two.points.collapsing

being moderately political, i am interested in tomorrow’s mayoral election for the city of los angeles. of course, since local politics don’t get as much coverage in my favorite news sources, i still have to examine my choices a bit before making my decisions, putting me in about the same boat as one of the young men interviewed for one of today’s LA times articles i looked to for help:

“I have to do some last-minute research,” said Luis Cisneros, 19, who was walking down Cesar Chavez Avenue on Sunday seeking help for his ailing pet cockatiel.

now that’s what i call journalism. the LA times doesn’t just grab sound bites, it grabs bites of LIFE! makes those stories live and breathe — and hopefully, helps those cockatiels to see another day.

a couple quick things because i had too much fun writing that oprah one to bury it beneath less-interesting writing.

one, i saw a video from the band on! air! library! and now i have a crush on their singer. the music seemed alright.

two, i also saw a video for mastodon, and they could crush me. i am excited though because i’m going to see them next month, and their cd is good.

i’m not gonna go all hipster-who-can-appreciate-metal on you and write a full review, i’m just gonna say i love how metal dudes can get away with writing 13 minute operatic guitar songs about loneliness and defeat but also reference things like infinite abysses and mountains and thunder and monsters. indie rock just can’t pull that off. and so, the pay day song, hearts alive. rock on.

oprah winfrey scares me. did i ever tell you that? no, it’s not in the ‘intimidated by a powerful african american woman’ way you might think, which would be politically incorrect, but at least sort of grounded in reality. oprah’s her own special case. i fear her control over the massive audiences of daytime tv-watching women that tune in religiously to her feel-good, you-go-girl piece of crap tv show for warm feelings and celebrity gossip. they’ll read her book club picks (as a sidenote, i was especially delighted when i heard about the jonathan franzen drama when he expressed honor at being picked but also ambivalence, accusing her of picking some good books but also “enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe, myself…” way to strike back!). they’ll probably try out whatever bath oils or other crap her on-air experts recommend or place in their gift bags. they’ll probably buy compact discs by whatever crappy singer comes on and seems so nice when oprah asks them about their family. all in all, the woman has an unhealthy influence on the minds of the average american female, and that just plain freaks me out.

but why do i share this now, you ask? well, because far from being satisfied with the puppet strings that extend to every housewife’s television set each afternoon, i’m beginning to fear that oprah is now set on taking over hollywood as well. not only the institution and factory for american film, but the city itself, which i call home. before, she was just a boring tv personality who aired at 11am or something, when i am safely far away from my television. but now, i am constantly assaulted by her propaganda while driving across my own fair city! on my daily commute, i pass TWO enormous oprah faces on full-sized billboards, her monstrous coif humorously extending above the board on a wooden cutout, and a large blue box updated daily (yes, daily!) with the subject of the episode to air the next day at 3pm. i should not know what time oprah winfrey airs, or that today’s episode is about ashton kutcher’s party mishaps, people. this i find truly unfair.

and in addition to those, which i am sure are in more than those two places i drive past each morning trying not to recoil, i also pass no less than five assorted billboards, bus shelters, bench ads, and other signs advertising ‘oprah winfrey presents their eyes were watching god‘. sure, it’s halle berry’s beautiful face, but her name isn’t anywhere on the billboard, curiously enough. with the new long hair, i didn’t even realize it was her until about the third week. so when you add that omnipresent power play to the fact that for some reason last week’s oscars included more shots of oprah winfrey’s reactions than clint eastwood, who only, you know, directed the best picture of the year — yes, i will admit that i am getting a bit of a shiver at the thought of what comes next.

please oprah, please… you can have a slice of the cheesy hollywood blockbuster pie, fine. i’m not a huge fan anyway. just promise me — promise! — you won’t keep assimilating until we have nothing left untainted by the sugar coated glaze of soccer mom sappiness. i was hoping to exit this life under more graceful circumstances than a violent plot to unseat the queen of daytime.

ong bak: the thai warrior – 4 stars

movies have been good to me this week. after the animation show, only a couple days later i planned on getting a bunch of the guys together and going to check out this excellent kung-fu movie, which i’d been looking forward to ever since i saw the crazy cool trailer a couple months ago. it was going to be a glorious night of extreme maleness: in-n-out burger, ass-kicking, and ideally with a beer-drinking wrap-up.

well, more than half of the normal crew was busy ‘working’, or going to ‘parties’ or ‘birthdays’ or ‘washing their panties’ or something, so it ended up just being me and my buddy ted, but you know what, the fact that an objective party may have perceived it as a man-date couldn’t stop us. we went. the fact that some weird loser with a headband and goatee thought that in-n-out burger was an american idol audition, singing some R&B hits, possibly of his own creation, couldn’t stop us. we chowed those burgers. and it was worth it, because when that movie started and that skinny asian dude began beating all manner of hell out of everyone that came near him, both of us joined the rest of the crowd in cheering loudly and enjoying every unbelievable minute. i mean kill bill, house of flying daggers, that stuff is amazing. but that stuff is also imagination. here, we’re talking about someone with a jaw-dropping physical talent that the camera can only hope to capture in a way that does it justice. so if you don’t live in LA or NY and can’t get to one of the whopping two places in town showing this, do yourself a favor and write down the name, and wait for netflix to save the day. sure, the plot is kinda silly and there isn’t a lot of ‘acting’, so much as blows to the head. but since when does that really matter to the real beef-eating action fan?

as a matter of fact, i was so satisfied by the high-flying beatdowns that when ted and i went to a bar afterward, we didn’t even worry about being surrounded by tall douchebags hitting on girls in tanktops. we sat at the bar, drank our scotch, ignored two girls that were standing right next to us for about 10 minutes, and talked about kung fu and money. sometimes you have to forget about distractions and focus on the priorities, you know?

another busy week down the drain, and i think the end of the craziness is in sight here pretty soon. the massive project that’s been keeping me so occupied is slowly wrapping up bit by bit and that, my friends, is exciting. less so is that one of my cool coworkers is leaving the company. what’s with trying new things, honestly? wouldn’t it be so much more fun to stay here and not put us in danger of getting a lame replacement for our team? he obviously wasn’t thinking of us when he made the decision.

on the plus side though, i caught the newest installment of the animation show thursday night with gino, and boy oh boy…

the animation show 2005 – 5 stars

suckers for animation like me will of course be sold instantly on seeing another feature-length collection of the best in recent animated shorts. fans of plympton, for example, get his oscar-nominated ‘guard dog’ piece. don hertzfeldt fanatics, of which i know several, will get to see the debut of his amazing new piece ‘the meaning of life’, which from a craftsmanship standpoint is unbelievable, even if it’s slightly less outwardly humorous than his hilarious previous work. the rest of the show was almost uniformly impressive though, with some beautiful artistic pieces, lots of laughs, and some really dark, interesting ideas presented in a nice mix of styles. across the board, one of the best ways to spend two hours, as far as bang for your buck. you can’t beat the variety and talent wrapped up in the animation show, so go check it out if you can. and hopefully they’ll keep doing this regularly to all our benefit.

a nice long weekend in the bag, i find myself with a few extra hours at the end of today with time to reflect. normally it’s sunday night and i’ve been trying to cram as much fun or personal business in, i cling to the last few weekend minutes too tenaciously to pause in consideration. with that whole extra day, i was able to fit in a full weekend with my buddies, a sunday evening of reading and an excellent ted leo show at the el rey, visit the lady friend today for an afternoon of lounging (not as boring as it sounds), and watch the very decent mystic river this evening on tivo.

so what i’m thinking are a few things. obviously, as usual, i had a great time with all my friends assembled here at the apartment for a couple nights this weekend. i have more fun with those few people than i ever seem to have doing anything else; and all we were doing was eating and drinking and hanging out at my place. so that doesn’t require any thinking over. those guys are just great.

but maybe it’s a combination of the rain, long hours at work, other work-related drama, not seeing the girl as often as i might like, and being kinda broke lately that makes me feel strange and restless and dissatisfied tonight. i was telling her today, if my life is a wave, with peaks and troughs (pre-calculus? sine curves, anyone?), i am very aware of feeling at a low point right now. in energy, excitement, and overall positive feeling. the tough part as usual is finding some deliberate way of starting the upward motion again. which is tough, considering i just went on a great snowboarding getaway a few weeks ago, went to several great concerts in the past month, had a great valentines day with a girl i’m crazy about (even if she may not fully know it)…

so what’s left to do to make it better? i mean, i can’t afford a drug habit right now — otherwise i’m basically out of ideas. here’s hoping a four day work week will be enough to get things started.

pay day song time. and may i say that this pay day does not adequately measure the amount of extra work i’ve been doing lately, having put in several 10, even a few 12+ hour days in over the last week. stupid ‘salary’. and luckily i love my job, otherwise i imagine i’d be one pissed off and possibly murderous employee. as is, i’m mostly just burned out and a little frustrated.

so let’s pick a tune that fits for this week, one of my favorite fed-up-with-working songs, still we let it choke us. i thought about going with ‘everybody’s working for the weak’ by hey mercedes, but i don’t really work for the weak, and it’s tough to listen to hey mercedes this particular week without wanting to shed a tear, knowing they just broke up. so instead i went with the as yet unbroken piebald instead.

the good news though is that valentines day was a swimming success, i thought, and she seemed to as well. the sushi was delicious, the martinis were fancy, the gift was well received and the wine finished. to me at least, the night was wonderful. so i’m feeling pretty good about that. now if only i had time to enjoy the inevitable lovin’ that should come from pulling off a nice evening like that — then i’d be in a great mood.

and all the usual hearts to you. happy valentines day, everybody! let’s try to find the right balance between the bitterness of single people and the cheesiness of the already-coupled, and band together in not buying too much hallmark crap no one needs or wants.

i wish i could report a better demeanor today, but i worked something like 16 hours this weekend — 13 of them spanning from 10am to 12:30am on saturday. thus, i had a weekend that was largely exhausting, stressful and unfun, which has also resulted in me catching a cold and feeling all around kinda foul. i’m afraid too that all that work brought me down for the only bright spot of the weekend, when i got to see my lovely lady friend. or even worse, that i will not be in top form for my secret plans this evening.

i refuse to let this happen though and plan on rallying the energy and good cheer in order to be my fully charming self for the night. after all, i’ve had about the last 3 or 4 valentines days off, so i had better step up now. otherwise it might be another 5 before i get my next chance.

i feel so special and lucky that out of the two whole shows the mountain goats played this season, one of them was in LA at the echo. you better believe i was there last night too, and of course they killed it. i love that man, honestly. his songs knock me down with their bittersweet power and i have yet to hear one i don’t like. most are even better live. and when they upgraded from guitar-and-bass (love that bassist/backing vocal guy, by the way. very good complement to the main man) to a full four piece, adding electric guitar and a drummer, to play ‘palmcorder yanja’… we’re talking rock and roll dance party of greatness. me and joe loved it — except that they didn’t play ‘no children’ because, as john said on stage, ‘i didn’t bring my machine that i hook up to my guitar to play it’, whatever that means — but a better indicator might be that our friend dan, who had never even heard their songs and came along for the hell of it, admitted afterward that it was ‘really fucking good’. that’s what i’m talking about.

so now i have another new year’s resolution that is way late but still: collect all the mountain goats LP’s that are available on CD. i think there are like 9 or something. wish i had thought of that before my birthday.

also very notably: i think this will be the first valentines day i am excited about in approximately five years. about fucking time, cupid you little bitch.

in less fun news, i think i had the first nightmare analogous to a real life situation i’ve had in years last night. in the dream i borrowed my aunt’s SUV, then took it out in hollywood where my friends trashed it and set the inside on fire. and i couldn’t stop them for some reason, but felt slightly better because at least it was parked and on fire while a 20-car pileup happened in a nearby intersection (?). then i had to tell my aunt it was my fault, in front of my parents, and felt like a totally dumb and helpless jackass for letting it happen, and had to pay for it by refinancing all my student loans through some guy in canada. believe it or not though, these events have a rough figurative correlation with a situation at work here this week. have fun guessing how that one works out.

so after years of blogging, the system worked. as you may or may not have read on the ‘about’ page, one of the cool things, i think, about having a publicly available personal website is that it’s so easy for old friends to get in touch, should they ever get the inclination. for those with the courage to use their full name in their web exploits (and the self-censorship to not let that get them in trouble), your site becomes the best possible of phonebook entries. as a matter of fact, i am pretty much the brian longtin on the internet right now, and i’m sort of weirdly proud of that, for some reason. or i just have a non-common name, luckily.

either way, an old high school friend randomly emailed me a few months ago out of the blue, or that is, in the wake of a five-year high school reunion i was unable to attend that prompted some curiousity on her part, and then we were in touch again, just like that. easy as pie and surprisingly not awkward.

then, there’s more! because that same ‘about’ page also offers a drink to those who stop by looking for me and go so far as to let me know they’ve done so. and look, this old friend was in LA on a business trip this week, and emailed me yesterday morning suggesting we get together that very night for a drink. and in a matter of hours, there we were, catching up and enjoying eachother’s conversation in a random bar/restaurant in the very happening LA peripheral known as monrovia, california. it was a great time, and i was so happy she wrote to me and it came together.

say what you will about stalkers, hackers, perverts, whatever you like that goes on thanks to the internet. as i told her over the drinks we were having last night, i am totally convinced that the positive social value of having some sort of presence on the internet most definitely outweighs the potential drawbacks.

so to rachel i say thanks for getting in touch and hanging out, and to this website i say, ‘it finally worked just like i said it could!’ how cool is that?