Category: Uncategorized

oh lord i loved my weekend. the road trip was, how shall i say it — unbelievable. glorious. i don’t think i can remember having a better valentines/presidents weekend. at least not while single, that’s for damn sure.

instead of telling a very long tale about the road and the camping and the hiking and all that, i’m waiting for some pictures to come back before setting up a separate page dedicated to all the great photos we got and the stories that go with them. hopefully i’ll get to that this week or next weekend at the latest before the memories fade. man, it was good though.

i spent most of my extra day off doing things like cleaning, laundering, shopping, and other things i needed to get done. a worthy way to honor our nation’s forefathers, to be sure. still enough time left over for a few reviews though.

daredevil…

i’m not going to defend it. you can call it a thin and unsatisfying movie that was more of a setup for sequel(s?) than a movie in itself and i won’t entirely disagree. i did think it was cool. i didn’t at any point during the movie wish i was watching something else. i wouldn’t buy it on dvd though. even if electra is too hot to believe.

(sidenote: i was having a conversation with three of my roommates and i was the only one of the four of us who thinks she’s really attractive. they all used words like ‘overrated’ and told me she just wasn’t good looking. i’m not sure if that makes me strange or something, but i reasoned that if she ever had her car break down in front of our house this just made my chances better of wooing her into my arms, having no competition and all. although i bet if she showed up they’d sing a different tune awful suddenly.)

under the tray

as in the new reggie and the full effect cd. i’ve listened to it several times today, since most of the weekend i was gone and couldn’t. i got it thursday from my friend jen, who being thoughtful as well as an intern at vagrant grabbed me a free copy (jen, if you’re reading this, you rock so much, you have no idea). so far i’d give it a definite ‘buy it’ rating, with only a small reservation that it isn’t quite as cool as the last album promotional copy. none of the tracks on the new album are quite as fun as ‘from me 2 u’, or as cool as ‘something i’m not’, my two favorites from that last one, but they’re still damn good. it’s nice to see some more guest appearances, however brief, from reggie’s coalesce friend sean which really make an impact, and as intentionally cheesy as some of the songs are they are damn fun to listen to. if you already have promotional copy you should get this and have both, but don’t pick this over that, is all. and no matter what i write won’t mean i’m not listening to this cd constantly this week.

speaking of which, the song of the week is the deliciously corny mood 4 luv from that album. i love how his angle is using the whole idea of reggie to make parody songs, which gives him the license to write crappy/cool pop songs like this one. that way if you hate it then fine, it was a joke anyway. but if you love it then even better, i guess. pretty brilliant setup if you ask me. anyway, the part where he says, “i know what you’re thinking when you’re drinking/and i think the same things that you do…sort of” is pretty priceless.

[now hearing this: jawbox – my scrapbook of fatal accidents.]

okay, this will have to be brief.

it’s valentine’s day and i’m fine with that. i don’t actually care at all that i am single right now and as far as i know no one would like to make that otherwise. maybe some cute girl has a crush on me though and is really sad that i won’t be around tonight to come seduce me because i’ll be camping out in the cold at yosemite national park with two of my also very single roommates.

oh yeah, so i’m going camping at yosemite with two of my roommates tonight. that’s right buddy-o: road trip, camping, cold weather, tents, hikes, beef jerky, ipods, shivering, beer drinking, and hopefully no bears. oh, and i really want to go see daredevil saturday night when we get back. that electra lady is goddamn sexy. raaaaarrrr.

see you in a few days los angeles — keep it real on v-day for me.

[now hearing this: reggie and the full effect – under the tray…i’ll give you the scoop on that next week.]

i have almost 700 songs on my ipod at this point, and i usually play them on random.

today it is raining pretty hard here in los angeles. very hard in los angeles terms, but just pretty hard on a wider scale. crossing the street to walk from the parking lot to the office was like crossing a wide stream, since the drainage here is so bad. it had a current and everything.

funny then that today, out of 700 songs, what should i hear as i pull into the parking lot (not on the way, but right as i pull in, even) but the beta band’s “dry the rain”.

i mean, i love that song, but sitting here with my pants soaked and my shoes squishing, i don’t think that was very funny, ipod. you’re a little bitch.

remember a few days ago, i was talking about tattoos? well let me tell you a new story. it’s the story about the third bit of trouble i remember causing myself by keeping a weblog. it goes like this: after class the girl from the story asks me if i’m brian. i say yes because, hey, why wouldn’t i? she says, “if you wanted to know about my tattoo you could have asked me, you know…” and the awkward conversation trails off as i am unprepared to face this random overlap of realities. i didn’t even have the presence of mind to actually ask her to explain it to me (in which case i could have easily been proven wrong, i don’t doubt), because i was just shocked.

but the lesson here is to never underestimate your influence in the world. sure, it’s just a little website. but people watch. people listen. people know…

i won’t share her name because that’d be impolite, but if she happens to be reached again, umm, sorry?

and to whoever leaked…way to go, you made me look like a jerk.

i think i might be one though. but would a jerk really be as into adult swim as i am? i was watching home movies just now and laughing up a storm. can someone who likes cartoons as much as me be all bad, really? oh, i also like puppies too. preferably with bows on them.

[now hearing this: spoon.]

dammit, if i had written 45 minutes ago i would have had five consecutive daily posts. i haven’t done that in months, i think.

so it sounds bad, but i feel like i have a new lease on life right now. not because it was so bad before, more just because we both knew it was going down and needed to be through. now it is. i needed this pretty badly i think. at least i must have if i’m feeling so rejuvenated now. who cares about valentines day when just sitting in your apartment makes you happy. i know this contentment won’t last forever and in a manner of weeks i’ll be lovelorn again because that’s how i am. but today i’m smiling. that’s the point. some friends and i had a nice dinner with some people i had never met before last night and that was splendid. i read a lot and did laundry tonight, and it was simple and good. i’m looking forward to the sleeping-in-fresh-bedsheets feeling. life is not complicated today, and i’ve been relishing that tonight.

i know the new reggie cd isn’t as good as promotional copy but i’m still going to try to buy it tomorrow when it comes out. have you seen the weird little flash intro on the vagrant site? does he really have a moustache like that right now, do you think, or is that a glue-on? because he’s doing an in-store in riverside this weekend but come on, it’s riverside — i’m not going there for a 4-song in-store set. that moustache makes me want to reconsider though…

more reading. books are my friends.

[now hearing this: count basie, “take the a train”.]

“god has a plan for all of us. a painful, painful plan.”

i’m not going to pretend that i don’t feel a certain enmity for mtv and most of what it stands for. they kind of abuse their power as a musical deity to america’s youth and don’t normally offer very much variety or quality in the bands they push, and that seems to get worse year to year. historically they have gotten it right sometimes though with their original programming. i mean, they aired the state. daria was pretty good (i especially liked jane’s older brother trent). and that bizarro animated show the maxx, which was weird as hell but pretty cool. well i decided tonight that they are still capable of doing good with my first two episodes of clone high. it’s really, really funny. marilyn manson telling people if they eat too much sugar they will die. gandhi and abe lincoln having “best dudes 4-ever” medallions. very good.

a few other items before i hit the sack. i bought make up the breakdown last week and i like it a lot. i liked it a little the first time and then it grew and grew in my heart. it’s funky fresh. so the song of the week will be oh, godamnit.

that, and if you’ve been waiting for the last three months to ask me out on a hot date, now’s your chance. nothing stopping you now, ladies. i got a fresh haircut and everything.

[now hearing this: spoon – girls can tell which i finally bought today. tasty.]

five sake bombs in less than an hour will, if you’re me, accomplish several things. like making you feel briefly like throwing up but be able to get over this shortly afterward. like getting you really quite drunk considering the four or five beers that preceded them (and the two that followed). like make a big mess of your friends’ living room. like ensuring that 12 people have a really fun night. or like making you dizzy when you wake up the next morning, but dizzy and happy.

when i went into the bathroom this morning it smelled like macaroni and cheese. i have no idea why.

[now hearing this: houson – head like a road map, as i load selected tracks into ye olde ipod.]

last night i went home even though some of my coolest friends wanted me to go out and party with them. i felt awful, i just had to be home. sometimes people have strange effects on you that you can’t control and you wish they didn’t. but they do, even still. they always do. so you shrivel and crawl home and recuperate and upload shiner songs to your ipod, because when they sing “and the egg starts spinning…” you like to sing along.

today i woke up and thought the crappiness would carry over, but i got a message last night that our department was having breakfast at jerry’s famous deli and i was invited. i was worried before i left that i’d be grumpy and it would be unpleasant, but then i started thinking, “i really ought to make these people feel like i’m part of their group so they’ll hire me when i graduate.”

and pretty much as soon as i walked in i felt better because i actually really like all the people i work with, and the french toast i got was good (and free). plus one of the girls announced to the group she was pregnant, and i was there. i feel special because of that somehow. then throughout the day the account supervisor said several times that i should hurry up and graduate and then replied to an email i sent her with “you are awesome.” these are good signs.

tonight i’m getting very drunk and intend to make the metal sign at every opportunity. i love my friends. it’s going to be a lot of fun. i feel much better today.

[now hearing this: well, me about to walk out the door and go home. probably some hum in the car though.]

alright, body art is fine. i wouldn’t get a tattoo, i wouldn’t get a piercing, but that’s me. i also don’t like tomato juice, so what? i don’t mind if you like it, that’s your thing.

however, there’s this girl. this, politely put, “girl’s girl”, if you know what i mean, only of the manly side of the equation. she’s in my philosophy class. again, that is a matter of taste. i have absolutely no problem with lifestyle choices other people make. i mean, i like kissing girls, so i can even see where they’re coming from.

the point i’m wandering toward though doesn’t concern what i like. it concerns getting something etched on your skin forever, and it being an image which means basically nothing. i was blessed with the sight of her leaning over to grab a backpack, and a rainbow-colored female sign about as long as one of my fingers (the cross with the circle…i think it’s called an ‘onc’?…) on her very-much-lower back. honestly though, what does that mean? “i’m a girl. hooray!”? “i’m a girl and i like girls…see the ugly inkstain on my back!”?

i just don’t understand. people get cool designs that symbolize something, they get initials, they get words, they get pictures — these all mean something to make them want to it emblazoned on their own flesh. it’s a statement. a lot of tattoos are really cool, even beautiful; but gawdy icons in rainbow colors seem like such a waste to me. and she paid good money for that too.

not that she’s the only one that seems to have made this mistake. i see girls all the time with suns or butterflies on their lower back, which to me seems like some weird attempt to be feminine and edgy at the same time. “it’s a sun, and suns are like, pretty, you know?” sure darling, i’m convinced. you’re quite daring and so interesting because no boring girl would ever think to have that done to her.

guys are also guilty of this, i know. i just don’t get people like that in general. it frustrates me that that’s the extent of people’s originality in expressing themselves, is all. i mean, i knew that girl was a girl before i saw that. having seen it, i haven’t learned anything, and no message has been transmitted through it. if there’s no meaning behind it, i guess i just don’t see why you’d have it drawn on your skin forever.

of course maybe i’m just missing something. i’ve been known to do that.

i feel lately as if i’m in a race against myself at all times. there’s Ideal Brian, who reads frequently, watches great films, and has plenty of time to listen to music, play video games, catch the daily show or the simpsons, and gets all his work done well and on time, while being a good friend and boyfriend to all those whom he loves.

then there’s me, who feels like his every waking moment is occupied and still isn’t enough to finish half of what he wishes he could do.

i remember times last semester when i was bored. moments i would sit in my chair and say, ‘you know, i don’t feel like doing anything right now.’

now is the complete opposite. at any moment, it’s a toss-up between what i have to do, what i can afford not to do yet, what i should do, what i really want to do, and what i’d do if i had more time. oh, and i try to get around 6 hours of sleep a day too, although sometimes even that doesn’t happen. where some people would think, ‘hey, good for you for keeping so occupied,’ i’m more often thinking, ‘what happened to my life and when will it stop?’

so right now i’m fearing that graduation — which i’m idealizing as this wall i just need to get over into that nice serene pasture where sure i’ll have stuff to worry about but at least i’ll have time to myself sometimes — won’t afford any kind of change in the day to day and that this could be the new me. EverBusy Brian ™. fully rechargeable and available in several assorted colors. oh god.

on the plus side though, i did figure out today that hot hot heat’s make up the breakdown lasts exactly the amount of time it takes me to get to work in the morning. in a bit i’ll see if it’s the same going home. either way i will be rocking.

[now hearing this: heels on the cement floor. clackity clack.]