two.points.collapsing

wait a second, speaking of being funny sometime soon — i haven’t done the ‘gee, the internet is so cool, look what funny search strings bring people to my webpage!’ thing in a long time, but this one was so over the top i had to share it with someone. i mean, who types 16-word sentences into a search engine anyway? and gets all the way to proud search result number 67 (at time of this posting anyway)? that’s some funny shit. you know, funny in that ‘malaise of the handicapped’ sort of way

…umm, i think this is the part where someone taps me on the shoulder and tells me i’m going to hell if i don’t shut up soon.

but sorry, whoever you are, i cannot help you with your wordy conundrum. i’m SO down with the hearing community i just don’t think we’d get along.

i went to get a cheeseburger at carl’s jr. today as i sometimes do when i’m hungry. i normally don’t get the combo because just the burger and fries saves like 15 cents or something, and i have soda here. today i was feeling frisky though, so i got the whole shebang thinking, “hey, i’m in the mood for some dr. pepper, and i don’t have that at home. let’s go all the way!”

then i got to the fountain and of the 8 flavors, the damn dr. pepper had to be the one that was ‘out of order’. what the hell, how can one flavor be out of order? and even if there was good reason, that’s the sort of little irony that just puts me on the lookout the whole rest of the day. stupid coca-cola…i only really love you when you’re masked in vanilla or cherry.

alright i sort of slacked off on the song of the week thing, but for good reason. two actually. one is that i can’t ftp to my web space right now for some reason and i can’t upload. not my fault. the other is that really i’ve been listening most often to free stuff from various other places on the web, so there’s really no reason for me to put up my own separate mp3 this week — that’s just wasteful. and i’m certainly not a fan of superfluous actions. or prepositions, speaking of.

so here are a bunch of things that have been frequenting my playlist this week, which i urge you to sample every which way. the minus the bear track was song of the week a while ago and i don’t have it on mp3 but i listen to the cd an awful lot and they just put that up on their page so i thought i’d put it anyway.

rilo kiley – the good that won’t come out

rilo kiley – the execution of all things

mates of state – hoarding it for home

rainer maria – breakfast of champions

rainer maria – tinfoil

minus the bear – monkey!!! knife!!! fight!!!

reggie & the full effect – getting by with it’s

reggie & the full effect – congratulations smack & katy

postal service – such great heights

(this one i especially can’t stop. jesus, it’s like cocaine. highly recommended cocaine.)

ted leo & the pharmacists – where have all the rudeboys gone?

(i wonder if this is at all a joke on the really shitty song about cowboys instead of rudeboys?)

ted leo & the pharmacists – under the hedge

(oh, plus we’re going to see ted leo with atom and his package a week from saturday at the troubadour. that should be great, if you want to come. hopefully atom will play that song about how strongly he feels about the US needing to switch to the metric system where he says “you can stick your fucking ‘foot’ up your fucking ass.”)

so that’s a tidy little list, you should get along just fine without a new song of the week with all this easy-to-download stuff in one place. and maybe sometime soon i’ll write about something other than music, possibly even something actually funny.

[now hearing this: see above.]

it’s been a few days, and i hope you missed me as much as i missed you.

had a hell of a weekend though. down to anaheim friday night to catch the stereo, which was a fun show more or less. i like the band quite a bit and they played most of the tunes i wanted to hear most (and if you’ve never heard their song “can’t look back” then i recommend you fix that right now). the night overall was severly dampened though by a late addition of this band abandoned pools to the bill. they sure weren’t on when i bought the tickets. in case for some reason you don’t recall, they’re an awful ‘alt-rock’ band that had one single that was on mtv last summer which was total shit — something about “..and you can be the remedy…”. anyway, they took forever to set up and kept whining about the monitors between every song, then had the gall to say to a crowd of maybe 150 suburban indie kids, “yeah, so we opened up for lenny kravitz on a tour last year, playing to places that seated like 15,000…but this is so much better…” what a bunch of jerkweeds.

apparently they also wrote the theme to clone high though, which they performed to start their set. i turned to my friend emily and said, “well…i sure like that tv show.” (ooo, and it’s on tonight too.)

we saw a much better overall show saturday night though. rainer maria with mates of state. i don’t own any music by either of these bands, but let me tell you i’m certainly about to. i’m normally not into female-fronted bands at all because they just don’t sound right most of the time. my ‘i’m not sexist, honest’ reason for this is that i think girl bands try to be just like guy bands but they’re not, because girls’ voices sound different than guys’ voices, so to be a good girl-fronted band, you have to work with what you have. so now i officially really really like three girl-fronted bands, the third being rilo kiley (listened to ‘good that won’t come out’ about four times yesterday, i think). all three of these bands know what the hell they’re doing and sound great. it makes me respect them that much more for not falling into the trap.

so i have to say that mates of state were outstanding. i have to get a hold of their cover of nico’s ‘these days’ which they closed their set with. and rainer maria was great fun too — i swear their guitarist guy spends the entire concert on the balls of his feet, either jumping, swaying violently, running, bouncing, or something. i bet he could kick my ass in a 50-yard dash.

the song of the week from last week came on my ipod this morning in the car and reminded me to switch it when i get home today, so hopefully i’ll remember and you’ll have grabbed it before it’s too late.

rock on, monday.

[now hearing this: i don’t know why girls wear shoes that make so much noise when they walk.]

a little post-valentines reflection has turned up an interesting revelation. namely that for what is probably the first time in my young adult life, i am honestly totally indifferent toward the whole ‘girl’ thing. i’ve had happy times and sad times with and without them, but i’ve always seemed to be trying to keep one or find one or in some few spans trying to get rid of one. now it’s none of those things and it doesn’t bother me at all. not at all.

this does a few things for me. on one hand it’s a nice sense of freedom. perhaps the whole thing is just the product of being very busy and not having time to feel lonely — i’ve been trying to balance school work and friends and still finding time for myself as it is. but i feel like all the self-afflicted pressure i’ve felt in the past to find someone is nowhere in sight this time around. it’s nice. really nice.

i can’t say that i’m not a little bit concerned though, cause on the other hand i’m worried that it might just be denial or something and in a matter of weeks i’ll be feeling the hole again. but even more scary is the possibility i’ll never care again. maybe i’m just better this way and romance isn’t for me and i’d be best just staying this way from now on. i doubt that’s true, but wouldn’t it be strange if i just gave up and admitted to myself that the person i envision in those daydreams probably doesn’t even exist anymore?

that’s depressing and probably not at all true so let’s not think about that — there are tons of amazing women in the world, i’m sure of it. i suppose i should just be grateful that now i’m in a position to just hang tight and let them come to me.

[now hearing this: soulwax – hang the dj mix session on mp3. this is some hot stuff.]

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.]