pres.umptuo.us

Following-up the previous post about Ali G’s commencement speech at Harvard this year, video link to Harvard’s Class Days, for both 2004 and 2003. 2004 would be Ali G’s commencement speech, and 2003 would be Will Ferrell’s. Will’s is way awesome, trust me, especially when he gets into his Bush impersonation. Real Player only, unfortunately.

That last post kinda got me into the writing mood. Because I love shamelessly plugging myself and referring to past posts in the hopes that people will actually read the stuff I write here, let’s get into a first impression of Rilo Kiley’s latest effort, “More Adventurous“, the CD that was released at the show which I went to last week.

This is good stuff. My reviews blow, all the are is me saying, “This is good”, or “This is not so good” over and over again. So let’s see if I can make this a little bit more descriptive.

The obvious comparison I think most people are going to want is against Death Cab, since both lead singers were part of the Postal Service. There’s a huge difference here though.

Rilo Kiley’s sound is a lot less heavy on the instrumentals and rock, and it sounds almost like folk to me at times. Very “sing-songy” as a friend described their stuff, and definitely a lot more under the classification of “girl music”. It’s hard to remember the standout tracks on this album since I only listened to it once-through, but “Ripchord” was great just because the chorus consists of the line, “Because nobody loves you”. Classic.

On a side not involving Rilo Kiley…okay, maybe it does, in that three degrees way, but anyway. I’m totally obsessed with Postal Service. I keep liking each track on “Give Up” more and more and more.

I think we’re all having just a little too much fun with this male bonding stuff.

MyBodyIs4Sale: didja get an email from basil?
valloq: I talk with everyone a lot online
valloq: yep
valloq: he said he loved me and not you
MyBodyIs4Sale: he said he told you he loved you more than me just to throw him off the trial
MyBodyIs4Sale: trail

Alert. This website has just gone from warm to fuckin’ flaming.

I do find it odd at times at just how easily I can make fun of myself. Is not having an ego a bad thing?

Trailer for the British film, “Shaun Of The Dead”, another one of those movies that I keep hearing hype about but have absolutely no idea what they’re hyping. Well, now I know. The record-throwing scene is great. Here’s the website as well.

Ooh, Star Wars Republic Commando looks promising. Nice squad action that doesn’t take a lot of micro-management. I love the little feature of how the alien blood splatter gets cleaned off the visor. Make sure to watch the gameplay videos on the side to get an idea of how the game looks.

What’s this? Natalie Portman playing a stripper in the movie “Closer” with Jude Law, Julia Roberts, and Clive Owen? And a trailer that shows her doing uh…stripperly things? Best. Movie. Ever. You can get the trailer from here or here.

Got the heads up from Brad that the Batman Begins teaser is now online. Looks very dark and can’t really say much else unfortunately. A clear shot of the batsuit has surfaced as well today, and I gotta say that I’m not really liking it. Maybe it’s just the angle though and I’m sure it looks better in the dark.

I’ve always found it kind of interesting how I can end up at some websites and completely forget how I got there in the first place. It’d be kinda cool to create some sort of network that would link you to other people who visit the same sites that you do and find similar interests, in effect helping you find more and more things that are related. I’m sure someone’s already thought of that though.

Anywho, I ended up at the website for Flight Comics, a compilation of comics from various different artists and storytellers. Seems very promising, check out the cool poster they got for it too. Damn impulse buys.

This past weekend I was out by Sawtelle in Westwood with the family and we stopped by GR2 and the Giant Robot store. I finally picked up my Kozyndan poster, and now I gotta find a frame and find some place to hang it up.

So like some twist of fate involving the cousins in my life and Brad Pitt, my cousin Laura had a more succesful run-in with Brad Pitt today. Here is her recount of the events:

lilwang22: my friend is interning at the wb
lilwang22: and he got us guess passes
lilwang22: and they are filming oceans 12 now
lilwang22: and me and my friend were walking around their trailers
lilwang22: and we saw him about to get in
lilwang22: and i was like excuse me can we take a pictures w/ u?
lilwang22: and he was like sure
lilwang22: and HE PUT HIS ARM AROUND ME!

At this point I’m excited like a little school girl about to get candy from a stranger.

valloq: OMG
valloq: OMG
valloq: WHERE’S THE PHOTO?
valloq: SHOW ME!

And that’s about it. Photo on the left, everyone enjoy. This certainly turned out a lot better than Celene’s failed Mexican Dinner with Brad Pitt.

I finally moved my desk and computer back home this weekend, and will be fully moved out of Newport next Saturday. I then spent the whole afternoon reorganizing my room by taking out the desk and filing cabinet that were in there and putting my desk from school in my room instead. I placed it so that it faces my door, and then I put a chair between my desk and the door so it’s like I have an office. My brother said I should get a nameplate and have people make appointments. Then my mom saw what we did and got mad cause I killed the Feng Shui in the room. You need to pronounce that the way Oprah does, so it rhymes with “Tang Gooey”.

The title of Star Wars: Episode 3 was announced this weekend to be “Revenge of the Sith”, a nice reflection of “Return of the Jedi”. I’m happy with it, way better than their titles for the first two prequels.

Some guy took apart an NES, SNES, N64, and Gamecube, and stuck all of them into a custom wood housing he built for them. Very nice.

I woke up on Saturday and had “Such Great Heights” stuck in my head. That show is gonna totally spoil me for every other concert I go to now. Jenny Lewis was really cute during “Such Great Heights”, during the lyric where they sing, “And they will see us waving from such great heights…”, she put her arm up and did a slow waving motion.

I’ve been trying to compile the setlist that Ben did as well, just cause I think it’d be cool to have a playlist of the songs he played. I’ll post it soon as I get it compiled.

Went to the Velvet Teen show on Saturday at 51 Buckingham in Pomona. The venue was really small, more like this tiny little side room in a bar, that had no airconditioning and really put a damper on my enjoyment. Plus my feet hurt like hell from standing the whole time. But it was only $8 to see three bands, so it was still okay. The opening band, The Pale, were actually pretty decent. Second band, The Polar Bears, had no clue what the hell they were doing. They seemed to really get into their own music and when I looked around nobody else was, so umm…at least they enjoyed it? The Velvet Teen finally came on around 11:30 and all was good, even did my favorite song of theirs, “Counting Backwards”.

It’s sad to say that I got really annoyed when the bands did the very thing I love that bands do - turn up the volume for the instruments way louder than the vocals so that I couldn’t make out a single lyric. I hate it when they do that, freakin’ idiots. Highlight of the show though is that I did get to pick up the Velvet Teen’s “Plus Minutes Equals” album for only $5. See, price CDs at $5 and I’ll buy, even at $8 (I got the Rilo Kiley album at their show for only $8). Thanks to Cindy and her sister Lisa for coming along, they did their fair share of ogling the bands and nabbing autographs afterwards.

Caught “Bourne Supremacy”, sequel to the Bourne Identity (duh) this weekend. Now the first movie I thought was good, nothing all that special in it though and not something I would pickup on DVD unless it was going for $10 or less. Just some good spy action going on. The sequel gives us much of the same again, and that’s not a bad thing at all. What bugged the hell out of me though was the stupid shakeycam action that was going on during all of the action scenes. I couldn’t make out a damn thing that was happening and had to use my imagination to fill in a lot of the details. Even during the great car chase sequence, the camera was flying all over the place and I’m just thinking, “Oh, there he goes…oh there’s some cops behind him…and now he’s doing some fancy turn and I have no point of reference in terms of where he was from the previous shot.” Gah. There were some minor plot issues that kinda got to me too, but still, a pretty good movie that’s on par with the first one.

As mentioned earlier, I went to the CD release show for Rilo Kiley tonight at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre. The theatre itself was really nice — very small and intimate, outdoors, yet every seat had a great view of the stage. Parking seemed somewhat odd though since it was stack parking and I didn’t even see much in the way of an actual parking lot; everyone got stack parked as far as I could tell.

The special guest was listed as Ben Gibbard, so I figured he was gonna show up and play a couple of songs with them. Turns out that he was actually the opening act…and man, what a great opening act. Seriously, if you ask me, he totally eclipsed the main act. Nothing but acoustic Ben Gibbard (Who is, again, for like the umpteenth time, the lead singer of Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie) singing stuff from Death Cab (An acoustic version of “405″, finally!), Postal Service, and even the special Home CD. One song after another he kept upping the ante, finally closing off with a duet with Jenny Lewis on “Such Great Heights”. Such Great Heights, man, I can’t believe they played it. No way. It wasn’t “Nothing Better” which I would have both expected and preferred, but can’t complain when they play the popular radio-friendly single.

Ben’s acoustic set was incredible. Way better than the Death Cab show I had attended earlier. If I had left the show right then I would’ve been incredibly happy.

Let’s get on to the main act — Rilo Kiley. Good music, although I must admit that I haven’t even heard a lot of their stuff so I wasn’t familiar with a lot of it. Managed to pick up their CD before the show for $8 and nabbed a free poster at that. Jenny and the lead guitarist had some fun with the crowd, and Jenny was cute boppin’ around the stage in an outfit where I swore she was wearing long white socks but turns out her feet are just that pale.

Great show. And I’m sorry to say it, but the first half with Ben Gibbard pretty much blew away Rilo Kiley. Thanks to the friends who came with: Julie (Who almost didn’t come), Brad (”Eric, remember that time you dated the black guy?”), RichardMary (They’ve become one entity, even though Mary’s trying to ditch him), and Tommy. He doesn’t get a cool parenthetical phrase with his name.

I need more acoustic Ben. And I need to find more shows playing at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre.

Mary wanted to come checkout where Richard grew up and have us show her around our hometown. This is his girlfriend, btw.

Lildreamer422 (12:41:50 PM): show me your high school and where you guys chill
valloq (12:42:24 PM): psh…stupid high school
valloq (12:42:29 PM): richard can show you that, he goes back a lot
Lildreamer422 (12:43:18 PM): really?
Lildreamer422 (12:43:23 PM): to pick up the underaged girls?

The man who invented the future, an interview at Salon with Alan Moore, writer of “The Watchmen”, “From Hell” and “League of Extroardinary Gentlemen”, discusses media and the going-ons of today. I’m just gonna jack this quote from over at Boing Boing:

One of the reasons we singled out media in “V for Vendetta” was because it is one of the most useful tools of tyranny. We invite it into our own home every night; I’m sure that some of us think of it as a friend. That might be a horrifying notion but I’m sure there are people who think of television as perhaps one of their most intimate friends. And if the TV tells them that things in the world are a certain way, even if the evidence of their senses asserts it is not true, they’ll probably believe the television set in the end. It’s an alarming thought but we brought it upon ourselves. I mean, I think that television is one of the most diabolical — in the very best sense of the word — inventions of the past century. It has probably done more to degrade the mind and intelligence of its audience, even if they happen to be drug addicts or alcoholics; I would think that watching television has done more to limit their horizons in the long run. And it has also distorted our culture.

Then we have A Softer World, comic strips made from photos. I’ve noticed that they all have either a very twisted sense of humor, or otherwise very worldy things to say that kind of make you smile. Good stuff.

Finally the art portfolio of Ashley Wood. I knew his style looked familiar, and when I went to the display section I realized that he’s done some artwork for the Spawn comics. Make sure to check out one of his most recognizable pieces, as well as the proposed statue they’re making of it.

Maybe I should talk a little instead of just posting links all day long. Life after college is different, as I’m sure everyone knows. People are leaving, although I think the vast majority of my friends are actually just sitting at home doing nothing all day long. Been trying to find stuff to go do, and as such scored myself some tickets to check out Rilo Kiley this Friday (With special guest Ben Gibbard of Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie, boo yah!), and then The Velvet Teen on Saturday. Could be fun stuff.

On discussing the works of M. Night Shalammayannayahpatelgupta (Okay, it’s really Shyamalan) with Bradley.

valloq: well I wasn’t able to guess unbreakable
MyBodyIs4Sale: nah, that one i missed too
MyBodyIs4Sale: but i was still giving him the benefit of the doubt that there might not be a twist
MyBodyIs4Sale: the man cant make a movie without a twist now
MyBodyIs4Sale: that bitch might as well change his name to oliver
valloq: …
MyBodyIs4Sale: dude
MyBodyIs4Sale: i need to make that into a website post
MyBodyIs4Sale: that is a good one
valloq: those dots represent my amazement in your ridiculosity

I seriously don’t know how this guy does it. It’s either a gift or a curse, depending on how you view it.

Oddly hypnotizing animated gif of a buncha stick figures, uhh…doing stuff?

The simplest games always seem to be the most entertaining ones. Just use the arrow keys to move the circle to the square. You’ll get it soon enough. High score 135.

I really need to learn to parallel park. It’s actually probably more like parking in general, but anyone who’s ridden with me knows how great my skills in parallel parking are. Doesn’t help that I’m still not too used to having a hatchback either and I underestimate how much room I have.

One of two things happen when I attempt to parallel park with the people in my car trying to help out:

“Okay turn now…turn…turn…turn the other way!”
“How far am I from the curb?”
(opens door) “You could park a 747 in here”

or:

“Okay turn…turn…turn the other way. Turn the other way! You’re gonna hit the curb!”
(bump)
“Shit. Start over again.”

Yeah, good fun.

I just read a little news bit in Time magazine that says Napoleon Dynamite is being released in theaters this Friday with added footage. Apparently the film crew actually gathered everyone up not four weeks ago to shoot a 5-minute epilogue to the movie. The picture in Time showed Napoleon wearing some fruity-looking medieval shirt and riding a horse. Time to go see it again, and I recommend everyone else to do so if they haven’t yet. Everyone I know who’s seen it has really liked it.

Is it bad that after I had read about this while sitting on the can I had the urge to just hurry up and finish up so I could post about it on my site? I’ll answer my own question and say yes.

This is gonna be reposted everywhere today, but what the hell. Apple releases its new iPods, which are just a tad thinner than current models and now have the cool little click-wheel that the minis have. Prices have been lowered too. And like that, my iPod is out of date already. I hate how Apple keeps changing them every year.