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WALL-E

Quite possibly the most creative and interesting movie that I’ve ever seen. There’s humor, drama, love, moral and amazing CGI all squished into an hour and a half. It’s one of those movies that you buy on dvd to watch a few more times. I saw the digital presentation on opening night at the AMC theater in Emeryville, which is down the street from Pixar. The theater was packed to the brim and there were a even a few Pixar crew members in the audience! WALL-E is just another Pixar / Disney that’s cute enough for kids, smart enough for adults and well-rounded enough for people somewhere in the middle.

I’d recommend it to anyone looking to get their 10 dollars worth, here’s my Yahoo Review.

Tags: movie, pixar, robot, wall-e

Road Trip: Aftermath

Well I’m back.  I had a drink with an Ethiopian who then gave me front row seat on the Hollywood tour bus. I took a boat ride in Long Beach and had a Corona while we sailed away. I saw all those big and rich celebrity homes in Beverley Hills; like Britney Spears, George Clooney and The Osbornes. I drove through Inglewood and listened to Dr Dre. I talked to a crazy homeless girl who has been pregnant with ‘thorn’ for a few years now. Woohoo!

I knew full well that it would’ve been much faster to take the GPS directions down to Malibu, but I really wanted to take the scenic path and see Route 1. I can’t say whether or not it was worth it now because it’s so dangerous on those steep and windy curves and I paid 5.64 a gallon for gas that doesn’t last long driving up and down hillsides. But, the views were amazing after the fog burned off. Route 1 is a hundred or so miles or so of cliffs, ridges and rocks. After a while you get so used to driving left and right, you forget that your a five feet from a few hundred feet fall!

After Route 1 was over with I was dead set on getting to Malibu! Not just because the name sounds so awesome, but mostly because of the Tenacious D secret track called Malibu Nights.  Honestly, it’s really nice but I was pretty much underwhelmed. I may have just been tired from the drive, but it wasn’t what I expected. I don’t really know what I was looking for out there but I didn’t find it. I stayed the night in Agoura Hills, which is about 15 minutes away and ate fish at a place called Chuy’s (pronounced Chewies). I came back to the hotel, sat by the pool and watched the cars speeding by contemplating how humans learned to build and ride in such fast boxes with wheels. Not just that, but how many there are and seriously, WTF. Since I had been driving for eight+ hours, I decided it was probably time to go to sleep.

I woke up a few times in the middle of the night not knowing where I was. After the pretty crappy / awesome complimentary breakfast I hit the road towards Los Angeles. Surprisingly there was hardly anyone on the highway. First I drove to the wrong Hollywood Blvd and wondered to myself if Hollywood may have been closed in the mornings. I called Sonya, because she probably knows these things and she told me to look for the Chinese Theater. So after another eight miles of driving I found free parking at the Kodak theater.  I walked around and saw the sidewalk stars, shops and tour buses.

I wound up meeting the Ethiopian guy I mentioned earlier who owned one of the tour bus companies. I signed up for the 10:45 trip. Sweet! I walked around aimlessly for another two hours waiting for the tour which would take me into the Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills and Sunset Strip. One person after another begged for my money in exchange for tours, clothes and star maps. It seems to be the way of life down there. Meh.  During the wait I found the Harry Potter stars’ foot and hand prints, the Jimmy Kimmell Show theater and the Hollywood sign in the distance. Around 10:15 I headed back to the tour bus pickup where the Ethiopian guy was swearing into the sky about killing another tour guide.  He sits down next to me and starts ranting about how he hates people.  Well, we wind up talking for a half an hour about the world and after he offered me a drink out of his flask of hard liquor (which usually i would turn down, but hey it’s Hollywood right?), he stood up and proclaimed me to be one of the coolest people in the world on the top of his lungs and drunk off his ass. I was so cool in fact, I got shotgun on the tour bus!  Word.

The tour was about two and a half hours of sightseeing. From the hills to the mansions. In no particular order and missing a bunch: Houses of Brad Pitt, Ozzy Osborne, and so many more.  I drove around Beverly Hills and stuff, looking at houses and people.  And then headed off to Long Beach.

There aren’t many words to describe Long Beach other than perfect.  My new goal is to make enough money to live there or at least own property to visit on a whim.  I’m pretty sure that it’s heaven on earth.  I would complain about the oil rigs off shore, but I’m sure they’re what make the city profitable enough to look so damn sexy.  Sublime.  Indeed.

That’s enough talking click here to view the slideshow!  I urge you to visit Long Beach.

Tags: california, la, long beach, los angeles, malibu, photos, roadtrip, tour

ROAD TRIP!

Around eight in the morning I’ll be taking off in my car. I filled up my camel water backpack, four granola bars, a container of cherrios, three sets of pills (ginko biloba, St. Johns wort, and multi vitamins) and a couple leafs of white sage. I never thought that I’d say this but here it is - I’m going to Malibu, Beverly Hills, and Long Beach. Depending on the situation, I may be sleeping in my car. It looks like the hotels are either very expensive or in the ghetto. But, since I’m going alone the car will be just fine. Plus I’ll save a few bucks. I have no idea what to expect, and have made no plan other than a google map and backpack. That’s the way I like it, spontaneity at it’s finest.

I’ve been a bit busy to write, but Sonya and I went to BFD08 and met Cypress Hill! Here’s the slideshow, enjoy! We saw a few bands we never heard of like the Flobots, who I think were awesome despite their song being banned from Live105.

Tags: beverly hills, bfd, cypress hill, long beach, malibu, road trip

Bay to Breakers 2008

Sonya and I are still recovering from yesterdays’ Bay to Breakers. The actual race is 7 miles but we probably walked about 10 miles throughout the course of the day. There were so many things to see, I have no words to describe them. Instead here’s a link to my Flickrset.

sfmoma

On a spur of the moment sort of trip, Sonya and I headed over to the museum of modern art (moMa) in San Francisco. The traffic going into the bay bridge toll plaza was a little slow, but it stayed a comfortable mid-70 degrees most of the way there and throughout the day. There were four floors of weird and abstract art displays, five counting the mezzanine. Actually three, because the fifth floor was just a multicolored-transparent-floor walkway. Looking straight down five floors upon the heads of site seers was pretty cool. Some of the art was off the wall insane that most likely, actually definitely, involved a few hits of something illegal. Personally I have a hard time considering most of it honest-to-goodness art. For example, a three-paneled, pure white painting with a long explanation of how it IS art just seems a bit overkill. It’s almost as if the term artist has become synonymous with the word careless. Blurred photos, messy paintings of nothing, broken vases. Really people, come on. I guess I prefer the type of art that involves more talent than rebelliousness.After the museum, we headed over to the Metrion and saw live video of LittleBigPlanet, and found out that it’s coming out a day before my birthday! Between that and Playstation Home™ I’m going to be like a kid in a candy come this fall.

Oh yeah, and on our way home we noticed a whole gang of black kids on bicycles. One bicycle had a ‘No Smoking’ sign while another had a radio strapped to it which was playing Lil’ Waynes’, Lollipop. It was kind of an odd sight. Tomorrow we’ll be walking the 7.6m Bay to Breakers. It sounds like fun and I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures of old, naked people.

Tags: art, Metrion, moMa, San Francisco

Heatwave

When we first came to this apartment complex I questioned why there wasn’t an air conditioner. I figured that everything in California should, because it gets so hot here. Well, it’s about 100 on the island today and I’ve taken two showers already. My workday is pretty much over with and there was some nice progress. I actually replaced the lightbox (that encompassed my yesterday) with shadowbox. What an amazing open source tool for websites. It’s miles ahead of lightbox and works non-obtrusively. I also wrote a bit of music earlier and it goes a little something like this. It’s pretty creepy sounding.

Right now I’m going to integrate shadowbox with this blog and work some more after working all day.  What a geek, but edit: Here’s the awesome outcome of my twenty minutes of hard labor.

Totally worth it.

Tags: Attempting to Fly, heatwave, hot, shadowbox, work

Once you go FLAC…

Maynard growls into my ears on the first hot day in the Bay Area, “Why can’t we just admit it?”, and I think to myself, ‘Tool is such an exceptional band’. It’s been years since I’ve purchased a CD because I’ve followed the masses and ate up mp3s like Vicodin. Fifteen dollar compact discs had played a big role in helping me forget how beautiful some music can sound. But flac has brought me back.

It’s finally a very nice day outside. I’m sitting/working on my back porch taking a lunch, late as always. I have on my Bose headphones that ‘Block Out Simply (Everything or Everyone)’. There were a couple fires to put out this morning; The development calendar started acting up because the view was edited, and all of our pdf files had to be made into functions for the implementation of iScribe. I also wrote a cron job that you can see here that will delete past calendar events.

Lamentations - by Opeth is 99% done. I can honestly say that at this point of my life, they are, hands down, my favorite. No one I currently know enjoys this type of music, so it’s difficult to relate that it’s the real neo-classical. There were people and bands that claimed to be neo-classical - but they’re all liars. “Plunging into the deepest void, departed shell left drained behind”.

Tags: headphones, lunch, opeth, tool

Deleting past calendar events via mySQL and php

DELETE FROM content_type_calendar WHERE field_date_value < curdate()

Tags: cron, date, delete, mysql, old, php