pop open a bottle of bubbly, here’s to another goddamn new year:

i find myself doing more and more things simply because of the comical aspect of them, but strangely enough, i’m the only person around when i do them. specifically speaking, tonight i picked up a 40 of mickey’s instead of getting champagne, ’cause i thought it would be funny. now i’m at home, drinking it alone.

no, not as bad as last year. last year, the “millenium” for chrissakes, i was at my apartment in ballard watching south park, htmling, and drinking a bottle of citron. yep.

thank god i’m going home tomorrow, yet at the ungodly hour of 930, meaning i have to wake up around 6 to get to the airport in time. nothing like the anticlimactic. i returned my movies today, but watched another before i did, and maybe tomorrow i will list all the movies i watched in order of importance. that’ll be fun.

oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. what a fuckin’ year….and the phone rings…it’s my mother….

last night, i took 4 shots of vodka and fell asleep on the couch watching old movies we made a few years ago. i would have liked to go out, but things just didn’t work out that way. in another day, it will be 2001. if someone were to have a party, they should dress up as an obelisk. i still movies i need to watch at home before i leave here. i probably won’t get to watch them all.

yeah, we hung outside and watched them pass the smokes:

mission to berkely accomplished. i went to amoeba and spent very little money to obtain 8 cds i’ve been looking for: the hi-fives welcome to my mind, of montreal no elephants allowed, rainer maria a better version of me, sugar copper blue, the salteens short term memories, the helio sequence complex, june and the exit wounds a little more Haven Hamilton, please, and a present for a friend, the godrays songs for tv stars. you may be wondering how i afforded all this, and i tell you, the bargain bins. i got all these cds for $28 bucks. the best deals being the salteens for $2, the godrays for $2, the helio sequence for $2. but i tell you, i’m still no match for the king of cheap media.

in any case, i go back to the city today. i watched road trip last night there, and damn if i wasn’t impressed. it certainly made me laugh aloud. more than i was expecting.

“I would never stick my head in a gas oven at the end of an evening with you.”:

much like melissa, i too love seeing kids i haven’t seen in years. last night i went out to the bars with a couple of old friends from grade school who i hadn’t talked to in 4 or 5 years. i thought it might be weird, but it wasn’t, it was good to see them and meet some new faces.

i’ve embarked on another trek to the video store and picked up 7 more movies yesterday, two of which i’ve watched. i was thoroughly impressed by princess monoke, and the se7en dvd kept me up late checking out all the features and such. it’s packed with some damn interesting stuff, especially the production design team with john doe’s notebooks. i haven’t yet seen the game, but that’s going on my list.

today i will try to go to berkeley to get to the record store and look at all the stuff i can’t buy. maybe stop off at cafe intermezzo for a big-ass salad. that place is fuckin’ great.

i am stuck here though, indefinitely as the stupid airline won’t let me change my flight because it was bought at some stupid .com. but i’m not bitter or anything, just stuck in the damn suburbs until the new year.

new year’s resolution #1: don’t get stuck anywhere. ever.

stay six, kid:

i’m currently in las vegas. my plans to get drunk and play pinball were thwarted by the powers that be. i tried to play pinball and visited numerous arcades in order to do so, but for the life of me, i couldn’t find any. i found one, in the “adventure something-er-other” at treasure island, but it was tilted. i unplugged the machine and plugged it back in, finding it had 13 credits on it, but no balls. ha, no balls. typical. (whatever that means).

i instead lost much money on slot machines and drank vodka crans all night tonight. i was out till 5 in the morning yesterday, and 3 the night before. i saw this great cover band who played some crowded house, van morrison, and duncan sheik. i was kind of excited about seeing a cover band in vegas. i also visited the new york, new york hotel and casino, and drank some maker’s on the rocks and a manhattan at the bar in times square. the bartender there was awesome, and he taught me a few things about bourbon. i’m not an alcoholic, i swear.

i’m trying to get back to seattle for new year’s, as i just don’t fit in california anymore. still need to make some stops at raputin’s and amoeba before i go though.

i finally got psychotic reactions and carboreutor dung, the new adbusters, and the neal pollack anthology of american literature, too. still need that night light for reading though. also, my deadfish article is done! i guess i’m at least getting things done this vacation….

i needed to get my thoughts in on this movie before i forgot: the film was superb. i don’t care what people will say. i suppose they’ll try to rip on the action as if it were something that the wachowski brothers had invented. some might try to say the action sequences were taxing after so many, some may say that there weren’t enough. i thought the acting was brilliant, and the action was perfect. the lucidity of movement and the storyline flowed enough to think that the movie was long and enormous; of epic proportions even. it barely passed two hours (if that). though there was a lot in the plot, it’s not as if there were points in it that were given cursory attention. not true. i suppose i could go on for a while, but i don’t want to bore you with the details. i’ll be interested to see what other people say though. i found quite a good reviews on the imdb site.

if you couldn’t tell, i would recommend it. i think it shot it’s way up to the top of the winter break list.

as long as i’m talking about things that i like, i might as well mention how great raymond carver is. i’ve read the first 8 stories in the book, and have enjoyed them for the most part, but have found that there’s this certain type of stigma attached to every relationship in the stories. i start out reading each story admiring how he stitches the characters together in such little time, with such grace that it’s given that they are with each other, no further explanation is needed. in the same amount of time, he turns the relationship backwards just as easily. i’m fooled easily, yes. i guess that’s obvious, but i will have to read up more about his life. i will. soon, my friends.

cease to resist giving my goodbyes:

wow look at me, i’m a jackass. well, all my whining about limited releases gets shoved back in my face today, as crouching tiger, hidden dragon goes nationwide. regardless, i will still see it in l.a. tonight, with less concern that it will be sold out.

now that i am sitting in my sister’s house pretending that this laptop is my own, i feel like i could update the weblog everyday for the rest of my life, as long as i were sitting whereever i chose to. sitting in a bathtub, the laptop sitting precariously on the edge of the tub, or in a field in the park. but i guess i wouldn’t be connected to the internet, now would i? i think i just set the record for using the word sitting. and now i shall break it. sitting, sitting, sitting, sitting, shitty, politty.

i told sonya of my plans in vegas, which are: to get too nervous to play any games with real people, so i end up playing video poker next to an old lady with blue hair. i win a couple of bucks and use that to go play pinball in the arcade. having run dry on my winnings, i will take my book and read stories while drinking a scotch on the rocks in the bar, until i get kicked out for being drunk and disorderly. my parents will find me (but only after my brother does), and they will bring me somewhere to sleep, where i will vomit on myself and pass out, stinking of alcohol. yes, oh yes, vegas will be fun. just kidding. about the vomit part, anyway.

i remember when i would get bored at work and alisha and i would send each other messages that went something like this:

bored bored board boared.

and some other stuff, but i don’t remember. in fact, i am kind of angry that i don’t have that enormous archive of cheerful correspondence in those terrible, terrible times. i wish i did.

closer, let me whisper in your ear:

i went to the movies again today by myself and saw unbreakable and proof of life. i’ve obviously got a lot of time on my hands. i thought unbreakable was good, but proof of life was awesome. leading the list for the best movies over winter break are breathless, shoot the piano player, king of the hill, and proof of life. i’ll get into more detail later, but right now. i’m just gonna sit around and not think about anything for a little while longer.

i’ve included previous posts here as well, for some inexplicable reason, i didn’t want to update the blog daily. the sun’s gone down now, as is hiding behind a thick blanket of fog. overcast whether is just so - well, grey, i guess. i have now watched dead man,shoot the piano player, manhattan (which i’ve already seen and rented on accident), king of the hill, can’t hardly wait, and what women want (i know, i know….) in addition to the previously mentioned. we leave for vegas tomorrow, but shall be stopping by my sister’s in l.a., where i hope to catch crouching tiger, hidden dragon (stupid limited releases).

12.18.00 1230pm
it’s been a sunny and clear 55 degrees here in northern california since we got here. it’s a shame that all i’ve been doing is staying indoors watching movies and reading. i finished about a boy and watched mr. death, breathless, and cool hand luke. they were all very good, thank you.

i’d link to things, but i’m afraid i’d crash aol. looks like vegas is going to happen. not sure when though. maybe saturday. weird.

when we got here saturday night, my brother and i had to go to this christmas party type thing at the church. i didn’t want to go, but also didn’t mind all that much since i hadn’t seen my mom, who was already there. we got there, had something to eat, and then sat around. i found this terribly depressing for some reason, seeing all these people. i felt like i was getting older and lonlier by the second, but ho-hum, that’s just the situation. i was fine after walking a couple of miles home after eating. it wasn’t really that bad. i guess.

12.15.00 10.30pm
on the flight i listened to the firebird band and the bends. i read a story from the new book i got for christmas, and i also read about a third of about a boy and laughed at my brother as his head kept falling to the side. his mouth was open and i couldn’t hear if he was snoring, but i was on guard to nudge him if he did, or if he started indadvertently leaning on the guy he was sitting next to. although letting him sleep on the guy would have been funny. sadly, i had the chance to do neither.

so i’m in the midst of reading stories from those books as well as the new mcsweeney’s journal and from naked.

tomorrow i head back to the ‘burbs to see the parents. fun fun fun.

direct flight. sea/tac to sfo. merry christmas.