I know there are a lot of you who read my blog on a regular basis (Val) and never leave comments. You read, you have thoughts, so leave them, comment?!?!? on them. If anything else I will know who you are. And thank you to those of you who do.

I've been really interested in this movie called Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. See the Apple site for more trailers.

At first I saw the trailer in a theatre and I wasn't really impressed, I thought the images looked wired and the story looked pretty lame. But over time I have developed a real interest in this movie. The images really look groundbreaking while holding a nostalgic sense. I finally found a good explanation of the overall look of the movie from JoBlo.com which described it as "washed out". Which I think really hits the nail on the head about the look.

I am still having trouble figuring out how most of the visuals were accomplished. My guess is that most of the movie is CGI (computer generated images) with live actors pasted in, with their images modified to have that "washed" look. I think there may even been a few CGI shots of the principal actors. If you watch any of the trailers then you will see what I am talking about.

I'm not sure how this movie is going to do financially. Since it really hasn't been heavily promoted, and it's coming out at the end of the summer season. I figure that it didn't want to compete with some of the big movies of the summer, which in fact most of the "big" movies really bombed. I figure this movie may receive some critical acclaim, with low attendance, but possibly many awards come next year, for visuals and/or cinematography.

On another note I'm really excited to see Garden State. I'll probably go this week so expect a post about that too.

This past weekend I went and saw Fahrenheit 9/11 again. But this time I saw it with a Republican and an Undecided. Quite interesting. I thought with all the hoopla around the Republican National Convention (you don't have to go to the site, I just included it just to) this week I'd thought I'd say something as well about all things political. For a different (yet similar) view see Kathryn's page.

But one of my friends said something thought provoking about Mr. Moore's movie. They said that they felt sorry for Bush. More for the reason that they felt that Bush was being so harshly attacked. They felt bad that people were so adamantly being just downright disrespectful towards him as a person.

This got me thinking. As much as I dislike Bush as a President and leader, how should I as a Christian see him. I guess I can ultimately disagree with him and not like much of what he does, but I guess I'm pretty much required to love him as a person. But I think I'm having a hard time finding my compassion for him.

We'll see what happens in Nov.
Rock the Vote

brought to you by audioblogger.com
just click trogdor to play audio

Wed was spent trying to prepare for Matt's and Jeni's wedding. I gracefully volunteered to pretty much cater the rehearsal dinner which was tonight. Since I love to cook I thought this would be a good idea, yet I forgot to factor in the time it would take to prepare everything. So Wed was spent at Costco doing most of the shopping before heading with the Jr Highers to Medieval Times. Which was a total blast, especially since I had yet to go there in all my years living in So Cal.

We have this little girl named Kelsey who is going to be in 6th grade next year, she stands 4 foot naught and looks as sweet as can be. I had the pleasure of sitting next to her during the festivities at the tournament. We enjoyed talking about the food we were enjoying and the Pepsi that I guess was served in the 4th century. Along with other things such as who we thought was the cutest knight. But my favorite part was during the fighting, when our knight the white and black knight was fighting the other side's Green knight and little Kelsey yelled at the top of her lungs, "Die!!!!!!!!!!!! Kill Him!!!!!! Die Green Knight, Die!!!!!!!" What precious moments. A great night which was capped off with some Krispy Kremes on the way home.

Today was the rehearsal dinner for the wedding and so that meant that I spent my first 2 hours of the day, starting at 8 am, when Matt and I had finished shopping for stuff we couldn't get at Costco at the great hour of 1 am. After 2 hours of preparing burgers (which included onions, eggs, bread crumbs and the infamous Worcestershire Sauce), and little salmon packets, which were little pieces of foil that we put a piece of salmon with potatoes, yellow and green squash, onions, garlic, and carrots, so that we could slap these things on the BBQ along with the burgers and dogs. We were finally done. I then headed over to CSUN to sit with Danni so that we could spread the word about our church and college group. If anything we handed out a lot of flyers to people, so helpfully we will see some fruit come the next few weeks. After that I returned home for a nap before the actual rehearsal and then the rehearsal dinner. There were about 40 people at the rehearsal dinner and I got a lot of props, from the older g-parents down to Jeni's sister's husband who was a chef. All which made the evening even more fun.

I do have to say I was a bit jealous of the bridesmaid's gifts, not to say that ours weren't good, but they got embroidered robes from the GAP. Totally stylin.

Tomorrow I finally get to spend some time with Jacob and Krista who got in Wed night but things have been so hectic that I haven't really spent time with them aside from Wed night when we had a latenight meal at Denny's. We are scheduled to head up to the Getty and possibly the beach sometime tomorrow which should be a lot of fun. Then dinner with the rest of the out-of-towners and whatever antics ensue. Then pretty much it's Sat which means the Big day, which will be great as well.

Let's try to make finding a wife even harder.

I've decided (for now at least) that I don't want to marry someone who is going to be in full-time ministry. She should be ministry minded, willing to think critically about ministry and even participate in ministry, but not do ministry professionally. Lately I've been thinking that I will want that seperation in my life.

Well I guess this pretty much commits me to a chaste life. Bummer.

The other night, well actually it was really early Tuesday morning, between 2 and 5am, I ended up watching Turner Classic Movie Channel. I found myself engrossed with the infamous Charlie Chaplin. TMC had rebroadcast a series from 1983 called Unknown Chaplin. Which was more than fascinating. It really brought to life the mysteries of this great man, and many of his techniques and thought structure which helped me understand this genius.

I think my fascination with Charlie and other greats such as Fatty Arbuckle, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and other slapstick comedians started in the sixth grade when I happen to take a media class that studied such great achievements in modern cinema.

If you haven't examined the greatness that these men (and the occasional women) who developed such a patriarchal style of movie making, you really should run out to your local video establishment or mail order video service and spend some quality time learning and admiring a craft almost long forgotten.

A few weeks ago I was on a outing with the Jr Highers to the beach and on the way home we were rocking out to some MxPx and I got really into a few of the songs and was playing air drums as I drove. Then this one song came on and I REALLY got into it and accidentally slammed my hand into the rearview mirror, knocking it clean off the inside of my windshield. All to the amusement of 4 Jr Highers.

I snapped the thing right off its hinges. I was really bummed because there didn't look like an easy way to repair the thing. The "screw" that held the thing on didn't look to accessible and even Crazy Glue didn't seem to be working. Even the mighty Duct Tape didn't work. (Most likely cause I tried it in the middle of the day when the inside of my car was like 145 degrees fahrenheit, and it kinda melted the sticky part of the tape, rendering it useless.)

I finally realized that the screw was hex screw and I happened to have a set of hex wrenches that took the mirror off the windshield and I proceeded to jimmy rig a situation where I could glue the two components back together. I made sure I did it at night when the CA air temp dropped to the negative degrees of 65.

It was really kinda weird driving using only the side mirrors. And once I got the regular one put back, I kept finding myself looking in the sides instead of the rearview.

Well this weekend we had a little bachelor party for Matt. AJ and I spent the last few months trying to come up with some good ideas for things to do for Matt.

Since neither one of us have had any experience in the realm of bachelor party planning, we turned to the master of all things knowledgeable and right in the world, Mr. Bill Sperry.

First of all we had to figure out the main problem of where to eat for the evening. We knew it had to be memorable and we also had the problem of Matt's favorite place to eat. A number of places ran through our head, from Chili My Soul, Todai, Tommy's, BJ's and even the good 'ol BBQ. In the end we thought that the place to eat would be Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles(sorry no official site). Especially since Jeni has told Matt that he has to eat less fried food when they get married, it was one last good BANG.
If you haven't been yet it is a must. Just order some chicken and waffles, but the way to eat this is to: rip a piece of chicken off, then rip some waffle wrap chicken in waffle, then dip it into syrup and then take the hot sauce and splash some of that on as well then enjoy. Yes it sounds a little odd but it's quite amazing.
At one point we wanted to hire a Marachi Band to play while we ate, but we soon nixed the idea due to funds.

After dinner we retreated back to the valley to spend some quality hang out time. One of the members of our church was gracious enough to lend us his house. Let me just say THANK YOU Brian Holland. This place is just WOW!!!! It has a 6 car garage.

AJ and I had stocked up on the booze for the evening and were ready to make plenty of Manhattans, Martini's and a few other assorted drinks. But in my opinion the creme de la creme for the evening was the bottle of Hennessy XO Conagc that I bought.

The night proceeded with some luke warm tubbing (we had a hard time getting the hot tub to heat up) and lots of munchies including chili cheese corn dogs.

We finally settled down to watch Matt's favorite movie the Big Lebowski. We all fell asleep before the movie was over with the exception of Joseph or J-Liu as I like to call him. The combo of Roscoe's and alcohol took us all out quick. We woke up the next morning to clean up a bit and we ended up watching the Jackie Chan movie that we had got for the night before. This movie called The Prisoner was basically an old Jackie move that was made in 1990 but re-released in the US in 2000 after Jackie had become big. The only problem aside from the movie being bad and not making not too much sense was that it is billed as a Jackie Chan movie but Jackie only really stars in about 7 min of the whole entire film. Quite disappointing in my opinion.

All in all a good time for all, the strippers ended up coming the next night when the family was home so I had to clear that up today, kinda embarrassing.

I guess you can buy shares for my blog.

I'm not really sure what this is, but take a look if you want to. Too bad I don't see any of this money.

I guess this shows that freedom of speech is not part of international law.

Read THIS

Not even able to post pictures that you, yes you personally took. Hmm...I wonder how long that will last.

I have a legal question, so if you are American and come back to the US and free speech and press, does that negate the sanctions posed by the Olympic committee?

Something to ponder.

If you didn't know, I'm fairly obsessed with MINI COOPERS. I'm sure within the next 5-8 years I will own one of my own.

If you are not familiar with the Mini Cooper. Here is a movie list (chronologically)to reference your memory.

Italian Job
(1969)

Bourne Identity

Austin Powers: Goldmember

Italian Job (2003)

I'm sure there are more but my limited research has only yielded 4 movies. (sorry)

When they first re-issued the Mini Cooper, I really wanted the S model. But the other day I received an e-mail informing me about a brand NEW model of MINI.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce the MINI CONVERTIBLE S (also available in the regular non-S form).

Now this presents a dilemma. Which to get, once I reach that stage in my life. The standard S, or the convertible S. Which by the way has a sunroof built into the convertible top. Pretty snazzy.

What do you guys think?

Why the freak are Cup O Noodles so freakn good???

Ever since I was around 7 I have loved these things. Granted I have gone through my Top Ramen phases too, but somehow I still always return to the cup.
Seeing how they are pretty much the same thing. I think there is something to be said about the portability of the self sustaining cup. Top Ramen takes the extra effort to find a pot or large cup (of your own) and then you make the stuff. Note: Process is pretty much exactly the same. Either add hot water and let sit for 3 min, or put water in and microwave for 3 min. Personally I go with 3:30 for the insurance that you won't have some crusty noodles.

I do have to say that I am slightly more inclined to eat the Maruchan (I'd link it but it's all in Japanese) brand of noodles.

It's quite amazing what you can add to these things to make them all the more flavorful.

Here are a few of Andrew's ramen recipes.

Adding spices, anything from simple salt and pepper to the more exotic, like tarragon or cumin. I really love garlic powder (not garlic salt), freshly cracked black pepper, Lawry's Seasoned salt and Tabasco in mine.

Or there is the addition of cheese, usually parmesan, tip stir in quickly or lumping or stringing occurs and makes hard to eat.

For beef flavored ones I tend to use a lot of Worcestershire Sauce (pronunciation) it really adds to the beefyness.

A few other things I have done before (note these were done to the Top Ramen not the cup varieties) were adding an egg right before cooking, it kinda makes it like egg drop soup, make sure to beat egg first, better yet use only egg whites, see here on how to separate eggs. On a sad note if you didn't know already that Julia Child died last week.

And the final tip, once again with the top ramen noodles, add frozen veggies to the bowl right before cooking.

I'm sure there are many more recipes out there and pretty much you are only limited by your imagination. Pleas let me know if you have any good ones. Leave a comment to share with the rest of the peeps.

One of the best places I've ever been to that serves noodles is this place called Wagamama. So if you are across the pond for any good reason, please make the effort to stop by one. If only they'd open one in the US near me.

Also the picture in the upper left-hand corner of the website is one of my all time favorites. I like to think that it is me doing that.

Wow I can't believe I just wrote a whole post about noodles. And I am eating a cup right now as I type too. Funny huh?

I came across this last week but held off until now to tell you about it.

Read THIS about Bobby Fischer.

Although it has pretty much nothing to do with the actual Bobby Fischer, the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer was a really good movie.

Chess is one of those interesting sports, I mean games.

Let's hop on the extreme bandwagon here for a moment. I wonder what the craziest way we could think of playing chess that would make it exciting, without resorting to Battle Chess.

I heard some of the High Schoolers talking about this thing called 4 way chess. Sounded kinda extreme.

But I was thinking more along the lines of having a large sumo wrestler standing over you in his sumo thong after eating 54 bean burritos from Taco Bell. Let's see you concentrate then. Sounds extreme enough.

Or....

We you could have to start saying all prime numbers (you better read up) while playing chess, and if for some reason you miss one or get one wrong then you lose a finger.

What do you think?

Reason #573 why I know I am not gay.

I stayed up all night last night playing video games.

A little back story. I was hanging out with one of the high schoolers the other day and we were playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2003. My character sucked because I had not the time to develop him vs the students who had developed his character, so nonetheless I was getting my pants beaten off.

I got it in my head yesterday that I should go out and find the game and develop my own character so next time I play him it is more of an even match. I went to one store and found a used copy, I took it home and popped it in...DEAD. How lame. So I took it back and managed to get a refund on things they aren't supposed to give refunds on.

To make a long story short I spent the next 5 hours looking for this game. I went to 25 different stores in the valley from Northridge to Granada Hills to Chatsworth to Van Nuys and finally out to West Hills before ending up at my 26th store for the day. Thank you EB Games. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not only did I get the game, which NO ONE had. They even had a new copy.

Back to why I'm not gay. I got less than one hour of sleep last night. I played from 8pm until 6am this morning. My left thumb is now pretty much numb.

I'm somewhat proud of this accomplishment, yet somewhat ashamed, being a 23 year old who probably has better things to do than re-live days-gone-by of High School.

P.S.
My character KICKS ASS!!!!

I really am enjoying this gig as a housesitter. Seriously it's even easier than babysitting. You get full refrigerator privileges, phone privileges, tv privileges, and even bed privileges. And best of all they pay you to do it. Minus the pets and plants, but much easier than a screaming 2-7 year old.

I know I've been wanting my own place recently. But I have come to the conclusion that I actually need very little. This house I'm at for the housesitting is a 4 bedroom 2 bath with an office space, dining room, living room, family room and a kitchen with a 3 car garage. I really think I'd settle for a nice (somewhat spacious) 1 bedroom apt. Really I just need a place to call my own. Though a really nice and big kitchen would be fantastic.

As much as the job as professional housesitter sounds appealing. I'm the kind of person who needs a bit more ambition in my life. What do you ever really feel that you have got accomplished after staying in dozens of different people's houses? Hopefully not too many wilted plants and a few dead pets.

Though I have heard that there are professional BLOGGERS out there. Darn I should have studied journalism instead.
How you can really make a career out of blogging, I'm not totally sure. Do you have to get corporate sponsorship.

Today's blog is brought to you by, Gatorade "the thirst quencher" and the letter "H" and the number "5"

Hmm...if only I had anything interesting to say and my blog got more than 7 hits a day. Then I would be in business.

I fixed three errors on the last post.

Sorry, really I am.

2 Apparently I can't spell nazi correctly. Sorry again.

I went and saw The Bourne Supremacy today with a bunch of the High Schoolers from church. It was good, upon initial viewing it was better than the first one, but maybe I'll have to go and rent that this weekend.

Got a bunch of stuff today.

The reefs which you already knew about.
The MercyMe CD, read earlier post.

Then a few things came in the mail.
By far the most exciting thing to come today was my new tags for the year 05 to be put on the car.
Other than that I go a shipment from BMG today. (If you decide to sign up with them please let me know first so that I can get a couple of free CD's out of the deal too, I would just have to send you an email first, SO DON'T SIGN UP WITHOUT CONTACTING ME FIRST)
Let me add my personal endorsement of BMG. You never have to buy anything else from them again if you don't want. And they have amazing sales (this is when I buy the majority of my stuff from them), like 60%-70% off and NO shipping. Which turns out to about 5-8 a CD. I just got 4 CD's (2 of them double disks) for only 23 bucks.
But back to what I got:

Caedmon's Call: Chronicles
Jars of Clay: Furthermore - from the studio : from the stage
John Mayer: Any Given Thursday
Maroon 5: Songs About Jane

These things will keep my busy for a while.

If you don't have plans Sunday night, you do now.
Tyrone Wells is playing at the House of Blues and it's only 3 bucks (with flyer, that I can provide).

Well I have a couple more things that I want to blog about but they will have to wait till either next week or later this weekend, seeing as how I've over blogged my quota for today.

Last night we went to BJ's for Jeni's (sorry Jeni, I fixed them both) Bday thingamabob. I started out the evening with a nice glass of the Porter which by the way has an alcohol content of 8.1%!!!! Having gone through almost half of my glass before my chicken wings (which don't really absorb by the way), needless to say I was already a little buzzed. But the capstone of the night was learning that after about an 8 month holiday, BJ's was once again offering the BERRY BURST CIDER. Oh elation. Here's the backstory: they stopped offering it because a while back something happened wit their distributor, and the license to make cider or something like that, and everyone I talked to said that they pretty much were no longer going to carry it ever. I mourned the loss. But as of last night I was told that they had found a new distributor for the stuff (albeit it tasted a little different) and I was overjoyed.
Even after a whole pint of the Porter (Sorry Matt, it was the Stout) I stiffed up and ordered a pint of the cider, which was much enjoyed even after I knew I probably should have stopped.
Matt was even proud of me, saying that I did a good job with my beer consumption on the night.

After getting home and eating a few pieces of toast to soak up the goodness and drinking a few cups of water I had a very peaceful night of sleep, aside from having to get up and pee like a race horse in the middle of the night.

I'm excited for tonight. I'm finally going to get to see Napoleon Dynamite. I've been wanting to see this movie ever since I saw a preview for it when we went to see Super Size Me a few months back. Kayla will be joining me for this occasion and Matt and Jeni said they may want to come too, I know Amy's been wanting to see this movie for a while too but I think she may be going to a concert tonight or something.

On the list of things to do today are also: buying a new pair of Reef sandals. This last pair I have had since x-mas of 2002. I can't believe they have lasted this long wearing them everyday. The trick I've found is to buy them big. I wear size 9 but I buy size 12, basically it's just more material to wear through, therefore creating a longer life for the sandal. The other thing on the list is to buy the new MercyMe album. The only reason that I knew they had a new album was that I was talking with Bill Sperry (who in my opinion should have a blog so that I can link to it, holla if you hear me on this one) and he said he had just been to a MeryMe concert and I then asked him if they had a new album coming out soon and he replied to my surprise that it had come out about a month ago. I then put it on my list of things to do this weekend. If you don't have any of their albums go and get one. If you haven't hear any of their stuff, I would say that you probably have and didn't know it. I even heard their smash hit playing on Movie Tunes, and the song was "I Can Only Imagine", yes that was MercyMe.

Well off to do some exciting things this weekend, I'm looking forward to housesitting too that should be a lot of fun. Party hardy.

I was flipping through the Ikea catalog the other day and it still fascinates me how amazing this stuff can be. What is it about Swedish furniture? Does it have something to do with their ability to make fish?

I could see myself in Fight Club mentally picturing my whole house furnished with Ikea stuff. Especially since their pictures are all of rooms completely filled with their stuff. Not as if I didn't have any of my own stuff, but I would really want to start with nothing at all and then put everything in that room from Ikea.

Would someone loan me about 10,000 dollars so I could deck out my house with completely all Ikea stuff? I mean, seriously if only they would start selling property then even the actual house could be Ikea brand too. That would be swell.

I am pretty glad that I near to no money and a decent self-will that I can resist the temptation to spend ALL of my money at Ikea. But sometimes I do have to leave my wallet in the car when I do venture into an Ikea. When things only cost 2.95 or less it gets really easy to rationalize all my purchases. Oh this is only 65 cents, let's buy 30 of them. And then there are the things for only 11.52. I could really use that, I tell myself, when in all actually, who needs a box shaped like the orbiting FOX satellite?? But when it is only 8.31, who can resist?

Now that I've been talking about Ikea and having seen the catalog in the last few days and I get paid tomorrow, I really want to go. So if you see me DO NOT let me go there this weekend.

So I guess G-mail isn't working at this point in time. Kinda lame since I use it for email. Maybe it'll work later. And I was all excited to have it and stuff.

I was at Islands for Karen's surprise B-day party. And while we crammed 11 people into a booth that seats about 8 I glanced over at the TV's that were playing videos. And among the surfing and wakeboarding that was playing, was numerous shots of snowboarders. It made me really, really want to go snowboarding. I only really managed to go 2 times last season. Once at Snow Summit in Big Bear, CA and once more at Mt. Spokane in Spokane, WA. Pretty lame since I love the sport of snowboarding. Being back in CA it's a bit harder to get up to the mts and the prices are so much higher. Though I still want to make it up to Lake Tahoe for some snowboarding.

Now for a non sequitur.

As I was driving this afternoon I ended up behind a Toyota Sienna. This car didn't have a license plate, but in the holder was a placard that said, nothing else but "K-Town Motors Inc.". I thought to myself no freakin way. I realize this is only really funny to me and like 2 other people and one of those people is Matt (who really, really, really, really, really freakin needs to update his BLOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)(seriously). I should have written down the phone number so that I could call them, I think it was 213 something.

This is a picture that my friend Andrej took in NY city the other night. Actually it's 9 separate pictures fused together. I thought it looked spectacular. He said he had to change the setting to keep the lens open for 10 sec on each picture since it was so dark out. Just thought I'd share a bit of culture with you guys. Enjoy!!! 

I just played and beat(?) the best game EVER!!!!! Called Pesant's Quest. Thanks to the fine folks over at homestarrunner.com.
I scored a whopping 133 of 150 points. I'm not sure if I can do better but I will try later.
If you really get stuck here are a few hints (caution these give things away, and I ended up not using some of the things at the end, so we'll see if I can score higher next time).

Please waste all of your time NOW. 


better not the best yet...soon...need more time (Update, I guess they fixed the bug that allowed you to get 152 points, so indeed I am the Master)
 

After High School group I went over to John's apt and we played tennis. Was this game invented by hippies??? Who scores things by loves????

I think I could really enjoy this game. The first few mins were quite laughable. It looked like a couple of guys swatting at flies but after a while we soon started to get the hang of things.

I played a lot of Ping Pong (you really need to click on this one) in college, mainly against some of the school's tennis players who lived in my dorm. I held my own (sorta) against some of them, but I guess playing tennis also pre-qualifies you to be a great ping pong player. Trying to go from ping pong to actual tennis is a totally different story.

My shoulder hurts a lot. Mainly cause of a previous volleyball injury, the overhead serving motion gave it something to cry about. We ended up playing for almost 2 hours. I was doing somewhat well of serving into the appropriate box on the opposite side of the court and could rally fairly well by the time we were done. The only problem was once John and I got our serves down we couldn't return any of them. The only time we really got to rally was when we soft served it to each other, which led to some decent rallies and some really bad looking shots. Give us a break we just started tonight.

My best friend Jacob is coming down in a few weeks and his girlfriend Krista is a tennis player, and one of the aforementioned tennis players that I played ping pong against, and I'll ask her if she can give us some pointers. That would be swell.

Well I know what I'm doing tomorrow. Maybe I can be the next Michael Chang (who I guess is Christian, see site). That would be kinda cool. Me = Michael Chang???