today i read this issue of quantz and my mind was blown. this is the kind of creepy shit that i think about all day long. it’s like t rex can see into my thoughts!
Archives for the month of: November, 2004
finally made it to ‘sideways‘ last night and it was great – funny and sad and sort of hopeful. the main character drives the same car as eric and there was another one in the background of a restaurant scene so eric got excited about that. has anybody seen the prius episode of ‘curb your enthusiasm’? eric is like that with saab 900’s. i will say though, that eric and i were the youngest members of the audience by at least 30 years. it was a monday though.
after seeing the incredibles i really debated whether to give her that cape or not.
saturday eric and i drove up to evanston to see ‘sideways’ but it was sold out. we got tickets instead for ‘national treasure’ but it was also sold out so when we got in there no seats could be found. SO we traded those tickets for ‘the machinist‘ which was very good. it has good atmosphere – i can’t really explain the plot because most of the movie is spent figuring out, with the main character, what is going on. christian bale dropped 65 lbs. for the role, at 6’2″ weighing in at something like 125 lbs, only to pile the weight back on right afterwards for ‘batman begins.’ i keep forgetting that he’s welsh because his american accent is so good. he gives an excellent performance – this movie is well worth the $9. aitana sanchez-gijon has a supporting role – she was in alfonso arau’s ‘a walk in the clouds’ with keanu reeves and she’s so beautiful it practically hurts to look at her in that movie.
you shouldn’t see this if you can’t handle dark movies. really dark.
check out the ‘photographs’ section for all the photos from the trip, captions and all. in the meantime, enjoy these delicious meat pies.
the trip was awesome, but exhausting. we walked everywhere and all day for a week and a half. when we first got to amsterdam there was a mishap with some boiling+ temp water and my hand and fingers were burned. thereafter followed encounters with rude dutch workmen and a really nice dutch doctor who, after bandaging me up, basically told me that i would feel better if i went out and smoked up. at amsterdam schiphol passport control the lady asked me if i spoke dutch and if i lived in italy. i was confused until i remembered this. the hotel in amsterdam was really cool and the city is beautiful and so laid-back. we saw the van gogh museum but not the rijksmuseum due to time constraints and construction. in london we hit a museum almost every day and had some delicious food at restaurants and homemade by brook and will. i got to know the admiral and kittybuns, brook and will’s roommates and learned that home design (particularly kitchens) in london is leaps and bounds ahead of anything i’ve seen in the states. i had a full english breakfast and saw the imperial war museum. we took a day trip to greenwich, had delicous pasties at goddard’s pie house, was the national maritime museum, climbed the hill to the royal observatory and stood on the prime meridian. eric and i went to a movie at the clapham theater – layer cake, a london gangster film that was really good – lots of twists and turns. i shopped in covent garden – bought a load of stuff at muji including a nice teapot and went to the tea house for some unique herbal teas and whole leaf teas. we ate at neal’s yard salad bar and i had some incredible vegan food including a chili-sort of stuff that i would’ve sworn had meat in it. we saw the graphic design and liebskind exhibits at the barbican and an exhibit about the history of optical illusions and the moving image at the hayward. tea every day all day in london and great architecture everywhere. i would love to live in either of these cities!
japan: snack = girly shows
amsterdam: coffeeshop = weed and hash, smartshop = mushrooms and herbal ecstacy
weird.
(2pm amsterdam time)
i voted this morning at the humongoid high school down the street from my apartment. i came armed with 6 bills, past voter registration cards, my passport and my lease, just in case some pesky republican poll watcher tried to interfere. my first impression of this, the most hallowed experience of the democratic process?
anticlimactic.
the part when i first got in there and they looked up my name and signature in the big book of signatures and pulled out my form with my name on it from the big book of voters was cool. the part where i punched #4 (?) for john kerry was sort of cool. the rest of the voting where i was confronted with the names of about 500 judges that i’d never heard of in my life…that wasn’t so cool. my second impression of this, the cornerstone of democracy?
embarassing.
jeff took us all to fogo de chao today for eric’s going away party. i am…stuffed. in pain. but oh, it was glorious. so much meat, so many tomatoes. mmm. highly recommended, but only if you like meat. a lot of it. force-fed. for an hour.
this weekend was a veritable orgy of audio-visual stimulation. friday night eric and i hit city north and saw ‘ray’ – the ray charles biopic starring jamie “oscar shoo-in” foxx. the movie was incredibly good and touching and i could not believe that the actor playing ray was the same guy who played steamin’ willie beamen in ‘any given sunday’ but let’s face it, jamie foxx was pretty awesome in that movie too. everyone in that movie did a great job. afterwards we got some carry out from the pasta bowl.
saturday i got my glasses adjusted – another preparation for the trip to london and had some greek fries which are the biggest thing i miss about evanston. saturday night andrew had a party at his coachhouse. sarah dressed as a valkyrie, complete with spear and winged helmut. a bunch of us pitched in to tape coins to her to make an armored bodice. it was exactly the sort of detail-oriented (some would say ‘tedious’) task that i relish. afterwards she was thanking me for helping out and all i could think was ‘oh no no no – thank YOU. THANK YOU.’ jill and i hung in there for the long haul, but everybody else lost interest after her boobs were covered with coins and there were no more opportunities to cop a cheap collective feel. mwahahaha!
after andrew’s eric and i were to the empty bottle to see the bobby conn et al halloween cover show, the juke box of the dead. it was…(wait for it…bet you can’t guess what word i’m going to use!) awesome! first up was baby teeth, the band fronted by pearly sweets, the glass gypsies’ keyboardist. they played covers of some hard rock songs of yore in a really cool sort of ’70-ish style (i am not good at explaning genres). the second opener was the detholz, fronted by the glass gypsies’ (new) bassist jim cooper (who also played in baby teeth). the detholz put on a really good show, playing adult contemporary classics reworked into rock songs (celebration, dancing on the ceiling, like a virgin, do you believe, etc.). the arrangements were really impressive and imaginative and set the bar pretty high for me. this, combined with searing pain in my feet and shoulder and all volume turned up about twice as high than the openers, left me sort of underwhelmed by bobby conn and the glass gypsies. i’m sure i would’ve enjoyed it more if not for these extenuating circumstances and the fact that every high note was like a drill boring into my brain. bobby conn’s mike was up particularly high and pretty much made it impossible for me to not be in pain every time he sang. i DID enjoy the show a lot, it was overall really awesome. i am willing to give bobby conn another shot. just – why did it have to be THAT loud? my ears are still ringing two days later.
high point of the night – the guy dressed as BEAKER from the muppet show! beaker is my favorite! all you could see were the guys eyes through beaker’s mouth-slit. i couldn’t take my eyes off of him. luckly he moved to the bar area before the bands started playing so i wasn’t distracted by the ingenuity of his costume during the whole show. also distracting – the see through white costumes the glass gypsies wore…i didn’t see much underwear going on and that…disturbed me, the guy dressed in a pink body suit (head included) with a sparkly tail who was brought on stage and also obviously wasn’t wearing underwear, water balloons throw up at the ceiling that burst and showered everyone with ceiling run-off.
yesterday i spent the whole day doing laundry and cross stitching. today i completely forgot that we’re going to fogo de chao for lunch, or i would’ve worn something less ass. oh well. i have bigger things on my mind, like how to pack for a place that rains all the time and what to bring on the plane to stave off boredom. i doubt the plane will be as nice as the jal flight we took to japan.