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i am totally addicted the the white house race right now. so much that, as much as it pained me to do so, i’ve watched all the prime time republican speeches out of fairness, just to see what they had to say.

i have to say, wednesday’s palin speech rubbed me entirely the wrong way with all its vitriol and hard-right pandering, but at least it went smoothly and seemed to be a hit with the people in the convention hall. but last night’s mccain speech was a little embarrassing to watch.

the first thing i caught was the sad sign someone held up reading ‘THE MAVRICK’, which was too bad for that person but pretty hilarious to see on national television. i mean, anyone can make a spelling mistake, but come on, it’s only one word, and this is not the time to be sloppy, republican guy.

then there was that big sprawling green lawn on the video screen behind mccain for a large part of the beginning of his speech. i tried to guess its significance but had no idea what it was until this morning. apparently, it was supposed to be walter reed medical center for US veterans. which i guess makes sense since mccain is so proud of his military service (despite the fact that he didn’t show up to vote on the new GI bill for current service members).

but again, a little mistake was hilariously appropriate. apparently the image was the wrong one, and is actually of walter reed middle school in north hollywood, california. oops! this one’s a little less forgivable to me. someone within the campaign had to prepare those images. and if the people working for him are that careless, and no one that knows any better is overseeing details like this, do we really trust his appointees to make good decisions down the line? it’s not just embarrassing but it shows some pretty weak control of your team.

and of course, my preoccupation extends to hopping on the internet to read all about the reactions, as well as religious watching of the daily show coverage. this clip sums up so perfectly the spin machine of the conservative talking heads, everyone voting should take a moment to consider it before listening to these people ever again.

one road trip: gangbuster success. we left friday morning last, and once in san francisco managed to drink beers almost nonstop during waking hours through sunday night. we did step out briefly on friday for burgers and to go to a bar for a while, but saturday and sunday we let the party come to us. football game and and hanging out all day saturday, bbq and beer pong all day sunday. all the buddies just having a good time. it was uneventful and at the same time, amazing. more weekends like that, i say.

other road trip: cancelled! or at least delayed. yes, after months of trying to wrangle our friends into the RV trip to austin, we had enough people realize they couldn’t afford it or get the time off, that now the rest of us that were still committed had to finally call it off. it was within reason when we had six or seven people splitting the bill (and the driving duties), but once we got down to four or five, it just didn’t make sense any more. so no grand canyon for me this month. don’t worry, we’ll just be flying to austin to hang out and eat bbq and go to the festival.

but don’t worry: the dream will live on! perhaps a shorter, less pricey, less time-intensive RV party bus just to vegas and the grand canyon to come in the spring? don’t count us out yet, it’s still a great idea in the making. we’ll see if we can get more brave souls to join up next year.

roooad triiiiip!

heading up to SF this weekend for labor day with ol’ roomie mike. six dudes from LA, ted down from seattle and dom in from chicago, all crashing at mike’s place. should be mad shenanigans happening all weekend. not to mention the first USC football game of the season. oh man, good stuff ahead.

preparations are also underway for the epic september road trip to austin; hopefully we don’t get any more people dropping out and have to downgrade from RV to car for budget reasons. that would kind of defeat the whole purpose. if anyone out there wants in, there’s still time! rush into your boss’s office right now and say you need the week of the 22nd off work so you can go on a rock and roll road trip. or just come for the journey and skip the music festival, i don’t care. i just want that RV to be packed full of fun for the week leading up to austin. vegas! grand canyon! albuquerque? who knows!?

oh and a fun new piece over at under culture if you haven’t been in a while. i like the ones where i get to complain a bit more; it’s easier to write in jokes when you’re angry than when you’re trying to praise something.

i cringe every time i see a campaign ad full of platitudes that amount to ‘i want to make the country more better than my opponent, who is wrong about everything’. even the debates are recycled quips engineered to sound the best when quoted.

i was talking to justin at lunch the other day that in the future, there should be a ban on any politician or political interest group buying media of any kind. it doesn’t inform, only obscure the debate with accusations and obfuscations. it’s kind of disgusting. ideally they would only be able to give detailed interviews, release full-fledged position papers with all the ins and outs of their opposing policies, and it would be the job of the news media to analyze, talk to experts, and present a fair picture of the differences.

so thank god for the occasional truly in-depth piece we get this election cycle, without having to wait for that ideal future, like this one from the NY times:

how obama reconciles dueling views on the economy

it’s really long but should be the kind of thing required reading for intelligent voting purposes. it goes into history, nuances, influences, opinions from academics, and detailed comparisons from neutral parties. its analytical instead of praising or damning, relying on, imagine that, facts and figures instead of passionate pleas. here’s the bit that really got me excited, because in all my following of the campaign, even i had not had a position explained this plainly to me yet anywhere else:

The Tax Policy Center, a research group run by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, has done the most detailed analysis of the Obama and McCain tax plans, and it has published a series of fascinating tables. For the bottom 80 percent of the population — those households making $118,000 or less — McCain’s various tax cuts would mean a net savings of about $200 a year on average. Obama’s proposals would bring $900 a year in savings. So for most people, Obama is the tax cutter in this campaign.

…

He would then pay for the cuts, at least in part, by raising taxes on the affluent to a point where they would eventually be slightly higher than they were under Clinton. For these upper-income families, the Tax Policy Center’s comparisons with McCain are even starker. McCain, by continuing the basic thrust of Bush’s tax policies and adding a few new wrinkles, would cut taxes for the top 0.1 percent of earners — those making an average of $9.1 million — by another $190,000 a year, on top of the Bush reductions. Obama would raise taxes on this top 0.1 percent by an average of $800,000 a year.

It’s hard not to look at that figure and be a little stunned. It would represent a huge tax increase on the wealthy families. But it’s also worth putting the number in some context. The bulk of Obama’s tax increases on the wealthy — about $500,000 of that $800,000 — would simply take away Bush’s tax cuts. The remaining $300,000 wouldn’t nearly reverse their pretax income gains in recent years. Since the mid-1990s, their inflation-adjusted pretax income has roughly doubled.

imagine that, spelling out details for people to judge on their own merits? it’s crazy, but it just might work.

i’d love to see another piece that focuses more on mccain, and then similar reporting specific to things like health care, foreign policy, national security, and on and on. maybe we can get people to vote for the best ideas this time around instead of the best drinking buddy.

i watch the daily show every single day it’s on. i never miss an episode. so on weeks like this, where they have the week off, there’s a little hole in my day. i miss the blunt disbelief at the ridiculousness of current events from smart, funny people.

i think my new substitute may be keith olbermann though. it’s not as jokey, but dammit if this guy isn’t a straight shooter with fire in his belly. watch him take on mccain’s speech to a veterans’ convention and all the double-talk and pettiness he’s been dealing lately.

ntz ntz ntz… listening to a soulwax remixes compilation at the moment courtesy of james, and looking forward to going out to do some dancing tonight at PYT. it’s a beat-thumping sort of friday.

this week so far, some reading and writing and whatnot. stayed home tuesday to bring the car in for a brake job and got to hang with jessica all day fresh back from her work trip. her friend joy, who we stayed with in tokyo, was in town that night so we got some roscoe’s, which i haven’t been to in years i think, and went to see pineapple express. good movie, maybe not as classic as superbad or 40 year old virgin, but still a good time.

the one thing i have not been doing is watching the olympics. i did catch a tivo’d viewing of the opening ceremony, which was super impressive. although am i the only one who saw their massive display of coordinated movements at least a little bit as a ‘fear us, we are a well-oiled, massive machine that cannot be stopped’ type of demonstration? or that thought their image of a globe with chinese people running all over every part of it was maybe their vision of the future?

the competitions themselves though i have basically no interest in. it’d be good to know our basketball stars are the biggest stars in the world for a reason, and not just marketing, but otherwise, i’ve always felt exactly how chuck klosterman describes feeling in this article:

I do not hate the Olympics; I just don’t like them at all. For as long as I can remember, the Olympics have been completely and utterly unmoving. This is ironic, inasmuch as we’re all about to spend the next VII weeks being reminded of how emotive and heart-wrenching and dramatic these games are going to be. This is not something I need to hear, particularly since the only thing the Olympics ever do is reinforce my dislike for a particular kind of American: people who like the home team simply because the home team is, in fact, the home team.

so yes, i am impressed that one dude can break a ton of records and earn a bunch of gold medals in the process. that’s pushing the bounds of human achievement — assuming he qualifies as human and not part dolphin or something. but do i want to watch men perform pommel horse routines? not especially. especially if they’re going to lose to an ascendant china intent on world domination… come on guys, keep them at bay!

i am so good at poker when i try to be. too bad i didn’t on friday night. i ended up doing my usual routine of having too many beers before the cards start coming out and then playing sloppy early on, getting into a hole i can’t get out of. there goes another five bucks.

at least i had a new beat ’em up game to play on xbox with gino and whoever else got out after i was eliminated. sword fights are way cooler than poker anyway, right? i’d forgotten the simple pleasure of repeatedly beating on each other. a few more nights of that and my investment in soul calibur iv this week will have been worthwhile.

making some nice progress on RV renting for the september trip to austin city limits too. we actually walked inside some on saturday, got a quote — did you know that in september you can get half price miles once all the wholesome families have had their summer vacation trips and demand goes way down? it’s like the planets are aligning for our party bus to texas. i just hope once we get in it someone doesn’t drive it into the grand canyon on the way; none of us are super experienced at driving massive residential trucks.

i also finally finished the book i was reading (rollover for review below-right). thank god, too. that was some too-long, unfulfilling stuff right there. very excited to be moving on to some nice tightly-written short stories from harlan ellison, and if i remember to go pick it up, our new book club selection. let’s see if i’m the only one who actually starts reading it this month.

the other night i went over to gino’s place to hang around and play video games with him and spencer and josh z. but when i say ‘play video games’, that really means 3 hours of taking turns on their favorite game of all time, power stone for the dreamcast.

it’s a game they’ve been playing since college where you beat each other up, and i’m terrible at it. or at least, when compared to legacy players like these guys, who aren’t super into games, but for some reason latched onto this one thing and got really good over the course of many years. it’s so interesting to me that, for some reason, these three college roommates never collectively moved on to any other new thing. they just kept on with the same game.

so i lost, a lot, and cursed, a lot, while they played masterfully and held conversations at the same time. the game was just something to do while we chatted, really. spencer said he was surprised i didn’t give up, because i’m the kind of person who wants to be decent at something in order to enjoy it — which at first i took as meaning i was a quitter, but decided later that he was right, sort of. i think i see quickly when something requires skill or practice to fully enjoy and so i’d rather do something else that i can enjoy until then. but i think a lot of people are like that with semi-competitive things; there are people who hate playing taboo or pictionary because they just don’t ever succeed at it. but then, like i did, there are times where they cave because friends are around and at least it’s something to do.

that’s actually the whole premise the game ‘cranium’ was built on, actually. i saw the guy who runs that company speak at a conference for work, and his philosophy was to ‘give everyone their moment to shine,’ hence a board game that combines a bunch of different skills to give more people a chance. but then, that’s sort of why i hate cranium. i want to be the one who shines, dammit.

i didn’t splatter, and neither did jessica, so we have come out the other side with pictures to share. can’t wait to get the videos in the mail this week, those should be even more fun. but for now…

this is us on the ground, with our uncomfortable harnesses, waiting for our instructors to take us up. i say ‘instructors’ loosely; basically all they taught us beforehand was ‘crouch at the edge, when they say go, arch your back on the way out, and follow their lead once you’re out there’. very instructional.

probably the most awkward part was once we were up in the tiny plane and had to get secured to them; i got to sit on this nice guy’s lap for a solid couple minutes while we waited for the other people closer to the door to jump before us. but when i say jump, i really mean just kind of roll out of the plane and instantly disappear from sight. there’s not a lot of ‘jumping’ involved.

nice view of the ground i was rushing toward; although from that height (about 2 miles to start), the ground’s so far away the idea of hitting it didn’t really even enter my mind, and it feels more like floating than falling. if my physics memory serves me, that’s probably because you’re not really accelerating that much, and your body feels changes in velocity, not actual speed. who cares if you’re falling about a mile a minute.

i definitely was not aware that my face could do this… but despite my strange g-forced grimace, i assure you i was having an awesome time at this moment.

so was jessica, who jumped just a minute after i did, and whose smile the air pressure was much kinder to.

the camera guys that jumped with us were great at flying right up to us and making us wave, give thumbs up, etc, which almost kept you from thinking about the fact that you were falling from 12,500 feet above the ground.

and then safely back on the ground. i got a little carried away with the metal signs throughout the whole experience, but i guess these things happen when you’re so fucking hardcore. i kinda wish i got a mountain dew chugging photo to go with this.

all in all, great fun. if you haven’t, you should try it, and i may just go back to go with you.

you might think i haven’t been up to much because i haven’t been blogging as much. not true! i’ve been up to so much, i have neglected my little hamlet here. you can generally keep tabs on the minutia via the new twitter feed to the right, but in broad strokes:

my weekend was packed with summer fun. pool party plus drinking games saturday. brunch and a hollywood bowl show sunday.

while i’m not ‘crazy’ about gnarls barkley generally, all my doubts were ‘gone daddy gone’ once they started playing their live show. their albums don’t make me wanna ‘run’ to the record store, but their list of hit singles make for a great live show that gave us all some serious ‘smiley faces’.

okay that was awful.

otherwise, work is picking up which is making me feel more useful and generally productive during the daytimes. i like feeling like i’m really contributing something with my brain instead of just letting it idle.

speaking of which, i also a put up a new call of duty 4 review that i stayed up too late last night finishing.

it’s interesting, i’m pretty sure that having this new creative project has really got my juices flowing lately. but i’ve also been having a harder time switching off at night and getting to sleep. i’ve gone from a comfortable 12-12:30 sleep time to a steady 1-1:30, and even then tossing and turning a lot because i’m just too awake and my brain’s still cranking. i’m not sure which i prefer.

tonight: dark knight in IMAX, but with seats dangerously close to the screen because the rest were already sold out through the weekend. if my eyeballs don’t melt, i’ll let you know if the differences are noticable.

and coming up this weekend: the celebration of my 3 year anniversary with jessica, which actually passed last weekend. THREE YEARS. it seems impossible it could be that long when i think about how googly-eyed we still are sometimes.

to mark the occasion and hope for continued good fortunes, we have nice dinner reservations in the evening, and in the afternoon, we’re going skydiving, naturally. nothing like intentionally plunging to our deaths from an airplane, then laughing in the face of mortality by saving them 20 seconds later through the deployment of a large bag attached to some ropes.

if i don’t post again by sunday, you can safely assume i either splattered on the beautiful lawn of skydive elsinore, or that it was so awesome i’ve given up my life of responsibility to be MORE EXXXTREME!!!!