Happens to the best of us, right?

I don't usually procrastinate, but when I do, it quickly assumes paralytic proportions.  

For example, this morning.  I promised myself I would go on a hike today (actually, yesterday, but I successfully put it off until today).  Except I don't really feel like it. I know I should (gotta lose the gut) but it really seems like all kinds of more effort than I really want to make (which, yes, rather does explain the presence of the gut in the first place).  

I thought, "Well, I should have breakfast."  But I didn't want to take a shower because I'd be all sweaty and in need of showering after the hike.  So that meant I couldn't wear fresh clothes (because that feels kinda gross). So I'm wearing yesterday's clothes.  

I made breakfast and ate it, and then cleaned up after myself, which was a wonderful way to knock off a few hours.  But now I'm done with that and need further excuses to not go hiking. 

One of them is, I do need to do laundry. Except I'm still wearing last night's clothes (stripy club-slash-party shirt included), which I also need to get clean.  But if I did that I'd have to change, which would mean I'd have to shower, which I don't want to do because of the hike I don't want to go on.  

So instead I'm writing this blog. 

Footnote:

Incidentally last night ended up being fun.  The day was boring (though reasonably productive) and finally around eleven I decided I needed to get out of the house and I really wanted a beer (I haven't been drinking much alcohol lately).  Walked to a place I'd driven past, but it was closed.  Didn't want to hit the biker bar that was much closer to home.  Ended up calling a cab that took like half an hour to get there. The cab driver was an ass and with the tip cost me $15, kind of a fucking rip-off.  But the place I went, a tiny establishment frequented by mostly stoner-punker types and their large-breasted girlfriends (maybe weed attracts large breasts, like magnetism? Someone should do a study).  I very quickly found myself talking to one of the few normal-looking people there, a very sweet young lady named Gina. Shortly thereafter met her boyfriend Justino.  They were there with the band that had just wrapped up when I'd arrived.  Another band came on. They were pretty good, for punk. I did have to turn my hearing aid off, however.  

Who says footnotes can't be more than one paragraph?  After last call, rather than getting a cab I got a ride with Gina and Justino, for which they have mucho gratitude from me.  I gave Justino the remaining six bucks cash I had in my wallet, for the gas. It was a much better deal than asshole cabbie ripoff.  

Odd how I used to think it was hard to make friends. True, alcohol makes fast bonds, but it doesn't seem to be a factor, since no alcohol was present in other recent cases. I have noticed however that regardless of whether my religious affiliation comes up (and it usually doesn't), non-Scientologists are more impressed by me than Scientologists.  Hmmmm. That's kinda fucked, but understandable as well.  And now I'm just rambling. 

I really should go take a shower.

There's Something About Mary...

So I recently discovered Hulu.com (kudos to Brewmaster Dave), which allowed me to watch a few episodes of one of the more amusing and engaging TV shows on my must-see list: Psych.  

If you haven't heard of it, the show follows Shaun Spencer, a Santa Barbara resident trained from childhood by his policeman father to be the best policeman ever.  The problem? Shaun doesn't want to be a cop.  But he can't deny the responsibility that comes with his "power", so Shaun creates a loophole, pretending to be a psychic so the SBPD will hire him as a consultant.  

It's a really, really funny show and I do highly recommend it.  It's also absolutely loaded with pop-culture references (many of them 80s pop culture references) which can add a layer of entertainment if you get them. 

Okay, now you're up to speed. And this is really mainly for the LOSTies out there.  Please watch at least the first ten or 15 minutes of the embed below.  Tell me if you can figure out who Mary is.  

It was bugging me through the whole damned episode, and I'm kind of ashamed to admit I didn't figure it out until the last 5 minutes. I really should've nailed it earlier. His voice is still pretty similar. 

Anyway, here you go:

Movie Reviews: Star Trek, Wolverine and Terminator: Salvation

Okay so this is a big year for me in terms of movies. So many to see! And it pains me to say I really can't afford to see them all. Especially since some of them I definitely want to see more than once. 

Star Trek was awesome. See it even if you're not a fan of the show(s). If you like high-concept adventure paired with down and dirty fight scenes, plus fantastic cast chemistry -- and all of it in Outer Space! -- you'll like this. I mean really, it's just plain good times.  

I like space opera in general. I'm not at all biased to any particular "universe" (except possibly my own, ha ha): Trek, Wars, Galactica, Firefly -- I enjoy all of them, each for their own reasons but overall because it's space opera. 

Trek, however, is a bit unique of the pack in that it's very much an optimistic view of the future. True, bad things happen. Redshirts die in nearly every episode. True, the fleet could be considered a paramilitary outfit, and for some that's blah. But hell with that -- it's all about exploration external and internal; the more you learn of others, the more you find out about yourself.  And it's got a liberal dash of humor, even goofiness. The overall vision of Trek is a brighter future, and I'm not talking about the tunics.  I love that kind of thing. 

The acting in this movie was mostly superb for the genre. The casting was note-perfect. The character interactions were spot-on and enjoyable. 

See the frakking movie already, if you haven't. 

Moving on: Wolverine, sorry to say, just didn't compare to Trek. I kinda wish I'd seen it first, because Trek is turning out to be the flick I compare everything else to, ha ha.  

Wolverine was adequate, and not through any fault of Jackman's (or many, many others involved) did it fall short of greatness. It's a simple matter of: I don't find joy in revenge stories, and that is essentially what they did with this. They didn't have to go that route (although, granted, it is logical and true to the character), but that they did made the movie a little less interesting to me. 

The other issue I had was that the storytelling felt unbalanced. Again, it's no one's fault -- I totally see why they did it that way and I can't argue the decision. But the first act felt too overloaded; the second too light, and the third frankly didn't make up for either. A few storytelling choices I can and do argue with definitely fall into the spoilers category, so I won't get into them here. Suffice it to say, given the size of the sandbox the writers had to play in, I really don't get why they felt it necessary to use the characters they did in the end. They could have picked any number of OTHER characters who could have pulled off pretty much exactly the same effect and it would have been hunky fuckin' dory.  

All of that said, I did like it and I will definitely see it again. I kind of doubt I'd buy it though, unless I happen to find it in the bargain bin at Blockbuster a year hence. 

So now we come to Salvation, and I think I've got more to say about this one because it's still fresh in my mind. 

Terminator: Salvation is the one of the bunch I'm going to see twice in theatres (although I really hope I can wrangle a Star Trek encore). That's primarily because of scheduling issues and my demanding bladder. The latter needs no further explanation, but the former: I agreed with two different people to see the movie with them, and then it turned out they couldn't both see it the same day. So tonight I saw it with one; next week I'll see it with the other.  Which is good because hopefully I'll get to see the bit I missed while taking the piss. 

My analysis of this fourth installment in the franchise: It is, at best, a second cousin to the original film.  Don't get me wrong, it was a good summer movie. It retained the messages of hope, redemption and survival that Terminator and T2 had, but I'm going to have to agree with many other reviewers that the heart and soul of the concept was lost; blown away, perhaps, by the bombs of Judgement Day. 

Salvation is nevertheless a better movie than T3 by many orders of magnitude. 

Part of the problem as I see it is the fact that the franchise has let itself slide into an entirely different genre from the original film. Terminator was essentially an excellent science fiction story.  It wasn't about the explosions and fights.  It was a commentary on human dependence on technology and the hope of averting catastrophe that inevitably awaits us if we do not deal with that dependance in a responsible fashion.  And also of course a tale of the indomitable strength of the human spirit to survive.  It wasn't the Terminator, after all, that was truly unstoppable. 

T2 was much the same, only with more action and cooler special effects (also, Linda Hamilton kept her shirt on this time around).  The same themes were there, but with the volume up a little. And that the heroes decided to stop running and actually attempt to do something about the doom they knew was coming -- well, there's a message in that, too, wasn't there. 

Unfortunately someone decided to exhume the endoskeleton one more time and throw the T&A back in, and that was T3.  T3 sucked. The explosions were impressive...and that's really pretty much it.  John Connor was a twat.  I liked the tough kid in T2 a shit-ton more. 

T3 was a popcorn flick with a downer of an ending. Perhaps following the trend (at the time, thanks to Messrs. Lucas and Christansen perhaps) of dooming-and-glooming once bright franchises, T3 took the hopeful message of the first two movies (no fate but what you make) and wiped its ass with it.  

Hollywood politics being what they are, it was inevitable. But the franchise was no longer smart storytelling, no longer thought-provoking sci-fi.  I can't pick the best simile for what the franchise had become: it's either a roller-coaster ride, an arcade game, or porn. Fun now and then, visually stimulating, but ultimately unfulfilling. 

So that brings us to Terminator: Salvation.  Now that the franchise has made the evolution from sci-fi to popcorn action-adventure -- I pretty much didn't expect much of it beyond eye candy, and I was more or less okay with that.  I wasn't disappointed in that regard.  

They did, however, manage to add several very nice touches throughout the story, and I certainly can't fault anyone's acting per se.  The issue is, of course, that this was an action movie. There was very little time amongst the apocalyptic backdrop and frequent mechanical disruption for anyone to emote anything but grim determination tinged with despair and the faintest silver lining of hope -- primarily in the form of, naturally, John Connor.  

But don't go thinking this was John Connor's story.  Because I don't know if anyone else has realized it, but not one of these movies is John Connor's story.  Closest one came to it was T2, and that was really more the Terminator's story.  

As a storyteller, I'll give you a little tip: Your key to who's your main character is, just ask yourself "who's evolving in this story?"  And much as Christian Bale and the studio executives would like people to believe, Bale's role is actually just a supporting character.

I'm not going to get spoilerific on you for this either, but when you see it, you'll know what I mean, and I doubt there will be any question who the story IS about.  

I will say this however: Despite the difficulty in connecting emotionally to, really, any of the characters, Salvation did bring back some of the hope, some of the "spitting in the face of fate" that made the first two movies great.  But even this is not without issue: The worst has happened. The fate has come to pass. So now we have to consider: What fate are they going to make for themselves now? (I suppose they did give me a tiny morsel of food for thought, after all.)

Which is why we'll probably see at least two more movies. Maybe one of them will finally give us the story of the legendary John Conner.

Gatherings, gas and a girl named Gabe

I'm gradually getting settled into my new life.  It's still new and exciting; routine hasn't yet had a chance to settle its dreary weight on me and I'm ill-inclined to let it. My world is, after all, New and Improved, with considerably broader horizons (even taking into account the omnipresent LA smog).  Why should I let it settle back into humdrum day-to-day, when I can continue to have adventures, continue to create something New and Improved?

I've done the routine thing. It seems like it should be inevitable, that it might even allow one some measure of power and security.  

Well, that's mistaking routine for stability.  I can do stability without also slipping back into a rut. 

Anyway, in pursuit of this rejuvenated thirst for life, I've discovered one obvious but overlooked fact: Broader horizons means everything's further away!

Even just driving to and from work and running sundry errands, I have quadrupled my gas use. Where I used to fill my tank twice a month, I now have to fill it twice a week.  I should have been expecting this (after all, my morning commute is easily four times the time I spent driving at my old job), but such prosaic considerations really didn't occur to me until I was faced with them. 

Undaunted by the startling increase in my carbon footprint, I've been bouncing around like a psychotic... bouncy ball.  Yeah, I had a better simile, but the fucker got away from me. Because, I suppose, of its inherent bounciness. 

But yeah, last Friday night a friend invited me to someone's birthday party. Guy I know but not all that well (all hail the friend-of-a-friend network).  He looks like Shia LaBoeuf.  Like, to the point it's kind of freaking eerie. I kept expecting him to run around saying, "Oh no, no no no nononononono."  But as it was, after all, his birthday, I guess he wasn't overly distressed.

He's a good guy though.  I mean absolutely no slight toward him. The uncanny resemblance is not his fault.  But he really should think about capitalising on it. I mean, he was grousing about wanting to meet one or more girls that night, and... well... I'm just saying is all.  This is LA. It wouldn't be that hard to believe.

I certainly had no trouble meeting new girls, as our Shia Lookalike has an astonishing array of curvy friends, most of whom I'd never met before (and a few that I had and, much to my chagrin, did not immediately recognize).  

As often happens in such instances, one in particular attracted my attention.  I do remember her name, but as I do not know who will read this and whose tongues may wag, it will not here be mentioned.  But she was a lovely girl, bright and full of life.  I liked her, but felt hampered by the decibel level and the humidity. 

Oh -- right. Um. I've not quite worked out the correct amount of hair product to use in this new climate. Too much and my hair looks greasy.  Too little, and I run the distinct risk of being confused for Seth Rogen (the Knocked Up version, not the Observe and Report version).  

Which reminds me: Another thing I've already sort of embarked upon is a crusade to get in shape. But I digress mightily...

Anyway so, I erred on the side of caution that night and... guess what happened?  Yeah.  I must have looked scary. I didn't find out until I visited the men's room. That rather did explain the tendency of people to sidle away...

Naw, it wasn't horrible. I looked kinda 80s, was all.  Which, okay, that could be considered horrible. *sigh*

The week passed fairly uneventfully. I'm doing pretty well at my new job. They're gradually giving me more work and I'm doing well at getting it done, pretty much like I figured I would.  My immediate senior is a... very... emphatic person.  After the first few days working there, I had a few people take me aside and let me know it wasn't anything to take personally.  I shrugged and replied, "Well, he's American, so I can't really expect him to know any manners."

Sorry guys, but I gotta call 'em like I see 'em.  

Whoa, this is getting long already.

I went to another birthday party this Friday just past.  This was actually a birthday party-cum-housewarming, as one of my very oldest friends had just moved his family into a modest home in Valley Village, I believe it was called. Anyway, it was a distinctly different crowd than the Shia party, being that singularities such as myself were the exception rather than the rule (in fact, there were a quite a number of small children running around).  But many of them were mutual friends. One in particular, a gentleman who has apparently become a World of Warcraft hermit since the last time I saw him -- which was last Halloween, holy shit -- came out of the woodwork.  Which was great. 

Good times, good times.  One thing of note: At neither party could I partake of any alcoholic beverages. I've returned to my strict rule of absolute separation of matters vehicular and alcoholic.  In fact, excepting a single beer with dinner a few weeks ago, I haven't had a drop of booze in two weeks.  Actually makes life a little MORE interesting, in that I can again clearheadedly observe how silly drunk people are. 

Anyway... This brings us to Saturday (yesterday, as of this writing). In the morning I needed groceries. 

Wait wait, before you go "ho-hum, this is getting boring", just bear with me, okay.  First, you're right. You don't care about the birthdays of strangers and rebuilding of bridges thought lost. That's fair.  How about a girl named Gabe?

I've been taking one of my coworkers home, and as can happen amongst men, the travel discussion turned to past conquests.  Now, I'm not one to kiss and tell particularly, but he was curious as to my exploits since my divorce. So I gave him a number.  The 18-month total, I call it.  (I've been divorced longer than 18 months. The 18 months in question is a distinct time period in my life.)  

Well, he was impressed.  I'm kind of blase about it; it's not really something I'm overly proud of, although I suppose I could or should be.  But something he said kinda took me by surprise: he said I must have a way with women.  

Heh. 

Saturday morning I was shopping at Trader Joe's.  I'd forgotten to pick up sundry breakfast items. So I hadn't ate. TJ's, as I call it, often has a "demo station", and so they did that morning. Proudly displaying microwave mac & cheese, coffee, OJ and... something else, was a dark, diminutive damsel whose dimpled cheeks (and alliterative potential) drew me over directly.  Or it could have been the smell of fresh coffee.  

Nah, it was the girl. It always is. We chatted for a few minutes, me pretending to be enthralled by the merits of microwave mac & cheese; I don't think she was overly fooled once the discussion ranged away from nuked pasta dishes, as it rather quickly did.  In the course of this discussion, I noted her name tag, which proudly named her GABE.  

After ascertaining that this was indeed her name, and short for Gabriela, I expressed my surprise: "I'd expect someone with a name like that to be some shorn and inked anarchist, not a pretty little girl!"  

She liked that.  Oh yes, she did.  She was sure to tell me she was frequently on duty at the TJ's.  And no, not abruptly to get rid of me. That was after a good five minutes of further discussion. I left with a smile on my face, an echo of hers. 

That night, I decided to check out a place near the office which promised a live band after 10pm on Saturdays, so that's what I did.  In spite of my initial reservations, they actually rocked shit, and I ended up staying until closing. Of course, the Malin Ackerman lookalike (it's LA, everyone looks like a movie star, lol) in the formhugging minisheath had something to do with that, too.  We danced. She's a very energetic dancer.  It was fun, and that's all I'll say since I've already more than lived up to the promise (some would say threat) of blah blah blah  blah blah in my blog's title. 

Suffice it to say, it would seem my coworker might actually have a point.  And I'm gonna say straight out, the quality of women around these parts is a marked improvement to those in my former county of residence.  No offense to anyone, honest. But the snob quotient is way down. At least so far, ha ha. 

So, yeah. My life is pretty much made of awesome right now. And it's only getting better from here. Because aside from all of the above, I'm also working on the second book again. 

Made. Of. Awesome. Yeah, I said it.  

Department of Massive Vacillation

So last weekend I drove back down to OC to spend Mother's Day with my mom.  Being the dutiful son that I am, and all that. 

Had some mail waiting for me, most notably four separate notices from the DMV.  Curious, I opened them on the spot.  

The first was nice. Dated May 1, it was an Order of Reinstatement for my driver's license.  Now, for the past several months (since being convicted of driving under influence), my license status has been in question, because earlier the DMV had told me that they wouldn't revoke it. But then I got messages from my insurance carrier telling me they needed proof of reinstatement. Which means someone thought my license had been suspended. 

So before I moved, I went over to the DMV to get it sorted out, which turned out to be a rather painless action. 

Thus the official notice from the DMV was no surprise; it was nice to see. 

Then I opened the next envelope.  Also dated May 1, this thicker missive was an Order of Suspension. Something to do with my insurance, which made zero sense, because as far as I know my insurance company loves me (especially with the higher premiums attendant with the DUI conviction, oh joy).  

Well, this was troubling. 

I still had two envelopes to open, so I figured I may as well find out what those had in store for me before I freaked out. 

The next one was a notice that my registration is due in June.  I'm not going to get started on the subject of paying more than two hundred bucks for registration. It's total... just... it's... okay fine, I'm not going to get started. Bullshit is what I was going to say. If I was going to get started. Which I won't. 

Anyway, I just kinda shrugged at that one and proceeded to the fourth and final DMV letter. 

It was dated May 4th, the day before the Order of Suspension was to go into effect (and almost a week prior to my reading it).  The single sheet read Order of Reinstatement.  I blinked and checked the date again. Then shuffled through the other Orders.  Came back to the May 4th one, read it again. It appeared I was all good.

I hadn't even had to do anything. 

Now, I'm certainly not complaining, as such -- I'm terrifically glad that my driving privileges were somehow saved at, apparently, the eleventh hour.  

But seriously: What. The. Fuck.  

I rather suspect this all may have come about because some bureaucrats needed to make their quotas to keep their jobs.  Nothing else makes any sense.  But reinstating and revoking my license on the same day -- at the very least it's a recipe for confusion.  If I hadn't had the new paperwork on the same day, I would certainly have been sitting there for three or four days trying to figure out if my license was good or not (and basically freaking out).  

Bloody pencil-pushers. But I guess everyone's gotta make a living... right?

Moving Day

Friday night I went out just to try to catch the last few people on my list that I wanted to say goodbye to. Surprisingly, I ran into more people who deserved goodbyes and they weren't even ON my list.  As well as three out of five of the people who actually were.  

Played a thoroughly shitty two games of pool.  I was already tired, a little drunk, and feeling just a touch sick. Those are my excuses for sucking so bad. I'm sticking to them. Oh, and that I haven't played pool in months.  Yeah. 

My friend got tired of kicking my ass at pool and some other friends had showed up so I went to talk to them.  One of them had promised to help me move but I could already tell he was going to flake on me.  Whatever. It was just good to get to see him before I left. Also there was a chick who came up to me and told me she was totally hot for him and could I hook them up. Now, Eric is not a bad-looking dude, but he's hardly an Adonis. I don't know how he fucking does it but women literally throw themselves at him.  

This particular girl wasn't bad, so I did relay the message.  Then I went back to talking to her friends, who were both a little chunky but both cute and, as it turned out, both lesbians.  Which actually turned out to be really fun because I could let my comments and compliments spin wildly out of control and they wouldn't take it seriously. In fact, I'm still not sure if they were laughing with me or at me. But it was still at least fun to make 'em laugh. 

Anyway, I got home MUCH later than I had intended (around 2am) and went right to bed. Approximately five and a half hours later, my mom is waking me up telling me we needed to move my room now!

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Mexicans impress the hell out of me when it comes to moving shit. They had arrived at 7am.  It took them half an hour to move almost everything in the apartment over to the other apartment.  Half an hour. Of course, my room had the heavy desk and weird bed thingy so it was definitely the most complicated part. Also some stuff was going across the hall to my mom's new apartment and some was going with me to mine. 

Anyway, a guy who's kinda crushing on my mom came over to help, too, and he totally saved my bacon.  Because while I don't have a lot of stuff, what I do have is still more than I can fit in my car.  I would have had to make two or three trips to bring everything, had it been necessary to do it on my own. But Dave had his big old Jeep SUV thing. Between our two vehicles, we needed only one trip.  That was awesome.  

So this was around the noon hour. I now had to move all my stuff upstairs. Dave had to be elsewhere so he just unloaded his truck and took off. I spent the next couple hours going up and down stairs, then going through boxes and figuring out how to arrange shit.  By around 4:30 I was done and I could finally take a shower and change.  Except, oops -- I didn't have any soap! I ended up going shopping and also getting to explore my neighborhood a bit.  Got the stuff I needed, finally made it back about an hour and a half later. My stomach was rumbling crossly -- I hadn't eaten since about 9am (when I left at approximately the worst possible time to get coffee and food).   

Finally I got my shower, changed, went out for dinner. I spent a good half hour looking for something that wasn't a fast-food franchise. There are actually quite a few such places around here, but I didn't feel like Armenian, Thai, Korean, Italian, Ukranian, doughnuts, ice cream or liquor. 

I finally found a bar & grill which looked like it might serve a decent hamburger.  It didn't. But there are lots of other items on the menu, the burger was still better than a greasy Quarter Pounder with Cheese, and most importantly there were a lot of pretty girls there. 

Brings me to another point. There are a lot of pretty girls around here. I'm not totally certain, but I think a fair percent of them are jailbait, though. It's kind of hard to tell because they dress the same, have the same haircuts and wear the same makeup -- if they're high-schoolers, they're pretty sophisticated high-schoolers.  

This is actually one reason I felt safer going to bars back in OC, too. Because there you could at least be certain no one was, you know, statutory rape waiting to happen.  

Anyway I crashed early that night. I forced myself to stay up until 10 so I wouldn't wake up too early, but I was gone shortly thereafter. 

This morning I woke up and it's apparent that not getting enough sleep or water yesterday screwed me. My nose is runny and my throat a little sore. So I'm going to have to go back to Trader Joe's and pick up some vitamins and stuff.  Because tomorrow I'm supposed to start my first day at my new job and I'm NOT going to do it by making everyone there sick (or even just being sick myself).  

I've left out a lot of stuff, believe it or not -- but this is already getting too long.  I'm going to go do some more exploring today. I wish I had a camera so I could take pictures. The house I'm staying at is very aesthetic; the neighborhood is all right although we've got upper middle crust block and white trash block side by side, which is a little disconcerting.  The main drag has tons of interesting-looking restaurants, stores, stuff like that - and I only went a couple miles.  

The place is right up into the hills which means the weather is constantly changing and when I drive home the hills rear up before me like a fairy-tale destination.  

And most importantly to me, living here means I'm closer to old friends and many new ones, it means I'm closer to the type of connections that will help me get published, and it means that I'm finally out on my own two feet again. Limping, perhaps; almost certainly shuffling -- but I'll pick up speed.  It's all uphill from here, but that doesn't have to mean it's more difficult.