great bar; crazy behavior; good (free) music

spent last night wandering the mean streets of costa mesa, in search of a place to listen to some music. I made my way over to detroit bar, which is an okay hangout, except they get carried away w/ the cover charge sometimes.

last night, they wanted $15, and $10 was my cutoff. I didn't know who the dj's were, and I wasn't on the list, so I just said, umm, no thanks. it was before 10. and I was home a little after 11. not going to pay that kind of $$ to hang out at a bar for 1 hour. so I went across the street to a more chill spot, no cover, dj inside, but he was behind the bar so he put on a record of Rolling Stones greatest hits (a formidable record) and just let it run. when the music ran out, he shouted, "somebody flip the record over!" so they did. It was cool. had good beers on tap and in the bottle, and they even had a $5 brown bag special, which was a 32 oz. bottle of Miller High Life, served in a brown bag. on the bar. drawback: it's beer/wine only. so if you want a cocktail you're out of luck. but if you want a place that's unpretentious and chill, then it's cool. and they usually have good music. Avalon in costa mesa. get there.

this happened yesterday: my roommate was at lunch w/ a girl visiting him from out of town. he told her before she came out that he would pay for everything. (the money was an issue, apparently: not that she couldn't afford it, but that she didn't want to spend it - probably you can see where this is going?) so they're at lunch, and the girl goes to get the check. he says, "no, I'll get it."
the visiting girl, "no, you've been paying for everything. I'll get it."
guy: "I said I would pay, and I'll pay. let me get it."
girl, "no, I'll get it."
guy: "Okay, since I'm taking you to a nice dinner."
girl: "i'm really full, so I don't know about dinner, but I'll get lunch."
[girl pays for lunch]
[fast-forward 4 hours] - girl is pouting, but why? she tells him: "I am upset that you didn't pay for lunch earlier today."
wait, what?
her explanation: he said he would pay for everything, AND he should have known that they weren't going to dinner when she said she was full at lunch.
so that happened. you can add this to the list of red flags, under the heading "when the girl says one thing, and then says the opposite thing just a few hours later, because she's a crazy person." hopefully the roommate will show some sense and not talk to her ever again.

on the upside, they posted some new dj sets over on http://www.djrel1.com/. the first mix (Brio - Below the Belt Show 04.17.06) is downtempo and has way, way too much talking (boooooooo). the second, Brio - Below the Belt Show 04.17.06 pt2, is some solid breakbeat, if you're into that. I DO recommend that one. you can also find some really good breakbeat mixes over at breaksfm.com. I'm on a mission to fill my 40 GB ipod w/ quality mixes. it's a work in progress, but i'm up to the challenge.
love you. -c-

smart, yet funny; plus: blogs of note? are you kidding?

Our Man with the Plan David Rees has published a video of himself speaking at Columbia University. (full disclosure: the only people I ever met that went to Columbia were socially retarded, but the sample size was small, like my little pea brain.) The David also sent a short letter out detailing the lecture. here it is, almost in its entirety:
---------------------------------------------
Dear Mailing List,

Last fall I gave a rambling lecture at Columbia University. You can see the video here:

http://cupolitics.org/videos/0506/rees/index.html

NOTE: This is an unedited, 70-minute long video. All the gaffes, pretentious vocabulary errors, and moments of naked self-loathing have been left intact.

TOPICS COVERED IN THIS LECTURE INCLUDE:

-The Thomas Friedman Metaphor Illustration Service
-David Horowitz vs. Michel Foucault
-The Council on Foreign Relations, wizard-related truth behind
-Dennis Miller, role as official spokesman for NetZero dial-up internet access
-Christopher Hitchens, ubiquity of
-Clipart, aesthetic beauty of
-Afghanistan, self-immolation of girls therein
-Political cartoonist, exciting lifestyle of
-A gazelle
-MOST IMPORTANT: My five ideas about foreign policy and politics that I wrote down in the park before my lecture!!! David Brooks I'm coming for your job!

Thanks for your interest,
David Rees
--------------------------------
re: blogs of note, I was tooling around on the interweb recently and I thought I'd take a look at the "blogs of note." I realized it's easier to get a blog than a driver's license, and do you have any idea how many bad drivers there are? maybe it's just tedious reading some anonymous persons stream of consciousness spew. much better if it's someone I know.

if I get big fake tits, will I get a column on si.com? what about just getting to the front of the line at quiznos?

i have nothing against pretty girls in principle. really, I don't. I'm a big fan. but let's not pretend that just because some girl spent some money on a fake rack and wants to show it off means she's qualified to write a national column and "mailbag" for sports illustrated.

let's keep this whole slutty girl thing separate from the syndicated columnist thing, ok? I agree there's room for both in my world. esp. w/ gems like these from Ms. Sterger:

Honestly, did you ever think that maybe there is more to women than their looks?

Not in this instance, no.
she did make some other comments in her mailbag that, if they weren't from an attention-starved media whore, actually sounded reasonable.

as far as getting to the front of the line at the sandwich shop, I was getting lunch yesterday and a very pretty girl, mid-30's, unmarried (obvious, since she was twiddling her hair w/ her left hand) walked in and couldn't find the end of the line. I was in the front. she asked the first guy, he said, go ahead in front of me. second guy, same. third guy, again. by the time she got to me she was suitably embarrassed and just laughed awkwardly when she found a place behind me. big ups to her for noticing the special treatment.

not sure what the point of all this is. except, umm, that's a pretty good picture, huh?

religious commentary: things that are important v. things that are NOT important

so I was driving over to the mega-mall center around the way from my crib on Saturday and I noticed that there were protesters, w/ signs and cigarettes and snacks, on the corner of the major mall intersection. they were protesting the Da Vinci code movie. much time, effort, and money was spent on the signage, not to mention the person-hours devoted to killing time on the corner of a busy intersection on a sunny Saturday AM. this is retardo on so many levels. here's a few:

anyone whose opinion will be swayed by a sign that says "The Da Vinci Code is Blasphemous!" is going to be similarly swayed by someone that tells them "The blah blah is TRUE!". so you're wasting your time/energy/money. start a blog: it's just as ineffective a forum and and it takes a lot less time, because...

the time/energy/money you're spending so ineffectively on "protest" could be spent doing any number of good works for the benefit of a person/place/thing that needs them. instead, you're making an ass out of yourself on a street corner. trust me, the Catholic church doesn't need any help with that.

the Da Vinci code is fiction, like harry potter. there are no respected historians who agree with its claims. there is no "debate." just as there is no "debate" in the scientific community about evolution. don't bother discussing it, except as an interesting story somebody made up about people that actually existed.

why the picture of madonna? she did some asinine thing on a cross at her concert and people are making noise about it. seriously, how old do you have to be before you stop trying so hard? and, who cares? it's just a pop concert. I liked her better back in the early 90's. like a prayer is one of my favorite pop songs of all time.

thanks for reading.

we've added features!

I heart features. really.
check them out at right. some links, and a list of recent posts. had to do some cribbing from other blog templates, b/c mine is custom.
that's how I roll. it doesn't fit too well if you have a small screen. can't do much about that, but i'll try to work something out. maybe make the right column smaller. we'll see.
xo -c-

you have a right to be angry, but not to be rude

learned an important lesson this week as I dealt with some bullsh*t with my roommates and work and all that stuff that isn't really all that sweet but it's a part of life anyway.

I have a right to be angry at [whatever dumb hurtful thing somebody does] but I don't have a right to be rude. I just don't. it's not cool, and it's not Christian. not sure if I'll put this bit of insight to use in my own life, but I'm positive I'll be able to share it with others. they might succeed where I will fail.

on the upside, I typed "picture of jesus" into my goodsearch search engine and came across some real treats. ran into an unexpected likeness on cnn.com, and found the superb artists rendering w/ a "true story" from other nutcase. best part about that (person's?) home page is that it was festooned with cheesy advertisements. very christian.

what can I say about the intergalactic jesus? that guy is weeping, he's wedged between the earth, a nebula, and the moon (which, btw, would be dark if the sun were peeking out from behind it as it appears to be). that's pretty much how I picture jesus in my prayers. a huge, disembodied head hovering in the galactic sky. nice.

nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there

this image is cool.
it's the image of the day from your local government space office of things that they do in space.

i modified it slightly to add an arrow pointing at the place where I worked for 5 months. you don't care. but it's still a cool image.

front to back, that's St. Thomas, St. John, Tortola, and Virgin Gorda. arrow is pointing at the north side of St. Thomas, roughly at the University of the Virgin Islands.

the superbowl is on today, but you're not watching (I tivo'd it)

the real superbowl, the one that actually draws the crazy demographics in all those countries, is on TV today. you won't watch it, since it starts at 1130 PDT.

it's the champions league final.

Imagine if other countries played american football, and they were crazy for it, and the top four teams from the NFL competed in a tournament from the top four teams from those other countries. the super-tournament could be called the "champions league", since it would be comprised of only really good teams (supposedly - some of the teams from the smaller countries would not be very good, but whatever).

the final for that theoretical tournament is today (that's Thierry Henry in the photo, who will hopefully help win tonights game), and unlike our bullsh*t "super bowl", which is irrelevant outside of the US, people from all over the world will actually pay attention. but not you.

if you were interested in seeing something superb, and you have time to catch some of it at lunch, or if you just like watching some of the world's best footballers do amazing things under crazy intense pressure, then check it out. it's on espn.

don't eat 7 oreo cookies for breakfast

sometimes I encounter something so unusual I feel like I need to bring it to you immediately.
this is not one of those things. this is just nerds on the web. but I think it's funny.

full disclosure: and I did own a couple of the watches and games they have on the site. back in the day I thought they were the coolest things ever. I wore a logarithmic calc. watch to school when I was a sophomore in high school, for christ's sake. perhaps not coincidentally I wasn't much of a hit with the ladies. perhaps.

some things you can probably say about the guys (you know it's guys) that run this website:

• never touched the skin of a woman, except that one time, in amsterdam. or vegas, at the defcon convention. (hey, even LL Cool J says "you always end up paying for it one way or another.")
  
• waited in line for several weeks for the star wars movies 1, 2, and 3 / signed online petition to "kill jar jar".
  
• they own a bewildering variety of cleverly shaped dice. and they're all great dungeon masters. great.
  
• went to CalTech.
  
• would own you at Magic the Gathering.
  
• bullet point
• bullet point
  

don't eat 6 oreo cookies for breakfast

I don't care if google is saving all my data and using it to make a lot of money. In return for my info, they offer me so much free stuff.

their website is elegant and clutter free: a model of usability, as if it were designed by the guru of web usability, Jakob Nielsen.

and, in a nice homage to the useless but fun mac features of old, I added the eyes to my google page. they take up way too much space, but I have two monitors, so space is a non-issue. mostly I like them because they remind me of when I first started using mac computers back in the Reagan years. we won't see days like those again any time soon, what with the largest peacetime military buildup in world history, skyrocketing deficit spending and an astronomical budget deficit, high gas prices, clandestine wars, people buying those portable music players (please go to the walkman link because it rules), and a legitimate debate about which computers were better: macs or pc's. that was before windows decided to copy everything that apple was doing. only took them 20 years to catch up.

is apple still in the PC business? I thought they just sold those portable music players. those things are great, btw. and they work on your PC.

things that are good

remember the show $64,000 pyramid? that was a sweet game show. I think it was rigged, or there was something they were not telling you-the-viewer, because it was impossible to try to play along if you closed your eyes and tried to, ummm, play along.
anyway, wanted to write a little note about stuff that is good. all 2 of my friends that read this thing ask about stuff like this sometimes, so this is like an email to them that the whole world can read!* so much good stuff! so let's stay positive!

• book to read: Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. an easy, engaging read. I recommend it.
• music to download: the latest podcast on friskyradio. they are revamping their site over there at frisky, and it's better than ever. all kinds of dance mixes for your listening pleasure. you aren't going to get better legal free music delivered right to your computer - just subscribe to the podcast and enjoy. you might get 2 or 3 min. songs that are really good for free, but a two hour mix? no way. if you have the bandwidth, they also do streaming audio.
  
• the ipod accessory that will make your new music sound superb: fact is, ipod headphones are shite (as are most of the accessories that apple is selling with the ipod). so get the most out of your new/old toy with some headphones. you will thank me. be prepared to stuff them in your ears, show some commitment.
  
• another book to read (a series this time): The Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. short, charming fiction.
  

* = def'n. of a blog: the mistaken notion that someone, somewhere, cares what you have to say. seriously, have you tried reading a blog written by somebody you don't know? mine is just practice, designed to get the fingers warmed up for work, and to share laughs w/ the 2-3 people that aren't very busy at work on any given day.

that's all I have. call your mom on mother's day. even if she bugs you.
thanks for reading.
love, -c-

what. the. f*ck.

[I heard about this from Samuel over at donttouchmystuff, and while it sounded funny, I really didn't appreciate it until i saw it - so this is a blatant ripoff. imitation sincerest form of flattery, etc, etc.]

every now and again something comes along that I just never expected. I keep my ear to the ground, and I learn about stuff I don't take an interest in, just to stay culturally aware. things like Macintosh computers, the latest celebrity wedding, women's issues - I understand they're important to people, so I kind of pay attention, kind of. so I know what I'm missing out on.

I have heard of the guy in the photo. the one at the far left with the microphone spewing sparks? yeah, that one. but I never really experienced his lyrical magic, his "flow", until today.

lordy lordy lordy

where to begin?
do we start at the terrible lyrics? or the awful style and delivery? I don't even like rap and I know this guy sucks at rapping. a lot.
in the live performance, I think it begins at the dwarf w/ two canes in the zubaz pants ("a crockpot for your pork!"), tie-dyed shirt, and fuzzy hat. and that's where I'll leave it.

thanks for reading.

hackney, indeed

i don't know what it is I like best about this photo. is it that the sun is shining in late 70's London? is it the sweet white shorts at the pool? (what happens when those get wet, btw?) is it the adolescent girl snaking her way out of the pool at left? is it the lifeguard wearing his little brother's shirt, throwing down a flex for the ladies?

Nope. it's none of that. it's the glasses in conjunction with the 'stache. of course it is. how could it be anything else?

does anybody know what a "lido" is? I guess it's a public pool. I could find out from my computer that talks to other computers through a cable in the wall, but I have work to do.
love you. -c-

have you ever gone with the left?

note: todays blog has nothing to do with the title.

caught a little bit of david "that douchebag that [describe retarded stunt]" blaine on the teevee last night. he was sealed up in a salt-water bubble in the Lincoln Center in NYC for a week, and then he tried to hold his breath for 9 minutes. let's explore this for a few bullet points,

• I have a lot of repect for magicians that can perform difficult sleight-of-hand tricks, the kind where cards disappear, they take your money at three card monte, the shell game, etc. all that stuff is cool, and it takes a lot of practice. just sealing your dumb ass up in a bubble for a week is neither magic nor illusion. it's asinine. i'll bet Penn & Teller were unimpressed.
  
• blaine was voted biggest loser of 2003 (props to Sam for pointing this out already), beating out a politician, a contestant on the same series that spawned Michael Flatley/Riverdance, and the entire country of Australia (which I found hilarious).
  
• can you really be said to be holding your breath after you pass out and start having convulsions? I have a word to describe that: drowning. so the guy held his breath for a very long time and then lost control of himself. I have another word for that: stupid.
  
• Stuart Scott, what the eff are you doing announcing this event? are you a TV announcer? a sports journalist? or have you transcended "Boo-ya!" and become your own special sort of celebrity? you are already on the d-bag HOF fast track, bro. You can expect to join Chris Berman if you keep this up. I won't even mention your "column" in ESPN the Mag. it's beneath me.
  
• i wish I had audio of the breathless commentary from Boo-ya and the comments from D-bag after they woke him back up. he was crying, he thanked new york, and he made me want to kick him in his (probably very sensitive) nuts. I hope you saw it, and I hope you thought, damn, that guy needs to suck it up.
  
• d-bag blaine could have saved this entire stunt if he played Europe's "The Final Countdown" as they were dragging him out of that bubble. seriously, that would have made everything okay.
  

thanks for reading. I love you.
-c-

it's looking at you

i'm getting one of these for my living room. it's designed to scare away the birds (it's looking at you right now w/ a piercing gaze), but I think it'll make a nice addition to interior decor. big ups to my homie for the suggestion. and it's only $30. err, $35.

I cleaned out the bird mess as best I could over the weekend, got some new screen, and covered up the hole. so that's done. I'll give them a week to go build a new nest somewhere else and quit going nuts outside my window every morning. after that i'll have to resort to more drastic measures. I'll keep you posted.

ahh, not much else to report. Saw mi:iii over the weekend. decent summer blockbuster. I was entertained and it got me out of the house. the guy next to me showed up just as the movie was starting and walked across several people to sit in the seat next to me. then he wanted the armrest. sorry bro. if you show up that late, you don't get the armrest. so when his arm came into contact with mine I pushed his arm away with my elbow and said, "sorry; don't touch me." that set the tone, and there wasn't an issue for the rest of the evening. which was nice. perhaps not the most friendly thing I've done, but hey, show some courtesy. and get there before me.

avian battle royale; lakers let me down

0615. as in, six minutes past 0h-six-hundred-hours. that's what time the European Starling (for sure one of the top five ugliest birds i've ever seen, check photo at left) and the common crow decided it was time to go birdo-y-birdo right outside my open window (mild weather in the OC, so the window was slightly open, as per usual).

I have no love for the crow, since it's beyond annoying with it's "CAWWWWW CAWWWW" calls and middle-manager tendency to crap on everything. However, at least it's a native species, and you have to admit, he does look good in black.

The starling, on the other hand, is

• hideous
• obnoxious
• an invasive, imported species; many wildlife rescues won't even take them
  
• a great reason to own/operate a high-powered pellet gun
• bullet point
• bullet point
  

and it has set up shop in my roof space, so I have to get on a ladder, put myself at risk and try to evict those f*ckers. so far, they are winning. anyway, these two, the rat with wings and the man in black, decided have it out in front of my window. it went on for about 45 minutes, during which time I thought about getting a cat (too ineffective), a snake (too Animal Planet), poison (too indirect, might get harm someone besides the starling), or a gun (yahtzee!). i had no idea one of these was available. I'll let you know how it works out.

not sure if the public will approve of my wildlife management policies. too bad.
some people, probably from the save-the-seals camp, have set up websites devoted to saving baby starlings. because there clearly aren't enough of them already.
-----------------------------
some anxiety from the morning might have been left over from the Lakers sucking last night. sports is modern escapism, and it's easy to overinvest in something, esp. when you have no effect on the outcome. I did this last night w/ the lakers, and my commitment, my energy, were not rewarded. it's not their fault, it's just a game. it's my fault for letting the loss affect me in a negative way. there is no reason to scream at the television. no reason. even if "Smush" Parker misses every shot and slouches around the court like a pouting teenage girl. Playing poorly is one thing, but not giving maximum effort? In a closeout game? I let it get to me. that is my fault. won't happen again.
-c-

lost a post = bust

so I wrote this whole post about the ghetto, yet functional, standing desk, and how I visited with the 40 year old, reviewed her plastic surgery, and even had a link to moosejaw because the Moosejaw Daily Madness was unusually funny today. ("My dog has dug several deep holes and trenches in the back yard. It's like All Quiet on the Western Front at my house.")

but then my connection failed and now i have to start over. well, I don't have time for that, so just imagine that you're reading something smart and funny. or maybe just reading something. thanks.

relationshapes is here: don't fall into the trapezoid

damn I'm really getting my post on today.
but it's because I love you (?), and want you to laugh. okay maybe just chuckle.

http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/relationshapes.html

this is from the guy that writes My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable. and some other stuff.
get there!
xo -c-

what were you going to do with your $100 rebate?

yeah so you heard that you were going to get $100 for gas? that's coming immediately after they start paying reparations to the descendents of slaves, because apparently this happened:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, under pressure from business leaders, retreated Monday from a plan that would have used a tax increase on oil companies and other businesses to pay for a $100 gasoline rebate for millions of motorists.

WTF? are you kidding me? what's $100 gonna do? and is it really the oil companies fault that they're making all that money? weren't they in the oil business back when they weren't making much money, in 1999? i'm not sure what people expect the oil companies to do. it's like people are irritated because chevron and exxon are getting paid. i'm not. that's why they are in business. I'm not going to do a connect the dots from failed oilman becomes president to oil companies make a fortune during his time in office. I'm taking a break from political analysis, because it bugs me.

and, lastly, this was the best analysis about the NFL draft that I heard:

To everyone's surprise the Lions actually drafted players that they were in definite need of this year. 9th overall pick was (LB) Ernie Sims out of Florida State, I am pretty sure that he has been in prison before so he is probably pretty tough.

the view from the top (sort of)

super. got the new office put back together.
I was going to write a funny post about some funny stuff that happened, but then I realized how much time I spent playing videogames over the weekend and it was just sad. so no. we're not doing that. i was even going to write another silly political essay, but that's like Paris Hilton: its been done repeatedly, and not well.
on the upside, high-level executives (and by high-level, I mean fourth floor) everywhere are jealous of my window office and my view. (I saw some birds out there the other day, and I think they're married. if you know what I mean. and I think you do.)

the execs are probably not jealous of my standing desk. i considered trying to get my company to actually buy me a real standing desk, but they're kind of expensive, and it's not like i had back surgery or anything. they did get me a really nice chair. and health insurance. so I can't complain. I built my own standing desk. it's pretty sweet, if you're into cardboard. I'll post pix.

I was all set to say something interesting about the NFL Draft, but I remembered that you don't care. best part: my fav teams first round pick was so happy he got drafted he wept tears of joy. that's what I'm talking about. i'll weep tears of joy myself if he learns to block his position instead of just try to play WR as a tight end.