I went with a couple of dude's to a stand-up showcase for Conan's show last night at the Comedy Store. That's a neat place; despite being enamored with stand-up for quite some time, I've never been to a legit venue for that, so it was nice to be there, even if the gin and tonics were nine freaking dollars.
The guy I liked the most from the performance was Kyle Kinane. I recognized him from one comedy bit posted on the AV Club's website, who enjoyed his comedy album enough to call it one of the best of 2010.
He represents the type of downer comedy that I feel is a big part of me. I think this is kind of a problem. Take for example this clip of his:
I thought that was hysterical. Like, really really funny. And his jokes are mostly like that. Hopefully you'll see him on "Conan" one of these days.
But is that bad if I like that a lot? Because the more I think about it, that's almost exclusively the type of comedy I like. It's weird, a bit sad, and mostly angry with itself. I hope I don't enjoy it solely for the fact that I relate to it; I already like Punch-Drunk Love way too much, and thought "Party Down" (which I finished today, if I may brag about that*) was awesome because though there were occasional rays of sunshine, but always closely followed by more depressing shit that makes me laugh too much. There was a sweet end though, kind of.
It worries me though how enamored I am with this stuff. I think the days of being a sad sack and looking cool doing it has come and gone with Eddie Vedder's popularity (dated joke for a blog, I think). I realize nowadays that looking sad and making fun of yourself constantly doesn't evoke utmost confidence, or even laughter for the more normal sect of people. I hope I'm not setting a bad example for myself by watching all this funny sad shit.
Then again, I may be reading into this. I did go to this showcase because it was sponsored by Conan, and I like Conan O'Brien a lot, and he's not a downer.
I guess I'll just focus my media obsessions squarely on Conan's shoulders now. And maybe Mike Birbiglia too.
*Why would I brag about watching television all day and not socializing or working, you ask? Good question... I don't really have an answer for that, actually.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
A Suggestion Sunday
I wrote a lot more yesterday than I planned to, and today my head isn't in the best condition, so I'll make this my most brief blog post yet.
If you're bored and looking for something to do (and have Netflix), you should watch "Party Down." I'm a couple episodes into it, and so far it's way wayyy better than what I would expect from it.
It's a show that somehow ends an episode with a woman crying hysterically and a man vomiting, a sad scene normally, but it made me laugh hysterically. Seriously.
Okay, that's it today.
If you're bored and looking for something to do (and have Netflix), you should watch "Party Down." I'm a couple episodes into it, and so far it's way wayyy better than what I would expect from it.
It's a show that somehow ends an episode with a woman crying hysterically and a man vomiting, a sad scene normally, but it made me laugh hysterically. Seriously.
Okay, that's it today.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Learning One's Place
If you acknowledge yourself as an active fan of hip hop and/or good music and I've seen you recently, there's a good chance I've mentioned Jay Electronica to you in the past couple weeks. He's been around for a while, but his lack of solid albums or single releases to the mainstream means he's eluded me for about three years (not that this is a hard thing to do; I don't exactly think myself as being incredibly hip hop savvy). I first heard a popular song of his, "Exhibit C," on one of Donald Glover's mixtapes.
The time I heard Jay Electronica rap over it was out of the corner of my ear one evening when "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" transitioned to "Last Call with Carson Daly" without me really noticing. Here's the song, followed by why I'm writing about this:
It's a neat song, but today I was thinking about the fact that I heard about it from Carson Daly's show. For those who don't watch it (and why would you? It was really bad for a long time), the format of the show has switched from a normal talk show format to a guerrilla style interview show where they take little equipment to remote locations and talk to people.
More important to note, is that Carson Daly has tried to stop being anything other than conversationally droll. No more comedy bits, monologues, etc. This is probably because Daly realized he is decidedly not funny, and never was funny. He just spends his time making dopey kids who stay up late notice some small cool stuff, such as Jay Electronica. This doesn't mean I watch his show all the time, it's just nice to know that this is what happens after Fallon now, as opposed to something painful.
I'm proud of him for realizing that he's not funny, and cutting it out altogether. It's something I'm still coming to grips with, and probably never will.
The time I heard Jay Electronica rap over it was out of the corner of my ear one evening when "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" transitioned to "Last Call with Carson Daly" without me really noticing. Here's the song, followed by why I'm writing about this:
It's a neat song, but today I was thinking about the fact that I heard about it from Carson Daly's show. For those who don't watch it (and why would you? It was really bad for a long time), the format of the show has switched from a normal talk show format to a guerrilla style interview show where they take little equipment to remote locations and talk to people.
More important to note, is that Carson Daly has tried to stop being anything other than conversationally droll. No more comedy bits, monologues, etc. This is probably because Daly realized he is decidedly not funny, and never was funny. He just spends his time making dopey kids who stay up late notice some small cool stuff, such as Jay Electronica. This doesn't mean I watch his show all the time, it's just nice to know that this is what happens after Fallon now, as opposed to something painful.
I'm proud of him for realizing that he's not funny, and cutting it out altogether. It's something I'm still coming to grips with, and probably never will.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Embarrassing Admissions Friday: Shit Gets Personal
Well, it was either talk about camera phones today (they're super neat, why didn't anyone tell me that?), or embarrass myself in some succinct way, because I don't feel much like writing today. I chose to embarrass myself, because let's face it, that's like 80% of my shtick.
I've mentioned it before that I was very much into what most people would acknowledge as bad music of the pop punk variety*. I look back at the CDs I collected and feel a bit of shame knowing that not only did I listen to what was very much a type of fad music at the time I was listening to it, I didn't even get the ones that the hip kids who were into "real" pop punk condoned. The sole exception to that might be the fact that I listened to and enjoyed thoroughly The Descendents' "Everything Sucks."
Still, there was a line that even I refused to cross for a long while, and that line started at Dashboard Confessional.
I bought one Dashboard song off of iTunes as an integral piece to a school project, a retelling of The Great Gatsby by way of an episode of "The O.C." which is something I'm still actually pretty proud of. Not sure what that says about my productivity or confidence in the things I did post-high school, but that's neither here nor there. I bought the one song, "Standard Lines," because I heard it in the first episode of "Clone High," and it was really perfect for a scene.
This project also led to me purchasing all of Death Cab For Cutie's "Plans," which I was deeply ashamed of at the time, but not so much anymore. Again, though, not important.
I justified these purchases as important parts in my send-up of "The O.C." although it probably reads more like a love letter than a send-up. It's not like I would buy those things otherwise, right? Of course not!
So how I ended up with a purchased, not stolen, digital copy of Dashboard Confessional's "Hands Down" really eludes me. I have dark periods, where I'm not sure what I'm doing, or how ridiculously emo I get. Luckily, those episodes are short, and I don't remember them most of the time (partially by just selective memory retention, but more often by alcohol these days), I just have to live with the consequences.
This was all kind of a prologue to the actual embarrassing story. Sorry for the rambling, but I assume you kind of know what you're getting into at this point, after a near month of posting.
The real embarrassing story comes as the tender age of 18, where I was experiencing what most of the world gets out of the way at around ages 12-15: their first acted-upon crush. I was a horrendously awkward late bloomer, but don't worry, the story gets worse.
I was finishing up what I remembered to be the second date of my entire life. This second date was important, as it was the first date where I kissed the person on the other side of the date equation at the end of the night. That part was cool, if you don't take into account that I was too big of a wuss to just do that on the first date (there was a long courtship prior to the first date, I kind of knew what was expected, so it's not like I was just being polite in feeling out the situation), or if you don't remember the fact that I was a legal adult at the time all of this awkward, nervous freshman-in-high-school-style date was happening.
Still not the embarrassing admission I was getting at (although as I read this out: holy shit, why am I telling anyone this story?). What made this event all the worse was that after we finally parted ways, I went back into my '85 Toyota Pickup, put in a specific mix CD, and went to a specific track.
It was "Hands Down," what may be the only happy Dashboard Confessional song ever recorded. I listened to it, and reflected on the awesome night I had, and felt myself a kindred spirit to singer-songwriter Chris Carrabba, and drove home, fairly happy.
That is honestly something I don't think I've even admitted to my best friend. And I tell him about the most embarrassing moments of my life on a regular basis (or he'll tell me about them, depending on who remembers what from a given night).
Upon reflecting the next day at what I did, I think I reevaluated the feelings I had at the end of a given good date, and how that made me react, specifically, what type of music it made me like.
All told, I went on approximately one date after that one, give or take a couple depending on your exact definition of a date. This means I have a no-date streak of somewhere around three and a half years, which I suppose is another embarrassing admission. This whole post is basically a string of embarrassing admissions, I guess.
But I'm blaming the majority of the things I just admitted, and my romantic ineptitude on this goddamn song:
*"was" is kind of a mislead, actually, considering I'm listening to the last part of Say Anything's "In Defense of the Genre" and the beginning of "...Is A Real Boy" as I type this all out. I still like some of it, and that's yet another bonus embarrassing admission for y'all dear readers.
I've mentioned it before that I was very much into what most people would acknowledge as bad music of the pop punk variety*. I look back at the CDs I collected and feel a bit of shame knowing that not only did I listen to what was very much a type of fad music at the time I was listening to it, I didn't even get the ones that the hip kids who were into "real" pop punk condoned. The sole exception to that might be the fact that I listened to and enjoyed thoroughly The Descendents' "Everything Sucks."
Still, there was a line that even I refused to cross for a long while, and that line started at Dashboard Confessional.
I bought one Dashboard song off of iTunes as an integral piece to a school project, a retelling of The Great Gatsby by way of an episode of "The O.C." which is something I'm still actually pretty proud of. Not sure what that says about my productivity or confidence in the things I did post-high school, but that's neither here nor there. I bought the one song, "Standard Lines," because I heard it in the first episode of "Clone High," and it was really perfect for a scene.
This project also led to me purchasing all of Death Cab For Cutie's "Plans," which I was deeply ashamed of at the time, but not so much anymore. Again, though, not important.
I justified these purchases as important parts in my send-up of "The O.C." although it probably reads more like a love letter than a send-up. It's not like I would buy those things otherwise, right? Of course not!
So how I ended up with a purchased, not stolen, digital copy of Dashboard Confessional's "Hands Down" really eludes me. I have dark periods, where I'm not sure what I'm doing, or how ridiculously emo I get. Luckily, those episodes are short, and I don't remember them most of the time (partially by just selective memory retention, but more often by alcohol these days), I just have to live with the consequences.
This was all kind of a prologue to the actual embarrassing story. Sorry for the rambling, but I assume you kind of know what you're getting into at this point, after a near month of posting.
The real embarrassing story comes as the tender age of 18, where I was experiencing what most of the world gets out of the way at around ages 12-15: their first acted-upon crush. I was a horrendously awkward late bloomer, but don't worry, the story gets worse.
I was finishing up what I remembered to be the second date of my entire life. This second date was important, as it was the first date where I kissed the person on the other side of the date equation at the end of the night. That part was cool, if you don't take into account that I was too big of a wuss to just do that on the first date (there was a long courtship prior to the first date, I kind of knew what was expected, so it's not like I was just being polite in feeling out the situation), or if you don't remember the fact that I was a legal adult at the time all of this awkward, nervous freshman-in-high-school-style date was happening.
Still not the embarrassing admission I was getting at (although as I read this out: holy shit, why am I telling anyone this story?). What made this event all the worse was that after we finally parted ways, I went back into my '85 Toyota Pickup, put in a specific mix CD, and went to a specific track.
It was "Hands Down," what may be the only happy Dashboard Confessional song ever recorded. I listened to it, and reflected on the awesome night I had, and felt myself a kindred spirit to singer-songwriter Chris Carrabba, and drove home, fairly happy.
That is honestly something I don't think I've even admitted to my best friend. And I tell him about the most embarrassing moments of my life on a regular basis (or he'll tell me about them, depending on who remembers what from a given night).
Upon reflecting the next day at what I did, I think I reevaluated the feelings I had at the end of a given good date, and how that made me react, specifically, what type of music it made me like.
All told, I went on approximately one date after that one, give or take a couple depending on your exact definition of a date. This means I have a no-date streak of somewhere around three and a half years, which I suppose is another embarrassing admission. This whole post is basically a string of embarrassing admissions, I guess.
But I'm blaming the majority of the things I just admitted, and my romantic ineptitude on this goddamn song:
*"was" is kind of a mislead, actually, considering I'm listening to the last part of Say Anything's "In Defense of the Genre" and the beginning of "...Is A Real Boy" as I type this all out. I still like some of it, and that's yet another bonus embarrassing admission for y'all dear readers.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Booze Billboards Near Beverly Hills
The first real "topic" post I did on this thing was about Four Loko's banning and subsequent non-caffeinated re-release. I still think this is total horse-hockey, which is why I was mad while driving to the gym to see this rather douche-y billboard (at least the photo was taken during near-magic hour, so the sky looks pretty):
It's not the best quality, as I took it out of my window driving away from it during a green light, but it's an absinthe add with a bottle that just has green spooky eyes on it with the phrase "Lights, Camera, Absinthe." You see, because we're in Hollywood, and we are all Hollywood types, the add caters to us.
Anyways, the website says that it's the first legal absinthe with proper wormwood standards and stuff to be released in a long while in the States, which is awesome. Totally awesome; stupid slogan and Halloween spooky eye bottle design aside, it's nice to have a once-illegal drink made legal, and at 124 proof, no less.
The reason I'm mad about this, however, is if we can get absinthe legally now, why the hell does Four Loko have to go all decaf on us? As I pointed out before, it's not hard to find a loophole in that (pour Red Bull in a can of Four Loko and you have Four Loko Classic).
I hate to get all socio-economic on this blog, mostly because I don't know what I'm talking about when I start talking about this stuff, but I find it annoying that a long-illegal thing at 60 bucks a bottle should be made legal when Four Loko is being denied the privilege of getting people fucked up. That means the hard working folk who wanna get mad crazy drunk and maybe hallucinate a bit are denied that, while the fat cats can have whatever crazy absinthe parties they want*.
I'm a man of simple principles. Mainly, one principle: I like the idea of having whatever type of booze I want; I feel like it's my civil liberty, mostly because I'm kind of stupid and don't really understand intricacies, but nonetheless, keep absinthe illegal if we can't imbibe Four Loko Classic.
Or, even better, just make Four Loko and absinthe both legal. Kids will figure out ways to get alcohol poisoning even with an absence of those two.
*See what I was talking about, not knowing anything about socio-economics?
It's not the best quality, as I took it out of my window driving away from it during a green light, but it's an absinthe add with a bottle that just has green spooky eyes on it with the phrase "Lights, Camera, Absinthe." You see, because we're in Hollywood, and we are all Hollywood types, the add caters to us.
Anyways, the website says that it's the first legal absinthe with proper wormwood standards and stuff to be released in a long while in the States, which is awesome. Totally awesome; stupid slogan and Halloween spooky eye bottle design aside, it's nice to have a once-illegal drink made legal, and at 124 proof, no less.
The reason I'm mad about this, however, is if we can get absinthe legally now, why the hell does Four Loko have to go all decaf on us? As I pointed out before, it's not hard to find a loophole in that (pour Red Bull in a can of Four Loko and you have Four Loko Classic).
I hate to get all socio-economic on this blog, mostly because I don't know what I'm talking about when I start talking about this stuff, but I find it annoying that a long-illegal thing at 60 bucks a bottle should be made legal when Four Loko is being denied the privilege of getting people fucked up. That means the hard working folk who wanna get mad crazy drunk and maybe hallucinate a bit are denied that, while the fat cats can have whatever crazy absinthe parties they want*.
I'm a man of simple principles. Mainly, one principle: I like the idea of having whatever type of booze I want; I feel like it's my civil liberty, mostly because I'm kind of stupid and don't really understand intricacies, but nonetheless, keep absinthe illegal if we can't imbibe Four Loko Classic.
Or, even better, just make Four Loko and absinthe both legal. Kids will figure out ways to get alcohol poisoning even with an absence of those two.
*See what I was talking about, not knowing anything about socio-economics?
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Angeleno Again
So I'm back in LA for a bit, which is good, I guess. Although the fact that I ate a rather terrible burrito at two in the morning last night after having a good one in San Diego for dinner didn't seem like a good way to start off what I will refer to hereafter as "My Semester Abroad From Education." And I wasn't even drunk when I ate the second burrito. I just ate one because everyone else did. Thank gosh no one suggested cliff diving or having unprotected sex with hookers, because lord knows I'm enough of a lemming to go along with those things as well.
I'm not without some comforts from home. My magic coffee machine (also known as a Keurig, also known as just plain awesome for how much I don't have to clean and maintain it) replaced poor ol' Mr. Coffee on my kitchen counter. It was a melancholy moment because I opened up the Mr. Coffee to reveal a intensely molded coffee filter someone left in there (alright, it was probably me, but I'm not taking the blame for it; it could have very well been a visitor or something).
I'm not very good at taking care of myself or general upkeep, so the fact that I could drop the ball on something like that is a painful reminder of my incompetence.
Then I just made a cup of coffee with the magic coffee machine, realized technology is mostly awesome for incredibly lazy and irresponsible people, and went on the internet to see if I could buy a Roomba for a cheap price, because screw it, I don't want to learn lessons about house upkeep. I want robots to do that work before Skynet takes over and we have to start fighting them.
Anyway, responsibility aside, it's nice to be back in the land of sovereignty. I love my parents to death, obviously, but living with Zach, despite being far less luxurious than living at home (and if you're reading this Zach, how come you never offer to cook me eggs in the morning like my mom does? Aren't you supposed to worry about my well being before your own like she does?), a lot more of my jokes land with Zach as an audience, and that helps my confidence I guess.
Plus, it's nice to go out on Tuesday and not be viewed judgmentally about being a loafer. See, everyone I hang out with up here still goes to college primarily, and I just pretend I do too. Remember, it's a semester abroad type thing.
I will, however, miss the heck out of San Diego. I can't find any good hills in Los Angeles to look at when I'm bored.
I'm not without some comforts from home. My magic coffee machine (also known as a Keurig, also known as just plain awesome for how much I don't have to clean and maintain it) replaced poor ol' Mr. Coffee on my kitchen counter. It was a melancholy moment because I opened up the Mr. Coffee to reveal a intensely molded coffee filter someone left in there (alright, it was probably me, but I'm not taking the blame for it; it could have very well been a visitor or something).
I'm not very good at taking care of myself or general upkeep, so the fact that I could drop the ball on something like that is a painful reminder of my incompetence.
Then I just made a cup of coffee with the magic coffee machine, realized technology is mostly awesome for incredibly lazy and irresponsible people, and went on the internet to see if I could buy a Roomba for a cheap price, because screw it, I don't want to learn lessons about house upkeep. I want robots to do that work before Skynet takes over and we have to start fighting them.
Anyway, responsibility aside, it's nice to be back in the land of sovereignty. I love my parents to death, obviously, but living with Zach, despite being far less luxurious than living at home (and if you're reading this Zach, how come you never offer to cook me eggs in the morning like my mom does? Aren't you supposed to worry about my well being before your own like she does?), a lot more of my jokes land with Zach as an audience, and that helps my confidence I guess.
Plus, it's nice to go out on Tuesday and not be viewed judgmentally about being a loafer. See, everyone I hang out with up here still goes to college primarily, and I just pretend I do too. Remember, it's a semester abroad type thing.
I will, however, miss the heck out of San Diego. I can't find any good hills in Los Angeles to look at when I'm bored.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
In Which I React to Award Nominations Again
The Academy Awards has to pull some weird, voodoo shit for me to make me angry about the Coen Brothers getting nominated for best director.
You don't get it. I love the Coens. Unhealthily, some might say. My therapist definitely says that (I don't have a therapist but if I did...).
I'm so convinced of the Academy's black magic, that I'm convinced that they put me and Spencer under a spell last night so that we got drunk enough to think going to a pool hall to drink even more than we already had was a good enough idea to call my mom to pick us up over, thereby giving me a hangover this morning and forced me to reevaluate my life.
And then, at my weakest hour, they throw this shit at me.
What's weird is the nominations are actually cool. Jeff Bridges got nominated (won't win), Toy Story 3 got a best picture nom (also won't win), and the Best Supporting Actor category was comically weighted in the favor of the front-runners for the award (Jeremy Renner is great, sure, but did he really need a nomination for The Town? That joint was all Ben Affleck, man).
What sucks is that Christopher Nolan didn't get nominated for best director.
Again.
The guy that single handedly made talking about dreams cool again didn't get nominated for best director. Is there no justice in this world?
I tell myself every year I won't care about Oscar nominations, and every year I do this to myself.
But to be brutally honest, I think my head hurts more because of the hangover, not the Nolan snub, which I guess means I'm taking a step in the right direction.
I'll repeat what I said on my Facebook status. One, I hope that if Shia Labeouf has a stoner name, it's "Higha Lapuff." More important to this blog post though, is that Christopher Nolan will become the Alfred Hitchcock of our time in terms of making ridiculously solid movies and always getting snubbed.
You don't get it. I love the Coens. Unhealthily, some might say. My therapist definitely says that (I don't have a therapist but if I did...).
I'm so convinced of the Academy's black magic, that I'm convinced that they put me and Spencer under a spell last night so that we got drunk enough to think going to a pool hall to drink even more than we already had was a good enough idea to call my mom to pick us up over, thereby giving me a hangover this morning and forced me to reevaluate my life.
And then, at my weakest hour, they throw this shit at me.
What's weird is the nominations are actually cool. Jeff Bridges got nominated (won't win), Toy Story 3 got a best picture nom (also won't win), and the Best Supporting Actor category was comically weighted in the favor of the front-runners for the award (Jeremy Renner is great, sure, but did he really need a nomination for The Town? That joint was all Ben Affleck, man).
What sucks is that Christopher Nolan didn't get nominated for best director.
Again.
The guy that single handedly made talking about dreams cool again didn't get nominated for best director. Is there no justice in this world?
I tell myself every year I won't care about Oscar nominations, and every year I do this to myself.
But to be brutally honest, I think my head hurts more because of the hangover, not the Nolan snub, which I guess means I'm taking a step in the right direction.
I'll repeat what I said on my Facebook status. One, I hope that if Shia Labeouf has a stoner name, it's "Higha Lapuff." More important to this blog post though, is that Christopher Nolan will become the Alfred Hitchcock of our time in terms of making ridiculously solid movies and always getting snubbed.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Brevity Monday/Jets Lose/Icing Conundrum
Yesterday was my birthday, which I viewed as an exception to my weekend "don't write too much" rule. I had something to say, and it wouldn't have worked as well the day after my birthday.
And since today I don't want to write anything, I'm moving my brevity rule to Monday just this once, because I can, because I don't feel guilty about breaking my own rules because I'm incredibly lazy and don't hold myself to a high standard.
Two quick subjects:
Obviously, the NFL was waiting to present me with a birthday gift after making me hate the season by week 13 when Aaron Rodgers had to get a concussion and screw my fantasy team over (yes, I am one of those people who cares about fantasy football too much, but there was money involved, and I enjoy money)
The Jets lost on my birthday. Rex Ryan looked like he was going to cry on my birthday. I feel like there are karmic forces in the world, and I must've done something great to have that happen. If only I had saved a bus of orphans somehow, karma might've paid me back by having the Jets lose to the Chargers. Something to shoot for next year, I guess.
Also, the Saturday before my birthday, I got Iced. During said Icing, my brother joked that Icing is past its prime. Some people I talked to about the Icing also responded in the negative.
I say nay. It was fun, still enjoyable. This is because my friends and I only do it on special occasions, such as birthdays or when someone deserves it.
Icing a bro can still be very fun. In moderation.
And since today I don't want to write anything, I'm moving my brevity rule to Monday just this once, because I can, because I don't feel guilty about breaking my own rules because I'm incredibly lazy and don't hold myself to a high standard.
Two quick subjects:
Obviously, the NFL was waiting to present me with a birthday gift after making me hate the season by week 13 when Aaron Rodgers had to get a concussion and screw my fantasy team over (yes, I am one of those people who cares about fantasy football too much, but there was money involved, and I enjoy money)
The Jets lost on my birthday. Rex Ryan looked like he was going to cry on my birthday. I feel like there are karmic forces in the world, and I must've done something great to have that happen. If only I had saved a bus of orphans somehow, karma might've paid me back by having the Jets lose to the Chargers. Something to shoot for next year, I guess.
Also, the Saturday before my birthday, I got Iced. During said Icing, my brother joked that Icing is past its prime. Some people I talked to about the Icing also responded in the negative.
I say nay. It was fun, still enjoyable. This is because my friends and I only do it on special occasions, such as birthdays or when someone deserves it.
Icing a bro can still be very fun. In moderation.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
My Year of Conan (Or: Once Shy of Thrice Involved in Big Moments)
I don't often talk about the big ol' car wreck that Other Spencer, Grant, and I got in, mostly because I'm pretty guarded about stuff and don't wanna seem like I'm mining for sympathy (unless you're a hot girl, in which case I'm absolutely going to do that*).
But holy shit, you should have seen my jeans. For some reason, when hospitals cut clothes off of you, thereby ruining them, they feel the need to give them back to you for god knows what reason, I presume just to show you that they ruined your favorite Ghostbusters costume t-shirt that you bought on a whim at Target. But looking at my jeans was pretty nuts. To spare you the gory details, let's just say there was a whole lot of blood and probably some bone chips and muscle tissue everywhere. Wait, I guess that is the gory details, and mostly inaccurate. There was just a lotta blood where my knee would be.
So it seemed strange that while they cut everything else off my body, the wristband advertising that I went to "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" the night before the car accident persisting on my wrist seemed kind of strange at the time. They cut everything else off, so why not that, you know?
It ended up being a bit of a godsend, as it provided great conversation material for the workers at the hospital and me. You guys know me as a pretty awkward dude when talking to new people, but in a hospital with a backless gown, Conan wristband, and tons of morphine, I'm a pretty affable dude. I must have channeled Conan's ability to talk to new people with the mystical powers of the wristband. Of course, I wasn't as eloquent, because, you know, morphine.
"Who was on the show?"
"Uhhhh, some dude from "Glee," that guy in the movie Rocket Man who was really funny but if I said his name you wouldn't know him, and The Pixies"
"Ah, how was it?"
"Andy rode his podium!"
"What?"
I then talked like a giddy child about the show (or made fun of myself, as I'm wont to do) until they were finished prodding my veins or putting saline solution into my IV, which was close to becoming infected, but I didn't say shit because I knew removing would mean they'd have to put one in while I was conscious, and screw that. The point was, the hospital staff liked me, and that was partially because of my enthusiasm for Conan, and, you know, I'm not a dick. That goes a long way in the face of adversity.
I kept the wristband on for a while after that. It was still a good conversation topic.
"Oh my God, what happened?"
"I broke my knee in a car accident"
"...Hey, you saw Conan?"
"Andy rode his podium!"
At the time, we didn't know we were breathing rarefied air on the "Tonight Show" set, but within a month or two of the accident, Conan's run was already ending, quite unfairly, if I may editorialize.
Incidentally, his last show coincided with the eve of my 21st birthday. My roommate Zach and I had the crew for the student film we were working on over at out place, and we stopped the broadcast so that the crew, despite my vehement protests to make this night about drinking and making Christmas decorations for the movie, not my birthday, could present me with cake and a shot, because, you know, it was legal now (and cake is delicious). They couldn't help it, they're nice people who ignore my modesty. One of them even made a cup holder for my crutch, which was a) very useful and b) yet another great conversation topic.
We resumed the broadcast, which we were surprisingly all much more invested in than I expected. I knew Zach and I cared, but a whole group of people all caring about Conan's premature exit was surprising to me. Then, Conan made it all make sense with his final address.
Now, a little drunk and in the midst of a very big moment of my life (the last cool birthday I'd ever have in terms of new rights and privileges), it took everything in my being to not get misty-eyed over Conan's optimistic and good-hearted speech about cynicism and being nice, working hard, and having good things happen. As a film student, it's very easy to become a cynic, mean, and spiteful of hard work, so hearing a successful man say these things on the eve of my full submersion into adulthood was comforting.
Just like it was comforting to have that wristband on to defer prolonged conversation on a real drag of a subject, that being a broken lower right half.
It's also nice to know that Conan has bounced back so quickly, as I like to think I have as well.
And it's really nice to think about Conan as opposed to thinking that I have now officially turned twenty-two, the most anti-climatic birthday since my nineteenth.
So, thanks Conan, for being my rock the past year or so, and for being there almost thrice in my life.
*Not true, and I realize this asterisk gimmick is getting old, but it saves me from doing brackets within parenthesis so you have to choose the lesser of two evils on this one.
But holy shit, you should have seen my jeans. For some reason, when hospitals cut clothes off of you, thereby ruining them, they feel the need to give them back to you for god knows what reason, I presume just to show you that they ruined your favorite Ghostbusters costume t-shirt that you bought on a whim at Target. But looking at my jeans was pretty nuts. To spare you the gory details, let's just say there was a whole lot of blood and probably some bone chips and muscle tissue everywhere. Wait, I guess that is the gory details, and mostly inaccurate. There was just a lotta blood where my knee would be.
So it seemed strange that while they cut everything else off my body, the wristband advertising that I went to "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" the night before the car accident persisting on my wrist seemed kind of strange at the time. They cut everything else off, so why not that, you know?
It ended up being a bit of a godsend, as it provided great conversation material for the workers at the hospital and me. You guys know me as a pretty awkward dude when talking to new people, but in a hospital with a backless gown, Conan wristband, and tons of morphine, I'm a pretty affable dude. I must have channeled Conan's ability to talk to new people with the mystical powers of the wristband. Of course, I wasn't as eloquent, because, you know, morphine.
"Who was on the show?"
"Uhhhh, some dude from "Glee," that guy in the movie Rocket Man who was really funny but if I said his name you wouldn't know him, and The Pixies"
"Ah, how was it?"
"Andy rode his podium!"
"What?"
I then talked like a giddy child about the show (or made fun of myself, as I'm wont to do) until they were finished prodding my veins or putting saline solution into my IV, which was close to becoming infected, but I didn't say shit because I knew removing would mean they'd have to put one in while I was conscious, and screw that. The point was, the hospital staff liked me, and that was partially because of my enthusiasm for Conan, and, you know, I'm not a dick. That goes a long way in the face of adversity.
I kept the wristband on for a while after that. It was still a good conversation topic.
"Oh my God, what happened?"
"I broke my knee in a car accident"
"...Hey, you saw Conan?"
"Andy rode his podium!"
At the time, we didn't know we were breathing rarefied air on the "Tonight Show" set, but within a month or two of the accident, Conan's run was already ending, quite unfairly, if I may editorialize.
Incidentally, his last show coincided with the eve of my 21st birthday. My roommate Zach and I had the crew for the student film we were working on over at out place, and we stopped the broadcast so that the crew, despite my vehement protests to make this night about drinking and making Christmas decorations for the movie, not my birthday, could present me with cake and a shot, because, you know, it was legal now (and cake is delicious). They couldn't help it, they're nice people who ignore my modesty. One of them even made a cup holder for my crutch, which was a) very useful and b) yet another great conversation topic.
We resumed the broadcast, which we were surprisingly all much more invested in than I expected. I knew Zach and I cared, but a whole group of people all caring about Conan's premature exit was surprising to me. Then, Conan made it all make sense with his final address.
Now, a little drunk and in the midst of a very big moment of my life (the last cool birthday I'd ever have in terms of new rights and privileges), it took everything in my being to not get misty-eyed over Conan's optimistic and good-hearted speech about cynicism and being nice, working hard, and having good things happen. As a film student, it's very easy to become a cynic, mean, and spiteful of hard work, so hearing a successful man say these things on the eve of my full submersion into adulthood was comforting.
Just like it was comforting to have that wristband on to defer prolonged conversation on a real drag of a subject, that being a broken lower right half.
It's also nice to know that Conan has bounced back so quickly, as I like to think I have as well.
And it's really nice to think about Conan as opposed to thinking that I have now officially turned twenty-two, the most anti-climatic birthday since my nineteenth.
So, thanks Conan, for being my rock the past year or so, and for being there almost thrice in my life.
*Not true, and I realize this asterisk gimmick is getting old, but it saves me from doing brackets within parenthesis so you have to choose the lesser of two evils on this one.
Saturday, January 22, 2011
A Hypothetical Involving Basketball
Hey, back to brevity for the weekend.
Say, do any of you 10-15 people who read this like basketball? If you don't, I'm sorry about this post, but I thought about it a couple days ago and thought this would be great filler on the weekends, when I strive to be brief.
Anyway, I was watching "Pardon the Interruption" when they started talking about Blake Griffin and the Clippers GM saying Griffin was "a Clipper for life." The dudes on PTI started debating it because of how shitty the Clippers are in terms of retaining personnel. They then started talking about what teams he could go play for when his contract expires.
They mentioned Oklahoma City because Griffin is a native Oklahoman and whatnot, but this got me thinking.
Oklahoma had the number three pick the year Griffin was drafted. This very easily could've been the number one pick, due to that lottery system that I only kind of understand. Which means that they could have drafted Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and Blake Griffin in a span of about three or four years.
That would be a team worth rooting for. As a man without a country basketball-wise (I'm a de facto Clippers fan because I dislike the Lakers personality-wise [plus, Blake Griffin is really fun to watch, as is Eric Gordon]), but if the Thunder had those three dudes on their team that'd be both awesomely fun to watch and a likeable team to boot!
Of course, it didn't happen, but it's nice to imagine.
Say, do any of you 10-15 people who read this like basketball? If you don't, I'm sorry about this post, but I thought about it a couple days ago and thought this would be great filler on the weekends, when I strive to be brief.
Anyway, I was watching "Pardon the Interruption" when they started talking about Blake Griffin and the Clippers GM saying Griffin was "a Clipper for life." The dudes on PTI started debating it because of how shitty the Clippers are in terms of retaining personnel. They then started talking about what teams he could go play for when his contract expires.
They mentioned Oklahoma City because Griffin is a native Oklahoman and whatnot, but this got me thinking.
Oklahoma had the number three pick the year Griffin was drafted. This very easily could've been the number one pick, due to that lottery system that I only kind of understand. Which means that they could have drafted Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and Blake Griffin in a span of about three or four years.
That would be a team worth rooting for. As a man without a country basketball-wise (I'm a de facto Clippers fan because I dislike the Lakers personality-wise [plus, Blake Griffin is really fun to watch, as is Eric Gordon]), but if the Thunder had those three dudes on their team that'd be both awesomely fun to watch and a likeable team to boot!
Of course, it didn't happen, but it's nice to imagine.
Friday, January 21, 2011
The Comedic Packing-Peanuts Theory
In the three glorious months where I was considered an editorial intern for the film blog Screen Junkies, I started thinking about features I could pitch to write for that website. I had approximately one published, the sample piece I sent in when I applied for the job, mostly because I was scared to death of rejection, and also I didn't think many of them were that good.
One of them, however, I did think was good.
I hereby present to you that one good story, "The Comedic Packing-Peanuts Theory," and not a moment too soon (you'll find out why in a minute or fifteen, depending on reading speeds, I guess).
Quick. Name a romantic comedy that wasn't good. Who were the leads? Who were the leads' friends or coworkers in the movie?
You probably answered "someone blandly attractive and nominally likeable" and "funny comedians stifled by the script" to those last two questions. This, my friends, is the theory.
Well, not so much a theory, more just an observation, but theory sounds much better.
I noticed it first when watching the trailer for What Happens in Vegas (not the actual movie, mind you, but I gleaned enough so that it seems pertinent). Sure, Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz have some claim to being "funny," as they incited chuckles from us a long while ago, but no one would confuse them with the great comic minds of our time, especially when paired with a script that wasn't written by Dan Harmon, an associate of Harmon, or someone British*. They're put in a movie like that because they're pretty affable faces (objectively; subjective appreciation of them will vary wildly) who can put moviegoers in a theater.
But once the moviegoers are in the theater, the filmmakers feel a half-assed need to entertain them. Preposterous, I know, they already have the money, but they're compelled to nonetheless. This is where they enlist the help of popular comic personas who need the money because while they are quite hilarious, stand up isn't a lucrative living unless you've managed to time-travel back to when people cared about it and/or are part of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.
That's why producers can pay folks like Rob Corddry, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudekis, and Andrew Daly to come in and make shit funny without a script. It's a time-honored staple of the 21st century romantic comedy to rely solely upon the fact that someone is funny in real life to make their movie funny.
You see, if Ashton Kutcher were a vase (pronounced "vazzze," not "vase"), Corddry, Galifianakis, and Sudekis would be the packing peanuts the filmmakers use to pad him in the box marked "Fragile" that is the bad romantic comedy. Hence, Comedic Packing-Peanuts.
What's even more interesting is the four mentioned in that movie can lead you down multiple rabbit holes of bad romantic comedy-dom illustrating the theory. For example, even looking at Andrew Daly's IMDB profile took me to Life as We Know It which itself featured Rob Huebel.
Rob Corddry was in The Heartbreak Kid, Failure to Launch, and some movie called Wedding Daze, which I can only assume fits the mold of what I'm talking about.
Galifianakis is a prime offender; he seemed to be ahead of the curve in this game, then got out because he lucked into being a pretty gigantic star. But before The Hangover, there was Heartbreakers and Out Cold, both significantly ahead of their time in being bad romances that tried to use auxiliary characters to make their films less bad. Both released in 2001, they were the harbingers for the state of romantic comedies in the new era.
I saved Sudekis for last because it seems like he's going to become the new face of the Comedic Packing-Peanuts Theory. I say this because he was in the movie that I noticed recently that corroborated my theory, Going the Distance. Justin Long and Drew Barrymore are kind of likeable, but nowhere near as funny as they think they are, and the script for that movie is nowhere near as funny is it thinks it is. Enter Sudekis, Charlie Day, Jim Gaffigan, and Rob Riggle. Bam, movie saved by having funny people around (I actually don't know, I never saw the movie).
And it's timely that I'm writing this the day of No Strings Attached's release. Definitely not a coincidence ("Hey, what should I write tomorrow? Oh look! That same commercial for No Strings Attached I've seen fourten fu--gasp! I know what to write about!") This movie is bursting at the seams with comic packing peanuts, and, surprise surprise, stars Ashton Kutcher. It also stars Natalie Portman, but I don't really know how to assess that one; maybe she wanted to follow up really crazy sexualization in Black Swan with quirky mediocre sexualization to balance things out.
Anyway, there's an interesting inversion at play with this film, wherein the female lead gets the best of the comic packing peanuts. Mindy Kaling is immensely funny on "The Office" and in general, and Greta Gerwig has a weird hybrid quality to her, as being someone who is funny but also gives the film (absolutely unwarranted) indie sensibility. Watch Greenberg and this will make a lot more sense.
But that isn't to say the Ash-man doesn't get his share of packing peanuts. Jake Johnson was really funny in that one scene in Get Him to the Greek where he has to break his cell phone, and I seem to be the only person that enjoyed the film Paper Heart, which featured him extensively. Then there's Ludacris, whose had funny music videos, and, let's be real here--if Diddy can be legitimately funny, I assume a rapper who has more of a built-in sense of humor can count for the packing peanuts theory.
And this isn't even mentioning Abby Elliot and Nasim Pedrad, resident attractive girls on "Saturday Night Live," or more classically trained funny older folk like Kevin Kline (wait, Kevin Kline is in this movie? No way!) or Cary Elwes (Wesley from The Princess Bride?! What? I gotta see this--Ah, see, I'm falling prey to the theory as we speak)
You may be saying, "Hey, this is only a handful of examples, and some of them are tenuous at best! You're just bored and trying to waste my time with your theories that anyone who actually watches movies like these wouldn't give two shits about! And I don't even know half of the names you're blathering on about! To hell with you and your long-winded-albeit-conversational-in-tone blog!"
Well, you'd be absolutely just in saying so. But there are reasons for this sloppiness. One, I'm quite lazy, and didn't do much research for this, as it would have required me to watch the movies in question. Second, I could have made a lot more tenuous connections to blather on about, so just be glad I didn't go through Ashton Kutcher's full IMDB filmography.
Let's just put it this way: If Jason Sudekis, Rob Corddry, or any cast member of "The Office" is in a supporting role in a given movie, there's an 80% chance you have a romantic comedy with bland leads on your hands. It's not a perfect science, but it's better than anything the science community has given us regarding mediocre romantic comedy research, you must admit that.
*Those are the two qualifying factors for being a great comic mind in the past two years, as evidenced again by observation and nothing else.
One of them, however, I did think was good.
I hereby present to you that one good story, "The Comedic Packing-Peanuts Theory," and not a moment too soon (you'll find out why in a minute or fifteen, depending on reading speeds, I guess).
Quick. Name a romantic comedy that wasn't good. Who were the leads? Who were the leads' friends or coworkers in the movie?
You probably answered "someone blandly attractive and nominally likeable" and "funny comedians stifled by the script" to those last two questions. This, my friends, is the theory.
Well, not so much a theory, more just an observation, but theory sounds much better.
I noticed it first when watching the trailer for What Happens in Vegas (not the actual movie, mind you, but I gleaned enough so that it seems pertinent). Sure, Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz have some claim to being "funny," as they incited chuckles from us a long while ago, but no one would confuse them with the great comic minds of our time, especially when paired with a script that wasn't written by Dan Harmon, an associate of Harmon, or someone British*. They're put in a movie like that because they're pretty affable faces (objectively; subjective appreciation of them will vary wildly) who can put moviegoers in a theater.
But once the moviegoers are in the theater, the filmmakers feel a half-assed need to entertain them. Preposterous, I know, they already have the money, but they're compelled to nonetheless. This is where they enlist the help of popular comic personas who need the money because while they are quite hilarious, stand up isn't a lucrative living unless you've managed to time-travel back to when people cared about it and/or are part of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.
That's why producers can pay folks like Rob Corddry, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudekis, and Andrew Daly to come in and make shit funny without a script. It's a time-honored staple of the 21st century romantic comedy to rely solely upon the fact that someone is funny in real life to make their movie funny.
You see, if Ashton Kutcher were a vase (pronounced "vazzze," not "vase"), Corddry, Galifianakis, and Sudekis would be the packing peanuts the filmmakers use to pad him in the box marked "Fragile" that is the bad romantic comedy. Hence, Comedic Packing-Peanuts.
What's even more interesting is the four mentioned in that movie can lead you down multiple rabbit holes of bad romantic comedy-dom illustrating the theory. For example, even looking at Andrew Daly's IMDB profile took me to Life as We Know It which itself featured Rob Huebel.
Rob Corddry was in The Heartbreak Kid, Failure to Launch, and some movie called Wedding Daze, which I can only assume fits the mold of what I'm talking about.
Galifianakis is a prime offender; he seemed to be ahead of the curve in this game, then got out because he lucked into being a pretty gigantic star. But before The Hangover, there was Heartbreakers and Out Cold, both significantly ahead of their time in being bad romances that tried to use auxiliary characters to make their films less bad. Both released in 2001, they were the harbingers for the state of romantic comedies in the new era.
I saved Sudekis for last because it seems like he's going to become the new face of the Comedic Packing-Peanuts Theory. I say this because he was in the movie that I noticed recently that corroborated my theory, Going the Distance. Justin Long and Drew Barrymore are kind of likeable, but nowhere near as funny as they think they are, and the script for that movie is nowhere near as funny is it thinks it is. Enter Sudekis, Charlie Day, Jim Gaffigan, and Rob Riggle. Bam, movie saved by having funny people around (I actually don't know, I never saw the movie).
And it's timely that I'm writing this the day of No Strings Attached's release. Definitely not a coincidence ("Hey, what should I write tomorrow? Oh look! That same commercial for No Strings Attached I've seen fourten fu--gasp! I know what to write about!") This movie is bursting at the seams with comic packing peanuts, and, surprise surprise, stars Ashton Kutcher. It also stars Natalie Portman, but I don't really know how to assess that one; maybe she wanted to follow up really crazy sexualization in Black Swan with quirky mediocre sexualization to balance things out.
Anyway, there's an interesting inversion at play with this film, wherein the female lead gets the best of the comic packing peanuts. Mindy Kaling is immensely funny on "The Office" and in general, and Greta Gerwig has a weird hybrid quality to her, as being someone who is funny but also gives the film (absolutely unwarranted) indie sensibility. Watch Greenberg and this will make a lot more sense.
But that isn't to say the Ash-man doesn't get his share of packing peanuts. Jake Johnson was really funny in that one scene in Get Him to the Greek where he has to break his cell phone, and I seem to be the only person that enjoyed the film Paper Heart, which featured him extensively. Then there's Ludacris, whose had funny music videos, and, let's be real here--if Diddy can be legitimately funny, I assume a rapper who has more of a built-in sense of humor can count for the packing peanuts theory.
And this isn't even mentioning Abby Elliot and Nasim Pedrad, resident attractive girls on "Saturday Night Live," or more classically trained funny older folk like Kevin Kline (wait, Kevin Kline is in this movie? No way!) or Cary Elwes (Wesley from The Princess Bride?! What? I gotta see this--Ah, see, I'm falling prey to the theory as we speak)
You may be saying, "Hey, this is only a handful of examples, and some of them are tenuous at best! You're just bored and trying to waste my time with your theories that anyone who actually watches movies like these wouldn't give two shits about! And I don't even know half of the names you're blathering on about! To hell with you and your long-winded-albeit-conversational-in-tone blog!"
Well, you'd be absolutely just in saying so. But there are reasons for this sloppiness. One, I'm quite lazy, and didn't do much research for this, as it would have required me to watch the movies in question. Second, I could have made a lot more tenuous connections to blather on about, so just be glad I didn't go through Ashton Kutcher's full IMDB filmography.
Let's just put it this way: If Jason Sudekis, Rob Corddry, or any cast member of "The Office" is in a supporting role in a given movie, there's an 80% chance you have a romantic comedy with bland leads on your hands. It's not a perfect science, but it's better than anything the science community has given us regarding mediocre romantic comedy research, you must admit that.
*Those are the two qualifying factors for being a great comic mind in the past two years, as evidenced again by observation and nothing else.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Big Brother Is Watching, But Don't Worry Because He's Pretty Inaccurate
I woke up today to find a website called Spokeo.com plastered onto a few statuses in my Facebook feed, usually with comments such as "freaky," or "REMOVE YOURSELF FROM THIS AND RE-POST."
Their urgency isn't unwarranted; if you wanna see why they're weirded out by this site, go to it and type your name in it. If nothing comes up, congratulations, you're off the grid*, and you should never write down any personal information anywhere to stay that way. But, for normal wholesome folks who are trusting enough to leave their front door open and give a cup of sugar or your social security information to a neighbor, bad news, you're on this website.
The latter group apparently includes my father and me. Extreme hermitude be damned. They have our names, addresses, family members, and apparently even how much money one makes. They might have even copy and pasted my "About Me" from my Myspace profile, which would indicate to would-be stalkers that I really have a problem with the film Annie Hall.
I only bring this up because there's a few weird quirks that make this situation kinda funny, at least in my mind. For starters, I'm listed at living in my parent's house (which for around nine or so months out of the year is not true these last four years). My brother, who also has probably listed that address for signing up for things several times, is listed as still living in Isla Vista or the same exact house number and street name in San Diego (small world, I suppose). My mother, who does not share a common last name with the rest of my nuclear, but does live in the same house, is not listed as a family member or someone who lives in said house, because despite having thorough information, they can't account for the nuances and quirks of my family. Take that, machines.
Anyway, the reason I find this funny, is that with a quick amateur-stalker glance at my profile, you'll see that I am an unemployed twenty-something living with his old (relatively) curmudgeon (kind of) dad in suburban San Diego.
What I'm getting at, is that this profile thinks my life is the basic plot of "$#*! My Dad Says," and I am absolutely fine with that. If I ever sign up for an account on that thing (I'm not, but still just go with me), I'm going to post episode recaps on it as dramatic reenactments of what happens in the Spencer-Dad household. That way, everyone will think we're a lot more exciting than we actually are. Although we do have a small poodle, something that show does not have. When comparing one's self to William Shatner, you have to fight every small battle you can, because you'll probably lose the big ones.
*Except for the fact that the actual government probably knows what you're up to.
Their urgency isn't unwarranted; if you wanna see why they're weirded out by this site, go to it and type your name in it. If nothing comes up, congratulations, you're off the grid*, and you should never write down any personal information anywhere to stay that way. But, for normal wholesome folks who are trusting enough to leave their front door open and give a cup of sugar or your social security information to a neighbor, bad news, you're on this website.
The latter group apparently includes my father and me. Extreme hermitude be damned. They have our names, addresses, family members, and apparently even how much money one makes. They might have even copy and pasted my "About Me" from my Myspace profile, which would indicate to would-be stalkers that I really have a problem with the film Annie Hall.
I only bring this up because there's a few weird quirks that make this situation kinda funny, at least in my mind. For starters, I'm listed at living in my parent's house (which for around nine or so months out of the year is not true these last four years). My brother, who also has probably listed that address for signing up for things several times, is listed as still living in Isla Vista or the same exact house number and street name in San Diego (small world, I suppose). My mother, who does not share a common last name with the rest of my nuclear, but does live in the same house, is not listed as a family member or someone who lives in said house, because despite having thorough information, they can't account for the nuances and quirks of my family. Take that, machines.
Anyway, the reason I find this funny, is that with a quick amateur-stalker glance at my profile, you'll see that I am an unemployed twenty-something living with his old (relatively) curmudgeon (kind of) dad in suburban San Diego.
What I'm getting at, is that this profile thinks my life is the basic plot of "$#*! My Dad Says," and I am absolutely fine with that. If I ever sign up for an account on that thing (I'm not, but still just go with me), I'm going to post episode recaps on it as dramatic reenactments of what happens in the Spencer-Dad household. That way, everyone will think we're a lot more exciting than we actually are. Although we do have a small poodle, something that show does not have. When comparing one's self to William Shatner, you have to fight every small battle you can, because you'll probably lose the big ones.
*Except for the fact that the actual government probably knows what you're up to.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Writing Comedy Bits in Dreams
Either last night or the night before, I had a strange free-form dream where almost nothing happened but small, slightly quirky things; it's alarming how often my dreams resemble bad indie dramedies (and I know no one wants to hear about people's dreams, but whatever, I'm shot for ideas today; it was this or pictures i took on my camera phone walking to the gym).
Anyway, somewhere between an older Mexican lady reheating marijuana-infused food products in my house's microwave as an effort to not tempt the people she lived with (I guess) and me going to a bar, there was a part where I was laughing to myself while talking through a stand-up joke. Like, laughing pretty hard, which I never do at a joke I think of because let's face it, I'm only marginally funny for the most part. In my mind I thought, "shit, I should be writing this down; I guess I'll do that when I wake up."
Wrong fucking decision, dream Spencer. Of course, I wake up and remember that I laughed myself silly in the dreamscape, but went to the bar instead of remembering it. I feel like that is a sign that even my subconscious is randomly piecing together images that are telling me to get my shit together.
But man, I really wish I had remembered that joke. Just to even confirm that it was not funny. Because if it was truly funny, how bad would I feel about not writing it down?
Anyway, somewhere between an older Mexican lady reheating marijuana-infused food products in my house's microwave as an effort to not tempt the people she lived with (I guess) and me going to a bar, there was a part where I was laughing to myself while talking through a stand-up joke. Like, laughing pretty hard, which I never do at a joke I think of because let's face it, I'm only marginally funny for the most part. In my mind I thought, "shit, I should be writing this down; I guess I'll do that when I wake up."
Wrong fucking decision, dream Spencer. Of course, I wake up and remember that I laughed myself silly in the dreamscape, but went to the bar instead of remembering it. I feel like that is a sign that even my subconscious is randomly piecing together images that are telling me to get my shit together.
But man, I really wish I had remembered that joke. Just to even confirm that it was not funny. Because if it was truly funny, how bad would I feel about not writing it down?
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Spencer Versus NBA 2K11 (Or: Spencer Had A Worthless Day)
This blog is coming quite late compared to most of my posts, but I have a good reason for that.
Wait, sorry, I meant terrible reason.
I did have a optometrist appointment today; I got a glaucoma test (because I'm old now) and some baller new frames (because I'm baller now*), that could count as my excuse, I guess. But no, I was back by noon from that.
I spent the afternoon learning a loophole in NBA 2k11 and trying to exploit that to make my Create-A-Superstar character really fast.
Then I realized I'm less than a week away from being twenty-two and spent hours on end playing video games and nothing else. Then, desperate to rectify the fact that I spent my day as a mostly worthless human being, something I shouldn't be doing at this age, I decided that I'd try to learn a lesson from this all.
The lesson is that it is nice to know that humans can still outsmart machines. I know, that's a stretch, but as someone who worries about technology taking over and enslaving humans (the real side-effect of my parents showing me Terminator films at an early age, as opposed to the violence it was supposed to ingrain in my head) more than the average person, it's good to know that we can still use ingenuity and trickiness to fool machines of sorts.
Computers may have the intelligence, but we have the intangibles.
*Obviously not true, evidenced by the fact that I used the word "baller" twice in one sentence.
Wait, sorry, I meant terrible reason.
I did have a optometrist appointment today; I got a glaucoma test (because I'm old now) and some baller new frames (because I'm baller now*), that could count as my excuse, I guess. But no, I was back by noon from that.
I spent the afternoon learning a loophole in NBA 2k11 and trying to exploit that to make my Create-A-Superstar character really fast.
Then I realized I'm less than a week away from being twenty-two and spent hours on end playing video games and nothing else. Then, desperate to rectify the fact that I spent my day as a mostly worthless human being, something I shouldn't be doing at this age, I decided that I'd try to learn a lesson from this all.
The lesson is that it is nice to know that humans can still outsmart machines. I know, that's a stretch, but as someone who worries about technology taking over and enslaving humans (the real side-effect of my parents showing me Terminator films at an early age, as opposed to the violence it was supposed to ingrain in my head) more than the average person, it's good to know that we can still use ingenuity and trickiness to fool machines of sorts.
Computers may have the intelligence, but we have the intangibles.
*Obviously not true, evidenced by the fact that I used the word "baller" twice in one sentence.
Monday, January 17, 2011
In Which I Watched the Golden Globes (Or: It's 1977 Awards Season All Over Again)
Every single year, I usually end up in a huff about awards shows equivalent to a die-hard sports fan getting pissed off when their team loses prematurely in the playoffs (think of the entire New England region last night, probably minus a lot of inebriation because I was watching the show with my parents; otherwise, it would've been like looking into a much more effeminate mirror). This year was obviously no exception. It's a damn vicious cycle.
To be fair, this year there were tons of things that I liked. For one, I liked that the girl who played Mattie Ross in True Grit appeared several inches taller than Justin Bieber (probably heels, but I didn't see them, so the visual gag was great to me), which is a really petty thing for me to laugh at, but Bieber has a lot of money, so I guess me making fun of a teenager in that context is alright.
I also thought it great that Paul Giammati finally won a Golden Globe for a movie that I'm fairly sure no one has actually seen outside of those who received screeners of it (I think Rotten Tomatoes advertised its theatrical release this last Friday). Here's a facebook comment I made about that award, which I feel is pretty fitting:
"What's important is that Paul Giammati won for that one movie he was in. Seriously, I don't know what movie he was in; if they had said "And the winner is Paul Giammati for 'Sorry We All Kinda Ignored You Re: Sideways'" it would have made a lot more sense. By the by it took me three times to post this with the proper usages of 'won' and 'one'"
I'll point out again I wasn't drunk during this broadcast or afterward; me not being able to use the proper usages of "won" and "one" is just a sign of my post-collegiate mental decline, I guess.
And finally, in non-snarky positive commentary, I really enjoyed that The Fighter got some performance recognition, as it damn well should have. Bale was an obvious choice for supporting, and my heart was torn like a parent who had two children up for the same award when it came to Melissa Leo and Amy Adams being nominated, so I was happy that at least one of them took the award. Plus, Melissa Leo's acceptance speech was one of the more exuberant of the night, which is always nice to see.
I was also happy that Toy Story 3 won, but it's become obvious that you never ever fuck with Pixar on awards night. So I kinda expected that my heart wouldn't be broken on that one.
You know what I didn't like about the show, though?
...No, it's not that they nominated really stupid movies like The Tourist, Burlesque, and Alice in Wonderland.
...No, it wasn't Ricky Gervais being overly acerbic. Celebs should learn how to handle that shit better; Steve Carrell did, and it was funny.
What it was that got my goat was the fucking Social Network.
I get it, I get it, it's a good movie. I won't dispute that; it's smart and makes a possibly uninteresting subject much more interesting. But for gosh sakes, it's so transparent that people are voting for it because they want to pick the most vanilla pseudo-entertaining, smartish and profitable movie on the ballot, as if their friends in the foreign press would make fun of them for voting for something like Inception.
Here's how I see it: The Social Network will prove to be the All of the President's Men of the 21st century, certainly at least 2010. A historical document-type film about an important event in American history that has reverberated and changed the way we think for a long while.
More importantly, it won't be watched by anyone who is not seeing it in their AP US History classes or by mega-film nerds who wanna be Fincher completists (not that that's a bad thing, he's pretty good).
To be fair though, while President's Men got nominated for a buncha Oscars, it only won a couple, screenplay being the biggest honor. You know what won most of the Oscars that year?
Rocky. You know, that movie that's really similar to The Fighter.
You know what movie won almost nothing? Taxi Driver.
I won't say that Taxi Driver is at all similar to Inception story wise, but I can make two bold-ish statements concerning their connection in an awards context. One is that both of the films are fairly challenging in terms of presenting a new set of ideas, be they in terms of cinematic language (Taxi Driver) or just somewhat complex story (Inception). Second, and more important is that Inception, like Taxi Driver, will be the one far more recognized by posterity.
And if I may be so bold, I believe The Fighter will be too, in comparison to The Social Network. Shit, Black Swan, even, while we're at it.
What I'm getting at is it gets annoying that awards are far less about the most deserving or interesting movies, nowadays, it's about people making the choice that they think they should to look good in front of their cohorts. There's a hype machine that seems to randomly pick one film out as the "smart pick" and dictates that Social Network's weird 80's horror film synthy bits of score should be ignored for the pretty piano noise that peppers the film as best score and that Inception's soon-to-be-iconic BRHAAAMMMM type score should go unnoticed.
Anyways, I'm rambling. I'll stop talking and wait for about twenty years to say "I told you so."
...Also, where the fuck was True Grit?
To be fair, this year there were tons of things that I liked. For one, I liked that the girl who played Mattie Ross in True Grit appeared several inches taller than Justin Bieber (probably heels, but I didn't see them, so the visual gag was great to me), which is a really petty thing for me to laugh at, but Bieber has a lot of money, so I guess me making fun of a teenager in that context is alright.
I also thought it great that Paul Giammati finally won a Golden Globe for a movie that I'm fairly sure no one has actually seen outside of those who received screeners of it (I think Rotten Tomatoes advertised its theatrical release this last Friday). Here's a facebook comment I made about that award, which I feel is pretty fitting:
"What's important is that Paul Giammati won for that one movie he was in. Seriously, I don't know what movie he was in; if they had said "And the winner is Paul Giammati for 'Sorry We All Kinda Ignored You Re: Sideways'" it would have made a lot more sense. By the by it took me three times to post this with the proper usages of 'won' and 'one'"
I'll point out again I wasn't drunk during this broadcast or afterward; me not being able to use the proper usages of "won" and "one" is just a sign of my post-collegiate mental decline, I guess.
And finally, in non-snarky positive commentary, I really enjoyed that The Fighter got some performance recognition, as it damn well should have. Bale was an obvious choice for supporting, and my heart was torn like a parent who had two children up for the same award when it came to Melissa Leo and Amy Adams being nominated, so I was happy that at least one of them took the award. Plus, Melissa Leo's acceptance speech was one of the more exuberant of the night, which is always nice to see.
I was also happy that Toy Story 3 won, but it's become obvious that you never ever fuck with Pixar on awards night. So I kinda expected that my heart wouldn't be broken on that one.
You know what I didn't like about the show, though?
...No, it's not that they nominated really stupid movies like The Tourist, Burlesque, and Alice in Wonderland.
...No, it wasn't Ricky Gervais being overly acerbic. Celebs should learn how to handle that shit better; Steve Carrell did, and it was funny.
What it was that got my goat was the fucking Social Network.
I get it, I get it, it's a good movie. I won't dispute that; it's smart and makes a possibly uninteresting subject much more interesting. But for gosh sakes, it's so transparent that people are voting for it because they want to pick the most vanilla pseudo-entertaining, smartish and profitable movie on the ballot, as if their friends in the foreign press would make fun of them for voting for something like Inception.
Here's how I see it: The Social Network will prove to be the All of the President's Men of the 21st century, certainly at least 2010. A historical document-type film about an important event in American history that has reverberated and changed the way we think for a long while.
More importantly, it won't be watched by anyone who is not seeing it in their AP US History classes or by mega-film nerds who wanna be Fincher completists (not that that's a bad thing, he's pretty good).
To be fair though, while President's Men got nominated for a buncha Oscars, it only won a couple, screenplay being the biggest honor. You know what won most of the Oscars that year?
Rocky. You know, that movie that's really similar to The Fighter.
You know what movie won almost nothing? Taxi Driver.
I won't say that Taxi Driver is at all similar to Inception story wise, but I can make two bold-ish statements concerning their connection in an awards context. One is that both of the films are fairly challenging in terms of presenting a new set of ideas, be they in terms of cinematic language (Taxi Driver) or just somewhat complex story (Inception). Second, and more important is that Inception, like Taxi Driver, will be the one far more recognized by posterity.
And if I may be so bold, I believe The Fighter will be too, in comparison to The Social Network. Shit, Black Swan, even, while we're at it.
What I'm getting at is it gets annoying that awards are far less about the most deserving or interesting movies, nowadays, it's about people making the choice that they think they should to look good in front of their cohorts. There's a hype machine that seems to randomly pick one film out as the "smart pick" and dictates that Social Network's weird 80's horror film synthy bits of score should be ignored for the pretty piano noise that peppers the film as best score and that Inception's soon-to-be-iconic BRHAAAMMMM type score should go unnoticed.
Anyways, I'm rambling. I'll stop talking and wait for about twenty years to say "I told you so."
...Also, where the fuck was True Grit?
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Memory Lane
Talking about the Miami Vice trailer yesterday made me think of trailers that were similar (cool or douche-y, depending on how much you enjoyed the Duplass Brothers) that did not disappoint when the actual viewing of the movie was involved.
Sin City popped into my mind right quick.
I first saw this while watching a mediocre movie that I can't remember. I did that a lot when I was young because a lot of my friends were busy having social lives and girlfriends (and to be fair, that hasn't changed much, but Netflix has revolutionized the art of being lonely). I think part of the reason I don't remember the actual movie very well was because I was so jazzed about that one trailer for the next several hours, which became the next several weeks, which became the moment until the movie came out.
I got my first traffic ticket the day of the midnight showing. I was only sixteen, so getting a ticket for something I could barely explain (using the shoulder of a road to turn right, which at least 100 people do every day) was about as embarrassing as having to drag my mom to a midnight showing of a movie dedicated to violence and boobies.
But by the end of the movie, I did not care about any of that. I just cared about how badass it was, and how I could convince my friends to stop talking to girls and see the movie so I could see it again.
Not to sound corny, but movies can really do a lot to turn a bad day around. I won't use the word "transport you to another world," but you can infer that's what I'm getting at.
Sin City popped into my mind right quick.
I first saw this while watching a mediocre movie that I can't remember. I did that a lot when I was young because a lot of my friends were busy having social lives and girlfriends (and to be fair, that hasn't changed much, but Netflix has revolutionized the art of being lonely). I think part of the reason I don't remember the actual movie very well was because I was so jazzed about that one trailer for the next several hours, which became the next several weeks, which became the moment until the movie came out.
I got my first traffic ticket the day of the midnight showing. I was only sixteen, so getting a ticket for something I could barely explain (using the shoulder of a road to turn right, which at least 100 people do every day) was about as embarrassing as having to drag my mom to a midnight showing of a movie dedicated to violence and boobies.
But by the end of the movie, I did not care about any of that. I just cared about how badass it was, and how I could convince my friends to stop talking to girls and see the movie so I could see it again.
Not to sound corny, but movies can really do a lot to turn a bad day around. I won't use the word "transport you to another world," but you can infer that's what I'm getting at.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Expectation
I made it to my second weekend, which means brief posts. Hooray for that.
I type this as I watch the Steelers-Ravens game, which is important to note because this game is bug-nuts. It's really really fun to watch (so why am I typing? I know, I know) because everyone seems to be really angry and aggressive. A tackle for a loss right now just looked like a freaking wrestling grapple, and the Raven responsible turned to the crowd and told them to quiet down a bit. It's awesome and entertaining.
Yet no one gave a shit about it because of stupid stupid Rex Ryan and his stupid words coming from his stupid mouth. This sounds juvenile, but I have a rather juvenile level of hatred for stupid-face Rex Ryan.
This weeks playoffs match ups in the AFC can teach us a valuable lesson in expectation. The fun involved in something is exponential if you don't really expect much from it. Meanwhile, much like Miami Vice after watching the unbelievably entertaining (or douchey, if you're a hipster), the Pats-Jets game can only disappoint. Either the Pats kill the Jets and everyone is like "yeah, that was expected and technically proficient, but whatever," or the Jets win and everyone is massively disappointed.
So I'm just going to enjoy the crap out of this game.
I type this as I watch the Steelers-Ravens game, which is important to note because this game is bug-nuts. It's really really fun to watch (so why am I typing? I know, I know) because everyone seems to be really angry and aggressive. A tackle for a loss right now just looked like a freaking wrestling grapple, and the Raven responsible turned to the crowd and told them to quiet down a bit. It's awesome and entertaining.
Yet no one gave a shit about it because of stupid stupid Rex Ryan and his stupid words coming from his stupid mouth. This sounds juvenile, but I have a rather juvenile level of hatred for stupid-face Rex Ryan.
This weeks playoffs match ups in the AFC can teach us a valuable lesson in expectation. The fun involved in something is exponential if you don't really expect much from it. Meanwhile, much like Miami Vice after watching the unbelievably entertaining (or douchey, if you're a hipster), the Pats-Jets game can only disappoint. Either the Pats kill the Jets and everyone is like "yeah, that was expected and technically proficient, but whatever," or the Jets win and everyone is massively disappointed.
So I'm just going to enjoy the crap out of this game.
Friday, January 14, 2011
Overload
Before falling asleep last night, I fantasized about what my day would be like. It went something like this:
You know what? I saw that "Louie" was on Netflix, so I think I'm gonna watch a lot of that. Man, that was a really interesting show; I really wanna watch it again because I suspect that the ratio of melancholy to funny is actually skewed a lot more in melancholy's direction than funny, and that's pretty bold for a comedian to do. He's doing short Woody Allen films as delivered by someone really really angry.
But you know what else? I haven't watched "Northern Exposure" in forever. God, that show is good. I keep saying I'm going to re-watch that show and I still haven't. Maybe it's for the same reason I haven't watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy again, it'd just be so time consuming to get through all of it. But screw it; maybe I can get through "Louie" early in the morning (there are only 13 episodes, after all), then I can get on "Northern Exposure."
Oh shit, wait, I already have the third and fourth seasons of "Chuck" on my plate, too. I kept saying I'd get caught up before Monday. Gotta stay on that regiment. So I'll watch that after "Louie."
Dude, thinking of TV makes me think of the True Grit commercial I saw today. Good to see it's number one at the box office. Should I see it a third time? I kind of want to, but that seems silly, like something I'd do in middle school. And I'm not in middle school anymore.
Ah crap, I just realized I still haven't seen Blue Valentine either. And call me nuts, but I feel like I'm committed to seeing the Green Hornet, just because I'm so damn curious about that pairing of Seth Rogen and Michel Gondry for a movie like that. I should see Blue Valentine first though, because that'll probably leave theaters quicker.
So maybe after watching all of "Louie," then a few more episodes of "Chuck," I can go see Blue Valentine tomorrow*. That'd be a pretty good day, even though the end of it would involve me admittedly seeing a pretty heavy movie almost certainly by my lonesome, which probably wouldn't put me in the best mood in the evening, but oh well. Good art is good art, I guess, and if I have a crummy night after a good day of media-watching, that's probably alright. I can blog my opinions of these things too, which will be helpful, as I'm really quickly running out of ideas to write about.
Tomorrow should be awesome.
...As it stands, I watched two episodes of "Louie" and got my oil changed, which took like an hour. Luckily, my oil change was free, so that was good.
Regardless, though, I think I need to temper my multimedia intake, and also take a long hard look at what I believe constitutes a "Good Day."
*Oh, and I should also listen to "The Wild Hunt" again by The Tallest Man On Earth. That'd be a good thing to do to take a break or do while blogging. Also, I should really try to steal more devices from the fifteen pages of David Foster Wallace stuff that I've read. It makes me look a lot cooler, I bet.
You know what? I saw that "Louie" was on Netflix, so I think I'm gonna watch a lot of that. Man, that was a really interesting show; I really wanna watch it again because I suspect that the ratio of melancholy to funny is actually skewed a lot more in melancholy's direction than funny, and that's pretty bold for a comedian to do. He's doing short Woody Allen films as delivered by someone really really angry.
But you know what else? I haven't watched "Northern Exposure" in forever. God, that show is good. I keep saying I'm going to re-watch that show and I still haven't. Maybe it's for the same reason I haven't watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy again, it'd just be so time consuming to get through all of it. But screw it; maybe I can get through "Louie" early in the morning (there are only 13 episodes, after all), then I can get on "Northern Exposure."
Oh shit, wait, I already have the third and fourth seasons of "Chuck" on my plate, too. I kept saying I'd get caught up before Monday. Gotta stay on that regiment. So I'll watch that after "Louie."
Dude, thinking of TV makes me think of the True Grit commercial I saw today. Good to see it's number one at the box office. Should I see it a third time? I kind of want to, but that seems silly, like something I'd do in middle school. And I'm not in middle school anymore.
Ah crap, I just realized I still haven't seen Blue Valentine either. And call me nuts, but I feel like I'm committed to seeing the Green Hornet, just because I'm so damn curious about that pairing of Seth Rogen and Michel Gondry for a movie like that. I should see Blue Valentine first though, because that'll probably leave theaters quicker.
So maybe after watching all of "Louie," then a few more episodes of "Chuck," I can go see Blue Valentine tomorrow*. That'd be a pretty good day, even though the end of it would involve me admittedly seeing a pretty heavy movie almost certainly by my lonesome, which probably wouldn't put me in the best mood in the evening, but oh well. Good art is good art, I guess, and if I have a crummy night after a good day of media-watching, that's probably alright. I can blog my opinions of these things too, which will be helpful, as I'm really quickly running out of ideas to write about.
Tomorrow should be awesome.
...As it stands, I watched two episodes of "Louie" and got my oil changed, which took like an hour. Luckily, my oil change was free, so that was good.
Regardless, though, I think I need to temper my multimedia intake, and also take a long hard look at what I believe constitutes a "Good Day."
*Oh, and I should also listen to "The Wild Hunt" again by The Tallest Man On Earth. That'd be a good thing to do to take a break or do while blogging. Also, I should really try to steal more devices from the fifteen pages of David Foster Wallace stuff that I've read. It makes me look a lot cooler, I bet.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Embarrassing Admissions Thursday
Still on vacay, still typing on a smart phone. The novelty of being able to do this all on a phone has worn off pretty quickly.
Plus, yesterday's day drinking turned to night drinking, so my head is a bit fuzzy today. On that note, why don't I make some embarrassing admissions?
Here's a good one: I've watched The Proposal three times.
None of those times was a girl involved.
Two times I was by myself.
And only once did I watch it simply because it was on cable.
I know full well it isn't a good movie, which means I must watch it because I'm a sappy goof.
Bonus admission: I saw a magazine that said Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock are dating now, and I felt genuinely happy about it. Makes me wish I was a lot more cynical and mean-spirited, it is at least less embarrassing that way.
Plus, yesterday's day drinking turned to night drinking, so my head is a bit fuzzy today. On that note, why don't I make some embarrassing admissions?
Here's a good one: I've watched The Proposal three times.
None of those times was a girl involved.
Two times I was by myself.
And only once did I watch it simply because it was on cable.
I know full well it isn't a good movie, which means I must watch it because I'm a sappy goof.
Bonus admission: I saw a magazine that said Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock are dating now, and I felt genuinely happy about it. Makes me wish I was a lot more cynical and mean-spirited, it is at least less embarrassing that way.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Vacay
Today's blog will be short, as I'm typing it on my smart phone (whoaaa technology!) It will also be brought to you by the city of Santa Barbara and a dose of drinking during the day.
"Are you blogging about the butterflies?" asked Spencer, my co-day drinker.
"...I am now."
On that note, we saw a flock(?) of monarch butterflies outside. Spence thought they were migrating or something, and I'm not one to argue.
We also saw a jet trail thing, the moon at daytime, and a falcon.
It's a cool place, is what I'm getting at.
On that note, here's some photos of none of the things I just talked about. We both heartily recommend day drinking and firestone double barrel ale
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
The Scariest Thing A Lazy Filmmaker Could Read
Okay, so someone made a 30-minute short with the iPhone.
That is scary. Technology is cool and all, but this is getting ridiculous.
I've never seen any Park Chan-wook films; I somehow escaped film school without seeing Oldboy, don't ask me how (but if you were to ask me I'd tell you someone spoiled the twist for me and I got pretty damned discouraged). I do know he's a good filmmaker according to most everyone, so he probably knows his shit, which is why his decision to make a movie on an iPhone is frightening.
This means other people will try to make movies on iPhones. This is terrible. Hear me out on this one.
This is where people will have to take sides. Is the democratization of film a good thing? An idealist would say yes; this opens up the world to auteurs-in-training who had no other means to do so.
But theoretically, that's what the Panasonic DVX line of cameras did on a smaller scale, too, and there's no real evidence that those things begot the new wave of filmmakers. I guess the Duplass Brothers (they made that movie Cyrus most recently) are the only ones who really made a big name of themselves with that type of technology.
As someone who owned a DVX, knew other people who owned DVXs, and studied a buncha DVX films, I'm scared for what further democratization of cinema will do.
(And at this point, I sound really pretentious; I'm sorry about that. I realize I've done nothing to separate myself from this group of people, but whatever, 8 or fewer people read this blog consistently)
Seriously, though, this new found technology is a lot like the Force (yep, I'm going there). It can be used for good or evil.
The problem is, the evil manifests itself in shit like Fred. If you don't know what Fred is, don't click this link*. You'll never know what it is, and you'll never have to thank me for telling you what horrors you didn't see. But you should still thank me.
What worries me, though, is that the evil will far outweigh the good. I'd rather just leave the auteurism to the auteurs, and let everyone else do it the old fashioned way--through schmoozing, promising film school films, and tons and tons of cocaine and debauchery.
*I managed to watch half of that video. It was the longest and most agonizing 1:36 of my life.
That is scary. Technology is cool and all, but this is getting ridiculous.
I've never seen any Park Chan-wook films; I somehow escaped film school without seeing Oldboy, don't ask me how (but if you were to ask me I'd tell you someone spoiled the twist for me and I got pretty damned discouraged). I do know he's a good filmmaker according to most everyone, so he probably knows his shit, which is why his decision to make a movie on an iPhone is frightening.
This means other people will try to make movies on iPhones. This is terrible. Hear me out on this one.
This is where people will have to take sides. Is the democratization of film a good thing? An idealist would say yes; this opens up the world to auteurs-in-training who had no other means to do so.
But theoretically, that's what the Panasonic DVX line of cameras did on a smaller scale, too, and there's no real evidence that those things begot the new wave of filmmakers. I guess the Duplass Brothers (they made that movie Cyrus most recently) are the only ones who really made a big name of themselves with that type of technology.
As someone who owned a DVX, knew other people who owned DVXs, and studied a buncha DVX films, I'm scared for what further democratization of cinema will do.
(And at this point, I sound really pretentious; I'm sorry about that. I realize I've done nothing to separate myself from this group of people, but whatever, 8 or fewer people read this blog consistently)
Seriously, though, this new found technology is a lot like the Force (yep, I'm going there). It can be used for good or evil.
The problem is, the evil manifests itself in shit like Fred. If you don't know what Fred is, don't click this link*. You'll never know what it is, and you'll never have to thank me for telling you what horrors you didn't see. But you should still thank me.
What worries me, though, is that the evil will far outweigh the good. I'd rather just leave the auteurism to the auteurs, and let everyone else do it the old fashioned way--through schmoozing, promising film school films, and tons and tons of cocaine and debauchery.
*I managed to watch half of that video. It was the longest and most agonizing 1:36 of my life.
Monday, January 10, 2011
One-Week (Repetitive) Retrospective
I was really excited to have a whole week of writing in this blog done. Felt very accomplished, despite the sub par quality of most of the posts. Today, I realized I had 51 more weeks left of writing, and felt pretty boned in commitment to this crazy dream of mine.
Soon, I'm going to start having to do weird statistical studies and crazy experiments like trying the P90X thingy, just to make ends meet. Not that these are particularly bad things, just a bit gimmicky. On the plus side, I'll finally have a scientific answer to which of my best friends are the best looking, and I myself will have a much better physique should I do these things.
But that is neither here nor there. Today, I'm going to be repetitive and stick with the same old format I've had for the past week of talking about my personal life and the media I bury my mind in to hide the fact that I cannot function socially.
The topic of today: Repetitiveness
I go down the rabbit hole when it comes to Youtube a lot, as I'm sure most of everyone does. They see those related videos and click and click and click until they forgot what they were initially doing. It's a complete waste of time, and I thank Youtube for providing me with such a perfect distraction in these long and boring days.
Today was a quicker and stranger route than most. I saw a link on Twitter to an old video of Whoopi Goldberg talking on The View about Republicans (specifically Sarah Palin) "targeting" Democrats who occupied government positions usually controlled by Republicans. Given the rather sad timing of this, the video was titled, "Sarah Palin Responsible for Gabrielle Gifford's Shooting?"
I'm not going to expound my thoughts on that subject, I'm just pointing out that it's only in the weird wacky world of Youtube where I'd click a link and immediately be transported to a somber Peter Gabriel rendition of the Magnetic Fields' "Book of Love."
I had heard this song before, but where? I rack my brain for the answer, but no need; Youtube is telling me I heard it in what should have been the series finale for "Scrubs," which is unabashedly one of my favoritest shows ever.
For the record, as someone who spent eight years watching every episode of this series, I surprisingly did not cry during the above segment.
But good lord did I want to.
I bring all of this up in relation to repetitiveness because anyone, especially people who grew tired of the show, will tell you that "Scrubs" is unbelievably repetitive. An episode goes as such:
So why did I watch this for 8 long years? Crippling shyness towards women probably helped, and also I was in high school, so I had most school nights to sit around and do nothing.
But it's more than that, I think. It's a testament to likeability, really. I watched the show because the characters were great, people I liked, people that reminded me of my friends and whatnot.
There's a scene where JD has to convince Elliot how much he loves her (also, by the by, found in the suggestions box on Youtube). He says, "I love you more than [JD's best friend] Turk." "Oh my God," responds Elliot. This was the most romantic thing he could possibly say ever, given . "I know, That's even hard for me to say, but it's true."
I love this scene because if there is ever a time in my life where I have to convince a woman I love her, I'll probably say the same thing nearly verbatim.
Like it or not, repetitiveness is everywhere, and characters are why we like art. No one watches The Big Lebowski for its plot on the umpteenth go-round; they watch it because of Walter, the Dude, and Donnie. "Northern Exposure" has got some great episodes, but the stories almost always take a backseat to the quirkiness of the community and how much they all like each other and interact and accept each other. "Scrubs" followed the same format for eight years* and with the exception of a few goofy years, was solid up until the end.
People say there's nothing original anymore. The bad news for those folks is that there never was anything original, ever. They've gotta realize it's character that makes the repetition bearable.
Plus, who doesn't like a TV show that pulls of a joke like this?
*I'm excluding the ninth year because I choose to believe that doesn't exactly count as "Scrubs," seeing as how the settings and characters changed so much. Plus, the Janitor wasn't there, and who likes that.
Soon, I'm going to start having to do weird statistical studies and crazy experiments like trying the P90X thingy, just to make ends meet. Not that these are particularly bad things, just a bit gimmicky. On the plus side, I'll finally have a scientific answer to which of my best friends are the best looking, and I myself will have a much better physique should I do these things.
But that is neither here nor there. Today, I'm going to be repetitive and stick with the same old format I've had for the past week of talking about my personal life and the media I bury my mind in to hide the fact that I cannot function socially.
The topic of today: Repetitiveness
I go down the rabbit hole when it comes to Youtube a lot, as I'm sure most of everyone does. They see those related videos and click and click and click until they forgot what they were initially doing. It's a complete waste of time, and I thank Youtube for providing me with such a perfect distraction in these long and boring days.
Today was a quicker and stranger route than most. I saw a link on Twitter to an old video of Whoopi Goldberg talking on The View about Republicans (specifically Sarah Palin) "targeting" Democrats who occupied government positions usually controlled by Republicans. Given the rather sad timing of this, the video was titled, "Sarah Palin Responsible for Gabrielle Gifford's Shooting?"
I'm not going to expound my thoughts on that subject, I'm just pointing out that it's only in the weird wacky world of Youtube where I'd click a link and immediately be transported to a somber Peter Gabriel rendition of the Magnetic Fields' "Book of Love."
I had heard this song before, but where? I rack my brain for the answer, but no need; Youtube is telling me I heard it in what should have been the series finale for "Scrubs," which is unabashedly one of my favoritest shows ever.
For the record, as someone who spent eight years watching every episode of this series, I surprisingly did not cry during the above segment.
But good lord did I want to.
I bring all of this up in relation to repetitiveness because anyone, especially people who grew tired of the show, will tell you that "Scrubs" is unbelievably repetitive. An episode goes as such:
- Goofy jokes, recapitulation of anything important that has been happening (mostly relationship stuff)
- Introduction to patient of some sort; more jokes
- Shit gets real
- JD narrates a profound lesson learned through shit getting real. Maybe a joke or two more to make you feel fine at the end of the episode
So why did I watch this for 8 long years? Crippling shyness towards women probably helped, and also I was in high school, so I had most school nights to sit around and do nothing.
But it's more than that, I think. It's a testament to likeability, really. I watched the show because the characters were great, people I liked, people that reminded me of my friends and whatnot.
There's a scene where JD has to convince Elliot how much he loves her (also, by the by, found in the suggestions box on Youtube). He says, "I love you more than [JD's best friend] Turk." "Oh my God," responds Elliot. This was the most romantic thing he could possibly say ever, given . "I know, That's even hard for me to say, but it's true."
I love this scene because if there is ever a time in my life where I have to convince a woman I love her, I'll probably say the same thing nearly verbatim.
Like it or not, repetitiveness is everywhere, and characters are why we like art. No one watches The Big Lebowski for its plot on the umpteenth go-round; they watch it because of Walter, the Dude, and Donnie. "Northern Exposure" has got some great episodes, but the stories almost always take a backseat to the quirkiness of the community and how much they all like each other and interact and accept each other. "Scrubs" followed the same format for eight years* and with the exception of a few goofy years, was solid up until the end.
People say there's nothing original anymore. The bad news for those folks is that there never was anything original, ever. They've gotta realize it's character that makes the repetition bearable.
Plus, who doesn't like a TV show that pulls of a joke like this?
*I'm excluding the ninth year because I choose to believe that doesn't exactly count as "Scrubs," seeing as how the settings and characters changed so much. Plus, the Janitor wasn't there, and who likes that.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
I Watch Trailers I Don't Like
Out of morbid curiosity, I oftentimes will watch trailers I know will be absolutely terrible. The most consistent source of terrible movie trailers comes from Adam Sandler films. On that note, here's the first trailer for his latest movie:
I only mention it because of the commercials for the same movie I just saw on the football game. It's an interesting case of studios realizing they made a movie about a complete douchebag, and want to change the perception of the entire film to appeal to a larger audience.
Now, instead of a douche who pretends to be married so he can have numerous affairs and then enlists his best friend (played by Jennifer Aniston, so you already know how this movie is ending) and her children to pull an elaborate ruse over the ridiculously cookie-cutter hot girl that he apparently "loves," it's now about a guy in love with a girl who pretends to have kids to win her over. Because that makes total sense in every aspect.
Will that work? You tell me. Also, I'm sorry if you actually watched the trailer. I didn't want to write much today.
(Author's Note: Though I disapprove of latter-day Sandler, his early movies are still good, and Punch-Drunk Love still ranks as one of my favoritest movies ever)
I only mention it because of the commercials for the same movie I just saw on the football game. It's an interesting case of studios realizing they made a movie about a complete douchebag, and want to change the perception of the entire film to appeal to a larger audience.
Now, instead of a douche who pretends to be married so he can have numerous affairs and then enlists his best friend (played by Jennifer Aniston, so you already know how this movie is ending) and her children to pull an elaborate ruse over the ridiculously cookie-cutter hot girl that he apparently "loves," it's now about a guy in love with a girl who pretends to have kids to win her over. Because that makes total sense in every aspect.
Will that work? You tell me. Also, I'm sorry if you actually watched the trailer. I didn't want to write much today.
(Author's Note: Though I disapprove of latter-day Sandler, his early movies are still good, and Punch-Drunk Love still ranks as one of my favoritest movies ever)
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Brevity (Quality Over Quantity [Kinda])
Since it's the weekend and no one should work on weekends ever*, I have decided to make my posts especially brief, communicating a point as quickly as possible. This is an exercise in writing, and also a very lazy tactic.
There's a case to be made for Spike Jonze being my favorite filmmaker. I might like the Coen Brothers more, but Jonze is who I wish to emulate should I get the chance. This is because he makes nothing but good movies. Always thoughtful, offbeat, and beautiful films. This might be because he's only made three films.
Always take quality over quantity.
That isn't to say he's not prolific, however. You all have seen his music videos, and recently he's been making more short films. They are great exercises in tone, a little offbeat, and beautiful. Maybe not thoughtful, however. Sometimes they just make you feel a way.
If everyone operated in this select features, short art projects method, I think movies and media would be a much more enjoyable thing on the whole.
Here are some examples/trailers of his new stuff which you should all watch. All seven of you.
*Personal opinion, not actually true.
There's a case to be made for Spike Jonze being my favorite filmmaker. I might like the Coen Brothers more, but Jonze is who I wish to emulate should I get the chance. This is because he makes nothing but good movies. Always thoughtful, offbeat, and beautiful films. This might be because he's only made three films.
Always take quality over quantity.
That isn't to say he's not prolific, however. You all have seen his music videos, and recently he's been making more short films. They are great exercises in tone, a little offbeat, and beautiful. Maybe not thoughtful, however. Sometimes they just make you feel a way.
If everyone operated in this select features, short art projects method, I think movies and media would be a much more enjoyable thing on the whole.
Here are some examples/trailers of his new stuff which you should all watch. All seven of you.
*Personal opinion, not actually true.
Friday, January 7, 2011
In Which I Go Clubbing
Hey, you know what's a good idea? Throwing me on a bus with a load of attractive girls and better-looking-than-me guys, then throwing me into a club with even more of the aforementioned situation.
This sounds like a situation where I would get too drunk and do something stupid, but I didn't. Call it maturity, I guess.
There is a party bus that departs from Rancho San Diego every Thursday at around 10 PM and takes folks downtown to go hang out wherever (I say "wherever" because I have a passing idea of where we went to, but couldn't fully explain where I was to my mom). Tonight's bus featured a lotta jock-types from high school I knew who, contrary to popular stereotypes, are actually pretty great dudes. It was those guys, me and mine, and the ever-dreaded girls.
The girl that mattered to me wasn't on the bus though. And again, before you think of anything cool this might turn into, realize the story will be anti-climactic. You'll have to get used to that.
Remember the Brazilian girl from two nights ago? The night I may or may not have slept in a car? Right, well she was there. She walked past, and I kinda double-taked her, and she did too. We hugged, and I think she might've kinda kissed me on the cheek.
I obviously became flustered as heck. She walked away, and only saw her in passing for the rest of the night. But honestly, the fact that I made a big enough of a likeable impact that she said hi to me several nights later made me feel like the most competent ladies' man on earth, despite the fact that I am very much not.
But that still made the night feel like a victory.
That coupled with hanging out with my best friends, watching one of them try to ride a mechanical bull, and almost being socially capable in large and a crowd I'm very awkward in, made for a pretty darn great night.
I talked to my Mom this morning about the night being interesting from an "anthropological perspective," ensuring that I sounded pretentious enough to indicate that I did not have anywhere near a conventionally good time. I did intend to write about the absurdity of being thrown on a dim crazy bus where bumping and grinding were only interrupted by the occasional speed bump and paying too much for drinks and realizing my new vice isn't blacking out but rather eating food, and observing at a distance the more base qualities of hooking up in dark places and something depressing and what-have-you--
But you know what? I think I'm just going to let it go at being a good night.
This sounds like a situation where I would get too drunk and do something stupid, but I didn't. Call it maturity, I guess.
There is a party bus that departs from Rancho San Diego every Thursday at around 10 PM and takes folks downtown to go hang out wherever (I say "wherever" because I have a passing idea of where we went to, but couldn't fully explain where I was to my mom). Tonight's bus featured a lotta jock-types from high school I knew who, contrary to popular stereotypes, are actually pretty great dudes. It was those guys, me and mine, and the ever-dreaded girls.
The girl that mattered to me wasn't on the bus though. And again, before you think of anything cool this might turn into, realize the story will be anti-climactic. You'll have to get used to that.
Remember the Brazilian girl from two nights ago? The night I may or may not have slept in a car? Right, well she was there. She walked past, and I kinda double-taked her, and she did too. We hugged, and I think she might've kinda kissed me on the cheek.
I obviously became flustered as heck. She walked away, and only saw her in passing for the rest of the night. But honestly, the fact that I made a big enough of a likeable impact that she said hi to me several nights later made me feel like the most competent ladies' man on earth, despite the fact that I am very much not.
But that still made the night feel like a victory.
That coupled with hanging out with my best friends, watching one of them try to ride a mechanical bull, and almost being socially capable in large and a crowd I'm very awkward in, made for a pretty darn great night.
I talked to my Mom this morning about the night being interesting from an "anthropological perspective," ensuring that I sounded pretentious enough to indicate that I did not have anywhere near a conventionally good time. I did intend to write about the absurdity of being thrown on a dim crazy bus where bumping and grinding were only interrupted by the occasional speed bump and paying too much for drinks and realizing my new vice isn't blacking out but rather eating food, and observing at a distance the more base qualities of hooking up in dark places and something depressing and what-have-you--
But you know what? I think I'm just going to let it go at being a good night.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Please Shut Up, Rex Ryan
In 2007, there were a simple set of rules dictating a nascent San Diegan football fan (that isn't to say newborn, but more someone whose friends forced him into joining a fantasy football league two years prior and developed a genuine affection for the sport). These rules were:
And you would think it would make the NFL more fun, having a buncha idiotic goofs making outlandishly stupid statements while winning, waiting for some team whom no one really pays much attention to defy odds and ruin Superbowl chances. I would vote for the Falcons to be this team, but I don't want to jinx anyone, so I politely decline taking sides. Except, I want the Jets to lose, that's about the only thing I care about this playoffs.
This is fair stance to take for two reasons: Rex Ryan is a loudmouthed idiot, and who likes loudmouthed idiots, and they ruined LT and Mark Sanchez for me. LT is now a smug shadow of his former self who revels in his old home's football woes, and Sanchez' good looks and swagger are now just douchey based solely on the fact that his team's mouthpiece is a fat man who can somehow insult Tom Brady when there is absolutely no need to. This would have been great in 2007, but now it just comes across as obnoxious.
The 2007 Patriots were the villains of Christopher Nolan's Gotham City. Nowadays, the Jets are the stuff of the Adam West world of Batman. It's a whole lot campier, and less engaging.
For example, when Rex Ryan says "it's personal" when taking on the Colts and Peyton Manning (then inexplicably praising Manning the next week), it just sounds stupid.
Imagine if Belichick said a game was personal. That'd be a little frightening; you'd think it might be possible that he would use his mind to make the opposition's quarterback's head explode, Scanners style.
It was a lot more fun when there was an unstoppable juggernaut of evil that everyone could root against. Now we have the loudmouthed, obnoxious bad guys from 80s college films that thought themselves to be smart.
It's gotten so bad that I actually sided with Tom Brady when he said he hated the Jets and wouldn't support watching "Hard Knocks".
Let's see that again: I sided with Tom Brady.
I hate Tom Brady. He's too good looking and great at things I'm terrible at.
You see what these Jets are doing to me?
For the sake of my mental health, please, shut up Rex Ryan.
*I wrote foot-in-mouth as a flow of consciousness thing. I then gasped at my inadvertent cleverness, given the recent foot fetishism of Rex Ryan, and reveled in said inadvertent cleverness for several minutes. Then I ate a sandwich. That might explain the disjointedness of this blog.
- Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and the entity known as the New England Patriots really kind of sucked, not so much for their play (couldn't really argue they weren't good), but how they conducted their selves so mercilessly
- LaDanian Tomlinson was the coolest person ever for being a nice guy and tremendously gifted athlete
- If you were a student at USC, you pretty much had to root for SC players in the NFL regardless of what team they were on.
- No one really had to care about the Jets, as their quarterback was either Chad Pennington or Kellen Clemens (I really don't remember), and Vernon Gholston was quickly amounting to someone whose name bloggers wouldn't remember how to spell correctly
And you would think it would make the NFL more fun, having a buncha idiotic goofs making outlandishly stupid statements while winning, waiting for some team whom no one really pays much attention to defy odds and ruin Superbowl chances. I would vote for the Falcons to be this team, but I don't want to jinx anyone, so I politely decline taking sides. Except, I want the Jets to lose, that's about the only thing I care about this playoffs.
This is fair stance to take for two reasons: Rex Ryan is a loudmouthed idiot, and who likes loudmouthed idiots, and they ruined LT and Mark Sanchez for me. LT is now a smug shadow of his former self who revels in his old home's football woes, and Sanchez' good looks and swagger are now just douchey based solely on the fact that his team's mouthpiece is a fat man who can somehow insult Tom Brady when there is absolutely no need to. This would have been great in 2007, but now it just comes across as obnoxious.
The 2007 Patriots were the villains of Christopher Nolan's Gotham City. Nowadays, the Jets are the stuff of the Adam West world of Batman. It's a whole lot campier, and less engaging.
For example, when Rex Ryan says "it's personal" when taking on the Colts and Peyton Manning (then inexplicably praising Manning the next week), it just sounds stupid.
Imagine if Belichick said a game was personal. That'd be a little frightening; you'd think it might be possible that he would use his mind to make the opposition's quarterback's head explode, Scanners style.
It was a lot more fun when there was an unstoppable juggernaut of evil that everyone could root against. Now we have the loudmouthed, obnoxious bad guys from 80s college films that thought themselves to be smart.
It's gotten so bad that I actually sided with Tom Brady when he said he hated the Jets and wouldn't support watching "Hard Knocks".
Let's see that again: I sided with Tom Brady.
I hate Tom Brady. He's too good looking and great at things I'm terrible at.
You see what these Jets are doing to me?
For the sake of my mental health, please, shut up Rex Ryan.
*I wrote foot-in-mouth as a flow of consciousness thing. I then gasped at my inadvertent cleverness, given the recent foot fetishism of Rex Ryan, and reveled in said inadvertent cleverness for several minutes. Then I ate a sandwich. That might explain the disjointedness of this blog.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
I did something I'm pretty sure I have never done in San Diego. I didn't sleep in my bed for two nights in a row.
Before you imagine anything cool, there was nary a girl involved. We slept wherever we could, as we had too much to drink two days in a row. One night was a friend's house, the other night may or may have not been a car (if my mom ever reads this, it definitely wasn't a car).
This last evening, we went out to PB. One of us went at about 6 in the morning to walk to McDonald's. Upon exiting the car, he vomited a little bit. Then he apparently vomited more on the way to McDonald's.
Before that, another one of us was not allowed into a bar because he was deemed too drunk.
Interestingly enough, I was neither of those people, which, if you know me, should come as a surprise.
I spent my evening making conversation with an attractive Brazilian woman. Only, by spending my evening I mean trying to decipher bad English in a loud establishment for about three minutes. But, again, if you know me, that's kind of a big deal. Ultimate victory.
We drove home around 7:15 in the AM. As such, we got to drive past downtown San Diego and the ocean area during sunrise.
If you could imagine that scenario for a second, you'd probably think it to be quite gorgeous. If you're less imaginative, here's a photo:
Pretty, right? Today's sunrise actually looked a bit nicer. In a slightly tired, mostly hung over daze, driving home with this was spectacular. It makes me really sad that I don't live here full time any more. It almost makes me rethink this whole "live in LA" thing a lot. And while Downtown SD is pretty, I miss the hills of El Cajon the most when I'm away.
That's right, I'm romanticizing East County. Deal with it.
Before you imagine anything cool, there was nary a girl involved. We slept wherever we could, as we had too much to drink two days in a row. One night was a friend's house, the other night may or may have not been a car (if my mom ever reads this, it definitely wasn't a car).
This last evening, we went out to PB. One of us went at about 6 in the morning to walk to McDonald's. Upon exiting the car, he vomited a little bit. Then he apparently vomited more on the way to McDonald's.
Before that, another one of us was not allowed into a bar because he was deemed too drunk.
Interestingly enough, I was neither of those people, which, if you know me, should come as a surprise.
I spent my evening making conversation with an attractive Brazilian woman. Only, by spending my evening I mean trying to decipher bad English in a loud establishment for about three minutes. But, again, if you know me, that's kind of a big deal. Ultimate victory.
We drove home around 7:15 in the AM. As such, we got to drive past downtown San Diego and the ocean area during sunrise.
If you could imagine that scenario for a second, you'd probably think it to be quite gorgeous. If you're less imaginative, here's a photo:
Pretty, right? Today's sunrise actually looked a bit nicer. In a slightly tired, mostly hung over daze, driving home with this was spectacular. It makes me really sad that I don't live here full time any more. It almost makes me rethink this whole "live in LA" thing a lot. And while Downtown SD is pretty, I miss the hills of El Cajon the most when I'm away.
That's right, I'm romanticizing East County. Deal with it.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Embarrassing Admissions: The Inagural Post
Since the thing I wrote yesterday was still posted as a Monday entry, I now know I cannot cheat this impeccable Blogger system. Curses. Looks like I can't stockpile blogs on more productive days.
As such, I guess I need to fulfill my requirement today. I know I alluded to talking about Rex Ryan, but you know what, I wanna prepare a bit more for that, as recent developments of who is and who is not taking the Colts-Jets match-up personally (hint: Ryan takes it personally, because he has verbal diarrhea on a daily basis and Peyton Manning knows how to handle the press less stupid-like).
I could post an update about my life, such as "Hey, harkening back to that post I tried to post today but got screwed on with time stamps, I did start watching 'Parks and Recreation,' and it's definitely better than I thought it would be."
But that wouldn't be fun at all for anyone to read. As such, I'll do start my file of Embarrassing Admissions much, much sooner than expected. Hooray.
Here's numero uno: Freshman year of college, I spent a week watching the music video for the Paramore song "That's What You Get." I'd embed the video so as to thoroughly make fun of myself, but embedding said video has been disabled by request. Thank God for that. Someone must be looking after me.
That still doesn't mean I can't just post a link to it though; but let's face it, that's one more link you'll have to click, and do you really want to do that? It'd throw off the flow of this post.
To be fair, it wasn't so much the song that I enjoyed, but rather their attractive singer, Hayley Williams. At that point, the seventh grade pop-punk fan version of me inside my subconscious was substantially in love with the plucky-and-wholly-unthreatening redhead. On a campus full of ridiculously beautiful Southern Californian blondes that I was 99% sure I was never going to get with (in hindsight, my margin of error of plus/minus 01% on that statistic proved to be incredibly accurate; I've always prided myself on having a knack for statistics), I guess seventh grade me and was bound to manifest itself and with it, an appreciation for mopey upbeat music.
To put an overly sentimental button on this post: I guess growing up means realizing you'll always be a little bit of an emo middle schooler deep down inside.
I guess that explains why people still like listening to "San Dimas High School Football Rules" by the Ataris every once in a while, or why I'm still a rather big Alkaline Trio fan.
As such, I guess I need to fulfill my requirement today. I know I alluded to talking about Rex Ryan, but you know what, I wanna prepare a bit more for that, as recent developments of who is and who is not taking the Colts-Jets match-up personally (hint: Ryan takes it personally, because he has verbal diarrhea on a daily basis and Peyton Manning knows how to handle the press less stupid-like).
I could post an update about my life, such as "Hey, harkening back to that post I tried to post today but got screwed on with time stamps, I did start watching 'Parks and Recreation,' and it's definitely better than I thought it would be."
But that wouldn't be fun at all for anyone to read. As such, I'll do start my file of Embarrassing Admissions much, much sooner than expected. Hooray.
Here's numero uno: Freshman year of college, I spent a week watching the music video for the Paramore song "That's What You Get." I'd embed the video so as to thoroughly make fun of myself, but embedding said video has been disabled by request. Thank God for that. Someone must be looking after me.
That still doesn't mean I can't just post a link to it though; but let's face it, that's one more link you'll have to click, and do you really want to do that? It'd throw off the flow of this post.
To be fair, it wasn't so much the song that I enjoyed, but rather their attractive singer, Hayley Williams. At that point, the seventh grade pop-punk fan version of me inside my subconscious was substantially in love with the plucky-and-wholly-unthreatening redhead. On a campus full of ridiculously beautiful Southern Californian blondes that I was 99% sure I was never going to get with (in hindsight, my margin of error of plus/minus 01% on that statistic proved to be incredibly accurate; I've always prided myself on having a knack for statistics), I guess seventh grade me and was bound to manifest itself and with it, an appreciation for mopey upbeat music.
To put an overly sentimental button on this post: I guess growing up means realizing you'll always be a little bit of an emo middle schooler deep down inside.
I guess that explains why people still like listening to "San Dimas High School Football Rules" by the Ataris every once in a while, or why I'm still a rather big Alkaline Trio fan.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Unraveling The Evils Of Facebook
You know how Facebook tries to cater sidebar advertisements to your specific preferences in things?
Well, apparently, Facebook thinks I like risk-taking and trying new things.
Unfortunately, I'm not really into either of these things. I wish I were, actually, but the extent of my risk taking usually involves whether or not I should delve into "Parks and Recreation." You see, it's a risk because I'm not sure if I want to make that commitment to watch what could be yet another good show. I take television watching very seriously.
God help me when I run out of the sample K-Cups from my Keurig coffee thingy. Will I try new ones, or stay with the same ol' ones I tried in the samples?
I digress, though. What set me off on this was that that I was often shown advertisements about an "LA Bucket List," which I equate to a list of things I would do only if presented with a terminal illness. That's how it worked in the movie, right? I never saw it.
Again, sidetracked, sorry. This was the photo advertising the LA Bucket List:
That, my friends, is an Uno, apparently an eco-friendly cross between a motorcycle and a Segway invented by an 18 year-old (yeah, I wish I thought of cool stuff when I was 18 too, but I was busy doing nothing).
The perplexing part is that one cannot find a way to ride this in Los Angeles. As far as I can tell, this is still a prototype, and a quick Googling shows that you cannot rent one of these things and take a Uno tour around the beaches of Los Angeles, or even ride around in parking lots as the photo illustrates.
Now, what worries me about this is the risk-takers and extreme motorsport enthusiasts who see that advertisement and think, "wow, that seems fantastic!" For me, it isn't a problem, but what if someone in LA does deem that something they must do before they die only to discover it's an impossibility?
Has Facebook done this to purposefully drive risk-takers mad in the search of an electric motorcycle-thingy that looks like it has photoshopped? A passive aggressive jab at those who spend their time doing real-life things as opposed to habitually sitting in front of their computer?
Anyways, I hope to raise awareness about this false advertising in the following months, and get as many one-wheeled motorcycle looks-photoshopped-but-isn't on the streets of Los Angeles as possible. It works double because they're eco-friendly, so I will look good in the green community too. Hooray for causes.
Well, apparently, Facebook thinks I like risk-taking and trying new things.
Unfortunately, I'm not really into either of these things. I wish I were, actually, but the extent of my risk taking usually involves whether or not I should delve into "Parks and Recreation." You see, it's a risk because I'm not sure if I want to make that commitment to watch what could be yet another good show. I take television watching very seriously.
God help me when I run out of the sample K-Cups from my Keurig coffee thingy. Will I try new ones, or stay with the same ol' ones I tried in the samples?
I digress, though. What set me off on this was that that I was often shown advertisements about an "LA Bucket List," which I equate to a list of things I would do only if presented with a terminal illness. That's how it worked in the movie, right? I never saw it.
Again, sidetracked, sorry. This was the photo advertising the LA Bucket List:
That, my friends, is an Uno, apparently an eco-friendly cross between a motorcycle and a Segway invented by an 18 year-old (yeah, I wish I thought of cool stuff when I was 18 too, but I was busy doing nothing).
The perplexing part is that one cannot find a way to ride this in Los Angeles. As far as I can tell, this is still a prototype, and a quick Googling shows that you cannot rent one of these things and take a Uno tour around the beaches of Los Angeles, or even ride around in parking lots as the photo illustrates.
Now, what worries me about this is the risk-takers and extreme motorsport enthusiasts who see that advertisement and think, "wow, that seems fantastic!" For me, it isn't a problem, but what if someone in LA does deem that something they must do before they die only to discover it's an impossibility?
Has Facebook done this to purposefully drive risk-takers mad in the search of an electric motorcycle-thingy that looks like it has photoshopped? A passive aggressive jab at those who spend their time doing real-life things as opposed to habitually sitting in front of their computer?
Anyways, I hope to raise awareness about this false advertising in the following months, and get as many one-wheeled motorcycle looks-photoshopped-but-isn't on the streets of Los Angeles as possible. It works double because they're eco-friendly, so I will look good in the green community too. Hooray for causes.
Post-Grad: An Analysis From A Post-Grad
I jokingly told my friend Andres that a screening of the 2009 Alexis Bledel film Post Grad needed to be in our near future, as we were both at the end of our time as students (yes, this is something I'm going to bring up for a while, as thinking of new things to say once a day is actually harder than I thought, and I don't want to start up my weekly "embarrassing admissions" posts until I can help it). As it stood, he hadn't come home, and one night the movie was on one of HBO's high definition channels.
So I watched it.
I'll point out that if it were on a standard definition channel, I probably wouldn't have watched it, as if that somehow saves my masculinity in any way.
I'll also point out that its supporting cast of Zach Gilford from "Friday Night Lights" and Michael Keaton didn't hurt the chances of me watching it. I mean, I gotta support Zach Gilford; he'll always be the awkward-yet-scrappy underdog in my book, and if I don't support him in his post-FNL ventures, who will? Plus, Michael Keaton is really weird and fun to watch. He's like Robert Downey Jr. if he had aged like the horrible drug addict he used to be, as opposed to just staying good looking. Bum rap for Keaton, I suppose.
Also, I guess Alexis Bledel is pretty adorable.
I think at this point, you're starting realize the movie is not good, with so many qualifying factors I've stated to justify halfheartedly sitting through it.
However, sitting through a bad movie about a person in the same position as me was about as perfect of an image I could pick for describing my life at this particular juncture, that of doing nothing but torture myself with bad media until I can find the agency to stop living vicariously and start actually making things (hey, look a blog post! I'm already on my way there!)
And as a bonus, it taught me a terrible life lesson that will in no way aid me past the rough patch of being an unemployed liberal arts student who lives with his parents.
(Spoilers follow. If you actually wanna watch the movie, probably shouldn't read past this)
(...But seriously, don't watch this movie, it's kinda bad)
The gist of the movie goes as such: girl leaves college teeming with optimism, has dreams crushed, sits around her parents place working awful jobs and ignoring the wonderful man that is her best friend (who is totes in love with her), then hooking up with a Brazilian dude, messing up a lot of small things, then falling into a job because she's less of a bitch than another girl, then quitting her dream job to finally move to a new state to be with the person she ignored for the whole movie and whom the screenwriters didn't justify her newfound love for (actually, I think it was something the hot Brazilian said to her; so the Brazilian did more in the courtship process for the friend than the friend could ever do; I guess this means if I ever want a hypothetical hot best friend to fall in love with me, I gotta befriend a lot more hot Brazilians). The end.
Wait, seriously? That's how this works? I screw up for a long time, and the everything falls into place only for me to decide that I don't care?
Well, darn, that's a relief. I thought I was going to have to work hard to reach goals and make good decisions. Turns out I could probably keep up my normal regiment of drinking with my friends, occasionally doing something horribly awkward and stupid, and making no real strides towards a career while I figure out who I really am. I bet you if I keep this up, I'll be offered directing or writing jobs left and right in no time based solely on the fact that my peer group that are currently getting jobs are douche bags (Please note, currently-employed peer group: I do not actually think this about you. I'm sure you're all fantastic people, and as a side note, please help me get a job).
Then, once that happens, I'll probably just say "eff it" and move to the other side of the country to be with the person I just found out I love with the help of the Brazilian dude I've been hooking up with.
Alright, looking back at this plan I just wrote out, I see it's a little flawed.
First of all, for this to work, I need a close friend that is in love with me that I'm also apparently in love with (troubling, as most of my closest friends are guys in relationships, and I'd rather not be a home wrecker). Second, and more difficult, I need to start hooking up with a beautiful Brazilian man.
So, um, does anyone know where Brazilian dudes hang out in San Diego? Because I really need to get a career soon, and if Post Grad taught me anything, it's that a good starting point for that is someone who looks like the guy who played Xerxes in 300.
Tune in tomorrow for an explanation of why I hate Jet's coach Rex Ryan. I'll give you a hint: it's because he's a tactless ass.
So I watched it.
I'll point out that if it were on a standard definition channel, I probably wouldn't have watched it, as if that somehow saves my masculinity in any way.
I'll also point out that its supporting cast of Zach Gilford from "Friday Night Lights" and Michael Keaton didn't hurt the chances of me watching it. I mean, I gotta support Zach Gilford; he'll always be the awkward-yet-scrappy underdog in my book, and if I don't support him in his post-FNL ventures, who will? Plus, Michael Keaton is really weird and fun to watch. He's like Robert Downey Jr. if he had aged like the horrible drug addict he used to be, as opposed to just staying good looking. Bum rap for Keaton, I suppose.
Also, I guess Alexis Bledel is pretty adorable.
I think at this point, you're starting realize the movie is not good, with so many qualifying factors I've stated to justify halfheartedly sitting through it.
However, sitting through a bad movie about a person in the same position as me was about as perfect of an image I could pick for describing my life at this particular juncture, that of doing nothing but torture myself with bad media until I can find the agency to stop living vicariously and start actually making things (hey, look a blog post! I'm already on my way there!)
And as a bonus, it taught me a terrible life lesson that will in no way aid me past the rough patch of being an unemployed liberal arts student who lives with his parents.
(Spoilers follow. If you actually wanna watch the movie, probably shouldn't read past this)
(...But seriously, don't watch this movie, it's kinda bad)
The gist of the movie goes as such: girl leaves college teeming with optimism, has dreams crushed, sits around her parents place working awful jobs and ignoring the wonderful man that is her best friend (who is totes in love with her), then hooking up with a Brazilian dude, messing up a lot of small things, then falling into a job because she's less of a bitch than another girl, then quitting her dream job to finally move to a new state to be with the person she ignored for the whole movie and whom the screenwriters didn't justify her newfound love for (actually, I think it was something the hot Brazilian said to her; so the Brazilian did more in the courtship process for the friend than the friend could ever do; I guess this means if I ever want a hypothetical hot best friend to fall in love with me, I gotta befriend a lot more hot Brazilians). The end.
Wait, seriously? That's how this works? I screw up for a long time, and the everything falls into place only for me to decide that I don't care?
Well, darn, that's a relief. I thought I was going to have to work hard to reach goals and make good decisions. Turns out I could probably keep up my normal regiment of drinking with my friends, occasionally doing something horribly awkward and stupid, and making no real strides towards a career while I figure out who I really am. I bet you if I keep this up, I'll be offered directing or writing jobs left and right in no time based solely on the fact that my peer group that are currently getting jobs are douche bags (Please note, currently-employed peer group: I do not actually think this about you. I'm sure you're all fantastic people, and as a side note, please help me get a job).
Then, once that happens, I'll probably just say "eff it" and move to the other side of the country to be with the person I just found out I love with the help of the Brazilian dude I've been hooking up with.
Alright, looking back at this plan I just wrote out, I see it's a little flawed.
First of all, for this to work, I need a close friend that is in love with me that I'm also apparently in love with (troubling, as most of my closest friends are guys in relationships, and I'd rather not be a home wrecker). Second, and more difficult, I need to start hooking up with a beautiful Brazilian man.
So, um, does anyone know where Brazilian dudes hang out in San Diego? Because I really need to get a career soon, and if Post Grad taught me anything, it's that a good starting point for that is someone who looks like the guy who played Xerxes in 300.
Tune in tomorrow for an explanation of why I hate Jet's coach Rex Ryan. I'll give you a hint: it's because he's a tactless ass.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
The Battle For Four Loko
I feel like a lot of this blog will involve me writing about "hot button" topics well after they have stopped being so hot and button-y. With that in mind, let's talk about alcoholic beverages a full two days after New Years, when everyone has ceased to care about champagne and cavalier midnight drunken hookups as part of tradition and whatnot.
A little while back, a big hubbub was made over Four Loko, a trashy, tacky, and mildly disgusting energy drink/malt liquor hybrid. It was the John Waters films of alcohol (For non-film nerds reading this, Waters was this dude who--You know what, never mind, it's not that important). It was recently deemed illegal to sell the iteration of the drink that God intended us to binge on, as the FDA decided that combining high alcohol by volume drinks with taurine and guarana is a bad idea.
If you were keeping score at home, that means the evil alcohol-energy combo duped the FDA for around eight years, seeing how stuff like Sparks and Tilt have been around for a while.
And what a glorious 8 years those were. Some of my favorite memories involve the consumption of Tilt. A preview screening of Superbad at Comic-Con, where a group of fellows sitting next to my friend Grant and I reveled in the glory that was giving very underage kids booze while drunkenly quoting Pootie Tang. A few years later, my friend Spencer and I discovered a liquor store in downtown San Diego that didn't card us. Actually, every once in a while they would, then the owner of the place would quickly dismiss it; he was a blessed man. Anyways, the first drinks we bought from this establishment? Tilt. We walked around downtown San Diego drinking Tilt and having one of those moments we'll remember until our alcoholism has permanently fried our memory cells.
I will admit, however, that Four Loko and I have not had the best rapport. In fact, I'm pretty sure Four Loko is the goddamned devil. If Tilt were the little angel on my shoulder, Four Loko would be too busy to play the devil on the other shoulder because he'd be posting incriminating photos of me on the internet or slashing my tires. I know I should really blame myself for getting woken up on benches without prior knowledge of getting there or a regrettable kiss with a rather annoying girl, but since everyone else is blaming it on the Loko, I might as well too. It also fucked up Tilt for me, and not even for the fact that they took the energy out of it, but rather forced Tilt to change their format to up the alcohol content and change its flavors from "generic energy drink" to "red," "blue," and "green."
What I'm getting at is that I'm not a fan of Four Loko, but does that mean it should be illegal because a buncha people got alcohol poisoning and some douche state assemblyman doesn't know how to handle his shit? We all got that alcohol education as we went to college, we know how to handle our shit responsibly, we just choose not to. If you spend an hour sitting in a doctor's office pounding two and a half Lokos, you're obviously going to start vomiting. That may not even have been alcohol-related, it might just be the taste alone. And I'm pretty sure those kids who got alcohol poisoning could just as easily get way too wasted on some other cheap booze (I recommend Red Cisco and Sprite, a drink I made up called the Shirley Temple Blackout; by my calculations, that's just as disgusting and just as dangerous as Loko).
I don't think I'm a good leader for causes or movements. For example, I started a Facebook group called "If Sarah Palin is elected president, I'm moving to England." It has two members right now, because I just don't care enough to moderate it. Although, maybe in 2012 I'll be a little more gung ho about it, although I'm praying I won't have to. But I'd like to propose a movement to the good four readers of this blog:
You may have noticed Four Loko is still on the shelves, as is Tilt and Sparks. The only problem is they've apparently replaced the energy drink with all-natural colors (yes, really, the can does say that). I pledge that if I ever drink Four Loko again (hopefully I won't, but still), I will buy a can of red bull and mix that shit together. It will taste awful, and I will do something stupid, but at least I'll stand for something. And that something will be the obstinacy of irresponsibility.
Growing up doesn't mean you have to stop being stupid, you just have to find ways to justify it. I recommend using weird words like "obstinacy of irresponsibility" to make horrendous decisions sound kinda noble.
A little while back, a big hubbub was made over Four Loko, a trashy, tacky, and mildly disgusting energy drink/malt liquor hybrid. It was the John Waters films of alcohol (For non-film nerds reading this, Waters was this dude who--You know what, never mind, it's not that important). It was recently deemed illegal to sell the iteration of the drink that God intended us to binge on, as the FDA decided that combining high alcohol by volume drinks with taurine and guarana is a bad idea.
If you were keeping score at home, that means the evil alcohol-energy combo duped the FDA for around eight years, seeing how stuff like Sparks and Tilt have been around for a while.
And what a glorious 8 years those were. Some of my favorite memories involve the consumption of Tilt. A preview screening of Superbad at Comic-Con, where a group of fellows sitting next to my friend Grant and I reveled in the glory that was giving very underage kids booze while drunkenly quoting Pootie Tang. A few years later, my friend Spencer and I discovered a liquor store in downtown San Diego that didn't card us. Actually, every once in a while they would, then the owner of the place would quickly dismiss it; he was a blessed man. Anyways, the first drinks we bought from this establishment? Tilt. We walked around downtown San Diego drinking Tilt and having one of those moments we'll remember until our alcoholism has permanently fried our memory cells.
I will admit, however, that Four Loko and I have not had the best rapport. In fact, I'm pretty sure Four Loko is the goddamned devil. If Tilt were the little angel on my shoulder, Four Loko would be too busy to play the devil on the other shoulder because he'd be posting incriminating photos of me on the internet or slashing my tires. I know I should really blame myself for getting woken up on benches without prior knowledge of getting there or a regrettable kiss with a rather annoying girl, but since everyone else is blaming it on the Loko, I might as well too. It also fucked up Tilt for me, and not even for the fact that they took the energy out of it, but rather forced Tilt to change their format to up the alcohol content and change its flavors from "generic energy drink" to "red," "blue," and "green."
What I'm getting at is that I'm not a fan of Four Loko, but does that mean it should be illegal because a buncha people got alcohol poisoning and some douche state assemblyman doesn't know how to handle his shit? We all got that alcohol education as we went to college, we know how to handle our shit responsibly, we just choose not to. If you spend an hour sitting in a doctor's office pounding two and a half Lokos, you're obviously going to start vomiting. That may not even have been alcohol-related, it might just be the taste alone. And I'm pretty sure those kids who got alcohol poisoning could just as easily get way too wasted on some other cheap booze (I recommend Red Cisco and Sprite, a drink I made up called the Shirley Temple Blackout; by my calculations, that's just as disgusting and just as dangerous as Loko).
I don't think I'm a good leader for causes or movements. For example, I started a Facebook group called "If Sarah Palin is elected president, I'm moving to England." It has two members right now, because I just don't care enough to moderate it. Although, maybe in 2012 I'll be a little more gung ho about it, although I'm praying I won't have to. But I'd like to propose a movement to the good four readers of this blog:
You may have noticed Four Loko is still on the shelves, as is Tilt and Sparks. The only problem is they've apparently replaced the energy drink with all-natural colors (yes, really, the can does say that). I pledge that if I ever drink Four Loko again (hopefully I won't, but still), I will buy a can of red bull and mix that shit together. It will taste awful, and I will do something stupid, but at least I'll stand for something. And that something will be the obstinacy of irresponsibility.
Growing up doesn't mean you have to stop being stupid, you just have to find ways to justify it. I recommend using weird words like "obstinacy of irresponsibility" to make horrendous decisions sound kinda noble.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
In Which I Force Myself to Keep a Regiment
It is January 1st of 2011. I am a college graduate who has spent the past several weeks sitting at home doing absolutely nothing adult, unless you count the consumption of adult beverages as a wholly adult thing to do (which I don't). I am wearing an oxford-style shirt that I think makes me look older, but in terms of growth and planning for the future, I have done very little, which is a little alarming, I guess. And I can only buy so many oxford shirts before I have to start actually doing real life adult things, like getting a job and talking to girls (although, let's not get ahead of ourselves with the girls thing).
So I made a decision about a week ago, which I will refuse to call a New Year's Resolution, the time and date are kinda irrelevant. I am writing in this blog every day, be it long or short stuff, stories or complaints, anecdotes or jokes and whatnot. I did want this to be gimmicky when I first got this blog name, I wanted to do things I would never do and complain about them. As it stands, the volume of writing I will attempt to do will not allow for just a gimmick. Plus, it's really hard to force myself to do things I don't like. Almost as hard as it is to write everyday. I guess this will be gimmicky after all.
So I made a decision about a week ago, which I will refuse to call a New Year's Resolution, the time and date are kinda irrelevant. I am writing in this blog every day, be it long or short stuff, stories or complaints, anecdotes or jokes and whatnot. I did want this to be gimmicky when I first got this blog name, I wanted to do things I would never do and complain about them. As it stands, the volume of writing I will attempt to do will not allow for just a gimmick. Plus, it's really hard to force myself to do things I don't like. Almost as hard as it is to write everyday. I guess this will be gimmicky after all.
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