% sure it was her, but she was so busy making out with another girl i couldn’t get a good look at her. not really though, it was just dark and i didn’t want to stare (and i guess i was technically sitting next to her backpack, which was on a seat between me and her, but it was a very nice backpack, so i think it still counts).

oh my god, is this a fucking joke? “madonna endorses clark as ‘natural born leader'” said the link on the front page of cnn.com this afternoon. how embarrassing for them.

i didn’t mean yesterday’s post to be all negative though. i forgot to mention the positive stuff, like a really fun office party saturday night. open bar from 8-1 in a really nice club and hanging out with all the cool people i work with mixed with talking to some cool people i normally don’t. that was a really good night and i looked cool in a tie for once.

and saturday, i may have been a little disappointed coming out of big fish, but i sure wasn’t going in. not just because i still had high hopes for the movie, but because we had just seen michael bolton! that’s right we did. he was sitting next to the food court of the shopping center, signing cd’s and getting pictures taken with the sadly short little line of people who had gathered to take part. now that’s a weekend highlight right there; i can’t believe i almost forgot to brag about it. it was very very hard to resist calling out lines from office space as we walked past him to go to the theatre . . . but i guess we were just too nice to embarrass that no-talent ass clown who started winning grammies.

[now hearing this: piebald.]

the last few days have been a little disappointing.

sunday i went to see big fish with some friends. beforehand we went to baja fresh for some food, and i swear those were probably the worst tacos i’d had in 2003, sneaking right in before the deadline. good job guys; you really pulled it together and beat out the strongest contender up until now, the office cafeteria. a real cinderella story, those terrible soggy bland excuses for california/mexican. and that was an 8 dollar lunch! screw those chumps.

the movie itself, while not bad — and admittedly almost making me cry in the end, which is a rare thing indeed — was not quite as great as i’d hoped it would be. i wanted it to stir me like edward scissorhands did, when it sort of fell a bit flat like mars attacks did, although it was a little more solid than that. but maybe it’s an issue of the main character being in love with winona ryder versus jessica lange; it’s just not the same.

monday didn’t help any. i think someone stole a package i was waiting for because the packing slip, which should have been inside a box with about 50 dollars worth of christmas presents i ordered, was somehow sticking half out of my mailbox when i got home last night, not attached or near or indicating the location of an actual package in any way. that certainly made me angry. sorry friends, you get nothing this year. fucking grinches.

and to top it off, i was hoping to sit down to a killer gangster movie with de niro and connery last night, but popped in the untouchables to realize that it was more of a corny cop movie with kevin costner. i don’t think he had a single line of dialogue that didn’t seem inappropriate, badly delivered, or just wimpy for someone playing a ‘hardened gangbuster’. he came storming out of a house after shooting someone and actually said, ‘what is this, a game?’. it was embarrassing. i need to watch miller’s crossing again.

tonight i’m going to have to make up for it somehow, either with delicious food or high quality entertainment. (please advise if applicable).

after seeing the trailer and reading the reviews, i have to say that i will use my last 8 dollars this weekend to see big fish, come hell or high water. it looks so much like the tim burton movie we’ve been missing for years.

plus i’m dying for a decent romantic film — especially one that’s a little… off. but i think that’s how i like them. intolerable cruelty was only 10 percent romantic, really, and that’s the last movie about love that did anything for me, so i anticipate something to finally hit the spot.

but first priority: two nights of free drinking courtesy of my Benevolent Employers. hopefully all the money that doesn’t go into our salaries will be channelled into the open bar tab, because i haven’t had a drop of the spirits in over two weeks. i sure hope something embarrassing happens to someone, even if it has to be me. merry christmas!

i’m divided on this issue: is the fact that i’m trying to go a whole week with my wallet essentially empty so that i have money to buy christmas presents a sign of generosity and self-sacrifice for my friends and family on my part, or a sign that our capitalist society has brainwashed me into thinking the only way to express my love for others is through consuming?

or am i just the best gift-giver ever? seriously, i think of great stuff — my friends are gonna be so happy. my family is going to be so happy. my credit card company is going to be so happy. i love christmas!

[now hearing this: rilo kiley, when oh when will your new album arrive?]

i’m a little worried. the other day justin told me, over one of our weekly work-day lunches, that he feels like his brain is rotting. that he doesn’t think enough about things, just does them. at first i just passed it off, but then that night i was at home reading, and finished another book. then i wrote that book in my little list of books i’ve read, which i’ve been keeping since last year. here’s when i started to worry: i looked up the list at the other books i’ve read since the beginning of 2003, and at least a couple i don’t think i remember well enough to summarize or explain. sure, that’s only two, and one was an esoteric nonfiction essay by camus which i read hastily for a class.

but still, what happened? i spent several hours consuming both of these books only half a year ago, and now they’re essentially gone. i have vague emotional memories of thinking they were ‘good’ or ‘beautiful’ or ‘sad’; but where is the rest?

and it’s worse with finer details. i read brothers karamazov just this summer, and i couldn’t name the three brothers when i was thinking about it last week — the three main characters of the book i read four months prior (i can’t even tell you the name of the protagonist from something i read in october). i could tell you the ins and outs of the story, but the names i had to look up to make myself feel better. although i’m still not certain enough to type them out right now on here.

so what’s the problem? am i somehow doing it wrong? am i just not as smart as i like to think i am? do i have the wrong kind of memory programming? am i reading too much and not letting it sink in enough? am i just not thinking?

or does it just not matter, and that’s why i don’t remember. when somehow i can recall a bit of dialog from the simpsons that relates to almost any situation, and recite most of the dialog from wayne’s world or office space at a moment’s notice.

can you imagine if i could quote great literature the way most of my generation can quote the simpsons? i’d be the smartest guy you know without any friends.

i’ve also seen a lot of movies lately, some great, some not. you can glean the recommendations versus the warnings from these:

les triplettes de belleville – 2 stars

if you go in expecting a really amazing piece of animation, you’ll be pleased to get it for sure — it’s an outstanding work. if you go in hoping for a good movie, like i did… well, you will have wished you spent those 8 dollars on a pizza, like i did too. it’s hard to get into a story with no dialogue and no characters you get emotionally attached to, at least for me. and i could have really murdered a pizza too.

dead man – 5 stars

jim jarmusch film starring johnny depp and a lot of cameos. fantastic characters, music from neil young, delicious pacing, cool dialogue. slow, but terrific.

sabrina – 2 stars

audrey is always adorable, but this one had way less personality than roman holiday, which i would rather watch any time.

raising arizona – 3 stars

a little slapsticky, but still surprisingly literate for a kidnapping movie. always love the coens. what’s with nick cage’s hair though?

elf – 3 stars

if you’re hesitating because it looks like a kids’ movie, well, it is, but if you’re a fan of will ferrell at all it’s definitely still worth it and a better christmas movie than seeing jim carrey butcher a childhood classic.

the weekend flew by as if it were missing a day, i don’t know what happened. i got to see my dear friend shannon for the first real time since graduation, which was easily the highlight; she seems to be just as cool as she ever was even if she has an uncommon fascination with BCS rankings and is probably still crying after yesterday’s bowl game announcements. that along with watching some of the spike jonze and michel gondry dvd’s with jen last night (now i don’t have to buy them to see all the cool shit… ha!), and a solid ozma show friday night made for a decent time while it lasted though. the real treat is that this begins only two more weeks before our holiday break: wednesday the 24th through thursday the 1st. apply a few unused personal days here and there and voila!… i get a 16 day vacation beginning 11 days from now. can you feel me jittering with excitement?