james new brain

SEATTLE – 2008.02.23 – Fremont Coffee

Jon, and John. Both born in Bozeman, Montana. Similar style, identical laptops. I am friends with some dumb bastards, indeed.

SEATTLE – 2008.02.23

Oscarsssssssssss:
Blargy blarg.  Blarg.  BLARG.
Tomorrow is oscars, I watched the stupid movies.  Actually they were good, and not stupid.  Dont expect me to say anything inspired about the five movies, I’m just going to ramble and recommend.

There will be blood: “I eat YOUR milkshake.”
So what’s his face day lewis here is crazy.  His voice sounds like oil, and you’re basically mesmerized throughout the entire relentlesssss movie.  Radiohead guitarist’s score is pretty key to establishing the constant tension that kind of beats you over and over for three hours.  I don’t know.  Usually when you see movies, as you stand up through the time you get to the car etc you kind of debrief with your friends, recount jokes or shocking moments, you know?  After this one, everyone was just kind of silent.  For at least twenty minutes, though everyone would sheepishly laugh like once, “ha..” awkwardly.  Yea, it was a pretty overwhelming movie, but definitely a must see.  I feel like day lewis was on screen for at least 95% of the movie, so it really is just about this character, which is fine because he’s unlike anything else I really remember seeing in a movie recently.

Judgement: As far as best of the five? Possibly.  Most unique, definitely.  Not my favorite, personally, but everyone EVERYONE should probably watch it.

Juno:
First one I saw, though i definitely experienced the backlash that is inherint when anything goes all “garden state soundtrack” on me.  I think it was hard at first to get in to that stripper’s dialogue style for the juno character at first, and the hamburger phone etc, but I dont discount the movie based on those things.  I was really in to it by the time it was a third of the way in, liking all the characters, and happy that things like Michael Bluth coming on to juno happened, to keep things shaken up.  George michael is of course great, and Elektra is another one that you assume will be movie stereotype but then goes and looks like actually a pretty good future mother (in the shopping mall scene).  So yea, I did end up liking this one a lot during, but haven’t really found myself thinking about it too much after seeing it.

Judgement: You dont need to see it in theater, and it wont/doesn’t deserve to win.  But its nice enough to torrent and put on for an ok (but not awesome) night.  Obviously though, since an awesome night requires instead either booze plus loud bass frequencies and or seeing andrew wk live.

Michael Clayton:
No one watches this one for some reason, I think because its color palette is all blue black and white, which makes people think of the backstreet boys.  and it has george clooney, of Batman and Robin fame.  But fuck that movie, and fuck george clooney for being in it.  actually, I love george clooney, and i am old enough to separate him from the piece of shit that batman and robin was.  i just dont get why warner brothers were like, “you know what the batman franchise needs?  fucking arnold schwarzeneganagher and nipples on batmans costume.”  and then the other dumbass executive says, “great idea, lets also have his boots shoot out ice skates, and show a close up of his ass when he’s getting pumped up to fight bad guys.”  Michael clayton is kind of like a john grisham novel, and is just really well done.  It didn’t impact my life, but i enjoyed the two hours i spent watching it.

Judgement: Fuck batman and robin, the movie, not the characters (who rule).  Michael clayton wont win any awards.

No Country For Old Men:
So everywhere on the internet I go, I hear that this is going to win.  Ok, whatever, it was good.  Bardem’s bad guy is a pretty good killer.  He totally stole that coin flip for life or death thing from Two Face though.  But fuck Batman Forever, that movie sucks.  Speaking of Tommy Lee Jones, he’s also in this movie, and he’s pretty cool.  Does someone want to explain to me his speech at the end of the movie?  I feel like if I thought about it for a while, I’d understand the point of the movie in this speech, but I dont really want to think about it too hard.  Josh Brolin rules, he’s hilarious AND badass.  I think all the parts with badasskiller hunting awesomeBrolin are soooo great, but am I the only one who doesn’t really understand why those parts add up to a movie that deserves best picture?  Yes its really like stupidly incredibly well made.  The scenery is expansive, and shit that defies movie convention given the plot, always happens, which is amazing and unexpected, and then you remember its the coen brothers, but wait does that then make those unconventional things Expected?  I’m not sure.

Judgement: It’s good, but I’m not killing myself due to its awesomeness.

Atonement:
Um, AWESOME.  My favorite genre in the movies are war-set epic romantic tragedies.  Based on the trailer, I was all ready for the next english patient.  Atonement managed to deliver everything I needed from that expectation while refusing to fall in to all the war-set epic romantic tragedy cliches.  That’s a nice compliment, even though I love those cliches and find nothing wrong with them usually, but it does add up to a pretty fresh movie.  There’s this amazing five-minute tracking shot in the middle of the movie, that tries to express that enormity of the british army that’s withdrawing from Dunkirk, heading up the beach, showing horses being executed (how do they get them to fall down like that?), going up to the village above, showing a choir singing (with their voices in tune with the sweeping score), and then to a bar, with the three main dudes walking in and out of the scene.  It is completely mind blowing, like a couple of those scenes in Children of Men.  People say, yea its a cool shot, but it takes you out of the movie instead of really expressing the size of the retreat that is intended.  I say fuck that, I give you +150 points because the shot is soooo awesomely choreagraphed that you should shut the hell up.  This is the most beautifully filmed of the five movies.  Kira Knightley’s green dress?  and the hot hot sex scene in the parlour room?  Stupid little blonde haired, never change her haircut in 80 years, girl, How DARE you ruin these two folks lives!  I dont forgive you.  The end of this movie?  F’ing unexpected as all hell.

Judgement:  This one was my favorite.  I wish it would win.  Why isn’t it going to win by the way?

“I’M FINISHED.”

SEATTLE – 2008.02.23 – BOOKS I’VE READ

So somehow this book came to me. I think it’s Gelly’s, and then via Ryo? It’s a beat to shit thing by Richard Brautigan, who I learned from Amazon is a crazy ass psychadelic author, who writes these really surreal short novels, that basically make you feel like you’re on drugs.

The whole thing is told kinda like mythology, or a children’s fable or something, short one or two page chapters, with tiny sentances that are directly to the point. The world that they describe though is a mind fuck that had me laughing at least on every page.

So in this world, there are only a few building materials. Sure there are trees, and stones. But everything else seems to be made out of processed watermelon sugar. The bridges, windows (and glass), statues, clocks, and tombs that sit on the bottom of the rivers are made from watermelons. These watermelons have seven colors, and like the sun, take on a different color based on the day.

Everyone lives in this village called iDeath, but the village is either one big building or just the woods, I’m not sure. For instance, to get to the kitchen from the living room, you walk under a river, and in the living room there are couches next to trees, etc. Who knows what this thing is.

There’s some darkness to this thing too. Some crazy dude named inBoil, lives in an old junkyard, (which is where the remnants of our current civilzation are, long after people have forgotten how to use them). He’s a drunk, and he recruits other drunks, and one day they go crazy, read below.

There are also tigers, that once upon a time did battle witht he humans, regualarly eating them, etc, see below. They speak and can do multiplication that is sometimes correct.

The tombs are interesting, all the dead are buried under water, in illuminated glass tombs, that you can see as you walk over the bridges throughout the village.

Oh, and everyone’s crazy. The book’s like 100 pages of kiddie level reading, but that’s the point. The writing style and weird world where I think our name’s for things dont coincide with those in the text, (the “watermelon”s in the book may not even be fruit or anything similar in our world. Ditto, “tiger”s may just be some kind of cannibalistic human off shoot, and not animals at all.), but all of these things add up to a pretty surreal experience.

LOOK, JUST READ THESE THREE PAGES, and if they dont convince you, skip this article. Crazy ass tigers.

There, if that doesn’t convince you, then you’re just lazy and didn’t read it.

I’m planning on buying this collection of a couple of Brautigan’s stories, including In Watermelon Sugar, to see if all of his stuff is this crazy. Recommended if you are weird.

SEATTLE – 2008.02.23

This is Chris. He is the person that I write all of these blog posts to. He is the only person who reads my blog. In the above picture, I have captured the essence of his soul.

SEATTLE – 2008.02.14 – Valentine’s Day

Soooooo, I’ve been out of the game for a while. Got the flu, started getting stressed about classes, etc… but, now GOT UPDATES FOR Ya’LL…because…ive been doing things…….lots of things…i’m alive and this post is really long. and don’t even get me started on “House of Leaves”, that’s an entirely separate post for the future. OK, and not even chronological, because at this point I’ve forgotten when I’ve done these things… to facilitate communication these sections are lettered:

A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.A.
- First off, a while ago I drove up to Western with Janessa to see the girls. Actually, it was all girls and me. like 15 of them. Actually, that’s a lie, eventually Eric met me off of work, and I chilled with dudes like Nick and Pat (first time in a long long long time…) and those 15 million girls, and it was small town thrills up in BELLINGHAM. Check it… Blahdy, here’s the pix.

Four of these girls live in this big fancy house with a huge glass vase full of 5ft tall sticks in their living room. More on the way they sing later. Oh, and it was Lauren’s (only black haired girl pictured) 21st.

Pat’s house. Hadn’t seen Pat since… um… Sasquatch this summer, and he took me in to his home (pictured) and made me coffee. Pretty nice dude, so it’s too bad, as you can see, that his right hand is sooo messed up.

Yea, those ARE brass knuckles. This is at some random Bellingham house party. It’s just like a regular house party, with the beer pong, and the dancing…mingling, only add an extra room full of dirty hippies (including girls with dreadlocks, barf) staring at black light posters.

This drink was called an ass-to-mouth. Isn’t that stupid? But watcha gonna do when you’re rolling with 15 girls who want to go to a gay bar?

Eric plays D.D…..aaaand by this time of morning, my camera is as focused as the eyes behind it.

Alright. Two things of definite note:
1. When it started snowing in the morning, you know that song in “White Christmas” where it starts snowing and Dean Martin sings the bottom note “snow…” and then everyone builds like this chord of “snow…”s on top of it? These stupid girls start doing that when it starts snowing in the yard, without even agreeing to do it. It just starts and happens, like some weird magic.
2. Then, as me and Janessa are heading to the car to head back to seattle, all four of those girls living in that damn house are hanging out the doorway sideways singing “goodbyeeeeeeee” in an f’ing chord at our backs. Had to get OUT OF BELLINGHAM.

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- This story is hilarious. This gallery in Ballard, OKOK, that Ryo’s been trying to get us to go to for a while…well we finally went.

I thought we were going to see some art collective doing mixed media about an abandoned nuclear power plant.

Instead, we (Me, Ryo, Tank Todd, and Rob) drive to this empty 70 foot long room, with a smattering of folks standing around waiting expectantly. In the very middle of the room there’s this drum set, surrounded by candles on the floor and a sound system.

Some lady starts handing out ear plugs and free wine. Everyone’s standing around the front 20 feet of the room, by the windows to the street staring at the drum set down the hallway-like room. The lady informs everyone that it’s just about to start.

Suddenly the door in the very back of the room opens and this guy comes out in colonial dress costume (think colonial america, founding fathers, white curly wig), carrying a drum stick in each hand. He walks (quite a ways) to the drum set, with shoes clicking the floor as he walks.

People begin putting in their ear plugs, so I follow suit. The colonist sits down at the drum set, puts on earphones, and hits a button on some mixing board.

Then he proceeds to play rock drums to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons symphony.

He plays various rock styles, nothing mind blowing, but its still pretty awesome. When he plays european fantasy metal style drumming, that’s the best. He had a second bass drum, but we think it was just for show. Some parts are genuinely pretty…. this is Vivaldi. What I mean is that his drums actually fit pretty well.

Just when this possibly could be getting a little boring (15 minutes in?) a violin solo starts, and he stands up, walks to a table on the side, pours a glass of wine and downs it, reaches under the table, pulls out a glass bong, and takes a huge bong rip (fact checked: gray smoke on exhale), then puts on huge Ray Ban sunglasses…sitting down just in time to launch in to this really rocking crescendo-y part of the symphony. That part KILLED, and gave everyone enough renewed excitement to coast us through the end of the piece.

He then stands up, does a ceremonial bow, and walks back to the end of the hall as we clap and lights fade back up.

Everyone is kind of laughing, kind of bewildered, but everyone’s got a huge smile on their face.

As we were getting ready to leave, (and go get delicious cupcakes at cupcake royale), we overhear some congratulations behind us, and its the dude in regular grown-up hipster clothes talking with some friends. An old man says, “nice job, Son.” to which the dude replies, “Thanks dad.”

That part kind of made it.

Ryo has pictures. he should post them.

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- As I mentioned earlier, I got the flu, and missed a week of school. That was the suckiest week of my life, and I shivered, and often. It also happened to coincide with my reading of a certain extremely disorienting 50-100 pages of “House of Leaves” where characters I was reading first person were going insane and having weird stuff going on with their bodies, plus the house. Ugh. I will tell you about “House of Leaves” in another post. I shouldn’t get in to this right now.

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- Saw all the best picture nominees. I will also talk about this in a post this weekend.

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- Have you heard White Denim? They are my favorite band. Listen to them, and if you live in Seattle, come see them with me March 2nd. I’d say its kind of cross between crazy messed up guitars and being awesome. Also, people do a lot of yelling in unison, and nothing they say makes any sense. Also they’re from Austin. Is austin really cool or something? Hahaha, yea, they are so cool my brain explodes.

I just stole this off google. Dude, they’re really cool, I swear. They don’t even have 23 members, and I still like them plenty.

More about music:
- Gelly has a new music blog. Everything she likes is usually awesome / i hate it, AT THE SAME TIME.

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Alright. That’s all for now. it’s v-day and I’ve got a hot date, and that’s all the shiz that’s shizzing out of my fingers right now. There’s seriously more shiz, later, in a day or two it’s coming. House of Leaves pt. 1 is the next post, i’ve been taking notes (and going insane). Then whatever happens this weekend too, becuase 3-day weekend = my life gets awesomer…. + Bone thugz show on monday (little scared), and I’m forming a band.

Oh, leave me a damn comment so that I can know that it isn’t just Chris who reads this isht. Actually, a post dedicated to Chris is next. Chris: my only friend.