2-28-05 (20:10)
  • tough life for martin scorsese. the oscars were pretty unmemorable. sean penn proved once again that he has no sense of humor and takes himself far too seriously, but there's not much new there.
  • updated movies list.


    • 2-27-05 (13:20)

  • updated movies list.
  • a recount of my time off:
  • 20th. saw the all star game and felt that AI deserved the mvp award. i like iverson because he shows up in every game, plays well on both sides of the ball and he's small. also saw jarred diamond talk on some cable channel. he's great. need to read more of his stuff.
  • 21st and 22nd. i started to get signs of a cold and took a bunch of cold eeze...it wiped it out almost completely. that stuff is amazing. helped my mom strip her bedroom wall of the old wallpaper. then we painted and put up crown molding. it looks good. also went to have sushi at the best sushi place i've ever been to. that was great.
  • 23rd. went to see my grandpa and recommended he see ikiru, which i loaned him. later he said he watched it and liked it. felt it was a bit long, but said he'd never seen a film like it before. i love that movie. after that i met up with james chai, an old track friend and we ate dinner and watched a movie. afterwards we met up with another old friend, david howard, who i also hadn't seen in probably 6-7 years. we talked about the old days and the current days and politics and movies and the usual shit. james is one of the coolest guys i've ever known.
  • 24th. went to amoeba and got a bunch of good dvds and cds. heard the amazingly awful news that chris webber got traded to the 76ers. i don't know how much longer i'm going to be a kings fan. they've traded my two favorite players, they let divac go and picked up ostertaag and they don't play like they used to. i might jump ship and become a 76ers fan or start following the warriors since they got baron davis, a ucla alumnus. the whole thing is tragic.
  • 25th. went to an all you can eat sushi place with my dad. that was good. sushi wasn't nearly as good as the other one, but it was all you can eat and they had other stuff so it was pleasant.
  • 26th. played nine holes of golf with my dad and averaged a double bogey. got one par and did better on the last few holes than on the first six. afterwards i got in a fight with my sister, the prima donna, and went to dinner with my grandparents and uncle's family. it was nice. another good food experience.
  • all told it was a relatively decent trip. only wanted to kill my sister for about an hour or so and didn't get in any fights with my parents. met up with a couple old friends and it wasn't uncomfortable. had lots of good food and avoided getting a cold.
  • updated movies i own list. and cd list.


    • 2-16-05 (19:52)

  • had another good jeopardy moment today. the category was "directors' first films" the five answers were play misty for me, eraserhead, 400 blows, sex, lies and videotape and citizen kane. eastwood, lynch, truffaut, soderbergh, and welles. i got them all and i was pretty happy about that. there was another answer that i thought was pretty clever. i forget the category but the answer was: "this company was #130 on the fortune 500 in 2003. this company was #130 on the fortune 500 in 2003." i also got that one, but unlike the film questions no one on the show did. it was xerox. clever. the final jeopardy question was really difficult. the category was singers and the question was "this singer, who often spoke out against the government, was named after the president who was elected in 1912." i got that it was woodrow wilson, but i didn't know that the singer was woody guthrie, whose full name was woodrow wilson guthrie. tough. i guess jeopardy is like most things - it's only fun when you're doing reasonably well.


    • 2-16-05 (01:02)

  • sorta updated movies list. two movies left to review, but i caught up on a couple from the other day.
  • i mentioned the other day that i'd be tougher on my movie reviews. i'm just realigning the grading the way it should have been all along. before, i was grading films relative to all films in existence, now i will be grading films relative to other films that i actually watch. the theory is that there is a large number of rather poor pictures out there that i hardly ever watch and that they generally comprise the left end of the bell curve - the Fs and Ds - which is why i hardly ever gave out Fs and Ds. that's making it too complicated, the gist is that the grades are being realigned from here on out so if you see a B grade it means the film is actually good, rather than just decent enough to pass the time.


    • 2-15-05 (18:52)

  • "Sacramento guard Cuttino Mobley was fined $10,000 by the NBA on Tuesday for his protest after referees did not call goaltending on his last-minute shot during a loss to Dallas.

    • Mobley had to be restrained from going after the officials by teammate Brad Miller on Friday night.
    Stu Jackson, the league's senior vice president for basketball operations, said the fine was for abuse of the officials and failure to promptly leave the court.
    The shot, which would have given Sacramento a 3-point lead, was blocked by Dallas' Erick Dampier and was followed by Jason Terry's three-point play that gave the Mavericks the 115-113 victory at Sacramento. Replays showed Mobley's shot clearly hit the backboard, which under NBA rules is goaltending.
    During the ensuing timeout, the Kings played the replay of Dampier's block seven times, and owners Gavin and Joe Maloof pointed pleadingly at the video board. Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who has had his share of fines for replaying controversial calls too many times in Dallas, merely smirked."
  • it's raining right now.
  • last night i had dinner with melanie and it was the first time i didn't feel 100% comfortable around her. i'm back to the point where i think about the situation all the time and it totally sucks.
  • worked almost 10 hours today because i had to come in early to have an ibm tech fix the computer. left late because there was a lot to do and nothing to come home to.
  • price of gas is going back up again. they talked about it on npr as if it were a surprise and offered one possible reason for the newest hike: a higher priced mix of gas for the summer time. they always have some excuse - a summer mix, gov't taxes, environmental standards, argentina, iraq, etc. but the truth is that the price of gas is always going to increase, sorry to be the one to break it to you in case you were too stupid to figure it out on your own. sure, prices might fluctuate about 10% or so in a given quarter or two, but when you look at it on a yearly basis the price is just going to increase. i hate that they have news items on the rise and fall of gas as if it were a surprise, or as if they actually think that gas is going to be under two bucks for the next 10 years...it's just not going to be that way.
  • so i took my car to the mechanic the other day because he called me and told me there was a serious chance of engine seizure which would lead to my front axle locking and my getting into a catastrophic crash. at first i was a bit taken aback that he would know what was going on with my car since i hadn't taken it in in a while, but he said that he was mulling over some past invoices and it looked like i had a problem...so i took his word for it. he said it would cost about $400 to fix, which is no small fee, but it's worth it since i didn't want to die a horrible death. the car has been in the shop for a while now and, despite my efforts to contact him, i've heard nothing. however, i have gotten several pieces of my car in the mail over the last couple months; along with a bill to cover more repairs. at first it was just a gasket here, a seal there, but now it's getting out of hand. i've started getting larger pieces of my engine in the mail - rods, valves, even the camshaft. the latest bill that he sent me asked for an additional $820. what's worse, is that everytime i get a shipment from the guy he tells me that he's figured out what the problem is this time and that it should run as good as new when i finally get it back. i've been tempted to put my foot down, but i'm too much of a wuss when it comes to this stuff and i figure that i already have the car over there so i may as well just let him finish "fixing" it. there are a few people i know who actually referred me to his shop in the first place, so i asked him what the deal was. they said that they knew he wasn't a great mechanic, but that he's a swell guy and that they figured my car was in decent enough shape already so i wouldn't really need any more than an occasional oil change anyway. thing is, i got in a car crash a few years back and it drastically affected my car's performance. at first i thought it would just need some body work, but things just got worse and worse because the body wasn't properly repaired. apparently, if proper body work isn't done then it throws the balance of the car out of whack to the point where tires wear differently which puts extra strain on the struts and it all ends up straining the engine. so, if i ever get my car back, i'm going to get a new mechanic and start taking care of it a bit better - i'm going to figure out exactly what a camshaft is, why my valves need to be adjusted periodically, and, in general, just start caring more.
  • in unrelated news, bush has asked for more money for the game in iraq.


    • 2-14-05 (00:03)

  • in the last couple weeks i've added a couple extra columns to my movies list. one for an ongoing short film count and one for additional info, for example when there's more than one cut of a particular film i'll put that info in that column.
  • updated movies list.
  • kings won today. webber stepped up and had a triple double.
  • larry bird is probably my favorite player off all-time. i bought a dvds on him, gretzky and jordan the other day and i've been watching those a bit lately. bird just played the game the way i would have played the game if i had any talent whatsoever, so that's why i like him. hakeem, jordan, stockton, bird and ...the power forward spot is always the tough one for me to settle on. sometimes i think about duncan, but he's a little soft and has trouble at the line. malone is a good choice...he can run the pick and roll with stockton to perfection, he's got good range, is durable and he's tough, but he isn't dominate in any way. i like barkley because he's a great rebounder (though he's undersized), a good scorer (highest scorer on the 92 dream team), and is tough. naturally some old timer would tell me that i should pick bill russell instead of hakeem or jerry west instead of stockton, but i've never really seen those guys play so it would be false of me to pick them for my team.
  • watched uconn lose to unc. i don't like unc because of what happened when they played michigan.
  • "20th Century Fox is said to have picked 4/5 as the day its Sideways will arrive in stores. Finally, our sources are telling is that Miramax's forthcoming special editions of Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill films are tentatively due in August. We'll post more as it comes in."
  • so far i have 24 days +10hours of music on my computer. once i'm all done i should have about 7-8 weeks worth of music. i have 18+ hours of autechre, 27+ hours of beastie boys, 16+ hours of aphex twin, 16+ hours of orbital...it's pretty cool.


    • 2-13-05 (10:23)

  • i can't sleep past 10am anymore...that's a real sign of aging i think.
  • i only have one day off this week, today, because the boss is on vacation so i'm filling one of his shifts. next week is my vacation, though, so that should be good.
  • so far i've put all my electronic and hip-hop cds onto my computer. still have world, spoken word/comedy, soundtracks, classical, indie, jazz, and rock to go. this is going to take a while.
  • watched hide and seek last night. movies are more scary when you're by yourself.


    • 2-12-05 (18:51)

  • kings game last night was a disappointment. webber choked, but we were robbed. mobley laid the ball up and it was blocked after it hit the backboard which should have been a goaltending, but the refs missed the call and we lost by two.
  • i'm going to be tougher on my movie grading from now on.
  • updated movies list.
  • updated movies i own list.
  • it's too bad that there's not going to be any nhl hockey this year.
  • for almost a year now there's been one consistent thing in my life - my love of autechre's incunabula. i could name maybe three songs (out of 11) off the album and, if pressed, i might be able to hum one or two tracks from the album without any cue. but those are both things that i love about it. it's just atonal enough to not have it stuck in my head (a common problem for me when i listen to pop music) and melodious enough to be wonderful to listen to. everytime i hear it, it's like listening to it for the first time; and that's pretty remarkable since i've listened to it a few hundred times.
  • might watch a movie in the theater tonight.
  • i'm depressed and lonely now.


    • 2-11-05 (18:57)

  • tonight all the contestants on jeopardy missed the final jeopardy question, but i knew it. it doesn't happen very often, but when it does it's pretty cool. actually two of them were quite close. the category was 1930s movies and the answer was something like "this film was originally released in 1930 and was rereleased in theaters after the german invasion of poland" one person put "war of the worlds," another put "all's quiet on the western front" and another put "all quiet on western front." so, really, two of them basically knew it, but the rules are very strict about that in final jeopardy so all three got the answer incorrect. there was another category on 2004 academy award nominees in which i got all but one. i'm pretty good at jeopardy so long as it sticks to one of two categories (sports and movies). honestly, though, if you had asked me what year all quiet on the western front came out i would have said 1931, so, really, it was just a guess.
  • there's a kings game on tv tonight.
  • i'm still hungry.


    • 2-10-05 (00:42)

  • updated movies list. finally saw the aviator tonight.
  • updated recommendations.


    • 2-9-05 (19:35)

  • "While many environmentalists fret about overpopulation, Italians are fretting over the opposite.  Despite the stereotype of its massive Catholic clans, Italy actually has one of the lowest birthrates in the world, a population set to shrink by a third by 2050, and the world's highest percentage of population aged 65 or older (18.6 percent in 2003).  The country wants babies.  Badly.  Last year, the Italian government offered a $1,300 one-time payment to couples who had a second child.  The rural village of Laviano, fearful of disappearing altogether, is offering $14,000 for every tyke produced. Studies show, however, that while cash payments may accelerate breeding schedules, they don't persuade tot-averse citizens to procreate.  Some activists say what's really needed is more public-policy support for working mothers.  If serious steps aren't taken, says Franca Biglio, mayor of Marsaglia (population 400), "Our

    • bella Italia will become a deserted wilderness.""

    2-8-05 (20:05)

  • i don't like loud engines....except, of course, for the old volkswagen engines.


    • 2-8-05 (00:01)

  • the other week i was in downtown with melanie and i saw a small chip on the ground. i picked it up and it turned out to be a cellphone chip about one sq. inch in area and the thickness of a dime. on the chip it read 64K. now i've seen smart media chips that are slightly larger that have had a much higher capacity, but seeing that exact size (64k) made me think about the fact that a commodore 64 had been reduced to the size of a couple dimes. it's not a novel thought, but at the time it struck me as pretty remarkable.
  • updated movies list.
  • i've been feeling a little burned out on movies lately. not sure why or what to do about it. i think watching 500+ movies a year creates a lot of pressure and watching movies shouldn't be about anything other than having a good time and experiencing the art. i wish i could put more pressure on myself when it came to working out.
  • i've been keeping myself pretty busy lately.
  • i have a headache.


    • 2-7-05 (19:03)

  • updated movies list.
  • been pretty bad about updating lately.
  • the superbowl was pretty good. i thought the score was going to be 28-14, but i was wrong. the patriots still won, but it was closer than i anticipated. i also thought that owens would score a td, and he didn't, but he did have a big game. mcnabb pretty much lost the game for the eagles with his poor clock management and three interceptions.
  • i've got some vacation coming up so that'll be nice.


    • 2-3-05

  • updated movies list.
  • updated movies i own list.

    • yesterday i got free tickets to see the kings and the warriors in oakland. so i called up john and we went to the arena in oakland to see the game. he's a warriors fan (booo) and i'm a kings fan so we gave each other shit throughout the exciting game. the kings are without bobby jackson (their number one bench player) until april, and yesterday three other players couldn't play webber and peja (our top two scorers) and mobley. despite all that it was a very exciting game which went into overtime. brad miller scored a game high 38 and ended up leading the kings to a victory in OT. free seats in the lower level, an overtime game, leaving work early, and a kings win...it doesn't get much better than that. the crowd was about 50/50 kings/warriors fans which made for an interesting dynamic...it seemed like there was a large contingent of people cheering no matter what team was doing well.