exciting: having everything work out okay after four hours of figuring out wiring, and getting directv HD + DVR hookups in the new place.

tragic: the newer, upgraded DVR boxes from directv don’t have Tivo functionality, so i can still record all my shows and all that, but the menus are way less user friendly, and most depressing of all, there are no more ‘bloop bloop’ sounds when you select or fast forward things. NOOOOOOOOO!

weird: shopping for pots, pans, and silverware. to paraphrase fight club, how do i know which cutlery set defines me as a person? i mean, i’m fairly sure they don’t make full flatware sets with batman logos stamped into the stainless steel…

at home today — and by home i mean our nice shiny NEW home, hooray! — waiting for the directv guy to do his thing and set us up. he’s using little gizmos that make strange beeping noises to figure out which wires go where between our apartment and the roof, and i’m just crossing my fingers that in a few hours we have a TV set up and ready to rock.

the move is going well. other than being nervous as hell driving the massive u-haul truck, and our mail-box keys not working and needing to be replaced, there haven’t been any major hitches yet. after all day saturday and sunday, and a few solid hours of help moving big stuff from my awesome buddies, i think i’m about 90% done. unless you count the deep-cleaning of the old place before we fully vacate, another fun few hours of work i’m not really looking forward to. at this point i’m totally sore, exhausted, and dirty. it’s been a long couple days.

it’ll all be soooo worth it though after a bit more work, and i can’t wait for it to be over. then i’ll have a spiffy new place where my girlfriend and i can just kick back on our new couch, put our feet up on our new coffee table, and enjoy basking in the aura of freshness. aaaaaahh.

i’m starting to think a move as small a distance as the one i’m undertaking is almost worse than a long one. when you have to move a long way, you pack every single possession into containers, move it all at once, and you’re moved. done.

but since i’m just moving down the street, i didn’t get a bunch of boxes. i’m not moving all at once, because i can do lots of quick trips. but that means the week leading up to moving, i’m sitting around my apartment getting anxious and not being able to really do much, because there’s not much packing to be done.

the bookshelves and desk are cleared, and those will get moved this weekend. then all the things cleared off of them sitting around this apartment, will get carted over and reloaded onto the shelves in that apartment. then a few carloads of closet stuff. all the electronics freshly removed from the entertainment center get hauled down and reconnected. it’s so piece-meal i just want to get started right away so i can see empty space in my current place and feel like i’ve done something.

of course it all starts with the big-ass painfully large check i get to drop off saturday morning in exchange for the keys to the castle before the fun can really begin. and none of it will really be ‘fun’ until my girlfriend comes back from her business trip next week to start being my new roommate, which was the point of all this in the first place.

only one day of waiting to go!

oh, right, i meant to tell everyone who reads this that if you weren’t around saturday night, you missed the single best live music performance i’ve seen in my life.

not necessarily the most fun show (um, daft punk at coachella), or most exciting in an energetic small venue awesomeness kind of thing (braid reunion was pretty excellent), and definitely not the most personal or intimate (mountain goats at spaceland, or pomona college); but in terms of highest quality, swimming in beautiful musical giddiness, i’ve never seen and heard anything on the level of the decemberists at the hollywood bowl this weekend.

sweet jesus, if ever there was a pop band whose songs deserve the benefit of a full LA philharmonic backing, this is one of them. the grandness this little band of theatre/literature/folk nerds specializes in was turned up to overwhelming, and i swear i couldn’t stop grinning the entire time — no matter the number of wine bottles we had emptied prior. i mean, they played the motherfucking TAIN, their 18-minute song that was released as it’s own EP for god’s sake. it was a glorious musical spectacle (which i totally called ahead of time to jessica, by the way. i mean, if ever you were to play that song live, wouldn’t this be the time?). my only complaint was that it only went on for 12 songs when i could have easily sat through twice that.

god, i wish more people could have been there to see it with me, but there is a consolation prize. and i do say consolation, because as grateful as i am to have found it, no bootleg recording could do the show justice. what i’m really hoping is that they recorded this show, or record shows on their supposed upcoming tour also backed by orchestras, for a nice crisp-sounding DVD release in the future. until then, to tide us all over, at least there is a very decent digital recording of the whole show, downloadable for free thanks to some true internet saint.

if you don’t care enough to download the whole show, at least enjoy a clip of it with the new pay day song a couple days early: odalisque live at the bowl.

I totally got a squishee at a kwik-e-mart during lunch today!

we did it! we were deemed worthy and reputable enough to deserve the privilege of paying thousands of dollars a month in exchange for an apartment, by the agents in charge of managing the building of which said apartment is a part! hooray for having a place to move into in the near future.

actually, after having put in an application and the starter deposit/holding fee/whatever you call it over a week ago, it’s nice to know they weren’t taking their time in rejecting us and stringing us along. apparently the head manager was just out on personal time most of last week. but now she’s back and we’re in business and i’m letting myself get excited about moving to a new place.

finally, we can begin the fun-filled process of setting up basic services for our new residence, and going down the list of dozens of places that will require our new address to continue letting us pay them hundreds of dollars a month in bills! good times all around.

entertainment weekly has a list up of the top 25 action movies of all time, and although the placement/inclusion of certain picks can be questioned, it’s a pretty decent list. mostly, i was pleased to note that i’ve seen all of them except for three (adventures of robin hood, the wild bunch, and road warrior), which is a pretty good record. of course, die hard landed where it belongs, at number one, a pick you’d have a tough time disputing with any american man.

speaking of which, i have some good news…

live free or die hard – 5 stars

i’ve read some harsh reviews and i’ve read some good ones, but my experience was totally positive going to see this movie. as an enormous fan of the original, who wasn’t even old enough to see the previous installments in a movie theatre, i was tickled just to sit down and see any john mcclane action on a big screen. i won’t deny i also entered the theatre cautiously, expecting a crappy sequel that was a shadow of the glorious first movie.

and yes, of course this doesn’t reach that same level. how could it? we’re talking about comparing it to the best action movie ever. and this isn’t it. are there some scenes that get a little carried away and go further over the top than is believable? yes there are. do they squeeze maybe a few too many ‘mcclane-isms’ in for laughs? sure, it’s possible. are there other flaws, like some of the supporting characters and the unnecessary pg-13-ification? yes, but again, they only stand out so badly when you compare it to the masterpiece that came before.

the important thing is it still feels like die hard. the set pieces are bigger, there’s a wacky sidekick, but mostly it’s still about this guy doing stupid things to beat the bad guys. he gets the shit knocked out of him repeatedly but he doesn’t give up. he cracks jokes to deal with the ridiculousness of his situation. he’s an inch away from death but he keeps on pushing, and you root for him the whole way. and despite a few glaringly farfetched moments, the better part of the action stays very grounded, so you’re not visually overwhelmed by whizzing CG effects, but sitting up in your chair following the guy through every punching, shooting, diving, ledge-hanging moment.

it would be easy to have given this four stars and just say, ‘second or third best in the series, definitely worth seeing even if it’s imperfect’. but i have to take a firmer stance and say despite a few major flaws, i still had so much fun watching this movie i forgave them instantly and just let myself get swept up in it. i’d still call it one of the best action movies i’ve seen in a few years. i’d still gladly buy the dvd and watch it time and time again — preferably a director’s R-rated cut. and i’m sure i’ll still quote lines from it with my buddies when we’re drinking beer and talking shit. so if that doesn’t make a five star movie, i don’t know what else would.

while i was in the parking lot smoking this afternoon, a helicopter flew overhead right across where the sun was in the sky, for like a half second i was in its shadow. it was like a longtin heli-clipse. what are the odds of that?

yeah, nothing much to report, and off to live free or die hard, despite the utter nonsense of that imperative sentence. i mean, shouldn’t someone who is living free(ly) also want to die hard (i.e., be difficult to kill)? i don’t feel the two should be mutually exclusive.

what’s lamer than wearing the band shirt of the band you’re going to see that night?** how about wearing the shirt of a restaurant you like while going in to said restaurant to order lunch.

we saw a guy with the bright yellow zankou chicken shirt come in to the west LA location while eating there today, and thought, ‘no way. he HAS to work here. he can’t be that lame.’ and we were WRONG! he just ordered food, ignoring the fact that his outfit was the mirror image of the people taking his order! what a douche!

sure, there may be a small chance he did in fact work there but was not working at that exact moment, but that doesn’t make a very good story, now does it.

** except maybe in the rare scenario where it’s an old/reuniting band and you have a legitimate shirt you got at another show, like, 15 years ago, and you’re showing you’ve supported them from waaaaaaaay back in the day and never lost the love. and even then, it better be a pretty badass vintage shirt and totally authentic, otherwise it might even be worse.

hmm, i was going to wait for tomorrow morning to post, but right as i was ready to go to bed, i forgot i had put clothes in the washing machine hours ago and never transferred them to the dryer (side note: how come you can say ‘washer and dryer’, and you can say ‘washing machine’ but no one ever uses the term ‘drying machine’? oh yes, these are the things i think of when i find myself suddenly robbed of an extra 45 minutes of sleep).

so anyway, this will become the movie post i was saving for later in the week, after which i am sure to have seen live free or die hard, no matter how non-R-rated or cheesy it may be.

in place of reviewing that, i’ll share with you my first ever video posted to youtube instead. see, a few days ago, spencer and i were chatting over the ol’ computer, and he sent me a link to the trailer for the new PTA movie, there will be blood. it’s a pretty cool preview. very intense. but as we discussed it and re-watched it, it became ridiculous in its melodrama and pathos. we started laughing at it and couldn’t take it seriously anymore. the dam really broke when he suggested substituting another word every time the narrator uses the word ‘people’ in his monologue, after which i said, ‘dude, i have imovie, i can make that happen.

this is the result, on the same level as overdubbed swear words in televised movies. for full effect, i strongly recommend watching the original first, but there you have it: my first contribution to the world of online video sharing.

because i still have a good half hour to kill, how about i also list off my top five looked-forward-to movies of the rest of the year, at least as far as i know so far. we won’t count die hard cause it’s out this week, and the transformers can stay safely tucked away as cool childhood toys and not shitty bruckheimer productions, thank you very much. so wait, i guess that just makes for four, really.

4) superbad: i haven’t seen a good high school movie in ages, and this one’s a judd apatow flick that held an R rating. guaranteed gold.

3) stardust: can’t not go see a neil gaiman novel turned into a film starring claire danes, that’d be like an outright betrayal of my own high school self. plus de niro as a pirate. come on.

2) no country for old men: i didn’t even know until today that the coen brothers had a movie coming out this year, and this looks like a return to form. fingers crossed — ladykillers, i’m looking at you.

1) war inc: might end up being cheesy, but i’m hoping the trailer is just dumbing it down a little, as this could be a sort of spiritual successor to one of my favorite films ever, grosse pointe blank, which would absolutely kill.

okay, i did it. time to retrieve things from the drying machine and get the fuck to sleep.