Category: Uncategorized

work has been nonstop busy all week, so i’ve had no time at all to read blogs. hopefully all of you are still alive and kicking (it?). i hope to catch up over the weekend or something.

but with the long and jampacked workdays all i’ve wanted to do is come home and chill, hence i have logged many netflix in the past 10 days. here are some highlights in brief, because conan is on and i can’t spend too long doing this because i have to get to bed at a decent time.

brazil – 2 stars

“oooo, terry gilliam is so great and imaginative and underappreciated, it’s so terrible none of his movies make it big so he can do more of the brilliant work he deserves to.” i mean, i know there are people that think that, but hell if i understand them. it was certainly different, but also sort of boring and long, really. let the comments fly all you want. i prefer jerry bruckheimer films.

audition – 3 stars

if you’ve never seen a takashi miike film, as i never had, then you don’t realize what you’re in for even when people tell you or you read about how fucked up they get. so i didn’t know i’d be squeezing a pillow and yelling ‘oh my god!’ out loud by myself on the couch in response to the most graphic scenes. but you know, once i got through it, the movie was actually really good. built up and carried through.

rosemary’s baby – 4 stars

great! screw the pianist, this film i have to thank ol’ roman for. the shots were terriffic and the rising tension all the way through had me fixated. a classic i’d gone far too long without seeing. and i never knew mia farrow was so adorable until this movie. or so weird looking until i saw her cut her hair off in this movie.

[now hearing this: some cex mp3’s i’m test driving.]

the brothers karamazov – fyodor dostoevsky – 3 stars

the worst time to undertake an ambitious reading project is the last month of your college life as you know it. the last month in the house you lived in through graduation and on into the summer of your first year as an adult. maybe that’s why i read this book over two whole months instead of three or four weeks. maybe that’s why i didn’t terribly enjoy the whole first half of meandering exposition, no matter how well-written and composed. perhaps it is no coincidence that having time to myself in a new apartment and suddenly zipping through the final third of this 780 page tome occurred in tandem; or perhaps the real action doesn’t start until well into the story and that’s when it gets more like a cliffhanger and less like grass growing on a hill. i did like it though. dostoevsky is skillful and the characters were certainly developed well in those hundreds upon hundreds of pages. how am i to really judge, though, since by the time i had finished it i could hardly remember the beginning. that said, i still think it’s one of the better books i’ve read about dumptrucks.

having finally had a leisurely afternoon to fully realize it, i must declare that i have a crush on harper’s magazine. not only do they have a column featuring probably the funniest thing from the whole weekend: “cards used in puttanopoly, an italian board game in which players are prostitutes trying to survive life on the streets”, the best by far which was “They find your skeleton in the forest. You lose all your money and the game,**” but also a curious article on the real role of compulsory education being to homogenize and sedate minds instead of inspire achievement and foster intellect. Here’s a fun quote to tempt you to read the article yourself and teach your kids (assuming you ever have any) not to fall prey to the machine.

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much large class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

–Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, to NY City School Teachers Assoc., 1909

for a six page article, i found it very thought-provoking, and it made me wonder how i would have turned out had i not escaped to a specialty school for promising young nerds instead of completing a full, normal public high school track. i know some of my early nihilist tendencies which later abated to simple thoughtful independence of opinion really took hold thanks to some challenging and unique teachers i’ve had, all due to my ‘honors’ status. i’d like to think that no matter what, my literary tastes would have kept me at least informed and intelligent, and led me to my own questioning and considering instead of nodding and accepting. though i am very grateful to have received a jump start from some respected minds who had something to offer.

sometimes i feel like i should teach some day just in hopes that i could break a few people out of the track to plainness. of course, trying to change peoples’ lives seems to be frowned upon by the school system, so perhaps i’ll just start a cult. or a book club. wouldn’t that be neat!

[now hearing this: soundtrak – ‘available memory’. opened for hey mercedes, were pretty good, and are downloadable here.]

**footnote: the original read, “your skeleton is found in the woods…”, but we all agreed that forest sounded funnier. it’s all translation anyway, you know?

whoa, weekend snuck up on me there. busy week and busy weekend. thursday i broke the 8pm mark for the first time at a company notorious for people working late, then ended up going for gusto and just working all the way until 11. that’s a 14 hour day man. wacky.

so in the wake of that i set out for a dynamite weekend which i think panned out great. hey mercedes played the troubadour friday night and as always i loved seeing them. they played a lot of new stuff which all sounded pretty tight to me; i’m looking forward to hearing the songs in their polished form in october. took off early during sensefield to go to jen’s party after taking joe home, got some alcohol and stayed up til 4:30 partying with those guys. we talked about hearing people in the next room having sex and for those who especially like that there should be a raido station called KSEX that just plays muffled sex sounds. stayed up just as late last night only with a different crew since spencer was up from orange county — we talked about how much we hated each other while we played nba street. a very friend-filled weekend i am satisfied wrapping up with some reading and relaxing. simple and sweet.

[now hearing this: prefuse 73 because i desperatly need to be cool and/or i just willingly accept recommendations from friends with good taste.]

don’t worry, i’m home safe from my whirlwind weekend. it was kind of tough to go back to work, but really that was the only drawback of the whole fabulous thing. i sure didn’t mind working a half day on friday. i didn’t even mind that after our delicious in-n-out in kettleman city, california on the way up, the van wouldn’t start. that was somehow surmounted by deciding to push it out for easier tow-truck access and it miraculously starting at a shot-in-the-dark ignition attempt while rolling across the parking lot. victorious.

as a matter of fact it was nothing but goodness all weekend. great to see dom, great to be in san francisco. his roommates seem really cool and his neighborhood is great. i’m happy for him, i think he’s going to enjoy himself.

plus i got to go to the original amoeba music, which is walking distance from his place. nice. it is equally eye-popping, although probably smaller — however i did find two cds i wanted both at unbelievable prices. and if a quarter of the album weren’t available already on their website, i’d have put up some bishop allen for the pay day song because it’s a pretty good disc. but you can just go there and get ‘busted heart’ yourself, and i can share something else. everybody wins.

so after a weekend of beer and football (go trojans?) and bars and eating, i came home sunday night to tackle the rest of the book i’ve been reading for entirely too long. finished it monday afternoon — expect a review tomorrow — with plenty of time to prepare for our first barbeque here in the new apartment. or rather, on its roof, since we don’t have a nice huge front porch like the good old robot house. we certainly made due though and as the sun went down we had a grand time in honor of laborers the world over. and meat. must honor meat.

a really cool and smiling girl even came over and sat on our couch, which i was excited about… but i won’t jinx it. i get all jittery at phone messages from people in converse, that’s all i’m saying. good jittery.

in summary it was a great three and a half days. i’m in a good mood and just sitting here rocking in the aftermath, so i’m even willing to pick a pay day song that may be corny in its subject, sure, but awfully fun to turn the dial up for. i know you can get this song from their site too, but just in case it never even occurred to you, i’ll save you the trouble and let you get stacy’s mom right here. that’s one catchy chorus, man.

[now hearing this: bishop allen – charm school.]

now at least 11 people are willing to publicly admit to knowing who i am under the scrutinizing gaze of the circle of internet dorks in which they are included. i feel vindicated.

talking about that too much is tacky though (not that you shouldn’t still be my friendster, i have so much love to give!), so i will tangent to this: don’t expect anything more until later this weekend cause i’m a-going to san francisco. our old roommate and good buddy dom has to prove to us that he will be okay in his new life up there by hosting us for a labor day weekend of fun. then we’ll be back to LA in time monday to have a holiday barbeque. the perfect weekend, perhaps? especially if we succeed in our mission of seducing his new female roommates. rarr.

i fucking love road trips. where’s my jerky?

[now hearing this: the famous road mix. soon, anyway.]

like most people by now, i finally caved. so if you want to see what my favorite books are or you just need that LA connection to open up a whole new coast for your voyeuristic purposes — my friends must be internet whores, i’m already connected to like a billion people — by all means be my friend via the name or email as listed on this page (please…?). so far i’m only up to 3.

now i need to get some sexy pictures taken that show off my good side and in which i am not eating a cheeseburger. i hope i don’t offend too many hot available vegans that want to get down.

maybe i can tell them i live across the street from a trader joe’s and all will be forgiven.

[now hearing this: tracks from my #1 most anticipated cd, loses control.]

three day weekends are good, but it just makes it seem like i haven’t worked in an awfully long time. as a result, today has been a bit of a crappy day.

on a good note though, the weekend was packed with fun, the highlight probably being getting ‘flagged’ at the well on friday. what does that mean exactly? who knows, but it was probably thanks to the 5 or so rounds we somehow got through in 90 minutes; we just found the waitress’s proclamation very amusing. i certainly slept pretty well that night once i finally got home.

and another long weekend on the way! so it can’t be too bad a week with a road trip to san francisco to look forward to. here we come dom! you can try to run away to go to writing school, but we’ll just come after you wherever you go. (sinister laugh).

so in the meantime i will try to finish my book (finally…and just over 200 pages to go), and guide jeff lebowski (my nba street 2 character) further on his path to becoming a street ball legend. just watch me!

[now hearing this: rumble grumble office mumble.]

ted leo – the tyranny of distance (try the pay day song!) – 4 stars

after the newness of this disc wears off and it isn’t in heavy rotation, i’m sure it will stand almost shoulder to shoulder with my other ted leo cd, hearts of oak. almost. i think the newer one is just bigger. at least it feels that way. it takes up more space in the room and pushes you around more while you listen to it. this one still gets me going though, although i think here more than elsewhere i feel like he/they just don’t know when to quit. like that song ‘stove by a whale’, which could be a badass 3 to 4 minute song, is a pretty overly drawn out 8 minute one. even the track off this cd i’ve decided is my absolute favorite ted leo song ever, ‘timorous me’, has a wholly unnecessary full minute of feedback fadeout tacked on the end which i guess is for some kind of effect…? and then of course, the song i wish would go on longer, ‘the gold finch and the red oak tree,’ ends after less than two minutes! oh don’t worry, i forgive you ted. it’s still a terrific cd and you’re still one rockin’ dude.

spoon – a series of sneaks (find your own this time) – 3 stars

alright, i listened to it for real this time. several times even. and i’m being totally honest when i say i really like spoon, at least in theory. i go to their shows, and i own several of their cds. but i can’t pay attention to this cd. i keep doing other things and before i know it, it’s over. now maybe i have a short attention span, or maybe it’s just that kind of cd you buy to support a band that you know is good. i stand by ‘metal detektor’ though. that’s some hot shit. as a whole though, i’d just much rather listen to girls can tell.

holy crap i totally love this. new hey mercedes songs give me a musical hard-on every time, guaranteed.

don’t worry, those are nowhere near as awkward to have around other people as the regular kind, otherwise my coworkers may not approve.