pres.umptuo.us

Slow news day for me. Just gonna link up a couple of trailers.

I Heart Huckabees looks very promising. In the midst of my dazed reaction to Garden State I totally forgot that they showed this trailer before the movie.

Finding Neverland, the movie about the author of Peter Pan. Could go either way.

The trailer for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is now up, Wes Anderson’s latest movie. As usual he’s gone with the same camera shots and dry humor he used in Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums. I need this movie now. Tell Christmas to hurry up.

Shame it’s in stupid Windows Media format. Where’s my Quicktime version?

A blog about Pho. The reason for the post though is this photo of the restaurant “What The Pho“. Not quite as funny as “Pho Shizzle”, but this one’s actually real! Here’s proof.

Following up on commencement speeches (A bit late, I know), but I ran into Kurt Vonnegut’s speech to Agnes Scott College in 1999. Agnes is a women’s college, so obviously the speech is directed towards women. Excellent quotes though:

A computer teaches a child what a computer can become.

An educated human being teaches a child what a child can become.

Some of you may know that I am a Humanist, not a Christian. But I say of Jesus, as all Humanists do, ”If what he said was good and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what can it matter if he was God or not?”

If Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being.

I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.

Now this part here illustrated the genius of Vonnegut. At the beginning of the speech, he brings up this excellent quote about what we can all hope to contribute to this world:

”A woman’s reach should exceed her grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

And of course the original ”A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”

Then later on, he talks about children and becoming teachers to teach children:

A child’s reach should exceed its grasp, or what’s a heaven for?

His beliefs about Christianity and Jesus Christ are something I strongly believe in myself. His philosophy on revenge is something that we should all adhere to, but we all know that’s a tough one to pull off.

Remind me to write an entry about how I’ve gone from Atheism to Agnosticism sometime.

Jimi sends along an article discussing how SUVs are actually banned on many residential streets because of their heavy weight. There is a 6,000 lb limit on thousands of streets in Los Angeles because of the danger vehicles that weigh that much pose, not to mention how they tear the road up more. What’s more interesting though is all of the loopholes allowed to SUV owners, letting them get tax breaks and being exempt from the gas guzzler law.

I’m all for going against government and leading the socialist revolution, but this is encroaching on the topic of environment more than it is on the topic of cheating taxes. Gluttony rules all.

Someone get me this Wicker Park Soundtrack. An acoustic version of “A Movie Script Ending”? A Postal Service cover of Phil Collins’ “Against All Odds”? A cover of Coldplay’s “The Scientist”? Who cares that Josh Hartnett is in the movie, gimme the soundtrack now.

It takes skill to use Coldplay in a movie and not have it come out cheesy.

I fall in love with Natalie all over again every time I listen to “New Slang”.

Damn. Now I want to see the movie again.

Not a whole lot going on today. A slow Monday. Managed to keep myself busy most of the weekend by running errands, attending family events and the on-going task of redecorating my room.

A few links:

Review of Counter-Strike running the Source (Half-life 2) engine. Looks pretty damn good, it might even get me back into playing.

Shyamalan is accused of plagiarizing The Village. Hah! That’s my witty commentary on this subject. “Hah!”

Pat sent along a coupon for 25 free digital prints at Target. Went out and tried it today, and it couldn’t have been any easier. Just loaded 25 pics onto a compact flash card, went over to the photo counter and showed them the coupon and that was that, no questions asked. I’m gonna have to get the most out of this and get some more photos printed.

Shame I’ve still got a roll of film (old school here) that I need to get developed. Who the hell still develops film these days?

Finally saw it tonight, and holy shit, I need to see it again.

The movie opened with some rather mundane scenes (for good reason), but it completely kicks it up when Andrew (Zach Braff) runs into Sam (Natalie Portman). It’s about damn time Natalie was in a good movie and actually got to play a good role. I’m completely obsessed with her again after seeing her in this movie.

I’m not articulate enough to say much else. Good music. Great story. Awesome acting. Funny jokes. Natalie Portman. Need poster and soundtrack. Must see again.

Ooh, very cool new commercial for the Audi A6 (With that big grill that looks sort of “ehhh”, but I’ll reserve judgement until I see it in person) that has the car driving through MC Escher(I wonder if he knew MC Hammer?)-like environments.

Rice:

De-riced:

Yay, finally swapped out the taillights on my car. The older clear ones, while not bad looking at all, just looked too…racer/rice for me. Like the nasty ones you see on Altimas these days. The reds turned out to be a bit more pink than I had expected, but they’re still good. Now I can stand out from all the other Mazda3’s.

Big thanks to my dad for helping me figure out how to take the lights off/on. Stupid bolts in tiny places where you can’t reach…

Another one for fun:

We’ll go from the funny to the serious today.

Thursday night’s episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien will be in the form of an infomercial. They’re going to be dressing up the set and having special guests like former Olympian Bruce Jenner on while trying to sell their latest DVDs. Conan rules.

Two gossip sites that I’ve been visiting an awful lot lately: The Superficial and now Defamer. Great stuff for bored people like me who enjoys Hollywood just a little too much at times. Btw, looks like Aliens versus Predator (AVP) is gonna suck, big time.

Students saying no to computer science. Man…smart bastards. On one hand I kind of wish I’d done that, and on the other maybe they’ll be more jobs out there now.

Now this is the best one. At this year’s Olympics in Greece, fans will actually be turned away if they are carrying food or drinks from rival companies of their sponsors. Oh yeah, it’s happening now. Corporate entities becoming world powers and dominating our lives. It’s sad that it’s affected the Olympics as well, something that one would hope would stay neutral to all of this since it’s basically a big athletic meet for all the nations in the world. But nope nope, gotta get brands and corporations involved.

I love consumerism.

Now this is just jacked up. This guy almost got his D&D book confiscated when boarding a ferry in NYC. A freaking book! Nothing like having our civil liberties taken away on a daily basis.

Garden State’s been out for almost two weeks now and I still haven’t seen it. I need more friends.

Not too far into Doom 3, there was this one part where I came across a locked cargo container. Picking up the PDA nearby, I read through the e-mails and one of them advised that I visit a website to get the code to open the crate. I quit the game, opened up the browser and typed in the URL, and lo and behold there’s a nice little fake front that ties into the e-mail in the game along with the code to open the crate. That’s a nice touch of trying to blend in some real-world interactivity.

More fun with our college degrees:

dotsloke (3:22:52 PM): cuz i’m to omuch of a playing person
dotsloke (3:22:55 PM): i want to learn to read actually
dotsloke (3:22:58 PM): maybe is hould buy something to read
valloq (3:23:00 PM): wow

She meant she wanted to start reading in her free time of course. Jennie’s is even better, taken from last night in front of Diddy Reese in Westwood.

Me: Let’s go watch Garden State. Or Napoleon Dynamite. Or Zatoichi!
Jennie: Are those your independent gypsy movies?
<everyone stares at her blankly>
Me: What the hell is gypsy?
Jennie: Wait, what’s that word?
Audrey: Indie?
Jennie: Yeah! Indie!

I don’t blame her. I always confuse those nomads with artistic works created by independent companies.

The U.S. Postal Service allows anyone to make their own custom stamps now, through the website PhotoStamps. Don’t go trying to make some naughty stamps though; all designs must be approved.

Top Ten Things I Learned In Law School. The post above it is quite handy as well. Heck, far as I can tell (I only skimmed), the site seems to be full of good stuff about schooling.

iPod vs. The Cassette. Funny.

I began playing Doom 3 last night, and that is some fun stuff. Yes, it’s pretty damn scary when you can’t hold a gun and a flashlight at the same time, and that’s all the fun of the game. Hearing weird noises, having zombies pop out at you and then screaming like a little girl when they ambush you, all in good fun. Like everyone’s been saying, the graphics are incredible, yet it actually runs a bit faster than I was expecting on my computer.

I’ve only played singleplayer so far, but anyone who likes first-person-shooters definitely needs to check this out.

Carvel Ice Cream Cakes commercial. So horrible yet so funny.

I have returned from a fun-filled weekend up in the Bay Area. We left late on Friday in two cars and didn’t arrive at our Uncle/Aunt’s house in Los Altos until around 1 in the morning.

Woke up the next day at around 8, left the house at 9:30, and made it into San Francisco and found parking by Haight street at about 10:30. Luckily for us though, none of the stores were open until 11. All of us (6 of us cousins) walked around the streets until then, and then slowly went into all of the clothing stores looking for clothes and shoes. Nathan kept screaming for his lovely Diesel jeans that he never found, and I splurged on some Onitsuka Tigers, as did Ivy-league bound Audrey, and thinks-she’s-black-but-is-really-half-white Laura got a blouse and slippers.

We then took a trip over to Little Tokyo for crepes at Sophie’s Crepes, which Jennie had been hyping up during the whole goddamn trip and kept telling us were the best crepes ever. They use some special mixture and you can actually watch them make it in the store window, plus you can get their gelato ice cream inside the crepes. Really good stuff.

Then we did the touristy stuff - drive up Lombard, drive through Little Italy and then along the wharf. Lots of new stuff seemed to be by the wharf since the last time I went, which must have been a few years ago. The streets were packed and a lot of new developments were going up on Fisherman’s Wharf.

Last we headed over to Castro just out of curiosity, and lo and behold, right on the first block of the famed Castro disctrict, we see Nathan’s Diesel store. I couldn’t stop cracking up for a good five minutes. He didn’t even want to pull over to go in when he was already wearing Diesel’s. Nothing like having his favorite brand associated with an area of San Francisco named after Cuba’s famous dictator. Oh yeah, and something to do with the homosexuals in that area too. =P

That was pretty much the fun part of our trip. I’d go into way more detail, but it’s just a bunch of stupid inside jokes. I’ll post more later if anything else pops into my head.

I’m heading up to the Bay Area this weekend, and unfortunately will be missing the opening of Adrian Tomine at GR2 (Giant Robot’s art gallery, just down the street from the Giant Robot store) on Saturday, August 7th. His art is going to be put up at the gallery for a little bit, and the artist will be on hand from 6:30PM - 10PM to sign his latest release, a scrapbook of his uncollected artwork. Anyone who’s interested in the world of literary/underground comics should really check it out, his Optic Nerve series is one of my favorites.

Crazy DHML/Java skills. Found after he released the Duct Tape mod for Doom 3.

Thanks to Jennie for our little outing to Old Town Pasadena on our lonely Thursday night. All of our friends (and even our relatives!) abandoned us for their own evenings of fun. Nevertheless, we saw the saleless clothes at Urban Outfitters, shopped for new books at Barnes & Noble and enjoyed frozen yogurt at 21 Choices. Their Reese’s Peanut Butter mix was awesome.

I picked up Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves since I needed something new to read after having finished Fight Club. The whole book is a rally against bad punctuation. I was laughing in the store after having read this from the back cover:

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

“Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.”

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”