#165 - lars and the real girl

well, i think i may have found my movie niche. because of netflix i've been watching a lot of movies this summer (well, some movies and mostly all of reno 911 and bones), but now that summer's over i'm think i'm gonna cancel netflix, number one because i've got no more movies in my queue and number two because i just can't watch so many movies all the time! then sometimes i find myself feeling burdened by all the movies that i've gotta watch and some nights i spent just trying to get through all the dvds on the table just so i could finally mail them out again. my parents have the blockbuster movie pass and i swear they get new movies almost daily, by mail or in the store. at last count they were well past 600 movies (they keep a list, haha). but i can't do that... it's too much. i need real life.

anyway, so i saw "lars and the real girl." i really liked it, and it got me realizing that while i find most mainstream movies extremely boring (i find myself fast-forwarding through a ton of horror/adventure movies, i can't stand heavy over-dramatic dramas, and can't find enough worth in most comedies or romance or whatever else types of movies there are to actually sit down and watch two hours of it), i am completely intrigued by movies like this one... simple, character-driven, with some weird disorder. i think i like the quiet movies, i dunno, i feel like i can relate somehow, even though some of the premises seem completely wacked.

in this one, a painfully introverted guy experiences delusions with a fake girlfriend, but that's just what moves the plot along, it's not really about the doll. the real great stuff (like any good movies) was in the protrayal of pain! haha, don't mean to sound like a masochist, but c'mon, all the best storylines showcase pain. and how hard life is. but not in a depressing way, in a cathartic way. in a "wow, watch how these people work through their pain" kinda way. right? look at that those other movies that i've blogged about recently... "year of the dog" and especially that TBI one... "the lookout." showcasing the contrast between pain and happiness makes for great stories. i really like shows by joss whedon (buffy, angel, firefly), and one thing that he's a fan of is giving his audience just a glimmer of happiness and then slamming them with pain. it's a great story device. of course, it's good to try and get back to happiness at some point, but i think a lot more people can relate to pain/sorrow in movies than they can to happiness (just because somehow painful or sad experiences become so much more memorable in perception).

anyway, i thought it was a cool movie.

#164 - seal!

quick post:

today i went surfing at laniakea on north shore, it was super tiny but that was kinda good because that made it less crowded (plus the weather was super nice so it was just great to be out there on the water), had to wait a LONG ass time for the sets but when they came in it was a good head-high on the biggest ones (well, head-high for me, which is a lot less on some other people). anyway, so there were just maybe three or four of us out there and it was pretty chill, just sitting and waiting for the waves to come. i started seeing some splashing and a couple of schools of fish running, but didn't think too much of it because i always see a lot of turtles there (and they scare the crap outta me when they pop up outta nowhere). i remember catching one wave though and as i looked back into it there was a whole school of fish (pretty good sized fish, big enough to pan fry whatever it was) riding the wave, looking like they're running from something. so that freaked me out and i ate it on the wave, ha.

but so there's like 3-4 of us sitting out there and all of a sudden there's a big mound of brown came up in the water like 20 yards in front of us. it looked like a big turtle coming up for air but my new russian surfing buddy (haha, i keep running into this guy out surfing over here) said it was something else, but he didn't know the word... and finally i'm like, "what? a seal?!" and he said "SEAL!" then the other guy out there was like "you saw a seal here? are you sure?" and ruskie says "trust me, i saw face."

whoa. that was cool.

#163 - i caved

ok. it's over. i give.

today i bought an ipod.

why have i been putting this off for so long? for several reasons:

1. i don't like apple - it seems like they want to put everything under their singular control (which is what good businesses do) and i don't like it. i want freedom. plus, i like buttons, and they want to rid the world of all buttons.

2. i don't like the apple store - all white and empty. all young salespeople with brightly colored t-shirts "happily" greeting you at every turn. makes me sick. haha, okay, not really, but it is a little much when i just wanna browse. plus, they all think i'm a punk or something and they don't want to help me buy stuff because they think i have no money. haha, okay, that's way overexaggerated, but i was in there today and first of all there's like 18,000 people all over the place, then they've got people having computer lessons and people wanting to buy things and salespeople talking to people and kids playing computer games and nerds doing computer speak all over the place. serenity now! and where are the checkout counters?! no, they're too good for checkout counters. they just carry around smug little credit card swippers in their pockets. all i wanna do is pick up an ipod box (which they don't even have), take it up to the counter, pay, and be on my merry way.

3. i need to be connected to the planet - and not disconnected from it, which is what i fear i will be if i've got music playing in my ears all the time. i like silence, and listening to the sounds of the world.

4. accessories - it's no good just to buy the ipod, you've gotta buy a docking stereo, and a car adapter, and a case, and whatever else. it's just buying a product, it's buying into a concept.

but, there are some very good reasons for finally buying one as well:

1. itunes - i started using itunes because they've just got tons of songs, old, new, instrumental, japanese, whatever. so when i started buying songs off of itunes, i knew it would just be a matter of time before i'd have to give in and get an ipod.

2. i worked for it - the money is not a big factor because i worked some extra days this summer so that'll pay for it, but the bigger concept here is that i need something to make the work week better. i think this might do it.

3. breakfasts - i make breakfast every morning before work and i can't see the tv from the kitchen, and my stereo is in the bedroom. so this little ipod and speaker dock will sit on my kitchen counter playing wonderfully motivating music while i'm making and eating breakfast before i have to hike it out to work.

well, the numbers don't quite work out... but i've still got one. so far, i like it. the big test will be when work starts in a couple days, but now i'm thinking i've got something to look forward to right?

#162 - does posting this make me crazy?

check out this video... yeah, i know american idol is over, but i think this group of people really do have a future, and, more importantly, i am actually interested in what these people do after the show is over (which demonstrates the true success of the show huh?).

anyway, this is a clip of david archuleta singing "crazy" by gnarls barkley. what's funny is that this is his first audition song from the hollywood round and all the judges and producers thought this was one of the best auditions, but they couldn't get the clearance for the song in time for the television show, so no one ever saw it. but now, jason castro is singing this song on the american idol tour... i youtube-ed his performance and, yup, it's pretty crappy, haha. but i love archuleta's version of it. if you listen past "crazy" on the clip, he also sings "heaven" again, and then at the very end he tries to talk to the audience and ends up sounding like a total dork. but in a funny way, so it's all good.

it's too bad they weren't allowed to sing songs like this on the show. i mean, the main critizism of a lot of the contestants is that they sing all old, generic songs and don't sound contemporary enough. but look at archuleta here, i think that's a pretty darn good re-take on a current song, but no one got to see it. oh well, i hope this is more of the direction that these people go in after the show, i mean, first they use archuleta's imagine on "so you think you can dance" and now this, the boy's going through a revival eh? haha.

ps - i'm getting closer and closer to buying an ipod for the first time ever. i've been anti-apple for the longest time, but i've been buying music on itunes (i just found a whole crapload of piano music from japanese composers that i can't find anywhere else, so that increased the temptation) and work is starting up again next week so... it might come down to this: surrendering to apple. buying an ipod. hmm...

#161 - slave to schedule

i know i've been over this subject before... but i guess it takes a few times going over it to sink into my brain. i'm a slave to my schedule. and it's gonna take some time to get over it. i was doing pretty well (see my other posts about guilt and over-adherance to my self-imposed routines) these past few weeks but you take a few steps forward and still slip back sometimes. but, yesterday was an especially great day because i didn't let my intention to carry out set plans interfere with actually carrying them out. see, i went surfing, but was disappointed when i got to the beach because it was cold and cloudy and the water was flat, so i drove up and down north shore from haleiwa to a little past sunset just looking around, being a tourist for an hour or so and ended up at lani's. it was still cold, no sun out and little waves, but i let myself forget about my original plans and went in anyway. and it was a nice day out there, i actually saw and talked to someone i knew out there and it ended up being a pretty good time, i even stayed way longer than i had planned to (mostly because i was talking to my friend).

then as soon as i got home i found myself again creating pinpoint plans in my head about how to spend the rest of the night. but luckily my friend called to play tennis so i let myself let go of those plans and go with the flow of the day. and it was loads of fun too. so what does that tell me? why do i get so worked up about creating hour-by-hour plans for my days? it's summertime dammit! why can't i go with the flow?

well, i've identified one problem... my calendar. i've been writing down everything i do each day. it started off because i wanted to keep track of my workouts at the gym, to make sure that i'm making the most of my $$ gym membership. but i've been noticing that it's becoming more of a guilt thing to me, when i don't see any writing each day i've come to regard those days as "wasted time." when really, that's not the case right? can't condense all of your life experiences into a few words and phrases on a calendar, that's dumb. so, i've stopped writing in my calendar (well, besides appointments and special events of course). i think it's going well so far. i've got to stop being a slave to these artificial devices and live freely. right?

#160 - inspiration

i guess i tend to think of myself as a guy with a plan. my days are usually planned out either according to a weekly routine (e.g. yoga tues/thurs, gym mon/wed, tennis on sun, etc.) or by my work schedule. but lately that routine has grown weary, and for the past two or three months i've found myself weary as well. a little more tired than i used to be, a little more sore than i used to be, a little more disinterested than i used to be. so this summer, instead of conforming so strictly to a weekly routine, i've decided to let inspiration take a more prominent role in my life. allow myself to be lead more feverently by my gut (after all, the nervous system located around your intestines could actually be considered a "second brain," because it performs functions that some researchers argue could be just as complex as the brain in your head... that expression "follow your gut?" it has justifiable reasoning behind it, the nervous system in your "gut" can actually make decisions that do not incorporate the nerouns in your cerebral cortex, therefore, obeying the decisions of your "gut" may be just as credible as the decisions you make with your head, sometimes even more so because those "gut" decisions are using different sensory input than the ones used by your "head decisions"). this goes a long way toward maintaining the mindset that i talked about in my previous post about expectations. instead of relying so heavily on my routines and self-established rules for living my life, allow life to flow freely and seek inspiration for daily activities in what's going on around me in the present. skip the gym and go surfing when the weather's sunny and the waves are rolling. don't spend hours trying to decide what's for dinner or whether or not i should cook or buy. take a nap when you want to. don't feel bad for enjoying a lazy day.

anyway, all this brings me to last weekend. it was the 4th of july and according to my plan, i should have gotten one day of bbq, two days of workouts and a lot of time spent outdoors at the beach in order to take full advantage of the 3-day weekend. well, i did have a fun bbq, but the next day i was feeling a bit hangover-ish so i decided to sleep until noon and skip the workout. normally that would be a big guilty problem, but the new me is taking that missed workout in stride. in fact, by taking a new view of my life and completely blanking out the day of it's original plans, i was able to welcome in inspiration. i went to home depot, bought a paint set, another gallon of paint, some painters tape and decided to make my home a reflection of my new viewpoint on life. well, okay, beginning the summer i had already wanted to finish the paint job on my place (the first one was kinda rushed, and some colors didn't come out quite how i had wanted). but i was waiting for that flash of inspiration and motivation to drive me toward finally picking a color and actually doing it.

for big projects like this, i have always waited patiently for inspiration to hit me (it seems that i just can't work up to these projects slowly) and once it hits i'm gone, man. i spent all day saturday (well, after 12 noon) taping, removing outlets, laying drop cloths, and painting until 1 am. i started by finishing off the living room. i only had one wall painted (like an accent wall), but after living with that for about 7 months i decided i wanted to paint the other walls as well, so i did that in the same color "sage gray," in some lights it looks more gray, sometimes it looks green, and sometimes it looks kinda blue:

so i thought that was pretty good and i was gonna live well with that. but darn it as soon as i woke up the next morning the inspiration bug hit me again and i wanted to completely redo the color in my bedroom. it was "green tea," but i wasn't liking it in the bedroom so i changed the entire room to "shortgrass prairie." i was afraid that it might turn out looking like poo, but i think it's not bad huh?:

i also picked out a darker green color to paint the 2nd bedroom, but i dunno, i think i'm good with the original color in that room now that the other two rooms are darker... so i think i'll put that one on hold, at least until inspiration stikes again.

#159 - MAJIDE!

so tv has been pretty crappy since christmas. i was actually enjoying a pretty regular weekly schedule of tv shows last fall, heroes, terminator, plus the office and 30 rock. then that writers strike pretty much killed the after christmas time (good thing for american idol huh?) and now the summertime is likewise crappy. and although i really don't enjoy the bludgeoning of reality shows on network tv, one clear winner has emerged...

MAJIDE!!!

this is the most awesome show, but not for the american part of it. what i like most about it is that it's kinda like going backstage at a real japanese game show, like challengers of fire, shows with crazy obstacle courses or funky human video games. because, of course, i'm a child of nintendo and so naturally i'd be completely drawn to full-grown human versions of video games. for example, today's first game was like a stuffed animal crane game when a person was hanging as the crane and they had to pick up giant stuffed pandas. then the second game (this was really cool and i absolutely wanted to do it) was like this huge wind tunnel that the contestants had to walk down to deliver packages in slots. it looks so fun, i love it.

plus the audience is SO ridiculous. they all have noisemakers and they go crazy at all the super lame jokes of the host and everything. and they do this hand motion and yell "majide!" all the time, it's so annoying, but you know i'll end up doing it all day tomorrow.

MAJIDE!!!