a broken lull.

SMOKIN' ACES
Joe Carnahan, uk france usa 2007

8.0
i wasn't too keen on this flick since the 'buzz' and production of it sounded too manufactured. but i'm happy i decided to sit down and watch it. DAMN! aside from sometimes acting as a True Romance twin/cousin (we'll let that slide but i'm hoping they didn't think they were getting away with it and instead wanted to honour the brilliant Tony Scott/Tarantino flick), this was a fine film. Joe Carnahan keeps things rolling (okay, the story gets complicated so just ride it out) and tight without losing too much and keeping the intensity level well below idiotic and overblown, where it should have laid had any of the less-talented hacks been at the helm. the casting is out of this world, i tell you. the Oscars should have a nomination for casting. every single actor (aside from Jeremy Piven whom i kinda not get after Ellen (he does have a couple of spectacularly intimate, raw moments in the film, but i had problems with him in the beginning)) gives a first-rate performance. i swear. to. god. (even Jason Bateman, whom i can't watch in anything outside of Arrested Development anymore, actually does something different here and it's ludicrously believable. i won't point to anything else because i don't wanna spoil it anymore but the thing is damn fine. i was just so surprised by the quality of the flick. thanks. Joe Carnahan is one talented filmmaker.

Posted by Anonymous | 9:43 PM |

hmm. so yeah. no new post on the girl for a few days now, uh? well, yesterday we went to Montreal to see her brother play a small hockey tournament :) he lives 5 hours away up north so she sees him whenever she can. and she decided to ask if i'd like to come along :) that was nice. but way early. anyway. the day was fun but i couldn't help but feel like a total spazz with nothing to say. i would get into conversations with her (short ones) but, since we barely know each other for now and this was only our second face-to-face meeting, i think i'm still in 'okay, what do i say now?' mode. and, at the end of the day, it made me feel like a total tool and i couldn't figure out why she'd want a relationship with me. lol. yeah. dramatic :) i really didn't like where it was going when i got home. lol. my best friend came back from her vacation and we talked about it this morning (i was seeing a movie with the girl this afternoon) and she made it all better, telling me to take it slow (not used to it since all the girlfriends i had before i already knew before going out with them) and go with the flow. i couldn't have had better advice. going to the film with her was cool. and then, afterwards, she invited me to see her apartment and her cat (we both love cats). once there we talked for at least a good half hour. when i left her place, since we're both working all week, i asked if she'd like to do something next weekend (we'll still write daily emails). i said i still wanted to see Grindhouse if she was up for that. she said sure. and then an idea occured to her - there's this Disney thing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, and she thought of me. so we're likely to make it a day in Montreal with those two activities next weekend :) i need to thank my friend for her advice to ride it out.

hope you're all having a great day! :)

the Garbage Disco Box discovers Shirley joining Gwen Stefani onstage in L.A. on friday.

Posted by Anonymous | 5:09 PM |

okay. kyle (since it looks like it's just you and me here:), the girl just emailed me and asked me to not hesitate to let her know if i'd wanna do something with her tomorrow night (the night before we spend almost an entire day together saturday around Montreal ;) this is making your instincts look real good right now... :P thanks for the support. really appreciated.

Posted by Anonymous | 9:24 PM |

i called up the girl (and i'm only calling her this because i don't wanna name her on here; it's not meant as some sort of ...thing:) tonight to talk over our options for the weekend :) (very couple-y, i say; even though we're not a couple yet.) well, we setled on what we'd be doing (saturday morning, we're driving to the other side of Montreal to catch her brother playing a day-long tournament of hockey :) she was also interested in seeing Grindhouse downtown afterwards but i just checked the schedule and, because it's a long movie, it's playing either too early or way too late for our long day. (she did mention we could catch it at another time:) anyway. so we're doing the brother thing and it'll be a day out with an interesting girl. i still can't tell if she's seriously interested because she's so relaxed about it. but-- we talked for two hours and fifty minutes!!! lol. about anything. we settled the weekend thing in about 5 minutes. som of it was up and down with some pauses but we also got some rhythm going on some stuff. as a whole, it was fun. and again, it didn't feel that long at all. getting to know ourselves/anecdotes chit-chat. we did hit on more than a few common interests, which was fun.

care to comment on how this looks from the outside? thanks :)

Posted by Anonymous | 11:46 PM |

okay. i asked her if she'd be interested in doing something (go to the movies or anything else) this weekend. we'll see. any ideas on cool activities to do? and should i have waited to ask about a specific activity? just wanting to do something is good enough, right? :) i'm just trying to navigate this and not ruffle too many feathers :) but the girl is cool and i don't think she's a snob for this kind of thing.

in other news - I Can Has Cheezburger? is hilarious!

8:22 PM

omg. i'm back at my friend's apartment and i caught 2 minutes of the end of the Strangers with Candy movie, which i saw twice in theaters last summer... and i fucking laughed my ass off!! how the hell can that be? it's just, like, three lines, as the film was wrapping up. amazing.

on to the other subject at hand - she wrote me back with three options for this weekend :) she's a very resourceful little lady. and one of these items involves, after another long-drive activity, catching Grindhouse on our way back!! lol. amazing.

Posted by Anonymous | 9:55 AM |

...now what?
lol.

okay. so we went on our little 'date' today :) kyle - you'll be happy to know that i brought the water bottles :) ...and she really appreciated it and the thought. we chatted along fine and talked some more about subjects we'd mentioned in emails last week. when our walk was over i asked her what she wanted to do, go for another round around the lake (a 45-minute walk) or something else. she asked me if i had anything planned for afterwards. i said no and she offered a drink downtown :) we went and 90-minutes later we were done. my impressions of the day - she's a good girl. honest, simple funny, and relaxed. oh, and she's cute! :) that was on my mind all week. we had no idea what the other looked like. i don't think there were many immediate sparks on this date. it was a nice afternoon. we're just starting to get to know each other. right now, it's all about learning about the other one. at the end, i asked her if she'd wanna do something else some time. she said yes :)

now the 'now what' part -- we've been emailing back and forth all week then had our 'date'. with her work week starting back up and being full, do we keep emailing each other? even though i'd read about not having high expectations and seeing stars,
maybe i can't help but feel a little bit let down because we started off on a slow (but cool and relaxed) start. anyone wanna comment or share some wisdom? :) thank you. the big event that was kinda stressing me out ended up being a really nice afternoon with a good, sincere, down-to-earth girl.

update - okay. now it's morning and i'm happy to report that the daily flow of emails between the girl and i hasn't stopped or even slowed down since our meeting yesterday. yay. i wasn't sure how it would go because most of our conversations so far have been about introducing ourselves and then it switched to our first meeting. so i wasn't sure if we'd have anything more to say without a 2nd meeting to look forward to. apparently, we (and especially 'she') still do :) i'm happy to report. i can't get a proper read on her right now because she's so mellow and happy. but she is continuing with the emails and telling me about her daily life. she just sent me a picture of her cute cat :) nothing's urgent, so i'm just happy the lines are still so open. but if i were to be looking for it, i couldn't tell if she was interested in me as a date or as a new friend because she hasn't temporarily brushed me aside or put up much of a wall right now. as i said, i can't get a read i'm used to on her :) but - it's also not urgent that i get an answer right now. we'll see. she's really busy during the week, and she's on-call, so unless she suggests something, i think we have until the weekend to plan something, if anything. now, yesterday i told her i wanted to go catch Grindhouse in Montreal this week. i didn't say if i was going on my own or not (i am going on my own) nor that i could do it on the weekend. but i'm thinking of asking her if she'd be interested to go with me this weekend. she knew about the film but that was the extent of it. maybe she thought i was going with people or it was during her work-week. it's either that or it simply didn't interest her. i have no idea. i'll ask her tomorrow or wednesday.

update update - i'm starting to add a few pics to my flickr account :)

Posted by Anonymous | 7:59 PM |

okay. i've been emailing with this girl since sunday night. every day we send each other an email and write back. it's been good, laidback. she seems like a genuinely nice person who enjoys movies and outdoor activities. yesterday i asked if she'd be interested in meeting up sometime. she said yes and apparently we're now gonna go for a walk probably sunday. what i wanna know is - would you have any thoughts or suggestions on this? i'm taking all the advice i can take :) we've talked about ourselves and everything's charming. but sunday we're gonna meet each other for the first time. we're also gonna see what the other looks like for the first time. it's kinda been on my mind since we first wrote. i know she's not ugly. my mom saw a picture of her and, after being pressed, said she had a pretty face (it was a head shot). i know she'll be at least alright. but it's still unnerving to have this meeting. it's a huge step up from emailing back and forth. so i'm looking for advice. how to approach this, any ideas or tips. info very much welcomed. :) thank you very much.

update - asked my mom about details last night. she's actually cute. has straight brown hair that falls just under her shoulders.

btw, any thoughts on bringing her a little something? a flower might be a bit much? a friend suggested, since we're going walking, a bottle of water, maybe? as a thought. let me know your thoughts. thanks :)

Posted by Anonymous | 2:55 AM |

oh god. my mom set me up on an almost-blind date. lol... she and her boyfriend ran into an old couple he knows. they started talking and at some point, the woman talked about her 30 year-old daughter who loves movies. love going to them. even goes on her own. (this brings me to a point i've tried to make to my mother before - everybody enjoys movies. granted, it looks like it's one of this girl's favorite activities. good. but there are a lot of movies. so someone enjoying movies does not automatically make them my best friend :) end of small rant.) anyway. so they talk. the woman shows my mom a picture of her daughter (after being pressed, my mom answers that, yeah, she looks good. natural. brunette. 5'8".). my mom shows a picture of me from 4 years ago (lol). anyway. long story short - my mom gave the woman my phone number *and* my email to give to her daughter. lol. the woman had asked if i'd call if i had her number. my mom wasn't sure so they gave her my shit. i couldn't believe it. of course nothing's set-up yet. but when it does, i'm just seriously hoping she's cute. that is all. you don't wanna know you're gonna reject (or be rejected, for that matter; but i'm not hideous:) the person as soon as you meet them. i've never been on a blind date. and this case is even blinder in that even my mom doesn't know this girl! lol. the only information we have to go on is what her mother told her during a 5-minute conversation and a wallet-size picture of her head ans shoulders :) i'm feeling two things: disbelief that my mom would give out my number like that to a stranger, but also that we could luck out on this thing. coincidence has a way of working in mysterious ways. stranger things have happened. any thoughts? :)

24
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM

oh. my. god.
they did it. no wonder the showdown between Jack and Fayed had such grandeur to it (mostly done by Sean Callery's beautiful score, reminiscent of the Season Finale). they actually had the balls to kill the season's storyline before it got (too) tired and go on on a tangent for the remaining 7 episodes!! hopefully, as Frank Chromewaves as pointed out, they won't feel the need to insert the Chinese into the nuclear threat but actually go on to a separate storyline (ie. what should have been Season 6 with Jack trying to escape China). with a season finale this early, we finally got the rug pulled from under us. as for the episode itself, i'm glad all the bullshit macho posturing is over and hopefully we'll get us a good ole hunt going on for the remaining episodes. could be good fun.

Posted by Anonymous | 12:24 PM |

the Habs players met with the press today.
here's another Alex Kovalev jewel:

Then, with a smile, he added: ''You guys (reporters) will lose your job if I don't come back because you'll have nothing to write about.''

lol. come on. how can you not love that man? :D
management and coaching staff will have their press conference tomorrow (tuesday) afternoon.

Posted by Anonymous | 12:44 AM |

The Montreal Canadiens' season is over.

they managed to come back from 3-1 tonight against the Leafs in the second period (with four straight goals), but the Habs lost 6-5 tonight in Toronto. thus missing out on the playoffs by a single point in the last game of the season. (Toronto needs the Islanders to lose tomorrow to get into the playoffs. btw, what would've happened if the game had gone into overtime? the Leafs were officially dead so do you think they could've helped the Habs by letting them win to get into the playoffs ahead of New York? it's a thought that occured to me as the game wore on tonight. woulda been a classy move on their part. :)

as for the Habs' season being over - it's alright. i think i wrote a few weeks back how i didn't expect them to make the playoffs, and if they did, they wouldn't go far. the last couple of weeks have been great for us so a playoff run would've been cool. but i was already sold on almost no post-season this year, so i'm not bitter. hopefully we don't sell the team off this summer (with Gainey on-board, i think we're in good hands). i can't wait to see what happens with the Draft and if we can manage to sell off Souray and who we get in return. let the media bloodbath begin. i'm out.

please help save Studio 60.

Posted by Anonymous | 10:04 PM |

NHL
Boston 0 Montreal 2

Jaroslav Halak (NHL.com's Third Star of the Night) gets another shutout in the Canadiens' last game at home. with two games remaining, the Habs are in 8th place, ie. they're still in the playoffs for now. they only need to tie Toronto in points (TO is 1 point behind) to stay in the playoff race because they've got 3 more wins than the Leafs with only two games remaining for both teams. btw, of course highlights are less spectacular because you pretty much know the outcome, so it's less surprising when it happens out of thin air, but - if you can catch Koivu's first goal of the night (he scored Montreal's two), you should be amazed :)

Posted by Anonymous | 10:16 AM |

it's a beautiful day out. i'm gonna stop watching Metallica's Some Kind Of Monster doc on tv (which i've already seen on dvd so i have no idea why it's pulling me back in, commercial breaks and all) to head outside, get some fresh air and walk around with the Canon S3. might post some pics when i come back (and link the Flickr account at some point ;)

and Happy April Fool's Day, everyone. (for the record, this post wasn't one of them.)

Posted by Anonymous | 2:29 PM |