Traffic sucks.
Yesterday, this just had to happen an hour before I headed home from school. This accident blocked off the entire 5 Northbound, turning the 14 freeway as well as San Fernando Road into an utter war zone. What is normally a half-hour drive took me nearly two hours, and 2 PM is hardly rush hour (I'd can't imagine how bad it was around 5-6 PM). Apparently half a dozen minor accidents happened on San Fernando later that day. Insane.
On a completely different note, until today I had believed my dad was the second child of four (one older sister, one younger brother, and an even younger sister). However, during dinner today we were talking about how my aunt and uncle from Korea will be staying at our place in a few days and somehow the conversation led to an uncle I never knew I had. Well, not quite, as he was a firstborn child who died after only a few months. But I dunno, this struck me as shocking, considering that I had no idea he even existed. I asked what his name was... which was kinda funny, because my dad had forgotten and my mom told me instead. Heh.
In other news, I just ate half a pint of Häagen-Dazs Cookies & Cream and then realized I just ate more than my entire daily value of saturated fat.
Liz has to be the most camera-shy person I've ever known, ever. I'll bet one of these days we're gonna find out she's actually an adopted Aboriginal named Isapoinhkyaki.
So the other night I was at Jen's apartment, and Kristal suddenly had a hankering for apple sauce, so we went across the street to the Mobil Mart and got some. Upon returning to the apartment, she grabbed a spoon to start eating it, to which we came to a stunning revelation...
HER SPOON WAS TOO BIG.
To anyone who is unfamiliar with the Academy Award-nominated animated short films of Don Hertzfeldt and doesn't understand the reference, please spend the next 20 minutes staring at the following banana.
The following are words that are different words when spelled backwards, so they're not quite palindromes. I like to call them semordnilap (singular: emordnilap). My last name is an emordnilap. :)
gnaw --> wang
devil --> lived
regal --> lager
sleep --> peels
diaper --> repaid
lamina --> animal
cinema --> anemic
desserts --> stressed
If you can think of any other 4+ letter length semordnilap, post them. Here's Karl at a party at Mudd trying desperately to hit lemons with a baseball bat.
Kids get bored all the time. Childhood is the relentless search for something to do, something to captivate you, or entertain you, if you will. You can see it in squirming toddlers and console game addicts. I can vouch for this claim; I too was once a kid, perenially bored, trying to find something to do.
And then somewhere along the way, it all just... stopped. Anyone who knows me well enough will tell you that I simply never get bored. I have a gift of making anything entertain me for hours. But as of late, it's all coming back to me. I mean, the other day, I called Sam. Because I was bored. He made sure to point this out to me. This past week, I read all of PvP (funny shit, btw... GIANT PANDA ATTACK! hehehe) and dusted off the old bike and gave it a go-around (and on the second day of riding it again, my rear tire pops).
I'm sorry, this isn't really all that interesting of a blog entry, and I'm a firm believer in the eradication of boring blogs.
Anyway, here's a picture of El Lundo Mundo posing with his Buddy Christ. It's not as humiliating as my last photo, but trust me... they'll come. Oh yes they will.
A long time ago in my search to find webspace to upload personal photos and display on the Star Wars board after Geocities banned image sourcing, I started an account at Hyperjump, thinking I'd never use up my 15 MB. Somewhere along the line, I started this blog. So now, over a year later, the search for more webspace and bandwidth continues. And I have chanced upon the magic of Photobucket and its 100 MB of webspace and 2,500 MB of bandwidth per month. This will mean that you will now be seeing more and more pictures appear in my blog, perhaps in every entry. Those of you who have fallen victim to my camera will now feel my wrath. Now ensues the painstaking process of redirecting previous image sources.
In the meantime, behold my first Photobucket picture of humiliation, featuring AI, Chris, and Chupathingy.
What you can't see is that his hands and feet are bound with twine and duct tape, of which he successfully freed himself from roughly 17 minutes later.
Not a theater within a 30-mile radius of my zip code was playing a midnight showing of Kill Bill: Volume 2, so I had to settle for 10:25 AM. Grrrrrr...
Anyways, I saw it with Mopar Man Sam and the Liz. Not too bad. Not too bad at all.
Quite clearly, Tarantino made Volume 1 as an homage to all sorts of genres and filmmakers, namely Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns, Brian DePalma suspense sequences, Akira Kurosawa samurai battles, anime by Production I.G., and even his own films. Volume 1 was his bloody candy-coated twist to all the movies he loved. What it lacked in depth and character he made up with already-proven style.
Granted, the same applies to Volume 2, which consists largely of an homage to the kung-fu genre. But Volume 2 is where Tarantino truly shines in his own original way. Complications arise, characters are fleshed out, relationships grow deep... the pen is truly mightier than the sword (in fact, not a single person dies by the blade). The story suddenly grows poignant, and one begins to question what's right and what's wrong. Bill, the iconic, mysterious, and faceless villian, is exposed, and you finally get to see things from his vantage point. The characters in this movie are far richer and more resonant than those of its predecessor. In almost every way, Volume 2 is a better film.
However, one mustn't forget that Kill Bill is all essentially one movie. Though episodic in nature, it's amazing how well it turned out, considering how last-minute the decision to divide the film was.
Looks like someone didn't recognize "Land of 1000 Dances." ;)
Kill Bill: Volume 1 finally released on DVD yesterday (you may recall my post-Japan rantings on the postponements), so straight after school I headed off to Best Buy to nab myself a copy. Then I found that they were selling KBV1 DVD's with Reservoir Dogs two-disc sets for 20 bucks!!! Best Buy must have had a surplus of the tenth anniversary set of Reservoir Dogs DVD's and was trying to get rid of 'em, but wow... that just made my day. :)
I love Quentin Tarantino. The guys a bit of a quack and talks like he's insane (the other night he was on Leno, drunk), but he's such a visionary genius. A high school dropout whose phenomenal knowledge of movies got him to be one of today's most acclaimed directors, he's one of those rare talents who was able to make a living off of his gifts alone. The four films he's made thus far are all instant classics, Pulp Fiction being my favorite. And all those ones he was kinda involved in but didn't direct or anything, like Desperado... good stuff too.
A little over 24 hours until KBV2 hits theaters... :D
Should I be frightened?
Looks like it'll only be in theaters for a week. Whew.
Spring break is at long last over. I can't remember for the life of me what I did on spring break. Ooo ooo, I remember now! I procrastinated! That's what I did!
Believe it or not, these pictures have been heavily photoshopped to match the appearance of their predecessors as the sun was still up behind the curtains when the pictures were taken. I'm still not quite satisfied with the midtone color balancing, but I'm sure you don't care.
Caroline! Caroline!
All the guys would say she's mighty fine
But mighty fine only got you somewhere half the time
And the other half either got you cursed out, or coming up short
Yeah, now dig this, even though
You'd need a golden calculator to divide
The time it took to look inside and realize that
Real guys go for real down to Mars girls, yeah!
You know that terrible feeling of nausea where you kinda feel like you're going to throw up at any given moment? All day yesterday I felt like that, and yet I never threw up. I ate practically nothing too. Sam says it's because I ate at Shakey's and not Lamppost.
I still feel kinda sick today; woke up really early with a bit of a fever and a headache. Nothing a Tylenol couldn't fix.
Cartoon Network's Clone Wars series finale is finally here, and I just watched it. Wow. Just... wow. This animated Star Wars micro-series, from the warped mind of Dexter's Lab and Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky and consisting of two 10-episode seasons, is quite possibly cooler than any of the movies. Each episode is only roughly 3 minutes long (save for the over double-length series finale), so they didn't really get caught up in any plot and got straight to the action. Some of the episodes didn't even have any dialogue, i.e. Mace Windu's lightsaber-less battle with the droid army and Anakin's 3-episode duel with Asajj Ventress. Furthermore, the series finale introduced the new villian of Episode III, the unstoppable droid General Grievous of the Separatist forces, much like how the Star Wars Holiday Special from 1978 first introduced Boba Fett. If you thought Darth Maul was crazy, wait until you see Grievous in action. Anyway, watch Clone Wars. It rules all.
Sunday night, to celebrate Jen's 19th birthday the following day, the sultan and his harem, Chris, and I went to the Troubadour in Hollywood and saw Deathray Davies, Dressy Bessy, and Starlight Mints in concert. The little we saw of Deathray Davies was pretty cool; Dressy Bessy was good, though I thought their music could use a little variety; Starlight Mints was awesome. Yeah.
So I finally finished reading Michael Crichton’s murder mystery Rising Sun, which I gradually started reading since I came back from Japan. Crichton is a veritable mastermind on Japanese culture and economy. I liked that I recognized a lot of the cultural quirks. It’s frightening how cutthroat Japanese competitiveness in business can get and the lengths they will go to preserve their public persona: appointing American cops, bribing liaisons, and in the case of this fictional story, even murder. As the Japanese say, “business is war.”
That’s when I decided to see the movie, starring Wesley Snipes, Sean Connery, and that dude from Mortal Kombat as Eddie Sakamura. They changed the name and race of the main character for some reason. They added incredibly stupid plot points and scenes that were not in the book (i.e. a love affair between Connery and a vastly younger woman). The stereotypical “Asian” soundtrack is mind-numbingly nauseating. In a nutshell, the movie sucked. Then, to top it all off, they totally change the ending. Hell, they even changed the identity of the killer to some random white guy and not Ishiguro (who they rename Ishihara). And in the final scene where Snipes and Connery chase down the killer, they throw in the corniest fight scene ever recorded as the two cops bust out some kung fu on Ishihara’s yakuza spies.
*sigh*
The only movie based on a Crichton novel that did it any justice was Jurassic Park. You know what? They should just stop making movies based on books, period. Ugh. I feel like screaming.
Anyways, my car now officially has a name: Akira Ishiguro. AI for short. What with Jen's "Allen" and Mike's "Chupathingy," I felt the Sentra needed a name.
Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards - To Have and Have Not
At long last, spring break is here. w00t! Now to figure out what the hell to do all week... not to mention two colossal art projects I have due the Monday after. And the Liz is off to London all spring break. Lucky.
By unanimous vote instigated by Mike following desperate yet failed attempts by Andrew to eradicate photographical evidence of the embarassing situation that occured the night of this year's Academic Decathlon SuperQuiz competition, I have been told to upload this particular photo of the Danowitz with John Walker's dog. See, I'm not the only one who does strange things to dogs, Caroline. ;)
