BrockLi Soup

(re: spinning in an office chair)

C: It’s a lot of fun when you start, but not so much after. Just like drinking.

I remembered the other big thing that bugged me about Everything is Illuminated - Jonathan as The Collector. Where the hell did that come from?

So, here’s a tip for you readers: before buying a book, take a gander at the cover. Even if it does have pictures of donkeys and elephants and that chick from Wonkette, check to see if it says “a novel” on the front if you’re expecting a political commentary or stories from the Hill.

That being said, Dog Days was pretty good, even if it wasn’t what I was expecting and was the literary equivalent of a chick flick.

Just know what you’re getting into.

It was months ago when I saw the preview for Everything is Illuminated. I’m assuming the book was doing OK by then, but I hadn’t heard about it. The only reason I even remembered the trailer was because of Eugene Hutz. I figured I should read the book before seeing it, so I picked it up a couple weeks ago and finished it last weekend. The beginning is a little hard to follow, but it was an interesting read.

The movie was pretty good, but I don’t know if I like the changes they made. Obviously, they could really only do half the story: Johnathan’s trip through Ukraine. The grandfather’s modified back story was a bit of a surprise. There was some other crap, but Scrubs is on so I’m a bit distracted.

Hutz was surprisingly good, but it was weird to see him without the crazy mustache, and with a shirt on - he’s very much like Dan Lee that way.

Have you ever seen an old short school bus converted into an ice cream truck? I’ve had one parked on the street by my place for a couple weeks now. Except it’s not an ice cream truck, it’s just an old bus. And it’s spray-painted white, including the side windows. And some of the lights are busted, and it never moves.

And half the time, it’s full of fruit.

I first noticed it a few weeks ago because of sign on the back window that said something like “Oranges for sale,” but didn’t really think about it at the time. A few days later, I was walking by as two guys loaded fruit into the back from another truck. “I guess he meant it,” I thought.

Now, the truck hasn’t moved since it showed up earlier this month. Aside from that one time, I’ve never seen anyone in or near it, but half of the time it’s full of boxes of fruit (like this morning), and half the time it’s empty (like this evening). I can only imagine where the guy is unloading the stuff, but I think I’m going to avoid the produce section at the nearby Giant for a little while.

C: Is it Friday yet? J: It’s Friday somewhere. B: …no. It’s not.

Seriously, the best nights start without even the illusion of plans.

We decided to go out for a celebratory (not celibatory) dinner last night, so Matt picked the Half Moon BBQ up in Silver Spring. It took us like an hour and a half to get up there via Metro, but it was totally worth it. We all got pulled pork, which was fantastic, and a couple baskets of thick, fresh-cut fries. The place was awesome: there’s about 8 booths, and 15 or 20 stools at the bar - the only spots available when we got there. It was probably the most laid-back place I’ve ever eaten (especially by DC standards), which was perfect because things tend to get rowdy when you put Jym, Matt, Schmitty and myself in the same room. The lady waiting on us was probably in her fifties and seemed like the kind of person my mom might hang out with, but she was totally chill - she wandered in and out of our conversation, dropping stories and bar recommendations where they fit. At one point, we were sitting there chatting when she set a beer down in front of Jym and I. Neither of us had ordered one, so we both kind of gave each other this look. The next time she walked by, she leaned in to tell us to keep our mouths shut because her boss was there, but the last round was on her.

We got talking about movies and decided to hit the midnight showing of Boondock Saints at The Drafthouse, but stopped in Chinatown on the way because we wanted Guinness-brownie sundaes at Fado (and after a few rounds at Half Moon and a 20-minute Metro ride, Jym and I really needed to pee). Sarah tried to join us there, but didn’t make it until we were leaving (whoops). We didn’t know this on the way in, but George Mason was playing at the MCI Center, so we rode the Metro back with a few hundred cheering fans on their way back to Fairfax.

After getting the car, making it back to Matt’s place, switching cars and seeing Jym off, we made it to the Drafthouse just in time to find out they were playing Capote, even though we thought it would be Boondocks and their website says 24 Hours on Craigslist.

Even though we didn’t get to see the movie, the night was fantastic. We’ll definitely be going back to Half Moon, but we can’t take many people - I don’t think they have tables for more than 4 people, and it’s tough to carry on a conversation if you’re all lined up at the bar. Fado is always great, and the Metro ride back was fun even if the Mason kids wouldn’t join in for Bohemian Rhapsody. I like this city more and more every week.

Jared: “I can’t get rid of my truck - the steering wheel has great bass.”

In a similar vein, I wish I could mic my couch, and Gogol Bordello was on Jimmy Kimmel last night.

I’ve never watched commentaries on DVDs, because I would rather watch a movie I haven’t seen than hear someone talk about a movie I have. NBC has been showing the cast’s favorite episodes for the past couple weeks, with their commentaries on the NBC site.

This week, Cox and Janitor are doing the commentary, and it’s a lot more entertaining than I would have expected, and it’s cool to listen to it while it’s actually on TV. I hope they do it again next week.

And since when is the Geico lizard Australian?

I’ve never read the book, so I had no idea what to expect when I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia last night with Schmitty. Unlike V, I totally got this one - Aslan is supposed to be Jesus! I mean, he died for the sins of the Son of Adam, the thing broke and he came back from the dead, and then he bit off that lady’s face.

Just like Jesus.

I think I’ve found the oldest use of the word “ginormous” - or rather, someone else did, and posted it to Digg. From November 1977:

An incredible, ungraspable number! Yet we are only two steps away from the original ginormous 3↑↑↑↑3.

I’ve spent most of my afternoon and evening cleaning up archives. For several years now, I’ve kept movie and concert ticket stubs. I used to write the names of the people I went with on the back of the ticket, but since the beginning of 2004, I’ve kept a spreadsheet with this information, because I like looking back to see what movies I watched when and with who (and occasionally compiling data). I went through my ticket collection, and added what I could from there, but it didn’t amount to much: 21 movies in 2003, and 10 in 2002. Obviously, I lost a lot along the way. I was surprised by how many of the movies I remembered so well - who I had seen it with and where, where we sat in the theater, things like that. I remember losing a contact when I went to see X-men 2 with FN, Brie, and Coo, and lost the other one a week later when I saw it a second time with my buddy Bill. In a lot of cases, I remember these weird little details better than I remember the movie, but I would argue that those are more important.

For the rest of the afternoon, I wrote a WebAudit script to check links on my site. I updated to MT 3.2 a month or two ago, and nuked my images directory while I was at it. There was a bunch of crap in there, so I went through it and only restored the files I knew would be used, missing a few in the process. I also didn’t realize until later that MT 3.2 uses longer file names than previous versions (this can be changed, but at the time I didn’t know it was going to be a problem). As such, a lot of the file names for my posts were different when I imported them, and any links to them broke. I didn’t even notice this until a week or two ago, so I wrote this script to go through and try every link on the pages. I’m not entirely convinced that it worked the way I wanted it to, but I found a lot of bad links that have been fixed.

Tonight, I’m going to make some dinner, pour a drink, and relax. A few of these Netflix discs have been here for weeks, so I think a movie is in order.

I’ve never been able to read into films much - I’m always the one that just doesn’t get it. I just don’t think that way, I guess, but I can usually tell when there’s something to get, whether I picked up on it or not.

V for Vendetta certainly had something to “get,” I’m just not sure what it was. Ebert said it best:

Is this movie a parable about 2006, a cautionary tale or a pure fantasy? It can be read many ways, as I will no doubt learn in endless e-mails.

The original graphic novel was written between 1981 and 1988, so it certainly wasn’t intended to be a commentary on the state of international politics or the Bush administration’s attack on personal freedoms. I found another review that just couldn’t get over the anarchist elements, completely missing the point that the character in the movie was striking back at a fantastically totalitarian government, and could hardly be compared to the current Anarchist movement.

And then, of course, there’s the Jesus Freak review, wherein tolerance is played off as bigotry:

The rest of “V for Vendetta” not only depicts Christians as evil people who oppress and torture “innocent” people, it also depicts homosexuals as a persecuted, harmless minority of “nice” people. Both of these portrayals are hate-filled, false stereotypes, but the second one is actually contradicted by the secret stash of homoerotic pornography that one of the homosexual characters in the movie hides in a secret room in his house. If all homosexuals, and all homosexual activists, are such goody two shoes, how come so many of them resort to unsafe sexual practices that spread deadly diseases, and how come so many of them promote pornography, support the murder of unborn children through abortion and molest underage children?

I’m not exactly sure how this justifies his stance that the movie portrays a “hate-filled, false stereotype,” but he mentions God a lot so he must be right.

So yes. We’ve got political motives, confused Anarchists, and a heavy dose of bigotry for good measure. If anyone finds a decent review that’s worth reading, please let me know, because I just can’t decide how I feel about this one.

Before I start this story, I need to admit that I’ve started smoking again, part time. I’m not a smoker; I’m a tobacco hobbyist.

This evening, I took a cab home from the Metro stop after St. Patrick’s Day celebrations (which I’ll get to in a moment), and, as I have a few nights this past week, I pulled my folding chair outside to enjoy a smoke and a glass of water before going to bed.

As I was sitting there, I noticed that the mulch around the tree right by my front door was wet. “Some bastard peed on my tree!” I thought. And it’s probably best that I noticed: a moment later, I saw some smoke rising from the mulch that hadn’t been pissed on. It looked like someone had tossed their cigarette in there before I got home, so I stepped on it to put it out, but it kept smoking. Even after pouring the rest of my water on it, it was sizzling and smoldering, so I went inside to get more water to make sure it was out.

So there. If I hadn’t been smoking, my tree may well have caught fire. Now, I DID get renter’s insurance not too long ago, but I still don’t want to deal with that. My filthy habit may have saved the day.

At any rate, it was a weird St. Paddy’s Day. I did dinner at the Cap City Brewery, then most of us headed into DuPont to hit Lucky Bar and catch up with my buddy Jeff. Despite the pub decor, it was mostly yuppies and hipsters dancing to hip-hop. I would have preferred a nice pub with actual Irish music, but we had a good time nonetheless.

Every time I hang out in the District, I want to move there more.

If you don’t have iTunes installed, or haven’t signed up for the Music Store, you should do so just to get the free songs every week. They typically post two every Tuesday, and I always like one (if not both) of them.

The single this week was Munich, by Editors (the British ones - apparently there’s another band with the same name that’s causing some confusion on the iTMS). It’s very Interpol-y, and I’ve listened to it a bunch of times since I got it the other day. Go grab it - I mean, it’s free, so why not?

On the other hand, you can skip Gary Nichols, because he’s a little girl.