May 2005 Archives

*stretch* ah...nice long weekend. me is happy. a bit injured and pained, but its all good. satty was the first official biking run of 2005. the trail of choice was the scenic seaside mountain trails of the hartshorne near sandy hook. fish said he was out of shape, and i hadnt exactly been endurance training during the winter, so we didnt really know whether we'd make it thru or keel over and spew our lunch. after the first climb up the trail head, fish was near death and i seemed fine...so i guess that answered our question. we rode on anyhoo, taking the trails pretty well. the trails were still relatively fresh tho, so the soil was pretty loose. loose soil=holy crap no traction! and as a result i spilled alot...ouch. by the end of our (relatively) short 2 hour run, i scratched up my entire right arm and leg, and i think i poked my chest hard with the end of my handle-bar after a spill, because its kind of sore. ack. anyhoo, good run...*golfclap*. fish took his baja on a brief off-road sand run for a bit while we tracked down a place to nosh near the waterside (we wanted seafood). we eventually ate at the pirates cove (yar!) yumming down fresh seafood and sending people to the plank. and afterwards, we got caught in a flash storm. gah! we spent a good 15 minutes tracking down a place to pick up something to cover our bikes, bought a car cover from an auto store, tied down our bikes, and rode cautiously down the highway...looking back every 5 minutes to make sure the cover didnt blow off and land on someones windshield, blindly sending them over a cliff to a fiery death. yea. we grabbed coffee and chess at our summit starbucks pitstop (2 wins out of 3...woo!), then back to the city for me. word.

SUNDAY
i dont really remember sunday, so i probably did nothing.

MONDAY
monday was a chillout/bday party at derricks (the first of two). pretty nice way to end the memorial weekend. his brooklyn pad was excessively big, which made me want to hurt him...i think the living room was the size of my apartment. it was pretty chill, with people mellowing out on drinks and hanging on the roof (that we werent supposed to be on). and right before i was about to leave, grace showed up too from rhode island. which was pretty coo since i hadnt seen her in years. derricks second partys next weekend, so maybe ill turn up for that. its at the maritime hotel, but i wont hold that against him.

righty-o then. new charlie and the chocolate factory trailer, and its wow. i just got a gene wilder flashback, and now i want to see this movie even more.

> charlie and the chocolate factory trailer (via cinescape)

[ audio selection | a tribe called quest - electric relaxation ]

i have to keep posting at the very least every other day just so the side doesnt get all screwy and overlapped. yea, why i didnt just lay that out as a table i dont know. anyhoo, its been a pretty nice week so far, aside from the shite weather. today seems to be redeeming the last 4 days tho, and the weekend doesnt look too bad. and since its spring and the weather isnt poop, tomorrow just might be the first biking of the season/year. wooha! time to see just how out of shape i am! well im not completely out of shape, but i havent really been bothering with endurance training during the winter season. translation: im going to puke after the first climb. new to this season tho is the introduction (finally) of a bike helmet! yea yea..."but halo, you should ALWAYS wear a helmet lol!" feh whatever...i had enough confidence in my skills to not need one 90% of the time. im just more cautious now and will abide by common sense. ive technically had a helmet since last season, so i just need to dig it out of my closet and dust it off.

anyhoo, crossing fingers today is a smooth day. crossing fingers i say!

giant malls invade china! so not only have the chinese picked up the bad american habit of um...becoming fat-asses, but now theyve also embraced the righteous suburban mall culture. the new malls of china are bigger! crazier! a billion stories tall! they figure, hey, we've got plenty of land and alot of child labor....why not go ahead and make the biggestest mall imaginable? i say more power to them. having been raised in new jersey, we did nothing but thrive on the mall culture. you would relate with other new jerseyans not by what town you were from, but what highways you were near and which mall you frequented. i was part of the rt 46 willowbrook clan. we would fight prolonged skirmishes with the evil rt 80 rockaway contingency and their armored divisions.

> the mall culture of china (via ny times)

[ audio selection | belly - feed the tree ]

*prays long weekend comes sooner* wednesday and it looks like crap outside. oh super...the 10-day forecast looks really great too. yar. on the bright side, my dad called me yesterday to let me know my state income tax returns came in. score! and it came out to be more than my federal tax returns...whats up with that? bah, anyway...last nites quiz nite at fiddlesticks wasnt as much a bust as last weeks at the slipper room. this one didnt have any stupid questions pertaining to obscure subterranean mammals with extra eyelids. we placed solidly in the middle of the pack, which wasnt so bad for a first time. we couldve scored a bit higher if a few of us had been more convincing with our answers (ie: me). who knew i could guess so well? its time to hit the encyclopedias again...

the 5-minute rundown.

FRIDAY
friday was supposed to be a relaxing din with the crew at the sunburnt cow, but it was poo'd on a bit when we had to wait an hour and a half for a table. there were potential mutineers, but we eventually got seated before anyone could escape. and the owner felt bad too and served us free rounds of moo juice. food was coo, people were satiated, but by the end of foodies everybody was pooped and went home. meh.

SATURDAY
nothing much to mention on satty except for motherfucking star wars! wooha! the movie rocked, 2 hours of crazy shit. there were the usual nitpicks here and there (some of the line deliveries lacked emotion, etc), and i do think they couldve handled vaders rebirth with a bit more class (as opposed to the lumbering frankenstein motif)...but the good far out-weighed the bad. word to sith...hooray! the leather seats were nice too. gogo premium tickets!

SUNDAY
sunday was pretty coo. a friend i hadnt seen in years was down from toronto visiting, so i got the call sunday afternoon to meet up. mins a bit of a flickr-whore, so was on a wooster collective walking tour of street art around the city. i met up with min and her crew around noho, and we strolled around with the tour group looking at stuff...and stuff. jake was part of the group too, so that was coo...and actually had my friend min as a flickr buddy. craziness. as we were walking down grand st, a cop was staring me down, and im going ah shit. then i actually looked at the cop and noticed his badge said "seto"...holy bugger! the cop turned out to be an old co-worker of mine at my last job who quit to go to police academy. and now he was a full-fledged cop and patrolling the noho/chinatown area. coo beans. the tour ended shortly after that, and some of the group met up at milady's for some drinky drinks. we had nachos and a round of drinks, then headed out. we checked out some more street art around les, looked thru the wk gallery, loitered around zakka for a while, then grabbed foodies from oh! taisho. word. after the yum foodies, we were forced to track down fried ice cream for min (grr), ended up at avenue A where the ice cream was on fire, then strolled a bit before splitting. yay for the weekends! this weekend is memorial day weekend too, jah? word!

its finally friday...whew! its been a really long week, and im just...hmm wait, deja vu. oh right, i essentially write the same "long week, im tired" monologue every friday week after week. bah...screw this. star wars weekend! i have premium tix for tomorrow nite, since all the premium tix had long been sold out up to satty by the time i got around to checking up on them. just as well, it looks like shit out today. ooh, and a friends coming down from toronto this weekend, hooray! thats it...time for my bagel.

im sure this is old news to alot of people...the unveiling of the new xbox 360, playstation 3, and the new nintendo revolution at the e3 going on right now. and when i say "old" i mean more than 24 hours old, because we're good like that in the 21st century. theyre all powerful yadda yadda. look at me, im so bloody cool i can render a bajillion polygons a second. and so on and so forth. im personally more of a pc gamer (ever since the premature death of the dreamcast), so the revolutionary graphics blah blah blah are nothing new for many. still coo tho, but um...moving on.

three trailers today...one game-related and two movie-related. and since i began with that random gaming prologue, ill start there. theres a new quake 4 trailer out, and it looks kinda coo. its sporting the doom 3 engine, so its got swishy graphics, moody lighting, et al. i havent been that big of a fan of the carmack quakes (as opposed to the romero-led first one), stroggos and all that. doom 3 was a bit of a bore tho, so maybe the quake franchise running the same graphics engine with considerably more killing (and lights, lamps, and you know...the ability to see things) could be fun.

WERE-RABBIT
the trailer for the new wallace and gromit and the curse of the were-rabbit is out, and its looking rockin'. gromit rocks, and wallace is a tool...but thats ok. crossing fingers now for a state-side release...word.

DA VINCI...STUFF
the last trailer today isnt so much a trailer as it is a really brief and uninformative teaser. the new da vinci code teaser trailer is out, and its...yea. there arent any movie clips or anything. just an ominous voice and the mona lisa flying around. but hey, its a teaser, and the movie is a whole year away (to the day almost)...so this is just to whet your palate so to speak.

> quake 4 trailer (via ign)
> wallace and gromit and the curse of the were-rabbit trailer (via aicn)
> the da vinci code teaser (via aicn)

[ audio selection | the smiths - panic ]

so mondays have fallen off the radar. *shrug* its too much of a meh day to post on. ill try again next monday, but considering i cant even get around to changing the banner (yea its still says april), i wouldnt put any money on it. anyhoo, whatever. yesterdays trivia night at the slipper room was kind of a bust. team squidle cakes (thats us) came in third to last amongst a room full of neener tarts and know-it-alls. and unsurprisingly, the winning team (3-time champions apparently) had a huge group of know-it-alls. but when you examine a team like that, you dont really take into account everybody on the team...some people are dead-weight. no, you look straight at the source of their knowledge...the mulleted fatman. every know-it-all group has one of these, the geeky corpulent one who doesnt do much except study useless information. damn youz...who the hell knows the name of supreme court cases from the 19th century? bah.

of particular irking-ness tho was their special "star wars trivia" section, which we thought we'd have an edge in (or not...considering the aforementioned comic-store guy). it was 10% knowledge of star wars characters and locales, the rest was a clever understanding of anagrams. argh...wtf. we still got 9 out of 10, but it was still bothersome that all you needed was a mental list of people and places and be adept at rearranging letters. still fun tho...go squidles.

[ audio selection | avalanches - a different feeling ]

yay for fridays! which is the catch-phrase for any friday following a grueling work week. whew...im quite enjoying my buttered toast at the moment. i hope its nice this weekend too. none of that 40 degrees crap weather frigid wind crap. anything above 60 degrees will be acceptable.

so one week left til star wars eps kick-your-ass. there are already a number of reviews...some going ape-shit over the movie, and others pooping on it. but whatever, theres other stuff to talk about. im sure you can find the reviews yourself. theyre kind of hard to miss. jo blo has some coo pics of the various movie posters up and around the cannes film festival, which has already started. theres alot of coo posters around, including ones for star wars (dur), the transporter 2 (um...ok), kiss kiss bang bang, narnia, and a couple other movies i hadnt heard about before. oh, warning too...theres nekkidness near the bottom. so a bit of a heads-up.

BATMAN
the new batman begins international trailer is also up, and looks pretty rockin'. at least i think it does. the link kinda went to the media page, and theres 3 trailers up. i picked the last one hoping they like to order things chronologically. its pretty coo tho, featuring additional footage i hadnt seen before.

ok thats it. back to my toast. its getting soggy.

> cannes movie posters | warning: nakedness (via jo blo)
> batman begins international trailer (via aicn)

holy crap...ahhh!!!

> portman goes bald (via killer movies)

and now for fun movie shit...yay! actually, im kinda clogged and im having sneezing fits, so ill make this brief.

NARNIA
the new narnia trailer hit the net the other day. it looks interesting. im not really familiar with the novels. we had the entire set sitting on our bookshelves when i was growing up, but i never convinced myself to actually start reading them. *shrug*. it looks interesting enough to check out tho.

POTTER
and now for the good shit. the new harry potter and the goblet of fire teaser trailer is live! woo! its actually just a teaser, but it already looks pretty coo. i also like how they flashed images of harry, hermione, and ron from the last three potter movies. holy crap theyve grown up. so yes...some people might think they look too old for the movies now, but i dont think so. i think its coo that they stay with the characters for as long as they can. age-wise theyll never be able to keep up with the movies, but its not like a few years is really that drastic a difference. i mean, they expected you to believe a bunch of narc officers could pass as high school students in 21 jump street. so i think being a year or two older than their supposed characters is forgivable. yay for potter!

oh, and as an accompanying pic, the new teaser poster for the goblet of fire. its not exciting or anything...but its just a teaser poster, so itll do.

> the chronicles of narnia trailer (via cinescape)
> harry potter and the goblet of fire teaser trailer (via aicn)

monday is again that missing day of the week...whew. three of us had to make our way to our printers to oversee some of our stuff go on print, so we carted over to jersey monday morning. it was actually pretty interesting watching the stuff go on press (we were there to check out our 5th color printing), and we even got a bucket of heart-imploding chicken for lunch. the fumes from the plates were kinda trippy too...woo.

mothers day was this past weekend too, so the family gathered sunday for a nice lunch at clydz in new brunswick. except this time we had extra guests...namely daves (my sis' bf) parents. 0_0 yea, well it was coo. a bit odd seeing my traditionally conservative chinese parents chatting and noshing on steak with daves kosher crew. ah, multiculturalism. i wont even bother bringing up what was on everybodys minds, but yea...maybe thats for another day. *shrug*. after getting stuffed stupid on kobe steak (mmmmm) and picking up the (massive) tab with my sis, i crawled back to nyc with a big belly.

to all the haters who wondered why on earth id buy myself a lightsaber (you know who you are), im sure they were unaware of the many practical day-to-day applications of a handy lightsaber. how stuff works has however created a convenient guide to the inner workings and domestic applications of your own personal lightsaber. things like lighting ciggies, trimming hedges, and cutting AND toasting a bagel at the same time, wow!

> how stuff works: lightsaber (via gizmodo)

hooray! time to get excited for the next upcoming harry potter again. time flies, and the new harry potter and the goblet of fire movie isnt too far away. muggle.net posted new pics from the upcoming movie the other day, and things are looking pretty coo. new pics of the goblet of fire, fleur, krum, the potter crew, and a bulgarian horntail...woo.

a bit of a heads-up too. the new trailer is also set to be released next monday, so that should be cool.

> new pics via muggle.net (via aicn)

very coo...lifted from hipstomp, this visual illusion. i didnt believe it either til i popped it in photoshop. devious...

drive-by post! because time is a luxury...and i dont want it to seem like i slack at posting. me, no never.

DOOM(ed)
new pics from the upcoming doom movie adaption with the rock and crew. look, theyre holding guns and shit. pfff...boring.

SITH
first revenge of the sith reviews, yay! most had good things to say. actings still stiff and average, but everything else seems to rock. even the story rocks, hooray! theres less than a month to go before the beginning of the end...so im there. you've come a long way baby.

SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH
and one last hitchhikers goodness...the dolphin theme-song! so long, and thanks for all the fish...

> new doom pics (via ign)
> revenge of the sith reviews (via aicn)
> so long and thanks for all the fish (via aicn)

[ audio selection | bjork - big time sensuality ]

shit, its already tuesday. monday just kinda squeaked by...or maybe i just didnt notice it as my eyes burned away from all the allergens. argh!

the weekend was pretty chill, as is the usual byline for the last 6 months worth of weekends. it was chill, i marinated, blah blah blah. er, yea...met up with fishy satty nite to catch a digital showing of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy at edgewater. we missed that showing (oops) and caught a 10pm non-digital showing instead...along with a full nathans famous snack tray. the movie is definitely rock. details of the book, etcs pretty fuzzy in my mind, so i wont even bother with comparisons. in fact, i dont even really give a shit about faithful adaptions, etc...because any fan of cinema has long known that direct adaptions never work. that, and given the fact that the hitchhikers book itself was an adaption, its not too big a deal. the characters as they were in the movie rocked. martin freeman as arthur dent mightve been a bit more aggressive than i had imagined, but everybody was pretty coo overall. especially the whale...the poor whale.

something i didnt know til the rolling credits, the "guide" in the movie was created by the rockmasters of shynola.