Wednesday, March 12, 2008

 I friggin love watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy every day. I get more enjoyment out of Jeopardy because it moves quicker and is more challenging and thus more satisfying when it gets to a clue you actually know (i am relatively... way too dumb for Jeopardy) whereas Wheel is more for the everyday average schmo, BUT i have an inverse relationship with the hosts! Pat Sajak cracks me up, that guy is great. When it gets to the final spin we like to say that he always shoots for the $5000, and whenever he makes it (like today!) you can totally tell he's slyly very proud of himself. SAJAK! On the other side of the coin, Alex Trebek is the biggest douchebag in existence, it is both obnoxious and hilarious. He LOVES using accents and wacky voices when he reads the answers, and he loves being a snooty know-it-all and name-dropping the international places he's been to, and in the contestant interviews (snooooze) he talks down to them so much (ESPECIALLY when it's a teen tournament) and tries to be funny and... man. He acts like such a dick! It's GREAT.

So that's what i do after work, hang out with my favorite game show hosts. And i also do my daily crossword, i'm pretty speedy at it by now, it's awesome, and by awesome i mean incredibly nerdy.

- 12:04 AM

Sunday, March 02, 2008

 Newsflash: it is terrible to be so acutely aware of your own mediocrity. I mean that in general terms, but also, for me, in terms of art. To constantly be thwarted by your own lack of creativity and skill and there's nothing you can do about it because it's just not how your brain works, but you can see, from the outside, that you really suck.

So THAT'S lame.

I read Lyra's Oxford today, sitting outside in the late afternoon under a tree in the yard and the weather was wonderful and it was very lovely (both the environment and the story). Oh BTW don't you like how i hardly ever update the "currently reading/listening to" sidebar? YEP! Anyway i know i've babbled on about His Dark Materials too much both here and in the LJ, but the characters and the universe and the themes are so brilliant and suddenly so dear to me, it can't be helped. This was such a nice little continuation, and to know that there are still adventures to come and the story is still "alive", so to speak, it just makes me incredibly happy. And friggin Once Upon a Time in the North is only a month away! HECK YES. Tiny little short reads or not, it's still new things, and new things are great, obviously.

Plus all this has reminded me how much i like reading good books, and i have quite the backlog of things to read (like for example I NEVER READ THE LAST OF A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS, because i'm dumb. BAUDELAIRES! I miss them!) It's really very interesting to me how much of a different qualitative experience it is reading a story as opposed to watching it on tv which is even a different experience from watching a movie. I always feel such a sense of loss when i get to the end of a book, because you turn the last page and you put the book down and then that's it, there's no more, you were reading and then you stopped. It's so quietly anticlimactic. I tend to always parcel out my reading to just a few chapters at a time over several weeks (mainly because i have too short an attention span for doing large amounts of anything at once, and also because it's sometimes hard to find uninterrupted quiet time because my concentration is so easily broken by NOISE), and since reading is such a solitary activity, having spent such a relatively drawn out period of time alone in your head with a story, it just is sort of sad whenever it ends. I actually kind of miss studying novels in high school english because you become so familiar with the text and i don't really re-hash and examine what i read so thoroughly anymore, but then again it was a pain in the ass and sometimes i'd rather just have my ideas floating around discombobulated and vague in my head.

But anyway! STORIES! I like them!

- 10:13 PM

Sunday, February 10, 2008

 Holy crap, my best friend just got engaged. It is very exciting! Also: time for me to REALLY start feeling bad about myself! Also: HOW FREAKING OLD ARE WE??!?

I saw Stardust yesterday and it was very adorable. My expectations were not super high because i'd heard some good things, some so-so things about it, but it was sort of Princess Bride-like and also very pretty, and i guess i enjoy feel-good fantasy stories and Neil Gaiman is awesome, so!

My brother "borrowed" my camera but in actuality shows no signs of giving it back soon. That is not awesome.

- 12:36 AM

Monday, January 21, 2008

 I just got back from seeing Cloverfield, which was pretty much completely awesome. It kind of reminded me of the good parts of War of the Worlds and Day After Tomorrow, except the good parts were the whole movie instead of just part of it. Also: the pilot of Lost. J.J. is still so great when he tries to be! The videocamera thing made it so immediate and fascinating to watch, and perfectly meta on top of it all (best use of "flashbacks" ever). And it made me sad. And it was entertaining. And it made me laugh out loud. (LOL, as the kids say!) Annnnnd... it was awesome. Hey remember when the movie was just "codenamed" Cloverfield and then that turned out to be the actual name of it after all? I didn't follow the internet phenomenon viral marketing hooplah at all, i just really wanted to see it. And it was awesome.

The reviewer (douchebag!) in the local paper gave it a D-, and in his review he talks about all the kids thinking it's profound because they love YouTube and taking pictures with their cell phones. You whippersnappers and your newfangled internet! HOW ABOUT it's a pretty awesome perspective to have on a modern huge scale epic monster movie and it was an amazing feat of directing and special effects and general storytelling? ...Naaaaah. YOUTUBE!!!

Oh holy shit, the teaser for Star Trek. AWESOME. I hope some of the extremely questionable casting doesn't make it suck. :/ I will be there just for Simon Pegg and spaceships! Ha ha i'm not even a Star Trek fan! For some reason i'd like to start being one, though. I dunno. A whole huge franchise of spaceships i'm missing out on, it seems wrong. I used to watch Next Generation all the time when i was a kid! I've seen a bunch of the movies! Uhhh, Borg? Klingons? Yeah? I'm sorry, lightsabers and blasters own my heart, i always thought phasers were lame. :(

I am currently incredibly obsessed with playing Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on my DS but i'm almost done with it and i don't wanna be. It is so adorable and fun and exactly the perfect kind of game for me! Some parts of it make me think of it as Animal Crossing as an adventure RPG. :D The only other Zelda game i've played was Twilight Princess on the Wii, but i basically only started that and then forgot to keep playing. Now suddenly i'm like "NEED MORE ZELDA".

Hi, i'm actually a twelve-year-old boy.

- 6:13 PM

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

 Ah jeez, last night sure was Pity Party '08! Boo hoo, i'm going to write an emo song with a pen full of tears.

Here is the only good thing to come out of the writers' strike so far, next to Conan's improv on Late Night: AMERICAN GLADIATORS. Heck yes, i remember watching that show so much when i was a kid. It is hilarious. Makes me want to sing the national anthem and paint a picture of an eagle crying.

I was so busy over Christmas break that i abandoned reading The Subtle Knife for lack of time and now i'm out of the zone. The reading zone. And then in the meantime Batman snuck in and took over my affections! SHEESH. Although that gives me an idea for what could possibly be the best crossover ever: Batman riding an armored polar bear. In a land called JUSTICE.

My job currently entails making graphics for an upcoming movie promotional cd-rom, so last week i got to make the Batsignal. And i got paid for it. YEP. I'm pretty proud of that.

- 6:24 PM

Monday, January 07, 2008

 I hate looking at myspace because it literally always makes me feel bad about myself. It is like the condensed, in-your-face version of "LOOK HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE A LIFE AND LOTS OF FRIENDS AND YOU DON'T, HEY LET'S KEEP A RUNNING COUNT OF HOW MANY FRIENDS YOU DON'T HAVE AND QUANTIFY YOUR WORTH AS A PERSON." I hate it. Everybody else is doing something with their life except me, happy new year!

Fuck.

Oh i finished painting. That makes me feel bad too because it's not real art, it's just a piece of empty aesthetic crap because that's what everybody wants and it's all i can do. Nobody cares.

I think the closest i get to feeling claustrophobic is seeing people make better art than me and knowing i will never be as good. It gives me an unshakeable anxiety. I'm scared of drawing in sketchbooks because i always mess things up when it really counts.

But hey i climbed a mountain in South Carolina!

My entire life needs to change and i don't really want it to.

- 11:28 PM

Sunday, December 16, 2007

 I watched Fargo on cable tonight as No Country For Old Men (BRILLIANT MOVIE, just so's you know) had got me thinking about it and how awesome the Coen brothers are. I hadn't seen it in many many years and yet i remembered the entire thing really well; i think i watched it a lot when it first came to cable. I seem to recall my little middle school self getting such a kick out of the accents and Steve Buscemi being funny-looking. And how a gunshot wound to the face makes me VERY UNCOMFORTABLE. And the wood chipper reveal is the best ever. And Frances McDormand is GREAT.

Speaking of good movies! I rewatched Batman Begins last night because all the new Dark Knight promo stuff has got me very very excited. I'll probably never get over how perfect Christian Bale is, well, in general, but also, you know, as Bruce Wayne, and Michael Caine as Alfred, and how much Katie Holmes sucks and how glad i am that they replaced her with MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL (UPGRADE!!!), and Christopher Nolan rocks and Batman rocks and everything rocks. Especially Christian Bale. And now i want to watch Batman Returns because Catwoman is my favorite (ha ha, fuck you Halle Berry your movie does not exist) and if they put her in the new movies i will have died and gone to heaven, but for now i will just imagine Christian Bale's Batman with Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman and make myself very happy in an imaginary dream world.

I am actually miraculously getting some painting done, but i really seriously do not have enough time to a) finish, b) go Christmas shopping, and c) clean my disaster of a bedroom, all while d) preparing to go on a trip for four days next week which is basically the worst timing ever but my best friend planned it and i really want to go. Now i know what all that holiday stress i hear so much about is! It doesn't even feel like Christmas, i haven't had time to enjoy the season at all. Also, it is literally 80 degrees out. :(

- 12:28 AM

Sunday, December 09, 2007

 There is a guy who works at a pizza place my friends and i go to who looks sort of a little bit like Ted Leo to me, but Ted Leo with dark hair and a beard and piercings. He makes my favorite food and resembles my favorite musician. It's like God is telling me to marry him or something! The only thing needed to complete the trifecta is whether or not he likes Star Wars. SIGH.

Hey remember when the movie version of The Golden Compass let me down more than i even thought possible in the most unexpected way and misrepresented/oversimplified everything so that the crappy review i quoted actually made sense? Ha ha, WHAT A SUCKY SURPRISE. I feel so betrayed. :( Maybe now i'll finally stop posting about it! I am just really into His Dark Materials right now, okay! But what i actually need to be into right now is painting and Christmas shopping. Yikes.

- 11:16 PM

Thursday, December 06, 2007

 TOMORROW. I have not looked forward to a movie so much since... well, i don't even know when, but probably not since Episode III. I still look forward to new movies, but not quite as much as i used to anymore. The excitement where i keep track of how many days are left till the release date and get ridiculously happy whenever there is a promo on tv. You know! So on and so forth, nerd shenanigans. Anyway i'm sure it's going to probably be pretty mediocre and the local reviewer only gave it a freaking C+ and i guess it's a story that won't translate so well to movie form maybe but... DANG. I want so badly for it to be cool and my imagination is hyping me up big time! Plus i'm seeing it with several people who want to see it and i don't want them to be disappointed in something that i suddenly LOVE SO MUCH. I made my mom read the book (ha ha, in a WEEK!) so she'd know the haps, she's the only other person i'd ever be able to get to read books since she reads a ton anyway.

Oh man, here is the last line of the review by the movie critic who i kind of hate a lot of the time: "Like Eragon and Stardust, The Golden Compass just contains a lot of hard-to-spell names, transparent motives and deep allegories only shallow people take seriously." Did... did that dude just insult me?? I mean i can see how maybe the movie makes it seem a lot more "transparent" and lame and stuff (the Potter movies certainly do that), BUT. EXQUEEZE ME, IT IS A VERY THOUGHT-PROVOKING AND AWESOME STORY WITH THEMES VERY CLOSE TO MY HEART OKAY DICKWAD. But i guess i'm just too shallow! ...Sometimes i feel pretty bad about myself.

I DON'T KNOW IF I'M EXCITED OR APPREHENSIVE. There is no emoticon for what i am feeling.

The other day i ran around the yard with my dog, and the funny part of that is that i get winded after running for maybe about a half a minute, tops. BUT when i run around once every... year, i like to pretend that a murderer is chasing me to see if i'd survive! It's really the only way worth doing exercise. ONLY IF YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. Anyway, the thing is that i would drop dead from exhaustion before the murderer even had a chance to kill me. It is so sad! I really need to exercise just so i'm able to outrun the homicidal maniac that will inevitably be chasing after me one of these days.

- 11:36 PM

Sunday, November 25, 2007

 I finished The Golden Compass today and it was SO FREAKING GOOD i loved like every page of it even when i had just started it and wasn't that into it. I take it back! I take back every vaguely unimpressed feeling i had! Like when i read the first page in the bookstore and thought "really? that's it?" HAH. I have to start The Subtle Knife IMMEDIATELY i cannot wait.

I saw one of the promos for the movie on tv tonight and it made me so flippin excited because i finally RECOGNIZE things and it is going to be AWESOME. When i originally saw the teaser trailer in the theatre the only thing i really thought about it was "oh dang i still need to read that." and also that it just looked like another in the long line of LOTR/Potter/Narnia epic fantasy movies that seem to get progressively more bland (LOL Eragon?). BUT NOW! Now i know how amazing it is going to be to watch and it makes me smile A LOT. As long as they don't screw it up, please please please. :( (NORTHERN LIGHTS!!! BEARS!!! DAEMONS OH MAN THEY BETTER BE GREAT. DANIEL CRAIG AS LORD ASRIEL, THAT IS STILL KICKING MY ASS! LYRAAAAAAA PLEASE BE GOOD PLEASE BE GOOD PLEASE BE GOOD.)

Hot damn i remember everybody talking about His Dark Materials yeeeears ago, i am so far behind the times. Sigh. Story of my life.

p.s. Oh man now i just watched the full trailer and it all looks so DIFFERENT. Sam Elliott is not Lee Scoresby at all, i had like the clearest image in my head of him out of everyone! Dang. DANG. I am going to be so disappointed by how much it differs from my imagination, i know it. That is always the most disconcerting thing! It is the only reason i ever had any problems with LOTR! TRIPLE DANG.

p.p.s. NOBODY EVER CALLS IT "THE GOLDEN COMPASS". SIGH SIGH SIGH.

Okay i'm done now for real.

Two weeks is still pretty far away. :/

- 11:00 PM

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

 I've started reading The Golden Compass because it is a habit of mine to finally read books i've meant to read forever right before a movie adaptation is released. I'm only motivated to do things when there is a deadline, apparently! Kind of like the painting i need to finish before Christmas, ha ha ha ha! ANYWAY. Obviously reading the book first is the way to go, because you can imagine it however you want and then have it ruined for you by the movie, but not TOTALLY ruined because you can just be like "HEY I LOVE THIS PART! HEY THEY DID IT WRONG. But okay it's still cool to see." Whereas if you see the movie and then read the book you can pretty much only imagine it the one way and that is uppercase L-A-M-E. Also, the books are inevitably better. That is simply how the world works, i don't know why they even still bother.

AnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnyWAY. Even though i have mostly not paid attention to previews and who is playing whom i was able to figure out pretty quickly that Daniel Craig is Lord Asriel and Nicole Kidman is Mrs. Coulter, so it kind of forced me to picture them that way, but holy crap Daniel Craig is the most perfect casting i could possibly think of and Nicole Kidman isn't so bad either except for the wrong hair color, so i guess i don't mind so much! I'm a third of the way through the book and i'm quite enjoying it; i thought it was sort of slow and confusing at first, but it introduces a LOT of shit without explaining it and i am easily bewildered by fancy words! But i'm into it now. ZEPPELINS.

Sometimes i forget how fun it is to read books! I don't do that enough because i am lazy. :/

Hey speaking of not reading books, i am re-immersed in Guitar Hero since III came out. The infuriating thing, though, is that i am so good on Medium, and then i try to play on Hard and can barely finish a single song. Of course i just remember when switching from Easy to Medium seemed impossible, or even further back when Easy seemed difficult to me and is now so simple it's boring! BUT DANG, HARD IS REALLY HARD. (you can quote me on that, by the way. I hope it's on the cover of my biography long after i'm dead. "HARD IS REALLY HARD: An Artist's Tale".)

- 8:30 PM

Friday, November 09, 2007

 I want to go on an adventure.

- 11:40 PM

Sunday, October 28, 2007

 I finished playing Portal which was absolutely awesome except for a few anxiety-inducing parts that i freak out at and can't do by myself. I do not play first-person games because i am slow and uncoordinated and easily stressed, i play games like Animal Crossing and Lego Star Wars and Katamari! Cute and happy and not incredibly difficult (or difficult at all!) la la laaaa. Anyway mostly the reason i wanted to play this was because all i'd heard and read about it is how great it is and a puzzle game seemed like something i'd be capable of, and since my brothers are actual gamers (instead of fake ones like me!) i just played one of their copies. AND IT WAS TRULY GREAT. Oh man, hilarious times a thousand plus menace and creepiness and mind-bending fun. And the best credits song of all time. And basically i am stuck on how brilliant the whole thing was. EVIL COMPUTERS ARE MY FAVORITE!! :D :D :D

I didn't have a Halloween party to go to yesterday and i probably won't even though i thought i would because my friends are stupid so i have a costume for nothing. Except for maybe wearing to work and looking like a dummy. And answering the door for trick-or-treaters. Woo yeah party time excellent!

- 5:37 PM

Saturday, October 20, 2007

 My fortune with tonight's chinese food was: "You are a happy man." Oh, fortune cookies. Sometimes you get it so right.

Somehow i have come up with Halloween costumes for myself for the next several years, except that i doubt i would have the motivation to make some [most] of them. BUT. If i dress up for Halloween some more times, i have a pretty big bank of ideas of things i would totally want to be! LET ME SHOW YOU THEM:

- Marion Ravenwood (Raiders of the Lost Ark)
- The Prince of All Cosmos (Katamari Damacy)
- Max Fischer (Rushmore) (too cliched hipster jackass, i know. BUT RUSHMORE! it is my favorite Wes Anderson movie!)
- Ellen Ripley (Alien)
- Sailor Jupiter (Sailor Moon) (guaranteed to look like an idiot: CHECK! yeah there's no way i would ever do this one, but it's fun to imagine.)
- Toph Bei Fong (Avatar)
- Art Garfunkel (YEP) (blond fro) (THE END.)
- Turanga Leela (Futurama)
- X-Wing pilot (Star Wars)
- Alice OR the Cheshire Cat but probably the Cheshire Cat (Alice in Wonderland)
- Kaylee Frye (Firefly)
- Patti Mayonnaise (Doug)
- Rowlf or Fozzie Bear (Muppets) OR Grover (Sesame Street)
- HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey)
- The Bride (Kill Bill)

Marion is at the top of the short list for next year. If i dress up for Halloween next year.

My first year of college i thought it would be totally friggin sweet to dress up as Sydney Bristow. It would have been red wig Syd + black sweater and pants from the pilot (super easy!!) or if i were remotely able to pull it off (nope) it would have been blue wig Syd from Almost Thirty Years. :/ TOO BAD!

I am realizing that i am both too old and too young for my age. EXAMPLES: i knit while watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy and i do crossword puzzles every week. Also i eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch almost every day and my favorite tv shows are cartoons and sitcoms and mostly what i do for fun is play video games. HEY WHY DON'T I HAVE FRIENDS??!? It's a mystery!!

- 11:25 PM

Sunday, October 14, 2007

 I went Halloween costume shopping with my friend today (i already have a costume, but she didn't. this will officially be the first time i have dressed up for Halloween since 6th grade.) and something startling came to my attention! Halloween is a pretty sexist holiday! Of course it is a universally acknowledged fact that once you're out of childhood, Halloween is just an excuse for girls to dress like sluts, ha ha ha barf. But looking at an entire wall of pre-made costume choices made me more uncomfortable and angry than ever before about this sad fact of life! Here is an actual sampling of the selection of costumes for men: Spider-Man, Batman, Superman, Darth Vader, a Jedi, BEETLEJUICE, A GHOSTBUSTER (@&*$^&*@!), Lt. Jim Dangle (ahahahaa), a number of fake fat suits, a doctor, a caveman, monsters, etc. etc. And here is an actual sampling of the selection of costumes for women: a sexy nurse, a sexy doll, a sexy bee, a sexy fairy, a sexy wizard (i am not even kidding, it was even a Gryffindor uniform except with a super low-cut sweater, a tiny short miniskirt, a tiny robe, and a comically small tie. EXCUSE ME, THEY DO NOT LET YOU INTO HOGWARTS WEARING THAT), a sexy Dorothy, a sexy maid, a sexy hippie, a sexy devil, etc. etc. ad infinitum, EVERY SINGLE ONE WAS EXACTLY THE SAME. So, ladies, unless you are able to come up with a costume idea on your own, you'd better resign yourself to dressing like a tramp!

Maybe some of it has to do with me liking more traditionally guy-oriented things, like i was really super tempted to get a Ghostbuster costume (just to wear the jumpsuit in day-to-day activities, even!) and i could still be a Jedi or Princess Leia (not in the gold bikini though, HAH) or whatever and nobody says a girl can't dress up in a dude's costume (that is the point of costumes!) but like, they don't even seem to OFFER cool stuff for women. There were about twice as many girl costumes and they were all generic boobs and miniskirts and grossness. That isn't really what every girl wants to dress like for Halloween, is it? I guess they kind of made a joke like that on s2 of The Office with Pam and Phyllis and Angela all dressed up like cats, or obviously in Mean Girls, but why does it have to be true? Please be more creative, world.

And IF THE TABLES WERE TURNED: every single costume for guys involves a banana hammock. DONE.

- 10:33 PM