There’s just no other way to say it, I guess.  She took off to Hawai’i with another man, and I’m sitting here in my apartment, all alone.

I guess I should mention that the other man is her father and she’ll be back Saturday, but I’ll bet you I got you to click on the link anyway, right?  Feel free to punish me in the comments.  I’ll take my beatings like a man.

First, we upgraded to 2.5.1.  I hope you’ve all upgraded your WordPress installations.

Anyway, I have the place to myself this week and already it’s pretty damned weird to not have her around here.  I wish I could’ve gone to Hawai’i, too, but I’d already taken too much time off from work in the past thirty days to get away with a whole week off like that.  Plus, I’d just started the grave shift, so it would have sucked to suddenly take a week off on the on-call guy and make him suffer through a week of painful middle of the night calls because I wasn’t there to catch them.

Speaking of… it’s been going pretty good on the grave shift so far.  I’ve been keeping to a strict schedule of sleep and exercise that my doctor recommended.  Unfortunately, it also means that on the weekends, I have to keep to it as well.  I only get two days off and it’s just not enough to right myself to a day schedule and then prepare for a night schedule in forty-eight hours.  This makes participating in activities a little more difficult, and it always seems to result in people being pissed off at me for not going to parties or visiting.  There are exceptions, of course, but not very many.  Plus, everyone likes to get together at noon, which is thirty minutes after I go to bed.  What?  No more evening get-togethers anymore?

On the subject of evening get-togethers… I think it sucks that I keep having to cancel the monthly parties because people have better other things to do.  By the way, on May 10th, we’re celebrating Julia’s 30th birthday.  I sincerely hope that people will show up for it, because we’re holding it at San Jose Municipal Stadium this year and it should be a lot of fun.  Get a hold of me if you want to go.

I leave you all with this little gem: Hard Candy.  Rent or buy the DVD; you will not be disappointed.

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

Did you know that I’ve never seen all of Studio 60?  This is because toward the end of the season, I wanted to hold off from experiencing the letdown of a series being canceled just as it was getting good.  And this isn’t the first time that I’ve experienced this kind of entertainment pain.  I endured it with Sports Night, although having to endure the abysmal middle of the second season (which I forgave Aaron Sorkin for because he was getting the West Wing off the ground at the same time), I’m dreading getting to What Kind of Day Has it Been for the same reason I dreaded getting to Quo Vadimus [Sports Night's finale] and Tomorrow [West Wing finale]). Anyone else feel this way?

At least I got seven seasons of the West Wing… well, six and a half, not counting the crappy fifth season post-Sorkin, where John Wells tried to do a stupid-ass meld of ER and West Wing by removing pretty much all the great dramatic themes that Sorkin and Schlamme put together for the first four seasons.  I was kind of hoping to find out that Sorkin would return to the show at some point, especially when they announced that it was going to be the last one…

But, I digress.

I know some don’t really like Studio 60, but there’s more to it than simply being a show-within-a-show.  Sports Night was similar but it wasn’t until they found their groove in the second season that I thought Sports Night could run with a heavy like the West Wing, with the multiple episode arcs and the threat of cancellation (plot, not reality) of the show.  I even liked the parting shot from the guy who buys the network, “If someone can’t make money off of Sports Night, they need to get out of the money-making business.”  Great line.  I miss Natalie and Natalie World.

Studio 60 didn’t really get much of a chance to show us what it could do in the long-term.  I haven’t quite completed the whole season, yet, as I’m slowly making my way back through the episodes I’ve already watched… to kind of try and get back into that mood of buildup, y’know?  I want to savor the very first time I see these episodes so I don’t take it for granted, given that eventually I will reach the end and look back with regret, wishing I could watch them all again for the first time.

Oh well.  I hope this isn’t the last we see of Shoe Money Productions.  I hope we get another opportunity to enjoy Sorkin’s wit on the small screen.

Current Mood: annoyed & working

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

Like most new toys, one plays with them pretty incessantly upon arrival.  Christmas morning growing up, I think once all the presents were opened, the rest of the day was battle between parent and child, over getting ready for the family dinner and playing with the new toys.  Well shit, folks, you gave me the damned things to play with.  It’s pretty cruel to just say, “Here you go, now put them away and don’t play with them.”  Christ… kick me, too, while you’re at it.

Uh, anyway, Netflix I’ve had for a while now (the new toy), and lately I’ve sort of gotten into a cool cycle here on the graveyard shift at work, where it’s really quiet during the night.  I have DVDs I take with me into work and listen to them in the background while I’m taking care of business.  Recently, I’ve cycled through a couple of gems that I wanted to bring to your attention…

The first is Cashback, a British film starring Bionic Woman’s Michelle Ryan and Harry Potter’s Sean Biggerstaff.  It’s about an art student who suffers from insomnia following the break-up of his relationship and ends up taking a night job at a local supermarket, where he meets a group of varied personalities and an attractive girl named Sharon who’s caught his attention.  I picked it up at a Netflix suggestion, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to take a chance on it, but hey… what the hell, right?  I wasn’t disappointed and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The second is the Academy Award-winning Juno, starring X-Men 3’s Ellen Page as the eponymous protagonist.  A girl has sex with her best friend and it results in her pregnancy.  Since the abortion clinic scared the shit out of her, she decides to keep it and put it up for adoption.  She meets a couple that suits her unborn child’s needs (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner) and befriends them, all the while having to suffer the social inequities of high school life as a pregnant student.  In spite of all that potential morose drama, it was smartly written and the performance of Page as Juno was amazing.  I was laughing my ass off at this movie, because the character of Juno is nothing short of an amalgam of most of the women in my life.  Sharp wit, acerbic sense of humor and blunt force trauma when asking questions.  Not to say that you all are bad, but there were times when Juno spoke that I remarked to myself that she reminded me of Tap or Julia or one of my sisters…  It made the movie more enjoyable, although the ending was a little out there.  Plus, it was an Arrested Development reunion, pretty much, with Michael Cera and Jason Bateman, although they never had a scene together.  And surprise, Allison Janney and Rainn Wilson’s in it, too!  Highly recommended, if you haven’t already seen it.

What’s next on my list?  Since I’m now an Ellen Page fan, next up is Hard Candy.  Check my queue on the sidebar for more information about my list.

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

I typically root for two teams: San Francisco and Cleveland.

San Francisco is immediately obvious; I live in San Jose and proximity dictates that I throw my support behind the local team. Of course, I will also throw some fandom behind the A’s because sometimes when Giants baseball kills me, it’s nice to bite into the refreshing lime wedge of A’s baseball, which at times, can suck way less.

Why Cleveland? It all goes back to my father. My dad loves baseball, and he was the one who introduced me to the game when I was a kid. We would travel to the Stick to watch the Giants in San Francisco, but also we would hang out at Municipal Stadium almost every home game during the 1989-1992 seasons and got to know some of the minor leaguers when they would go to the bar after the game and drink with us. It was a lot of fun (and yes, even though I was like 11, as long as I didn’t sit at the bar, I was cool). But my dad’s first love was and is the Cleveland Indians.

Not because he used to live there or anything, but because when he was a little kid, he would catch the sports scores on the radio during the 50s. Every now and again, he told me that he heard a pitcher named Mike Garcia (aka The Big Bear). It was one of those things, I guess, when you hear someone with your own name being referred to on a broadcast medium like radio and eventually television. So, naturally, he would root for the pitcher who shared his name and the team he played for, which was the Cleveland Indians. Ever since, he would always keep tabs on the Tribe and of course, as his son, I tried to be as helpful as I possibly could in that area.

And that carries through even today. I may not follow the Tribe as die-hard as I do the Giants, but I still follow them. When I talk to my dad on that increasingly rare occasions these days, during the baseball season our conversation will turn back to the Tribe and how they’re doing. My dad doesn’t follow the game as avidly as he once did when I was growing up, but that bond that we built between us with the Giants and the Indians will always remain, no matter how old we get.

With the start of the 2008 MLB season this week, I’m ready to go back on the trail with my teams once more; ready to live and die with wins and losses. I’ve made many friends because of my love of the game, and maybe lost more than a few loves because of it, but I won’t apologize for being who I am and loving what I love.

Go Giants! Go Tribe!

Current Mood: bouncy & working

WordPress Posts | No Comments »

For those of you keeping score, we’re running 2.5, now.

I just got back from SakuraCon in Seattle this weekend and experienced snow for the first time since my trip to Philly in 2005. It was a metric fuckton of fun, including conversations that bordered on the absurd as whole portions of dialogue from Aqua Teen Hunger Force seemed to be the order of the weekend. We went up with Teri and Kailee, sharing a hotel room that had these tiny-ass double beds and a toilet that reminded one of the Disneyland Hotel in 2000 for Anime Expo (it will suck the soul right out of your body).

Fun was had by all, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

By the way, I know you all want to sponsor me for the AIDS Walk this year. I’m going to start walking now to build up the ability to do five miles a day, if I can. So please do me a favor and put down $25 at the link above. Thanks!

Current Mood: awake & working

WordPress Posts | No Comments »