Hoppa!

My cousin Matt got married this weekend up in Fresno. He decided to be like his sister and have a wedding out of the blue (although he wasn't pregnant), but it wasn't quite as rushed as hers. My brother, dad, and I went up there on Saturday because they guys were going to play golf (I wasn't invited), and I went along because I knew much of the family was going to be driving up on Saturday.

Karma intervened and it rained on Saturday, so the guys only got about 7 holes in before calling it quites (take that!), so we all went over to the hotel where everybody was staying. This was a large hotel, but when my whole family went into the bar, we completely took over the place. Some had to leave for the rehearsal dinner, and the rest of us went to The Cheesecake Factory, which was a couple blocks away (and I was completely bummed - who wants to eat cheesecake?). We discussed Snowcrash (which I need to reread), clairvoyant dreams, and blogs, among other things. It was a very fun discussion with the three generations that were present.

On Sunday was the wedding, and it was being held at a Serbian Orthodox church in Fresno (my cousin is Greek Orthodox and his new wife is Serbian Orthodox). My family is rather large, and the church it was at was really small, so it was standing room only for the ceremony. Luckily, the reception hall was plenty big. It was great to run around with my cousins, corrupting them by telling them to dump a whole basket full of birdseed on Matt and Chrissy's (his new wife) head (and of course they did it), and telling them to call my other cousin fat (she's 9 months pregnant).

Many people think I hate weddings, but I don't really mind them when it's a family one because we manage to have fun no matter what. Some cousins and my uncle (who's son was getting married) were worried that the wedding might be dry, so they brought a water bottle full of Ketel 1. There was wine at each table (Merlot and Chard, so I didn't really drink much, at the wedding at least), but they still managed to find some punch to add "water" to. We joked that the people from Fresno would think we didn't like their water because we kept adding our own to the punch.

Of course after the wedding we weren't done partying, so we headed back to the hotel and invaded the bar again. Then after we got kicked out of there we went to a hotel room where there were cigars (and other unmentionables) to be smoked (but not by me) and our own bar to use. Then after getting too many complaints at that room, we took it to another. So all in all it was a great weekend, full of family, good food, and good drink.

I don't care if I never get back.

Yesterday I went down to LA with my brother to watch a Dodger game. He and some buddies have four season passes, and they weren't being used last night, so I got to invite some friends. After a long string of turn downs, Chris and Nate were finally able to go, so we met up with them at Jessica's place to drive in together ($15 for parking is such a rip off).

We got there after the first half inning (somebody was late), but it wasn't a sold out crowd, so we still got our free hats. The seats are in the first row of the second section of the pavillion, if anybody cares, but there are two important features of these seats. The first is that there's tons of leg room, which is very nice. The second is that everybody who goes and gets food has to walk past you to get to their seats. So by about the third inning we were all craving Dodger dogs and nachos. There was a mass exodus from the stands, and we all went to find some food. Billy, Chris, and I all managed to do so in a reasonable time frame, but I think it took Nate two and a half innings to finally get his two super Dodger dogs.

It was a good game - there was a home run to score the first run, and then lots of doubles and base hits by the Dodgers (and not so many by the Padres), so we won pretty easily 9-1. All the while discussing movies and TV shows, of course. I think the best conversation was when we got to talk about bad kid's sports movies, like The Sandlot (which isn't bad), A Kid in King Arther's Court, Little Giants, and some that I think I've forgotten.

Oh, and it cracked me up that the words for Take Me Out To the Ball Game were incorrect on the board during the 7th Inning Stretch.

You had me at merlot.

So this past week was a week of family vacation. We went over to Los Osos, which is situated right by SLO, and really isn't a bad place to go vacationing. Anyways, my siblings and I joined our parents over there on Tuesday, and we had a surprisingly pleasant ride over there. I don't know what was wrong with my brothers, but something must have been.


It was a vacation of firsts! First (long distance) car ride I can remember with my brother's that wasn't horrible. First time buying Converse (it was past time for a new pair of shoes). First time I was able to drag any members of my family wine tasting (I got all of them to go, even if only three of us tasted!). First time that my brother (Billy) tasted and bought wine. It made me so proud. First time that somebody thought I was older than Billy in a long time. And I quote:

Castoro Pourer: I'll let you pour it out. I'm not mean like your older sister over there.
Me: Actually, I'm his younger sister.
Pourer: Really?
Me: Well, only by four minutes.
Pourer: You just seemed much wiser than him.

That made my day.

So it was a good vacation, as much as I had my doubts going into it. And now it's onto Easter weekend, which is always fun because people come back to town. So hopefully this will be a good cap to a fun week.

Chilling at the BN

So I went to Barnes and Noble to get some entertainment for this week and I saw a guy sitting in one of the aisles in a camping chair with a water jug sitting next to him. I guess that's something to aspire to.

Close Encounters of a Three Kinds

I decided to take a trip down to LA this weekend and to visit with Robert a little bit. So I left on Sunday morning to head down to Santa Monica. When I was about to Pyramid Lake, I looked into my rear view window and see a white Trailblazer. So I thought to myself, "Hey, that could Tim, going back from Spring Break." Of course I didn't really think that it would be Tim. But lo and behold, that Trailblazer pulled up next to me and I looked over and it was Tim! Which was pretty hilarious.

Now, everybody knows that I procrastinate, and the latest thing that I've put off doing has been to register my car. So as of yesterday my registration was officially expired. Normally I don't see very many cops on the drive down to LA, usually one or less. But this trip I saw no less than 4 cops, and 3 park rangers. One of these cops almost pulled up right behind me at a red light, where he would have had a perfect view of my out of date tags. Luckily he turned left just before the light. But it was pretty funny. Or annoying or whatever.

The last encounter was of a different kind. Some of you may know that Rob has been playing D&D with some people for the past year. Well I decided to finally go down and join, which was part of the reason for the trip. So I got to play a regular character in the party because his player couldn't be there this weekend. Now D&D isn't like your normal video game where if your character dies you can just reload the previous auto-save and try again. If your character dies, she's dead, unless you can find a cleric to rez her, and that's rather difficult and expensive.

Generally if you die you just reroll another character and start over at level 1. Of course, dying isn't all that common since you have to get down to -10 health. I got this guys character to 0 health (at -1 you drop unconscious and bleed out 1 health per round until -10). I'm not all that attached to this character, but I imagine that Jerome is pretty attached, so I don't really want him to die. So I run away to a healer (who happens to be Robert) when we only have the last guy left to kill. Most of the party was beat up, so I decided to try to be a hero and fire my bow at the guy instead of hiding, even though I knew that after I fired he would have a clear shot at me.

I hit the guy for 5 damage (which really isn't that much), but considering he was at 0 health (which we didn't know) it was enough to knock him unconscious and out of the tree. And of course the fall killed him. So I didn't die. But since it was April Fool's Day, one of the group members called Jerome and told him that Jork had died, which was pretty hilarious.

Deep Thoughts

I'm completely amazed that they haven't tried to remake The Sound of Music yet. Actually, that seems to be the one thing in Hollywood that is safe from remakes - musicals.

It's a very interesting experience to go drinking with your father and his crazy friends from teacher school.

I'm worried for the youth of today if the people I just went drinking with are going to be tomorrow's teachers.

Freshmen are stupid. And very funny.

Horsism is very true - school makes you dumber.

Some people can't hold their liquer. And it's very entertaining when they can't.

A bee story of my very own!

After playing soccer at BHS today, I went over to where my shoes were, and there was a bee crawling on my laces. I'm not really scared of bees, so I merely flicked it off and proceeded to change shoes.

So I walked to my car and decided that on the way home, I would check to make sure that there was going to be something for dinner, so I decided to call home. Nobody answered, so I called my dad's cell and my brother's cell, but neither of them answered. Now, I know some of you drive a stick, so you'll know that it's fairly difficult to drive, dial on a cell phone, and drink a soda at the same time, but what can I say except I'm talented.

However, during my third call, I look over at my window, and I see a bee crawling on the very top. I know there's no way that I can try to flick it off while I'm drinking and talking on the phone, so I put my soda down so that I can unroll the window, hoping that it will take it's chance for freedom and fly away.

Alas, it decided to crawl down the window, so now I'm dealing with a bee that I can't flick out. I end my phone call, but now I have to wait for a light because it seems the bee is scared to jump out of a moving vehicle. Unluckily for me, though, I went through like four green lights down California. So I'm driving, trying to watch the road, and also trying to watch the bee to make sure it doesn't attack me. Luckily a light finally turned yellow, and although I usually would have gone through it, I stopped and flicked the bee outside. I think I angered the person behind me, though, because they promptly got out to the side and passed me.

So while I didn't get to attack it with a pan, I do have my very own bee story. I should turn it into a movie and call it Bee Movie! Oh wait, I'm too late.

Ode to a name

Henceforth, ye shall be called Sebastian,
And loud shall be the sound of your processing!
Games shall come forth in great abundance,
And loud shall be the sound thereof!

Great battles will be fought,
Great fortunes will be lost,
But evermore shall ye perform,
never failing!

So yeah, I finally decided on a name (Sebastian), and decided to write 0.01% of the epic poem of Sebastian.

Green and Gold plus a little Driller Blue

I had a softball tournament this weekend. Now, going in to the tournament, I didn't have very high expectations, mostly because I have no idea what a good Frosh Soph team will play like, so I can't judge how good my team currently is.

Apparently I do know what a good team plays like, because my team plays like one. We got 2nd place in the tournament, and only lost to Frontier, who has a better pitcher than is on our JV team. (They don't have a Varsity team, so basically everybody is moved down one team). After an okay game on Friday we brought our A game on Saturday and schooled some schools that needed it.

Seems like a little blue goes a long way.

Bittersweet

Today, my team of little freshmen (and some sophomores) beat BHS. Now, I never really cared about BHS softball (even when I was playing I wanted to win, but wasn't all that upset if we lost, unlike in softball), but there's still the Driller in me that wants to win at every sport we play. Soccer is a different story, obviously.

Still, I almost feel like a traitor to myself being glad that West beat BHS at anything.

Doncha Wish (that your favorite TV shows stayed on air?)

I find it horribly ironic that after saying this, Veronica Mars was replaced this past week by show "Doncha Wish You Were A Pussycat Doll," or whatever the hell they decided to name that horrible show.

Not only that, but now that Studio 60 has gone off for who knows how long, it seems that VM is also taking a break, as is Heroes. I guess that means that March is going to have me either watching a lot of movies, reading a lot of books, or playing a lot of video games.

A moment of silence

Manny as he was is officially gone. He got a brain transplant, and now is back good as new! Of course, this means that I have to try and remember where all my install cds are for all the programs I had on Manny, but that's okay.

So, my new computer needs a new name. What should it be? Any suggestions?

Mustn't get excited...

I keep telling myself that I will be disappointed in the end and that I can't get my hopes up, but I really can't help it.

It's official. There's a date and everything.

For a little while

My brother and I came home yesterday from the driving range and put our clubs in the garage. We saw water had come all the way to the door of the garage, but figured that it was just from the rain. See, the back door into the garage leaks when it rains and if we forget to put a towel there to stop it, that side of the garage becomes a swamp. Luckily, I was intrigued by how much water was in the garage and actually looked at the back door. It was completely dry.

We figured out that it was actually the water heater which had sprung a leak. So no hot water until that's fixed (and knowing my family, who knows how long that will take). Luckily, coinciding with this breakage, I've started house sitting for the next few weeks, so I, at least, will have a hot shower. Score!

Oh, and my little team got its first win yesterday (and only our second game). Go us. Unfortunately, we'll be playing basically the equivalent of a JV team tomorrow since Frontier only has two teams (JV and FS). So I don't think it will be a pleasant game for us. It is a chance to see what my team is made of, though, which'll be good.

Post Oscar Season

So, the Oscars happened last night, and we had a nice little shindig to celebrate. Like most shindigs, we had to have a contest, so we printed off Oscar ballets to see who could get the most right. There were, of course, prizes, with the first prize being a copy of The French Connection. For those of you wondering about a strange choice, it's really not all that strange. For one, it won best picture, and for another it's on a number of AFI lists, and rarely comes on TV for Chris and me to watch.

Anyways, the winners were Jessica and Chris (who tied) with 14 each, I think. I got 8 right, but most of that was because I generally picked what I thought should win, instead of what I thought would win. There were a couple disappointments, and a couple exciting upsets, and I'll relate my favorites here.

Where the Academy got it wrong
Best Visual Effects: In my opinion, Superman Returns should have won, instead of Pirates. I can see why Pirates won (the effects were more varied - lots of sea creatures and effects as opposed to mostly flying), but the effects in Superman were truly amazing and perfectly seamless. Pirates was too flashy for my taste to win this, but I can't be too upset, I guess.

Cinematography: Pan's Labyrinth won (which I can't get too upset about), but I think Children of Men should have. Don't get me wrong, the cinematography in Labyrinth is good, I just thought Children was superb. Then again, I'm a sucker for long, cut-less, drawn out shots. But that's not all Children had. While it didn't cut very often, the camera movement and angles really let you feel and see what the characters were feeling and seeing.

Best Foreign Film: Granted, I've only seen one film in this category, but I can't imagine the other films being better. While I'm glad that Pan's Labyrinth won some other awards, I think Jessica was right in that they were given to it to make up for the lack of this Oscar.

Best Picture: I really don't think that The Departed deserved to win in this category. I didn't see all of the films up for the award, but I feel like the movie that wins this should somehow be important, and I didn't feel that The Departed was all that important. Honestly, I expected The Queen to win, and I'll give my opinion as to how right that was once I've seen it. I still think the Academy was wrong, but I'll try to withhold judgment until I've seen more of the films on the list.

Awesome Upsets
Best Supporting Actor: I'm very glad that Alan Arkin won this award. He truly deserved it, but I didn't expect him to get it. A very nice surprise for Little Miss Sunshine.

Best Original Screenplay: Another deserving win for Little Miss that I didn't expect. But I'm happy about it.

Best Supporting Actress: While this wasn't really an upset, I think it's awesome that Jennifer Hudson who on her first time out. And after America didn't vote for her. Which really just shows how much the audience of American Idol knows, really.

And Finally
Best Directing: I thought this might be the year for Scorsese, and I was right. Part of this probably had to do with the fact that his cast was amazing and he directed them perfectly. Part had to do with the fact that he was doing what he does best - a violent mob film. But most of it had to do with the fact that he really is a great director.

Honorary Oscar: How Ennio Morricone didn't win an Oscar for Best Score in 1987 for The Mission I'll never know. But at least he got one for his whole body of work, which is sorely deserved.

Oscar Season

So, it's that time of year again. Time for me to put out my list of movies from this past year. Now, it's true that I really haven't seen all that many movies this year (well, movies that were released this year, at least), so you'll have to keep that in mind as you look at this list.

1. Little Miss Sunshine
Reason for ranking: Everything about this movie works so well. The soundtrack is great and fits perfectly. The cast is amazing and hilarious. And it makes fun of beauty pageants. What more could you look for in a movie.

2. The Departed
Reason for ranking: While mob movies usually aren't my cup of tea (nothing against them, they just all pale compared to The Godfather), this one was good. I was constantly wondering when the moles were going to be discovered, and who wasn't going to die (because there are more that die than don't).

3. Children of Men
Reason for ranking: I'd like to put this one at the number 2 spot, but feel like it could have been better. Granted, the cinematography was amazing and I'm a sucker for movies with long, continuous shots, but some of the plot was lacking, and I felt like it was a little too preachy.

4. Pan's Labyrinth
Reason for ranking: This was a very visual movie, and I absolutely loved it. If this was a list of my favorite movies, it would probably be ranked second, but it's a list of which were the best, in my opinion. There were gaps in the story that I think could have been plugged, and it jumped a little bit, but I still loved it.

5. Brick
Reason for ranking: I love film noir, and this new thing - teen noir - isn't much different. This film put new life into a genre that has sadly seemed to lose it's place in our current society. The cast of young actors was great, too.

6. A Prarie Home Companion
Reason for ranking: There's just something about ensemble movies when they're done correctly. This movie was short on plot, but made up for it with randomness and great acting.

7. A Scanner Darkly
Reason for ranking: A very difficult movie to follow, and one that deserves a re-watching. There was some amazing voice acting, and the process of animation that they use is pretty cool. I don't want to say too much about it because most people haven't seen it, still.

Worst movie: Eragon
While the first book wasn't the best thing out there, it was far superior to the movie that came out. It was so bad, I'm not sure if I'll see the second one (if they make it). The only good thing about the movie was that Saphira looked wicked cool. Before the movie came out, I said that the entire movie would rest on how much effort they put into making the dragon look awesome, but it seems that's the only effort they put into the movie. Perhaps next time more script and character development, and the same amount of special effects. It wasn't the actors' fault, it was the writers and developers.

Loss of Innocence

There was an intervention on Friday night. A group of friends sat me down and decided that it was time I drank beer from a can. See, all of the beer that I've ever had in my life has either been on tap or in a bottle, and Chris finally decided that it was time. Actually, he decided this while he was at Von's and looking for something to drink. He decided that he hadn't had Bodington's in a while (which is an English beer somewhat like Guiness), which only comes on tap and in cans (it has a cool little CO2 capsule to make it way cooler than regular canned beer).

In completely unrelated news, I really like the new Window's Vista commercial, but hate what it's advertising. You know, the one where they show all sorts of cool stuff with people saying, "Wow," and then ruin it by saying that Vista is going to be like that. I'm sorry that I have no faith in Microsoft anymore, they've just failed so often that there's no room for hope in my heart anymore when it comes to Microsoft.

And in more unrelated news, there was once a pool that existed, for which there is no longer a reason. Congratulations Natalie.

Celebrate good times (come on!)

So, after months of being lazy, I finally took in Manny (my computer) to get fixed. And after thinking I would get him back in a day (like they said), I've finally gotten him back after a week. But the awesome thing is that he's back, and I now have my computer back in my room, so I can waste who knows how many hours updating things that really don't need to be updated and the other useless things I do on the computer.

So, be on the look-our for more posts more often.

Too much of a good thing?

So my leg seems to have finally recovered from whatever it is I did to it. Occasionally I will still feel a twinge, but it doesn't hurt while I'm running, which is what's important. And it healed just in time for me to hurt something else, too, although hopefully not. I played again as an alumnus today at BHS, and had a good time. It was nice to not hurt every single step I took. And this weekend we have an adult tournament here in Bakersfield, which should be fun. We can usually get people out for the Bakersfield tournament that can't usually play, so it's a nice change of pace for the team, and a good warm-up for the Vegas tournament in April. I just have to hope that I don't hurt something else.

Continuing my recent rash of watching movies (if you can believe it, I didn't watch many for November, December, and the first part of January), last night Rachel and I watched Little Miss Sunshine, which was as good the second time as the first. I also watched Philadelphia since it's on some AFI lists and I've never watched it before. It was exactly what I expected, and I had to keep reminding myself of when it was made, and what a huge movie it must have been back then. Of course, it got me to philosophizing about ethics and the law, so really, I spent most of the movie only sort of watching it and philosophizing. It was also very interesting to see how much the world has changed in only about 13 years.

Super Lame

As I hope everybody out there knows, this past weekend was the Superbowl. Now, I'm really not that into professional football (at least the American kind), but I will sit down and watch most of the Superbowl, because they're generally alright games, as far as they can be. It's also a great excuse to go over to somebody's house and eat a lot of junk.

So a small gathering of us went to the Burzlaff's house to enjoy the game, and continued the tradition we started last year of having a pool. This is the pool where everybody buys squares in a grid, and you look at the last digit of each teams score at the end of each quarter, and whoever has the square gets some money.

I generally never expect to win something when it comes to pure luck. In fact, I hate games that rely heavily on luck, because I tend to trust my own abilities more than luck. And this was proven to me once again on Sunday. With two seconds left in the half, the Colts (I think) had to make a less than 30 yard field goal for me to get some money. Now, they're kicker is one of the best and most consistent in the league, so I figured this might be my chance to trust somebody else and rely on luck. But of course, I should know better, and he missed the freaking field goal. Wide left. I was so angry, especially because it meant that Paul won on the same square for two quarters. I think that made me angrier than actually losing.