james new brain

MLK Weekend: some drinks, some comics

SEATTLE – 2008.01.21

This was a great weekend. Let me tell you about it. Ok, cool.

-So Friday night, the Spank Rock DJs Devlin and Darko played this awesome dance party at the War Room. It was a Friday so the crowd wasn’t so thuggish/ethnic as it was hipsters. But hipsters that come to dance parties and drink are fun hipsters, not lame bike riding ones, so it was awesome. Rolled up with G.rob, his boo Erin, and her boo’s Karen and Katie, and my boo, John Todd. You might know him as Tank Todd, I think that’s what everyone’s calling him now. It was a dance party, so I didn’t take my camera. THAT, was a mistake. I’ll take it next time. Maybe I’ll put up some pictures off face book below this sentance. Maybe not.

Ok I decided to. I stole these 4 pictures from Erin Riley, Katie Springer, and Ms. Karen Ann Heath Bar. Sorry guys. The WAR ROOM.

Tall Tank Todd spying Djs Devlin&Darko, Erin channels Medusa (right?) and I’m doing my patented Exorcist dance move.

I stole this from you, Karen.

aww

So yea, super fun: I GODDAM LOVE CRUMBY DANCING.

-Hannars updated her brog with tales from the South east, and I am jealous.

-Additionally, I finished this sweet comic, ABSOLUTE NEW FRONTIER. I’ve been coveting this beast for over a year, and Christmas finally justified the purchase. It’s huge, and gorgeous, and just look how huge it is compared to the size of my dog:

WHAT IT IS: America in the 50s and 60s, starting with McCarthy hearings disbanding the JSA, and then chronologically telling the origin stories of the various heroes across the DC universe until the formation of the Justice Leaugue. The whole thing ties in to actual history, from the Korean War,to Vietnam, to Kenedey’s space race, allowing the DC superheroes that are just going through their origin stories the added reference points of real history.

This whole book is an incredible piece to anyone versed in the DC universe, and silver age stuff specifically. Inheriting a large collection of 60s and 70s Silver Age comics from my Dad has allowed me a certain nostalgia for any sort of flashback to the silver age comic that comes across the racks from time to time, but for an artist of Cooke’s calliber to combine all the pieces, from the Gaurdian’s empowering of Hal Jordan with the Green Lantern Ring, to Batman’s silver age softening of character to reflect the times (vs the super scary hard edge of his Golden Age portrayal in the 40s and 50s), to incorporating more obscure characters like J’on j’onnz and the Challengers of the Unknown, and then bringing everyone together to fight this freaking flying dinosaur island for 50 pages at the end, this thing is just awesome.

New Frontier is American comics at their freaking best. It isn’t some emo indie thing, or overly artsy and pretentious, or JAPANESE. It is huge, and awesome, patriotic, nostalgic and stupidly cool. And Darwyn Cooke’s art always makes me cry.

You can borrow it if you ask nicely.

So yea, I’ve decided to start putting up little blurbs on books or comics I read, or music or movies i watch or whatever to practice my writing and hopefully turn you guys on to some cool stuff along the way. Jamenewbrain doesn’t deal exclusively in drunken pictures of me and my friends anymore! But that’s still like 90% of it…so yay for drinking.

goddam Catcher in the Rye, goddam crumby Norwegian Wood

SEATTLE – 2008.01.20

So I left Korea with kind of a massive reading list. It’s gonna take like 50 quadjillion years to get through it all though, but reading sure does beat sitting and staring at people on the bus commute to school and back everyday. Korea surprised me by awakening a, as Ryo put it, “huge reading boner”. I was also excited that it was for books with more than 50% words vs. picture content unlike my typical reading material of the past, oh, my whole life.

Anyway, I read the goddam Catcher in the goddam Rye, and realized talking like goddam crumby Holden Caulfield really is better then talking like all you phoney regular people. Also, like everyone on the planet is doing right now, I read a Haruki Murakami book, Norwegian Woooooood(as per Hannars suggestion). I’m going to now type giberish that falls out of my goddam mouth as I think about these two books::::::and then kill myself. Not really, they were good.

Regarding the Murakami, ok. I think I shouldn’t have read this one so recently after Pat’s copy of “South of the Border, West of the Sun”.. I’ve only read those two Murakami’s, but they were really damn similar (same 1st person jazz enthusiast male character, who even though he has a really boring personality somehow channnels reading and listening to jazz alone in to attracting crazy suicidal/nymphomaniacal women to have sex with him before they kill themselves). That isn’t to say their journeys, are the same, or in any way less beautifully described along the way. That middle hundred page chapter 7 of Wood, where he leaves Tokyo to visit Naoko in the country at her hospital was serene as all hell. If the first third was a little too much deja vu, by that middle section in the country I started to get in to it much much more. Some of these characters were great, I especially enjoyed this Hatsumi character, who treats every facet of societal interaction as a game, from academia, to making money, to sexual conquest. Understanding the rules in these worlds, he does exactally what is needed to suceed, and then delights in winning the game. He easily scores a job with Japanese government right out of school, and has just as easily slept with in excess of 50 women or something like that. His human interactions are never seen as immoral in his eyes, and he has good intentions for society at heart. When you listen to his philosophy in conversations with our protagonist, instead he looks at the relative discrepencies in morality as simple differences of life philosophy, all of which should have a voice and are equally correct for whichever person is practicing them. Side note: Danny, hurry up and come home from China for crissake. Woah, actually this book is more complicated than I thought..lots of really realistic slice of life passages as Toru, or whatever the main guys name was, carries on his day-to-day in between the jolts where he gets laid, or finds out another person he knows just commited suicide. Haha, no Norwegian Wood is actually a LOT better than I’m describing right now. Seriously.

Rye Catchers was short and sweeeeeeeet, I definitely could have just read Caulfield narrate himself walking around Manhattan island for another three hundred pages. Too bad he turns out to actually be just insane. Cmon dude, life really isn’t that bad, and there are plenty of people wayyyy cooler than your kid sister. And your teacher? He wasn’t trying to get with you, IDIOT, he just thought you were interesting and a good possible life apprentice. He wanted to HELP you and you ran out on him at 5AM with a couple “goddam crumby”s. Also, why does the dude cry so much. But beside all those things that depressed me, not to the point where I thought about just running in to the country and building a shack mind you, the book’s tremendously enjoyable, fast as f to read, and you laugh out loud (lol) at least like 8 times. Those are good times. I like how this 16 year old dude is willing to just go up to people way older than him like taxi drivers with families and stuff, and ask them to get drinks with him, while sarcastically deriding them for being boring personalities. I like every time he describes the reasons of how girls “knock him out”, those parts were soo truly put it was like Seinfeld or something. I like how he had hypo tendencies, like Seth, and was all convinced he had cancer after having a cancur sore on his lip for a week. And I guess it’s pretty endearing that his sole life aspiration is to catch kids falling off of cliffs. Fucking Lemmings for DOS addict.

Oh, and that goddam girl in Norwegian Wood who asks Toru, “are you trying to speak like the guy in Catcher in the Rye?”. F no, he doesn’t sound at all like Holden Caulfield. –> I am goddam crumby Holden Caulfield. And that makes me depressed, and then I cry.

Hahahahahaahhaah, ok that’s all. Next up: House of Leaves. Actually, some comics instead.

fancy dresses+open bar…lisas bday, WTC Seattle

World Trade Center, SEATTLE – 2008.01.04

Ok, I finally finished messing around with these pictures enough to post them. A couple weeks ago, lisa had a big birthday bash at Seattle’s world trade center, out by the piers, and it ended up being an open bar fueled dance extravaganza. We’re talking work out dancing here, of the 3 hours straight until you’ve completely sweated off your buzz like two hours ago and your voice is hoarse from screaming the lyrics to “Build me up Buttercup” or freaking will smith allllll night. Again, more test runs with my camera this night, got like 300 pictures in, and of them, i give you these twenty that describe the night and the great folks who I spent it with pretty damn well. BEGINNNN::::::

Blah blah. Blahdy blahdy blahdy blah.

BRAIN-RAY

Jonalauren was like this allllll night.

our ties are too big?

“look at her face, like hoooly culap..”

Jessie’s girl. No seriously, thanks for inviting me Lisa.

Look at that one girl. She TOTALLY gets it. Also pictured, Mr. Lisa’s father.

all that’s missing is bunny ears for Colin.

I sang Elton John – your song, for the ladies. Or I could be giving a stump speech.

live long and prosper becomes John’s motif of the night.

G.O.B. Bluth

Mouths agape, f’ing zombies dancing.

I already told this to Vik, but this picture perfectly captures Angie and Jonathan’s actual personalities.

I direct your eyes to the man flashing live long and prosper.

And I leave you with my favorite thing, old men dancing.

Like seriously strutting it.. THANKS LISA!

NEW YEARS (aka the future)

SEATTLE – 2007.12.31 – 2008.01.01

IT’S TWO-THOUSAND-NINE BABY! WE DID IT WOOOOOOO 2009!!!

Hahahah, yea. Megapost of my first 21-year-enabled New Years. Dont know how it compares to Mexico last year, (the conga-line with our families, me Danny and Jonathan skinny dipping in front of hundreds of old people, to dancing to stupid trance music in an outdoor rave on sand are kind of hard to top), but it was still pretty close. Also, this is the first run with the used d70 slr camera i picked up for the holidays. Shi-jak..

That’s the space-needle EXPLODING

Alright, so first we went to this place PROST on Phinney Ridge, that has all sorts of German beers on tap sold BY THE LITER.

Then, to the Hard City Refugee Camp..

Nessa-janebbachanezza, she lives there of course.

Cullen!

Eric and Milad were there too haha

You’re SUPPOSED to wear a Tux on New Years!

But more on the refugee camp in a sec, We hightailed it downtown to PESOS at the base of Queen Anne to drink tequila, meet some folks, and be in prime real estate come midnight fireworks shooty off time.

Paul and Colin, who is making an abraham lincoln face.

ladies and gentlemen, the completely ridiculous Jonathan Glancy

Bux and Rohry

Brother/Sister shot, too bad Colin’s ghost made it in.

Met these cool dudes outside, dude in blue is wearing a wig – I saw his bald dome in a gust of wind!

NICK COLLISON of the Seattle Sonics, probably not too happy to have Jonathan trying to talk ball when he’s trying to spend new years with his girl..

Lisa and Allison, Mexican memories

How’d Colin end up with TWO of lisa’s friends?

New Years strikes. Happy 2009! And yes, we each got to kiss like a boatload of babes.

Holy crap, where’d Vik come from!

Then all of THESE girls show up. Though we probably should have moved ten feet to the right to be infront of a cool looking bar instead of this dry cleaners..