Boy, A Lot To Talk About

I probably won't get into everything, but here goes...

I thought It's A Grind was just a fake coffee place when I saw it in the opening titles of the Showtime show, Weeds, but it's real, and they just opened one near my usual Starbucks. When I went in one morning, six people were behind the counter, all greeting me, and one customer was sitting in one of the comfortable chairs, waiting for her order. I usually get an iced Americano (espresso and water) because too much hot coffee really makes me sweat, plus cold coffee doesn't affect your breath as much. There's was pretty much like the way they make it at Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, which is weird and not very good. The pastries looked better than Starbucks but I'm not sure I'll be back.

I do like the coffee at Seattle's Best, which is in my neighborhood Borders. I found I really enjoyed writing there, longhand, and plan to do it more often, hopefully about once a week. It's productive, plus I can look at girls.

Friday I got a girl I work with--who's really beautiful--to have a couple drinks with me, about 12:30 p.m., as we got off early for Good Friday. It was a good Friday. Nothing particularly romantic, just good conversation. I'm not really expecting anything, but that early stage of getting to know a woman is always fun, even if the promise doesn't turn out the way you want. I actually really like that she's very pretty but with some arm scars and a messed-up clavicle from a car accident, but that's just me. I don't have a fetish about injuries but I find little flaws attractive. Now I just need to find someone who feels the same about big flaws, heh heh.

Parents came in from Chicago Friday night, left Tuesday. It was fun. At this age, it's more for them and the kids to experience each other, but I enjoyed myself. I find I'm kind of quiet during the visits but mostly a comfortable kind of quiet. They still look good but my stepdad's driving isn't so great. He's not used to how in California there's a separate left turn light, so we went through a couple green lights with red left turns. I ate well, with salmon Benedict, prime rib, shrimp Caesar and some Bloody Marys and beers to wash the meals down, so now I'm pretty sick of the rich food for a while. Looking at a couple pix my mom took reminded me I need to definitely lose a few pounds.

Both parents seemed surprised that I would rather have the kids every weekend as I do, rather than every other, since it obviously would get in the way of dating. And yes, sometimes I do wish that, but not that hard, as I think I'd miss them too much. It just makes me think of my own dad not being around and all of a sudden I'm a sad 7 year old or something, you know? I don't remember every crying about that as a kid but obviously I pushed it inside, because now it's on tap like Fat Tire.

Bought some books at Borders. They had a 3 for 2 sale of paperbacks, so I got the latest Paul Auster, Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown, as it sounded really interesting and he's a major writer I've never read, and Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential, as I like that guy and figure he has some good stories. I also got Giada De Laurentiis' Everyday Pasta because it actually looked pretty easy to make, and a book called Rejection Collection, which is a bunch of cartoons rejected by the New Yorker for reasons of taste, in many cases. It has some of my favorite cartoonists from my old National Lampoon-reading days like Sam Gross, Gahan Wilson and P.C. Vey, and many more.

Bought a set of two albums by the tragic Teutonic chanteuse, Nico, called The Frozen Borderline 1968-1970, which includes The Marble Index and Desertshore, along with alternative versions and demos. It's hard to comment on yet except it's pretty heavy. One guy in the liner notes says The Marble Index isn't an album you listen to, it's a hole you fall into. Both albums are only about 30 minutes long each because it was felt by the label they might be too depressing if they were longer, but of course now they are longer. We'll see what happens.

Had a very wearying, stressful day for various reasons. A) Didn't know how things were left with the girl from work. Texted her a little over the weekend, admitting the beer hit me more than I expected (it was 9.4% alcohol vs. the usual 4-5%), and she replied that she could tell and that's why she gave me her water. I asked if I was buzzed in a charming way or an obnoxious one, and she didn't reply. I know I wasn't obnoxious but just wanted to see if she would say charming. Didn't talk to her much today. Ah, well. B) While I was out yesterday, my assistant checked my emails, which is normal but apparently against our parent company policy, which became a problem when he called their help desk to report my computer was very slow. The help desk guy freaked out about my password being shared, and this morning my computer was disabled. I called him to get it started and he wanted to lecture me about it. "Sharing your password is a big no-no." "OK, can we get my computer started?" "Not only does it compromise your computer, it can affect other people's computers." "All right, won't happen again." "Is there anything else you want to say?" "Is there--no, I have nothing else to say. Can we just get this going?" "Two wrongs don't make a right--you ever hear that saying?" "Yes, yes I have. Can we please start my computer?" The guy wanted me to apologize or something? I swear, if my phone had a button that ejected him from the building, they'd be scraping him off the street. Also, not a good time to have the password "coochie99," either! Long story on that, but it's changed now. C) My manager was let go near the end of the day, for various undisclosed reasons, though I felt terrible that this help desk thing and one other thing my assistant did on my instruction got her in trouble. I did hear from another friend/coworker that she had a big argument with someone else there, so while I liked her and feel bad this happened, I'm a little relieved I wasn't a major factor, apparently.

So after such a day, and having heard fantastic reviews of Grindhouse from ADD and my friend Sarah, the latter of whom I had hoped to see the film, I decided if the theater near my house was playing it when I got there, I'd see it tonight. I got there right at the showtime of 7:00 and asked the box office guy if there was room. "Sure, there's room. In fact, if you want to stretch out and put your feet over the seat in front of you, you can." So, okay, the film is flopping commercially, but no matter, I was psyched. I sat about six rows up, but the closest of any of the maybe 15 people there. What did I think? Well, I had a helluva lot of fun with it and am glad to have seen it in a theater. I dont think words like brilliant and masterpiece should be applied, but it's tremendously enjoyable, vibrant, lovingly produced filmmaking. I think I prefer Rodriguez' Planet Terror over QT's Death Proof, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy that. Planet Terror just had so much going on--a funny, sexy, rocking zombie action movie with cool vehicles and weapons and tons of gore and laughs and a strong Rose McGowan performance and some great cameos. The fake trailers...Edgar Wright's "Don't" was hilarious and got a lot of crowd laughs, Eli Roth's "Thanksgiving" was funny and shocking, and only Rob Zombie's "Werewolf Women of the S.S." failed, though it could have been a good music video. It just didn't have the right feel for this project. Speaking of which, the scratched film, old Coming Attractions titles and Rodriguez' fake trailer for "Machete" all worked wonderfully. Death Proof was good but a bit oddly structured--basically lots of talky setup for a big action setpiece, followed by more talky setup and the final setpiece. I know Tarantino said he turned a corner with how he wrote his women characters, and I did like their bawdy cameraderie for the most part, but thought it got a little self-conscious with the "nigga pleases" and "muthafuckas" and all that, and the talky scenes could have either been shorter or had some other subplot going on, such as more to do with Jungle Julia's texting boyfriend who never shows up. That had some unrealized potential there. I also would have liked another actress in Ferlito's spot, as she really doesn't appeal to me with that bat nose of hers. Kurt Russell is cool in what ends up quite a bit more of a challenging role than it first appears. He isn't just the laconic badass. I did think the two car sequences were really good, though, the first making me chuckle guiltily, and the second really almost nail-biting, at least until the tables started to turn. I liked Zoe Bell a lot, and Rosario Dawson was cool, too. Tracie Thoms is the one with the over-the-top dialogue, which I don't blame her for. Kind of a shame we didn't get anything with the Lee Montgomery character when she ended up with the redneck. What else? Rodriguez got the better use of the "missing reel" gag, and not just because he used it first. It was funnier when he did it, more disappointing when Tarantino did it. Again, not knocking Tarantino's work, just saying I thought Rodriquez' was the more fully realized, cohesive film. Be interesting to see what they do with the dvd and if they do release them as separate films as has been mentioned. I don't see that really helping box office much if they do that--are there people not seeing this because they only like one of the directors, or the premise of one of the movies? I don't think so. I think 98% of people who like one of the directors like the other, and if so, they don't care that much what movie they're making. But obviously the people who will see anything Rodriguez or Tarantino do is smaller than they realized.

Bought both soundtracks off iTunes. The Rodriguez one is probably better, as it's 22 tracks, much of it by Rodriguez, with a few other numbers and some McGowan vocals, while the Tarantino one is shorter, focused on obscure oldies, and with his trademark short dialogue segments. It's a dollar more, for some reason.