pirates of the caribbean 2: longest movie ever.
…fun though.
pirates of the caribbean 2: longest movie ever.
…fun though.
this weekend i was pretty much only home to sleep – i’ll have to catch up tonight 🙂
friday charlie and i saw the fast and the furious 3: tokyo drift (which apparently was given three stars by roger ebert) which was incredibly entertaining. the first reveal of these two cars drifting side by side was AWESOME. afterwards we blew half a tank of gas – premium gas; we drove down lake shore drive and shot lower wacker drive three or four times. i really need to get a car.
saturday was the first day of the intonation music festival. i met cecile at her place and we went over together. jim boggs (in town for a visit before he moves to london next month) showed up a few hours later and we spent the whole day lying in the sun listening to good music. saw brian cagle, who had AD-ed on galileo’s grave, zach and a whole slew of cecile’s friends. lady sovereign and the streets played that night and while the performances weren’t outstanding, it was still a lot of fun. after the show we walked to tuman’s and met up with andrew, christine and jim’s old flatmate, angelo. we drank, danced, i ran into patrese, got hit on by a dj and hit the pillow sometime after 3am.
sunday morning i had organized a galileo’s grave reunion lunch – some of us met at three happiness in chinatown for dim sum. it was fantastic and a good assortment of people were able to make it. as we were finishing though, i realized i had forgotton my ticket to intonation at home. i spent the next two and a half hours on trains and buses criss-crossing the city. not. fun. when i got to my apartment i was incredibly bored with public transportation so i wanted to grab my ipod too…d’oh! left that at work. i dug out my cd player instead, hoped it still worked (it did, but has no shock protection) and was on my way.
i ended up getting to intonation in the middle of annie’s set. i found cecile, jim and angelo and we hung out the rest of the day eating various fried foods and drinking 312s. the guy giving out the over-21 bracelets was bizarrely entertained by the size of my wrist. saw more zach and more of cecile’s friends – this girl knows everyone. sunday night bloc party was the headliner, and i have never seen so many enraptured hipster boys. they put on a really good show (bloc party put on the good show. well, i guess the panting hipster boys put on a good show too, but replace the word ‘good’ with ‘amusing, though mildly pathetic’). it rained a little during bloc party, but it was ok because it made everyone feel more hard-core. go ahead, laugh. but you know EXACTLY what i mean.
afterwards cecile and i were both tired and had to get up for work the next day so we headed home. waiting for the western bus this guy (also named angelo) started up a conversation with us – he had obviously underestimated our ages because he kept asking where we went to school. he kept talking all the way up past belmont where he exited – topics of conversation included: how he could get me a job in catering ($12/hour!), confusion about cecile’s origins (“you’re canadian? but…you look asian”), anime and underground hip hop, which he apparently is really into. he’s putting an album together as a producer and is looking for some people who can “lay down rhymes”.
ok seriously – i spent the whole bus ride trying not to laugh and the whole conversation seemed like it was really making the day of every other bus patron – but this guy was really nice and i seriously hope his album is super awesome and he makes it big. it was a pretty good cap to the weekend though. after angelo left the bus i put in the streets and listened to that all the way home – which took about another 40 minutes due to bus schedules at that time of night.
this weekend is the 4th of july weekend…and i don’t know what to do. seems like there will be things going on here (maybe?) but my brother is in town back home and my family really wants me to come home for the whole time so everyone can be together, etc. maybe i’ll just go for two days or something? i don’t know if we get monday off work or not and i have a haircut friday evening, so who knows.
saw x-men 3 tonight with nako and jyl – it was great! i suspect that brett ratner is responsible for the added schmaltz, but the action was fantastic and overall the story was pretty good. lots of fighting and different mutant powers. you get to hear the juggernaut utter his famous line and see some scantily clad famke janssen and hugh jackman (together but not “together”. or whatever.). nako liked it so much she wants to see it again! stay after the credits for the extra scene!
as for reality violence as opposed to the comic-book fantasy kind…did i mention that aaron and i heard and saw the aftermath of a guy getting shot in a drive-by today at work? yeah. good times. the idiot gang bangers drove by two more times though, which gave me all the opportunity i needed to get their plates. i’m pretty sure they were apprehended (police cars speeding away fairly soon after aaron called in the plates) and the victim looked ok after the police/ambulance/fire dept. showed up. before that he was wisely playing dead/knocked unconscious and lying face-down in the gutter. i think he only got shot in the arm. after this aaron kindly drove me to the el.
on friday silent hill opens and i’ve been breathlessly counting the days since i first saw the trailer. in preparation, antonio has set out to beat the video game ‘silent hill 3’, which is not the game the movie is based upon, but is still pretty creepy. last night i went to his apartment and charlie and i took turns reading the walkthrough* while antonio and charlie took turns at the controls. we got about 3/5 of the way through last night and are going to play tonight (and tomorrow night before the movie if need be) in order to finish the game before we see the movie.
other ‘silent hill’ and ‘silent hill’ related delights:
* – is this cheating? sort of. but we only have until friday night to finish this game off, so in the interest of time – walkthrough all the way.
i saw brick last night with charlie and travis and it was AWESOME. it’s a noir set in high school about a guy (joseph gordon-levitt) who decides to find out what happened to his ex-girlfriend, who suddenly disappears. the music was good, the script was good (so much special lingo and spoken at a mamet-esque clip) and the atmosphere of the whole thing was incredible.
this weekend my mom was in town to drop my cousin off at the airport. after i got a haircut she picked me up and we ate at costello’s and saw ‘ice age: the meltdown’ at the davis theater. we spent the rest of the night vegging on the couch watching the food network while i texted and IMed people, most of which were at the good night, tv! product photo shoot (which went very well and the photos are über-hip).
sunday (post-daylight-savings-time-change) we got up early and went to the southport bakery & cafe for breakfast. after that i picked up a few things at osco and then we drove out towards oak park to see my cousins. my aunt was visiting lisa and brad for the weekend so she was there too. kjirsten (almost 3) had set up a tea party for us, which was totally adorable. once harry (almost 7 months) woke up from his nap my mom held him and played with him for awhile…during which he proved that either a) he was ravenous or b) he was ravenous for boobs, because he kept grabbing the collar of my mom’s shirt and looking down it while his eyes practically bulged out of the sockets. this started out cute – you know, the first 10 times he did it – but soon i started to get a little creeped out a little. this kid is clearly going to be a boob man. we ate a really nice lunch there then mom drove me back into the city. we parted ways and she made it home just before the storm hit the quad cities.
i went to firebelly and once charlie got there we/he/whatever cleaned up what was leftover from the photo shoot. we picked up travis and drove up and down chicago ave. getting gift certificates from some really cool restaurants – japonais and green zebra.
we had a lot of time to kill before the sopranos started at 8, so we went to the loop and drove lower wacker again then took lake shore drive up to evanston. i showed charlie and travis around northwestern’s campus and took them out on the lakefill. we walked around on the big cement blocks – a nice length of it actually, because charlie saw a block with some writing on it he wanted to check out but when he got there i guess it was sort of a let-down because all he said was, “…oh, it’s just some stupid poetry.” after travis and i finished laughing our asses off we walked back to the car and went to cross-rhodes for dinner. oh delicious greek fries! it was awesome and we all ate until we were stuffed.
at this point it was time to head to antonio and patrese and charlie’s apartment for the sopranos. travis brought popcorn and we watched a really good episode while the thunderstorm started outside.
post-sopranos we watched ali g then charlie drove me home and i would like to make special note here that he gave up a really good parking space to drive me home (i appreciate it. i appreciate it a lot. i owe you. k?) in the rain. and then he had to park a few blocks away and walk there in the rain this morning. which antonio was not pleased about. so i appreciate it even more.
anyway, it was cool to see the apartment finally – antonio and patrese have a really nice place – like, it’s got stuff on the walls and is organized and designed and stuff, you know, like a real adult apartment. unlike mine which i’ve lived in for almost 2 years and have basically done nothing to make it my own space. but i suppose this is a matter of personality, because once i was surround-sound- and broadband-enabled it was pretty much home.
today i met lindsay at southport grocery and cafe for breakfast. it was fantastic! i had the house-made cereal, “our own crunchy chai spice bran & corn flakes laced with rice-nut clusters & a side of fresh fruit with vanilla vinaigrette.” it was so good, but really chewy. i was exhausted by the time i was done.
after breakfast lindsay and i met matt downtown to see the chicago river dyed green. it was really green. like, slimer ectoplasm green. and tendrilly. it looked like some sort of nuclear accident! freaky.
lindsay wanted to go to the family farmed expo at the chicago cultural center, so matt and i came too and we looked around the galleries. there were some really cool exhibitions going on and the building itself (the old public library) is really beautiful so i got a lot of (hopefully) good photos. the ceilings are amazing and in the main convention room there is a big mosaic and stained glass dome.
lindsay stayed for the organic farming expo and matt and i walked around michigan avenue for awhile. we went to the apple store and looked at the new mac book pros and the ipod hi-fi. we looked around a few stores but didn’t find anything to throw money at so we walked around until we found a place to eat.
matt had a prior engagement (a friend’s father’s birthday party) so i wandered a little and enjoyed the beautiful weather – 64°! i saw a lot of pretty convertibles and felt a little sad that since eric sold his car, that meant that someone else was probably driving the saab at that very moment, and that someone wasn’t eric and i with the ipod plugged in, zooming around the city while singing loudly.
after matt and i parted ways i went to the office and charlie took an hour break from the omnipresent dvd project so we could finally watch this week’s ‘house’. on tuesday my tivo choked and managed to record an hour of the wrong channel, totally cheating charlie and me out of our well-crafted plan to watch it and the season finale of ‘project runway’ in one night. was the episode worth all the trouble it took to see the damn thing? just barely. the whole episode was basically an hour long safe-sex psa. use condoms! don’t cheat on your spouse! gonorrhea could get you killed in a horrible car accident! etc!
on my way home this evening the temperature was still in the 60s. i walked down the street and enjoyed the warm air and made sure to take a few moments to enjoy my health and happiness, which sounds totally lame, but is true. for tonight: maybe some perplex city or catching up on tv or…probably just lying here and falling asleep early since i got very little sleep last night. i had to get up fairly early to meet lindsay and last night antonio, charlie and i saw ‘the hills have eyes‘ so i didn’t get home until late and i was still anxious about it when i went to bed. oh! that reminds me – aaron, antonio and i went to a meeting in pilsen last night and afterwards we looked around at some artist’s lofts down there. they were so cool! this one guy – a stained glass artist – actually MADE a theremin. he built the circuit board and everything! we all got to try it out. i definitely want to go back for next month’s ‘second fridays’ open house.
last night charlie and i hit a double feature in evanston – ‘16 blocks‘, the new bruce willis/mos def thriller and ‘night watch‘, the incredibly popular and incredibly awesomely-subtitled russian fantasy/horror movie. both were pretty good and i’m excited to see the sequels to ‘night watch’.
as i said, the ‘night watch’ credits were insane. if the action was slow, the subtitles faded on and off. if a character suddenly stood up, the subtitles would be pulled out of frame. credits wiped on and off in time with characters crossing frame or camera pans. blood-red credits over a swimming pool scene dissolved into tendrils of red liquid. freaking AMAZING. but i guess when you have the highest grossing russian movie in history, you can afford to make some pretty hardcore subtitles for your US release.
the visual effects were good too – not too in-your-face, which i like. there was a really awesome scene near the beginning wherein a woman turns into a TIGER and leaps across an apartment, but unfortunately there was no more of that in the rest of the movie. hopefully we’ll get to see tiger cub and bear and olga change back and forth into their animal forms in the rest of the trilogy.
overall the night was pretty laid back except, oh yeah, the part where charlie and i are sitting in the car on western near the blue line and suddenly a guy chases another guy into an alley. shortly after this is two separate volleys of shots. a lot of shots. by some natural instinct for ‘guys about to get popped’ charlie knew something was up when he saw the two guys running. i however, was totally at a loss as to why he was suddenly so quiet, allowed a single curse under his breath and was staring out the window. also, hey! why are those cars all backing up? and, what is that sound – fireworks?
just got home from a preview screening of ‘underworld: evolution’ with cecile, jon, kat and charlie. it was good – not great, but definitely entertaining. things that weren’t so great:
overall i’d say it was worth it, particularly if you’re a fan of ‘underworld’. the sequel picks up right where the first one leaves off – the very same night, maybe the same hour – and you get to see some backstory on the elders. i still can’t decide if the sex scene was alright. it was really jarring. charlie was all, ‘what is this rated?? i didn’t think there was going to be a sex scene…’ and i use the phrase ‘sex scene’ tentatively since jeez, could they have shown more of scott speedman, all naked and hovering like a FOOT away from her pelvis? how is that sex? maybe this is how immortals have sex. IN THEIR MINDS.
anyway, despite all of the above, i found ‘underworld: evolution’ to be thoroughly enjoyable. while ‘underworld’ was more story-driven – more cool plot twists and glimpses into the world of…uh, underworld – ‘underworld: evolution’ was a down-and-dirty action movie. that last fight was a real crowd-pleaser! kind of reminded me of the t-rex fight in ‘king kong’ or maybe some of the more memorable moments in ‘hostel’.
update: my suspicions are confirmed! kate beckinsale WAS still with michael sheen (lucien) on the first movie! and she left him for the director – ouch.
during ‘king kong’ last night (which was awesome), carl denham says to ann darrow, ‘i’m someone you can trust. i’m a movie producer.’ i immediately and completely involuntarily ‘HA!!‘-ed, putting the full force of my diaphragm behind the guffaw.
it was totally silent in the theatre and no one else laughed. at least, no one else laughed as explosively as i did.
now, i realize my reaction was a little…overboard, shall we say, but seriously – NO ONE ELSE thought that was funny?? what gives? i felt like a leper. i guess, as eric pointed out, that joke probably played better in LA.