Category: Uncategorized

i read a whole lot over thanksgiving week, but don’t have too much to say about it. but to keep the record accurate…

trainspotting – irvine welsh – 3 stars

i liked the book better than the movie, for starters. the movie felt like a party/drug film that got way more credit than it deserved. the book, however, is a very human story of the choices involved with battling addiction. once you get used to the scottish spellings it’s not bad and there are some great passages of reflection on life on and off drugs. still, it wasn’t something i’d read again or really recommend strongly.

the neal pollack anthology of american literature – neal pollack – 4 stars

pollack is obviously both very smart and well-versed in literature, as well as very funny. in that, this book was great, because i laughed a lot and i appreciated his tactics. all the same, if i were his writing teacher i’d prompt him to branch out, because as funny as the little details are, the book as a whole is all based on essentially one joke. because of this, even funny passages start approaching tedium by the end. since it was a quick and fun read though, it’s definitely worth the few hours it’ll take you to chuckle your way through over a long weekend.

today i have eaten 5 donuts and one sizeable piece of pumpkin cheesecake, and drank some water.

i think tonight i should try just eating a bag of sugar with a ladle instead of bothering with all this chewing bullshit.

i also have to call the girl back i met before thanksgiving. when i called her last week she told me about her serious back problems and how they had to give her a shot in the spine. is that cool or what? never question my taste in women ever again.

two indie rock giants i had neglected

one: guided by voices – human amusements at hourly rates – 5 stars

guided by voices is one of those bands i always read about in interviews as so-and-so’s influences, or heard about yet another of their new cd’s coming out, and yet i persisted in never picking up any of their music. i think i was just so intimidated by their catalog i didn’t know where to start, so i lived in GBV ignorance. lucky for suckers like me, they just released an excellent workshop course in pollardism in the form of a best-of cd. yeah, it’s not as cool as owning all the lp’s, but fuck you, this cd is an amazing buy for a novice with 10 dollars. that’s right, ten dollars! and almost every song on here is great — so just leave my cred alone while i catch up on this stuff, okay?

ps: this week’s pay day song is off this very cd, so check out motor away if you haven’t already. i won’t tell anyone.

two: stephen malkmus live at the el rey, 12/1/03 – 5 stars

holy shit. i have a few pavement cd’s, which i love, but i’m sorry stephen, i had been slacking off since you went solo. i downloaded a few mp3’s at some point and they’re okay, but i must not have been listening or something. or maybe it’s one of those all-or-nothing things where the album is better than the sum of its parts. but i apologize profusely, because you slapped me around and taught me a lesson last night at that show. i can honestly say i’ve never heard such an expressive guitarist live in concert. over the course of a few songs you became one of my favorite guitar players, songwriters, whatever else you do that i might not have even noticed. but you were good. very good. i felt every different place you took me with that thing, and i liked it. as soon as christmas shopping season is over and i can start buying material things for myself again, guess who’s making a special trip to amoeba in your honor? okay don’t guess, it’s me, i love you.

friday night, living it up at the homestead. sure it isn’t much of an adventure, but you can’t beat the wonderful things like thanksgiving dinner and putting up a christmas tree and watching your first few christmas movies with the family. aww, too cute, gag me, i know.

and already tomorrow i’ll be flying home well-rested and fed, ready to return here in only three weeks for the big week of christmas fun. i already can’t wait and already have to remember to bring my playstation. and more books, lots of books.

this might speak volumes of me, i’m not sure: on the way out here, for the first time probably ever, i was seated in a row with two young women in roughly my age bracket (i almost always get the old people). not only that, i was also in the middle seat, another rarity. what good fortune! you may think. to my left, a pretty brunette, wholesome looking, possibly a year or two older. on my right, an attractive and stylish/funky girl who’s probably a year or two younger, i predict. could be a fun trip. within a few moments of take off, the older has given herself away as a texan as she asked if “y’all could excuse me for a second” to the bathroom from her window seat, at which point the other takes her cue to strike up a conversation with me — i later found out that was the moment she determined the other girl wasn’t my girlfriend and saw the opening.

she’s talkative, smart, is into music — we exchange ipods for a once-over — and is interested in what i’m reading, pulls a nabokov reference on me… so i totally ignore the other woman who comes back and starts grading chemistry quizzes on her tray table (a college TA?! a young high school teacher?! god that could be so hot! what was i thinking!?), but it’s okay because things with this girl are going well and she’s from LA; a much better bet.

then naturally, as things progress and the younger girl and i are flirting and talking, it turns out that she is still in high school. that’s right, i seem to prefer the company of people who still have curfews and study halls to that of sexy young professionals. good job brian, that really shows where you are in life.

of course, she did seem to purposely slip in the fact that she had recently had her eighteenth birthday, so perhaps i should have given her my card…

or perhaps i should just have another slice of nice wholesome pumpkin pie. can’t wait to see what happens on that flight back.

[now hearing this: the desperate need for my own stereo again.]

it’s going to be an exciting weekend. not only will i get to air-test my ipod on its first flight and attendant airport waiting time, but i will also get to attempt to eat one to two pies worth of delicious motherly desserts over a span of about 2 days. my siblings won’t know what hit ’em, and by the time they figure it out i’ll be on a plane back to the safe welcoming haven of los angeles. ha!

i also imagine i will tear through at least a couple books in these few days, which will be exciting as well, in a way that only nerds like myself can relate to.

but as i am, of course, going to be spending the rest of the week relaxing at home with my family, i will either not be blogging because i don’t have much to say, or blogging a lot because i don’t have much to do. could be either one, but happy thanksgiving just in case.

[now hearing this: hey mercedes]

decent weekend. friday night i drank a glass of beer a yard long, which was more of an ordeal than a pleasure. i sure did drink a glass of beer a yard long though. saturday night i went to a birthday party and talked to a cool girl who wrote her phone number on my hand. i have to call her back tonight and figure out how to see her again someday.

if you want me to die, then this is your answer. i would love love love love LOVE to hang this on my wall — and it would go so well with my other posters. but if you buy this for me, i am going to be killed. don’t be so stupid. you don’t want me to die, do you? neither do i. it is a nice poster though.

plus: i love the movie american psycho. we watched it again last night after some delicious soup from steff and after arrested development wrapped up (which is great, by the way. driving the stair car left over from the recently-sold family jet was brilliant). i can’t possibly grow tired of hearing that dialogue. the tone of every conversation between the wall street guys is priceless.

i have to return some videotapes.

[now hearing this: mad guided by voices, for real.]

watchmen – alan moore – 4 stars

i think i may have read more comics this year than any year since i was in junior high school, but i see that as a positive thing considering what the selections have been (maus, understanding comics, more preacher). the latest, which i finished around two weeks ago, is overdue for review; in fact i’m already almost finished with the next book i picked up after this one.

but backtracking a bit, i can’t forget to recommend this book, despite the fact that anyone into graphic novels at all would probably have read it already. it seems to hold legendary status in the genre, and with pretty good reason. it’s not only a great comic, and a great read, but it’s specifically good as a comic for the way it milks the medium for all its worth.

how the artist and author use juxtaposition of words with images in ways prose or film can’t do really pushes the way you see and feel the story. there are scenes where a boy at a newstand is reading a comic, and that nested narrative is overlayed with the overarching story taking place involving ‘real-life’ comic heroes dealing with the public’s revolt against such masked vigilantes who assumed such roles inspired by the comics those characters themselves read as children… effectively allowing moore to take several pieces of great writing, along with the visuals accompanying each strand, and intertwining them all to create one impressively strong and moving work.

as a novel the story might not have felt like enough, and in many places might not have made sense at all. but i think the greatest enjoyment to be had from this graphic novel, beyond its surface appeal as a good comic story, is a demonstration of what levels of sophistication and complexity comic writers can reach in their craft. and as in this case with moore, they can be attained and surpassed for a very satisfying and mature story that elevates comics as a whole.

in fact, if there were more stories this good, i might go a year reading nothing but comics. preacher may be cooler, and i still like sandman better — the only reasons i give this a four and not five — but this is still an unmissable book.

(plus it’s extremely cool looking — i love the new cover design (the original had a weak-ass shattering window) and there are some panel visuals that cinematographers would envy without question. honestly, what are you waiting for?)

how about today so far?

well, things continue to be a little . . . easygoing . . . here at work, so i was a little sad to see not many people wrote anything new on their websites. what a lame thing to cause me disappointment. since there wasn’t much going on, i didn’t feel altogether bad about being gone closer to an hour and a half getting a pleasant lunch with jen — excellent italian panini sandwiches on a sunny 75 degree afternoon in santa monica. pluse we saw eriq la salle, whom i neglected to tell i admired for his role in coming to america or that one doctor show and let mind his own business.

tonight i think i’m going to stay home and perhaps take in some high fashion with some friends if they decide they’re as classy as i am. i’d say some cheap wine is also in order. aren’t you jealous?

since i think it’s safe to assume that most of my friends or website visitors would never read any articles from a fast company magazine while sitting at work, i thought i might share some fun facts from a happy little piece on wal-mart i read this morning (a condensed version of this article).

• wal-mart is the world’s largest retailer, and largest company. larger than exxonmobil, GM, or GE, selling 244.5 billion in goods last year.
• they sell more in three months what #2 retailer, home depot, sells in a year. they sell more than category-competitors target, sears, kmart, j.c. penny, safeway, and kroger combined.
• last year, 7.5 cents of every dollar spent in any store in the united states (other than auto parts stores) went to the wal-mart.
• as a result of their immense leverage, no one wants to end up in what is known by vendors as the ‘penalty box’ — punished or excluded from store shelves for saying something bad about wal-mart, or failing to meet performance standards. said one consultant, ‘you won’t hear anything negative from people. it’d be committing suicide. if wal-mart takes something the wrong way, it’s like saddam hussein. you just don’t want to piss them off.’
• since proclaiming in the 80’s and 90’s to ‘buy american’, wal-mart has doubled its imports from china in the past five years ($12 billion in 2002). this makes up nearly 10% of all chinese exports to the US.
• huffy bicycles at one point had to give designs for its high-end, more profitable bikes to competitors in order to free up production capacity for the cheap bikes sold at wal-mart. huffy is currently the #3 bike seller in the US despite having lost money 3 out of 5 past years. wal-mart is the number one bike retailer. but 98% of bikes are now imported, and huffy has not made a bike in the US since 1999.
• levi’s jeans, after years of falling sales, began last year to sell a cheaper version of their jeans in wal-mart, who in the same year sold more clothing than any other store, as well as more jeans (their in-house brand sold almost as many as levi’s). five days before announcing a near-doubling of profits, levi also announced it was closing its last two US factories and laying off thousands. the iconic american brand, who 22 years prior had 60 US plants, will import everything by 2004.

check out the article if my summary doesn’t scare you enough, because there are several more examples. i’m pretty sure if wal-mart were a person they’d be like patrick swayze’s character in donnie darko, who everyone thinks is friendly and good and trying to help out the little guy, but really wants to eat your children or something.

[now hearing this: guided by voices – human amusements…]

if i were a pop star, this would convince me that my totally funny friend virginia was my ticket to extending my super-stardom based only marginally on anything other than hype. or if i were just me, which i am, i would just think virginia was cool.

my weekend was so relaxing i felt charged up for today, but also sort of uneventful.

friday night we got good sandwiches but went to a party that was not worth the drive to newport from LA. not like the tv show at all.

saturday night we got so bored watching the SC game because they were destroying stanford so badly that we had to play xbox instead. crimson skies is awesome.

{edit: apparently we played arizona, not stanford. see what i know about football? although that would explain the tumbleweed blowing across the field…}

sunday we saw the station agent which was okay in that ‘nothing happens, but the people seem nice, but the movie’s not really that exciting’ kind of way. i wouldn’t recommend it, really. i was much more excited finally getting my character, jeff lebowski, to official street ball legend status. nba street 2 is also awesome (i totally killed the rucker park tournament, yo). that and getting zankou chicken for lunch. oh my god that’s a delicious 7 dollars.

now hearing this: hey mercedes. when’s the video gonna be ready, dammit?