two.points.collapsing

still in hyperdrive mode at work. i feel like i went from a nice leisurely, manageable march to a crazy full april without realizing what was about to hit me, so i’ve been a bit stressed and preoccupied.

we did squeeze in a thermals concert last friday which was fantastic. opening band who i won’t even name out of politeness was downright terrible, but maybe that just made the thermals seem even better in contrast. not a bad touring strategy, i guess, and it can’t be too bad for the venue that we’d rather get drinks in the back than listen to the first band. anyway, it felt good to go see a really up-tempo punky rock band in a hot little club and bounce around a bit. need to dig into that back catalog a bit, i’ve played last year’s album like crazy already.

saturday was also a bit on the crazy side, but it’d take too long to get into it all here. lots of cocktails and a few cab rides and for some who stayed out later than jessica and i, some brawling. thank goodness we ran out of steam when we did, eh?

honestly my week since then has been pretty dull though so i wont grasp at straws to talk more. i’m glad the shield is back on, that’s pretty much all i got unless you want a status report on my five or six work projects, which i doubt you do.

finished beowulf last night, finally catching up one more step with hundreds of thousands of high school students past and present in reading great works of classic literature. my favorite part was when beowulf hung the dismembered arm of grendel from the rafters of the mead hall. now THAT’S a fucking trophy.

i realize i used to be understated about my video game playing on here, and have recently shed those inhibitions entirely. i think because i’ve picked up two new consoles in the last 4 months so my enthusiasm for games has come back with a vengeance, as it has resurged with past new generations of machines. anyway, my second text-based adventure on the new DS is going great, and i’ve been playing lots of phoenix wright this week and loving it. it’s making me realize that the only games i really care to play any more are ones with a decent story pushing me to finish all the way to the end, even if it’s a cheesy hollywood action story. this one’s actually a really good young lawyer story, though. very funny and well-plotted. highly recommended.

i also bought my first full album on itunes this week because i don’t like the idea of importing albums i probably won’t be able to find at amoeba and paying double for shipping from the UK. so i’ve been playing the debut album from a cool band called windmill a lot this week. kind of a mercury rev/flaming lips-sounding solo guy with lots of piano and touches of big percussion and sweeping strings that result in some very the soft bulletin-esque moments. check out the pay day song, fluorescent lights for a fun sample. maybe if you’re real nice i’ll share the whole album with you.

the good news i have coincides with why i haven’t been blogging as much in the past week. for one, my red-ringed xbox has returned from it’s vacation to service-land, looking healthy and green-ringed once more. this has mostly resulted in nightly sessions of good old worms, a classic i used to play in high school and am really enjoying again in its sexy HD version.

also, i’ve been busy on some really fun stuff at work, so with longer hours and lots to do, i’ve had less time to troll around for interesting things to talk about or too spent to have adventures at the end of the day. i’m really happy about work (and got my first promotion-loaded paycheck last week… SCORE), so that’s only bad news if your eyes are glued to this blog for updates. i’ll be better, honest.

most importantly, we returned safely from a weekend camping trip to joshua tree without anyone getting killed on the giant rocks we scrambled to the top of over two days in the desert. the weather was beautifully mild springtime desert perfection, and getting out of LA to gorgeous nature places really made it feel like a long break from the work week. so now i’m back happy, suntanned, and only mildly sore and scratched up from the climbing.

i really wish i had pictures to show the cool rock formations we made it to the top of — not just to scare my mother into saying ‘you went all the way up there? — but alas, all cameras were left back at camp to avoid getting smashed. this girl’s flickr photo should give you some idea of how badass we are though. not ‘ropes and handholds up a vertical face’ badass, but ‘hopping and climbing up the longer, less steep way’ badass at least, which i bet is still more badass than what you did this weekend, so just shut up why don’t you.

you know what makes you feel kinda old? watching the odometer on your first new car hit 50,000 miles. just happened this weekend. that’ll be quickly topped though in about five months, when my lease runs out and i have to decide to buy it or not, which i will probably do because i love my car. but also because it’ll be the first thing in my life i will actually own that isn’t part of an entertainment center. finally, something i can sell off to save my ass in case of unemployment or in the event i am being hounded by mob-affiliated loan sharks with a reputation for taking fingers instead of interest payments. not that i see that as likely, but it never hurts.

in movie news, i’m pretty sure i’ve seen every fifth scene of spider-man 3 by now over the course of several trailers, but i still can’t wait for the full film. i’m predicting now it will easily defeat all existing box office records for opening weekends. the busses of los angeles are already coated in spidey-prop, and it’s still months away. but honestly, i don’t really mind.

on the non-blockbuster side, there are two films i’m most excited about at the moment (besides the imminent grindhouse, of course). the shaun of the dead guys’ next movie hot fuzz, whose trailer sold me immediately, is pretty much guaranteed to be as cool as their last movie, only this time with more guns. and the summer release of the very fun-looking stardust, which combines some of the best things ever like pirates, magic, ricky gervais, claire danes, british accents, and a neil gaiman book into a neat little package that was practically tailor-made for me to like more than most regular people. can’t wait for either.

pet peeve of the day: people who talk into their cell phones like walkie talkies, alternating between holding it in front of their mouth to talk and then touching it to their ears to listen, especially when driving.

although this drives me up the fucking wall, i am aware that this is partly irrational, because it really only affects me in a minor way, and only if that person is talking extra loudly as a result of their habit. but for some reason it goes way beyond that for me, to the point where whenever i see anyone doing this i cringe and judge the person in question as a total douchebag.

where does this hostility come from? what am i assuming about these people based on this habit that instills me with such skin-crawling annoyance?

i think it’s partly that i have no idea WHY someone would use their phone in this way, as if cellular device designers are incapable of knowing how to make a microphone that can actually pick up your voice while the handset is held to your ear as it should be. this isn’t mayberry, your phone doesn’t need a separate mouthpiece and earphone, i’m fairly sure motorola and samsung have some clue what they’re doing people. if you can believe it, this drives me even MORE crazy than the weird bluetooth/star-trek people, or the ones with wires in their ears that insist on holding the little mic up to their mouths, thus defeating the purpose of the ‘hands free’ earpiece. (but i digress…)

the second part i think is more assumptive regarding the character of the people i’ve seen most often doing this, and what their phone usage tells me about them. in my mind, holding the phone out in front of your mouth, earpiece miles from your face, screams “i am talking, and you are going to listen to me, and i don’t care what you say”, with only cursory returns of the phone back to the ear to make SURE that the person on the other end heard what you’re saying and to see how they react. it seems so self-centered and despicable, and it falls so nicely in with stereotypes i have for the people i see doing this most: namely overdressed hollywood girls in huge overpriced SUV’s, middle-aged businessguy tools driving luxury cars, or blinged-out dudes with XXL clothes that wear sunglasses indoors. the common denominator, to me, is the ‘look at me (and also LISTEN to me), goddammit’ attitude that is utterly counter to everything that i appreciate in a person. please, for the love of god, hold the phone like a real person and have a conversation like a human being.

……

wow, that went on even longer than i thought…hadn’t been writing enough lately, so i decided to take a mental rant i went off on earlier today in the car and transcribe it here for fun. sorry if you’re one of these people and you’re afraid of me now, and please do explain yourself in the comments so i can calm my rage.

good things heading into the weekend. for one, the comments are back. i like comments. i missed them and it’s good to see them return. especially without any action required on my part.

i also played tennis twice this week, after having not picked up a racquet in at least two years. it felt pretty good. it would feel better if i knew of a nearby place to get my racquet re-gripped, because as is i finish playing and have a lot of sticky black decaying rubber gunk on my right hand. also, i’ve found while trying to google such a place that i often misspell racquet without the ‘c’. how embarrassing.

other than that, i’ve mostly spent my evenings this week playing hotel dusk on the new DS. it showed up monday, even earlier than expected, and i’ve spent over thirty hours playing since then according to the game clock. wow, that’s a lot. but it’s so addicting, and i want so badly to see what happens next, i can’t stop. mainly because it’s more like an interactive detective novel, which has a surprisingly good story for a video game. i’m really hoping this far in it doesn’t have a terrible and cheesy conclusion that makes me regret all the hours i’ve logged so far. i guess if nothing else, it’s been a great distraction from having to wait around for dr. xbox to fix my 360. according to the ups site, it’s still on the way to texas, so it’s gonna be a while.

and to further chronicle my nerdy week, i finished season two of battlestar galactica and let me just say that i was not pleased with how that ended. i won’t go into spoiler-filled details, but come on writers. i think you could have done better.

oh! and i need a new payday song, i think i forgot last time. i’m sure if i’d been to the record store recently, it would be something off the new arcade fire album, but tonight should be the night for that. instead we’ll go with the current favorite record of 07, a little peter bjorn and john. enjoy a little trip to amsterdam and whistle along with me.

300 – 4 stars

this movie hardly needs or deserves reviewing. my roommate and i saw it separately, and had very similar reactions afterward — mainly that you get almost exactly what you were expecting, and exactly what all their marketing promised.

at no point in any advertising i’ve seen did they attempt to make this out as an epic story, only an epic battle, and that’s precisely what this movie is. i guess i could say *spoiler warning*, but since it’s also based loosely on historic events (minus the monsters of course), this shouldn’t come entirely as a surprise: the plot, at it’s base, is: lots of people are coming to attack. for political reasons, only 300 guys go out to defend the city. they do a hell of a job for a couple days before going out in a blaze of glory, inspiring the full army to take up the fight right behind them. aside from a few traitors and cowards, that’s pretty much it.

but after watching it, i can’t say i had any problem with that. if you like violent battle scenes or bloody graphic novels, both of which i quite enjoy, then you’ll have a great time watching the two hours of slicing, stabbing, beating, beheading, impaling goodness that is 300. if, say, you need every movie to have a complex plot, major character development, or less than a few hundred gallons of blood spilled or splattered, than you won’t be surprised either to find that 300 is not for you.

far from a condemnation, i actually believe that’s where this movie succeeded best: it made no claims it didn’t deliver, never tried to trick anyone into seeing it by pretending to be what it wasn’t, and for those who wanted what it had to offer, the film served it up beautifully and unabashedly. bravo, 300. bravo.

if you’ve been dying to leave comments on my last few posts for the past week or so, i know the comment service is busted at the moment, and i apologize. do feel free to email any pressing thoughts to the address under my photo in the upper right. i’ve been tempted in this extended downtime to switch providers completely, or go to the standard blogger ones, but those solutions all have their drawbacks as well. on top of the fact that i’d lose all my old comments, they don’t have the right customization options or require logins that i don’t want you to have to sign up for, etc.

things appear to be closer to a solution though over at their site, so my fingers are crossed that all will be well in another couple days. so save those brilliant words of wisdom or clever quips for just a bit longer.

my weekend was even more jam-packed than usual. out to dinner both friday and saturday nights. then yesterday was a marathon of activities, going from playing tennis with dan, to going to see 300 (also with dan), to a mountain goats show with jessica (which dan also went to), almost one after the other. it was a very good and very dan day.

the show was sold out at the el rey, which is surprising for the ol’ goats i’ve seen in much smaller places like spaceland, the echo, and the troubadour. so it was a bit hotter and louder than i’m used to. but the set was full of surprises as usual, since i’m sure it’d border on impossible to guess what’ll get played out of his massive catalog at any performance. quite a bit off the new album and the sunset tree, after all this was the ‘get lonely tour’, but some rarely-played cuts from tallahassee and farther back as well.

the real surprise was that the whole set featured a drummer along with the standard mr. peter hughes on bass, and that for the second half of the set john even went electric! it was a really nice shake-up from past shows i’ve seen, especially after him saying last year how he’s getting more into songs that don’t have as much ‘hollering’, as he calls it. so some major rocking came down from that stage, and a high point for me was probably an electrified ‘going to georgia’ which was blazing hot. totally not what i expected out of the night but lots of fun as always.

this week now i’m just looking forward to the arrival of a stopgap measure i took to make up for my xbox’s extended vacation (and the little reward i decided i deserved for getting a promotion), my new nintendo DS. i want to play a video game where i’m an animated japanese lawyer, dangit!

just off my big post of ‘look at all the good news i’ve got, boy my life is great!’, my (luckily) less-than-90-day-old xbox 360 gave me the dreaded RING OF DEATH.

apparently this problem has been pretty prevalent, which is a shame because it’s a really fun piece of hardware, whose reputation is now tarnished with this major inconvenience. like i said, i’m lucky i’m within my warranty period and get a free repair & shipping ticket, but all the same it’s pretty sad i’ll have to go without my friendly white game box for something like 3 weeks.

looks like i’ll have to spend this weekend doing lame stuff like reading or going outdoors or having conversations with friends. UGH.

so one of the cleverest sites/blogs i’ve ever come across in my web travels, indexed, has apparently recently signed a book deal. very well deserved, because she is essentially brilliant and deserves both money and fame — i highly recommend you give the site a visit for some quick laughs and insight.

but also, it’s another one of those times that forces lowly personal diarists like myself to think, “do i have more creativity in me than i put into my own web pursuits? could i do something bigger and possibly more rewarding (and profitable) if i were to just focus and refine my creative energies?”

the answer of course being that i’d like to think yes, probably, but i will continue to believe i can get around to that later.