DJ Mix Originals

One of the things I've done already to help put some time between my last DJ mix and my next one (whenever that may be) is to compile onto two CDs the original versions of as many of the 77 tracks that have thus far been featured on my five DJ mixes. In addition to simply being a fun way to appreciate my mixes in a different way, having the often stylistically-disparate original tracks on one CD ends up giving me something that is somehow both firmly dance music and firmly not, therefore allowing me some much-needed distance from the genre.

As a demonstration of how different the original version and remix version can be, check these two links out:

Jape - Floating (Original)
Jape - Floating (D.I.M. Remix)

A lot of the originals are a lot funkier, more down-tempo, or acoustic than the remixes, despite often still being dance music.

Greenville Pics

Well, although it took me two whole weeks to get around to it, I've finally posted the pics from Candace and my visit to see my sister and her husband Ryan at their new house in Greenville on Facebook! Here it is:

Greenville w/Candace

Not much to say here that I haven't covered elsewhere (either in the album itself or in my previous blog posts from that week).

Castle in the Sky

One of the two Hayao Miyazaki films I received for my birthday was Castle in the Sky, a steampunk adventure that follows two young kids, a band of air pirates, and the government that's after them as they search for a legendary floating island castle. Although I was looking forward to this film a good bit more than the other one I received (Kiki's Delivery Service), it turned out to be a bit average for me, much like how I feel about Miyazaki's somewhat similar (though more recent) Howl's Moving Castle.

I'm starting to realize now that I usually find Miyazaki's work most successful when the subject matter is at its most fantastic, Spirited Away - a story about a girl caught in a ghost world - being the prime example. Of Miyazaki's eight feature-length films, only two others seem to be of the type I'm most interested in: Princess Mononoke and Nausicaä. For the sake of having a complete collection though, I think I might go ahead and buy the three films I'm missing from his oeuvre, despite the fact they might be slight disappointments like this film.

CosmoLava

After talking about going to check it out for months, last night Candace and I finally went to CosmoLava, one of Atlanta's few dance clubs, to see what it was all about. Although admission was $10 a person, we ended up not having to pay as one of the bouncers turned out to be one of my friends from high school! Upon entering, I was immediately impressed with the club's spacious layout, large number of dance floors and bars, and relatively unique atmosphere, but this quickly gave way to being frustrated by the relatively undanceable music (a weird mix cheesy remixes of current Top 40 and 80s music) and the somewhat strange crowd, so we left pretty quickly after arriving.

Fortunately, the club supposedly has more interesting music on Wednesday and Thursday nights, so we'll have to go check it out again sometime soon to see if that's any better (especially considering how much I liked the space itself). Probably the nicest thing about the club was that it had rooms where you could chill if you happened not to be all that up for dancing, a situation I often find myself in. The patios there were also fairly large and uncrowded, making me think it might be perfect for bringing a large group of friends sometime.

DNC 2008

This week, for the first time in my life, I watched the Democratic National Convention, and I'm glad I did. Sure, when you make a convention four days long you're going to have plenty of repeated phrases, slogans, and ideas, but overall, seeing my politicians of choice elaborate on how we can start turning our country around was the kind of kick-in-the-pants that's gotten me really fired up about the potential our country may have coming its way come January. I saw the majority of the big speeches, including those of Ted Kennedy, Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, Al Gore, and of course Barack himself, but I missed Hillary and Bill's speeches, which I heard went well too. In particular, Biden, Gore, and Barack's speeches resonated the strongest for me, and now I'm looking forward to this upcoming election season even more than before.

Chicago Dogs

Much to my good friend (and Chicago native) Dave's surprise, one of this year's biggest dietary discoveries for me is realizing I like Chicago dogs. Shortly after moving home and after realizing I hadn't had a hot dog in a long time (particularly due to having lived in Europe), I decided to give this little place called Chicago Dogs a shot. Initially, I wasn't sure I would like Chicago dogs, having all the extra stuff on them, so I got one Chicago dog and one regular hot dog. Let's just say that after that first visit, I haven't gotten any more regular hot dogs.

Well, although I love Chicago Dogs (the restaurant), it is now too far from me to visit on any regular basis now that I've moved, but today I finally got around to trying another hot dog place closer to me, Mike's Hot Dogs. Although it was good to try someone else's take on the same meal, I just wasn't feeling Mike's Chicago dogs as much as those at my original restaurant, most-likely due to what I perceived to be an imbalance of its main ingredients (in my opinion, there was too much of almost all the toppings, leaving it hard to taste the hot dog itself).

Now I'm just waiting to try a real Chicago dog in its namesake city, hopefully on my next visit to see Dave (who somewhat ironically doesn't like Chicago dogs!).

My Current Situation with Dance Music

I'm a bit burned out from dance music right now. Although it's tempting to say this might have come solely from the bad turnout of this past weekend's Chi Phi gig, it's more accurate to say it's the combination of a number of recent trends. Sure the Chi Phi gig was bad, but it was more the last straw than the cause itself. I suppose the start was a growing frustration that all I had been doing for a long while was making mix CDs that weren't taking me anyway, especially not to any new gigs. And being a DJ who doesn't really DJ that much is kinda a sad state to be in, one that doesn't encourage you to keep going all that much.

In addition, although I was enjoying making these DJ Mixes, they started to seem not only a bit pointless, but also a bit repetitive, repeating the long process of creating a mix over and over, one after another, with little feedback about them to propel me forwards. To break up the monotony a little, I have come up with a few ways to postpone my next mix while still being productive, two of which I mentioned in my blog upon the completion of the 5th mix. I think this time away from the genre will help a lot, and maybe in the meantime I'll figure out a way to start getting more gigs...

Fortunately, my Xbox 360 provides a good healthy amount of distraction from all of this, allowing me to obsess about something other than dance music for a bit. Add to that my desire to bite the bullet and go ahead and order that $75 7x7x7 Rubik's Cube, and I should have a nice little break ahead.

BioShock

Although you could argue that beating Guitar Hero's career mode in easy and medium would technically make GH my first game finished on the Xbox 360, my recent completion of BioShock on easy seems more worthy of the title, largely due to GH's career mode not really being the point of the game. Despite my initial reservations about playing a bloody shooter, BioShock has turned out to be one of my favorite games of all time, and certainly my favorite game on my new console. The game's story, presentation, look, controls, and depth are all so top-notch that I feel that pretty much anyone that doesn't mind a little video game violence (despite possibly not being shooter fans) would love this game.

The best thing about BioShock though is how well everything in it works together. There are a number of ways you could play through this game, both in terms of in-story choices as well as simple game mechanics (hell, you can even justifiably use only the wrench the whole game!), and all of these choices make sense within the given environment. One of the biggest choices you have to make in the game is whether or not to take the moral high-road when it comes to saving or killing these little girls that can make you more powerful when dead, and as I chose the high-road, I'm not sure how the story ends if you go the other way, so even if for nothing else, I'll need to play through this game again. In fact, I'm so itching to play it again I keep having to force myself to complete my other games first!

I had a tiny complaint here or there, but ultimately these were either too tiny in comparison to the good stuff or were most-likely the result of the difficulty setting being too low and will therefore be resolved soon. Let's just say I'm eagerly awaiting the release of BioShock 2 sometime this next year!

Chic-fil-A Chicken Strips Campaign

Chic-fil-A is probably my favorite fast food restaurant, largely due to how different their menu is from all the others and their consistent high standard of preparation. So, despite the frequent Christian radio playing while dining-in there, the occasional Bible study being held in one of their large booths in the corner, or their extremely annoying Sunday-off policy (Chic-fil-A is Christian-owned and often employed), I frequent this establishment on a regular basis.

While eating there recently, I saw the following advertisement for their new line of chicken strips, spelled in the seemingly-appropriate cow-spelling they're now known for:

"Weer big fanz of nu stripz"

The thing that caught me off guard about this is that no fewer than three of the six words in that sentence, despite being misspelled in English, are legitimate Dutch words!

weer = 'again' or 'weather'
of = 'or'
nu = 'now'

Funny.

Ghostbusters 2

A few nights ago Candace and I finished the Ghostbusters boxed set I recently purchased by watching the second film in the franchise. Growing up, I held this movie in high regard, even compared with the original, most-probably due to my having gotten into the franchise with the release of the second film (I was too young to see the first in theatres). I had all the toys, including the Ghostbusters firehouse, EctoMobile, proton pack, ghost trap, and plush Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, not to mention all the figurines, so I was a big childhood fan.

That said, having watching the second film recently, I now understand why all the critics found the second film a bit undercooked: in addition to the novelty of the franchise wearing off by this point, the chemistry between the characters seems a good bit thinner, the plot is less cohesive, the film is significantly less scary, and the comedic elements were fewer in number. That said, I still enjoyed the movie, just not as much as I thought I would.

Chi Phi Gig No.2

Last night was my second time officially DJ'ing for Chi Phi at Oglethorpe, and it very well might be my last. See, despite the fact that the first time I DJ'ed there everyone seemed to like me playing the type of music I play, this time very few people were dancing, largely because the average person there seemed to want me to play hip-hop exclusively, which I obviously don't have. Although I did end up playing for over two hours, I gave up around 11:30, agreeing with the fraternity brother in charge that it would be better for him to just put on an iTunes mix of rap songs.

While this wasn't my worst gig of the thirteen I've done in my short DJ'ing career (that honor goes to the time I spun at the Haagse Hogeschool's bar, The Pub), it certainly came close. While people were mostly fairly nice about me not playing hip-hop, it did become frustrating over time to keep letting people down and not much dancing. In the end, there was only one kinda bitchy girl who essentially said the following: "can't you play something that people can dance to without being on ecstasy, you know, something with words?" Although I was decently nice to her, this pissed me off a good bit, largely due to how wrong she was about what I was playing. First off, almost EVERYTHING I played had words. Second, everything I played was easy to dance to if you know how to dance beyond hip-hop. And finally, NONE of what I played required being on ecstasy to get into. In fact, I was totally sober!

Some other people were asking me to play "black-people music" to which I also got a bit inwardly frustrated considering at least half of the music I play was either produced or performed by black people. Add to this the fact that house (which is what I mainly play) came from black culture in Chicago and Detroit and you've got one frustrated DJ. Ultimately, I think last night is going to be the turning point forcing me to decide to either move to a city with a real dance scene (like San Francisco, Miami, New York, Chicago, or LA) or to quit entirely. I just don't know what to do any more. I suppose I could give promoting myself to the few real dance clubs in Atlanta one more shot (despite already having done so in a fairly serious way), but I'm starting to feel really powerless here in a city that doesn't know how to dance without having air-sex and pretending to be badass thugs...

Xbox Live Arcade

My most recent obsession is with Xbox's arcade format, called Xbox Live Arcade. Unlike the gaming consoles I grew up with, Xbox 360 and its contemporaries offer you two ways to enjoy gaming, the first being the traditional buy-a-whole-game-at-the-store variety, and the second being smaller, less-expensive, and less-ambitious (but still addictive and fun) arcade-style games that you download from the Xbox Live server. As these games are cheaper to buy (due to being cheaper to make), there are a lot of them available, and I've been spending the past week pretty much fully engaged in trying to learn about all the games and decide which ones I might be interested in. To make matters both worse (for my time) and better (for deciding which games are best), Xbox Live Arcade also lets you download free trial versions of all the games, giving you a taste for the game mechanics and look. Needless to say, playing a bunch of trial versions for over fifty titles results in a lot of used time...

The types of games available on Xbox Live Arcade can be broken down into two basic categories: emulations of classic/older games (such as Pac-Man, Galaga, Contra, Street Fighter II, and Sonic the Hedgehog), and entirely new games, often based on old game formats (for example, Braid, Geometry Wars, and Castle Crashers). Despite being old, the classic games are often cleaned up or sometimes even 'evolved' to have both better graphics and gameplay, and you sometimes even have the choice to play the original port or the evolved version.

Anyway, there are definitely some games that have stood out to me more than others, and I'll probably post about them later, but a more pressing post will concern my first Xbox Live Arcade download: Alien Hominid HD.

The Rocker

So, today I helped my friend Kendra out with organizing her grandma's storage facility for the second time, and afterwards we went to see the new Rainn Wilson movie, The Rocker. First off, this wasn't really a movie I had a whole lot of interest in seeing, but it looked like it could be funny, so whatever.

The movie was essentially your typical garage-band-makes-it-big movie, complete with lots of crushes, shifty managers, wary parents, and gigging on the road. The big difference with this film is that Wilson's character is a has-been 80's glam rock drummer who fills in for the teen band's drummer when he gets grounded, and of course they end up making it big somehow (via YouTube, nonetheless). Not having seen much of The Office, I went into this only having heard the hype about Rainn Wilson's comedic skills, but of course I was let down considering this movie isn't really the sort that would best showcase his talents.

That said, the movie had its laughs (although nothing like those in Tropic Thunder), and the relationships between the characters were enough to keep you interested for most of the movie, but none of this really added up to much more than a basic feel-good comedy of the disposable variety.

2nd Big Chi Phi Gig

I've got to start catching up here, so I'm just going to postpone my Greenville pics blog and start getting down to business. I'll be sure to post those photos as soon as I get some more free time.

In the meantime, I'm going to be heavily focused on my upcoming DJ gig at Oglethorpe's Chi Phi fraternity. This will be the second official gig at their house (technically the car show was sponsored by another organization that just happened to have a Chi Phi member or two in it), and considering how my first night there was quite possibly my favorite DJ gig ever, I'm quite pumped about this one. Once again, I'll be spinning for a benefit instead of a regular party, most-likely due to the fact that they're only allowed one official party a month by the school and would prefer a hip-hop DJ for that. Regardless, I'm totally pumped about this one, despite the fact that I'll be officially spinning from 9-11 pm (which is really early) and then continuing on after that for a bit for just the fraternity members and a few friends, again due to school-wide party rules.

In addition to doing my typcial practice sets a few nights before the gig itself, I'm also preparing for this gig by burning some CDs of my DJ Mix renditions of the original tracks contained therein, the reasoning being that these new edited/arranged versions of these tracks generally strike me as more favorable for the dance floor than the originals themselves. Considering about 30 or so tracks from my recent mixes are probably applicable for this, I've got my work cut out for me. We'll see how much I end up getting done by Saturday night...

Tropic Thunder

Still really behind, so since I still haven't finished my Facebook album, I'm gonna go ahead and write about Tropic Thunder, which Candace and I saw with J+R during our Greenville visit.

To start, it should been said that I had high hopes for this movie, largely due to the premise and Robert Downey, Jr.'s crazy part as an Australian actor in blackface for his role in the movie inside the film. Plus, the trailers looked good, so although I'm not a huge Ben Stiller fan, I was pretty pumped.

That said, the movie was simultaneously both a letdown and a fun experience. As it turns out, although Downey Jr. was good, the really standout part was the fairly unexpected comedically-extreme violence and profanity (with emphasis on a particular cameo). The worst part of the film though is that it frequently starts to ramble and is a bit too long for its own good, leaving you essentially just suffering through the story waiting for another great funny bit. Also, Ben Stiller is fairly annoying here, essentially being nothing more than Zoolander in an action role, which doesn't really work.

All told, I'm glad I saw this movie, as it left a strong impression despite its shortcomings. If you're at all interested in seeing it, go for it, but just don't get your hopes up too much.

Greenville Trip Recap

Sorry I'm a bit behind on my blog - I'll do my best to try to catch up soon. As you can imagine, I've been back from Greenville since Sunday evening, but I've just been either too busy or too lazy to do any blogging. Plus, I plan on making a Facebook album of the pics I took there, and you know how that can slow me down. So, instead of posting the pics now, I'm gonna go ahead and cover what we did while visiting Jaclyn and Ryan, saving the album for my next post when I discuss their house (which concerns the majority of the pictures).

Greenville is only about 2-2.5 hours away from Atlanta, but we got a little lost once we got into town due to my GPS not being too up on the area. Once we settled in, we all went to lunch at Red Robin (which is new to the South) and caught Tropic Thunder at a matinée time (more on this later too, of course). After the movie we all chilled at home playing a variety of games: J+R's Wii Sports, Blokus (which my sister gave me for my birthday), and a little Guitar Hero, which I brought over. After this, J+R fixed a delicious dinner and then we all settled in watching the Olympics (the women's marathon and Phelp's last race). The next day we all drove to downtown Greenville and toured the newly-gentrified park areas before grabbing some lunch at a cute little hippie diner called The Bohemian, ending our trip nicely.

Overall, Candace and I had a nice time, although the whole thing was a bit shorter than I would have liked (especially in retrospect). The highlight of the trip though was certainly seeing J+R's new house, about which I have a good bit to say in my next post, so stay tuned!

Visiting J+R in Greenville

Short post here. Just wanted to let you know that I'm out of town for a couple days with Candace visiting my sister and her husband at their new home in Greenville, South Carolina for the first time. They have a REALLY nice (new) house in the outer suburbs of the city...so nice in fact that I almost can't believe it's real. Maybe I'll take some pics to show you... I'll give a you a full rundown when I've got a minute to write more.

Helping Kendra

One of the friends I made while living in The Netherlands was a fellow conservatory student (in audio engineering) named Kendra. Although Kendra was born and raised in Alaska and then went to school in Oregon, both her mom and grandmother live right here in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, meaning that every once in a while we get to catch up when she's here for a bit.

Unfortunately, Kendra's grandmother (with whom she's staying) recently got hurt and is currently needing a good bit of supervision, a role that Kendra was willing to take up for her two months in the ATL, despite its implications on her day-to-day life. One thing Kendra needed to get done for her grandmother was to sort out her grandmother's storage facility, taking inventory of all of her belongings, both to try to sell them and to have a decent archive of all relevant recent financial records.

So, Kendra asked me if I would be willing to help her sort all of this out, and although I was initially a bit hesitant about the whole endeavor, I finally ended up going to help her today, and despite my fears, we were done with the first half of our work (which we were planning to split into two days) within a couple hours...easily twice as fast as either one of us was predicting it would take. Afterwards, Kendra took me out for lunch at a local Mexican restaurant, where we essentially caught up after months of being on different continents. Overall, it was a good time, despite the mild work, and I'm looking forward to hanging out with her at least once more before she moves to NYC for an internship in a few weeks...

Two New Games

Although this is probably a bit indulgent of me, I went out and bought two new games for my Xbox 360...not so much because I was done with the other ones, but because these two games cover two game types I was kinda missing and felt a little incomplete not playing on my new system. The first game I bought was Naruto: Rise of a Ninja, which is a combination platformer (with a sandbox slant) and versus fighting game based on the manga/anime of the same name. This game in and of itself knocked out a bunch of different things I was looking for in a game, and as such I had been planning on buying it right away this whole time. Those things include the two combined game styles (both of which I love) and the overall Japanese quasi Spirited Away look to it. Thus far, the game is quite awesome, and I'm happy to report that I'm enjoying the sandbox element much more than I had imagined.

My second new game is The Simpsons Game, which I chose entirely for its two player format and familiar comedic environment so Candace and I would have something to play together. Up until this point, I didn't really have any true two-player games, and I wanted Candace to feel involved in my new gaming obsession too. Although this game is funny, it's actually a bit difficult to figure out what you're supposed to do to solve different boards, but the entertainment value (essentially being a really long Simpsons episode), is pretty high.

All this said, I feel a bit overwhelmed with games right now, especially having not gotten much further in Lost Odyssey, so I don't plan on buying anything new until Star Wars: The Force Unleashed comes out mid-September. Guitar Hero III is coming along, and I'm almost done with BioShock on easy, but both of these games are the type of game I'll want to keep playing for a long while.

George's Move to NYC

My good friend George, who was both my roommate my last year at UGA and my "right-hand man" in the Philip Glass Ensemble I ran there, is finally moving out of Athens after about ten years of residing there during and after his schooling. For the past few years George has been living in a small but serious recording studio in Athens doing freelance work there and around town, but over time he had been growing tired of not making any serious steps towards a more traditional and stable life, so he decided to take the LSAT and apply to a bunch of big-name law schools in the country.

Turns out he ranked in something like the 97th percentile and got into NYU, whose law school is ranked 4th in the nation, so he didn't feel like passing this opportunity up and will therefore be moving there later this month in what surely amounts to the biggest life change he's probably had thus far. While I'm excited for him and glad that he's deciding to put some of his music know-how to use by focusing on copyright law (and related subjects), I'm certainly going to miss him, especially considering he was pretty much my last friend left in Athens close enough to cause me to want to make a trip to see them there.

So, the other day on his way back from Athens we got together at my apartment, caught up; did some Guitar Hero, Rubik's Cubes, and mandolin; went to dinner at El Azteca on Ponce downtown; and followed it all up with a drink at Hand in Hand in the Virginia Highlands. Overall, a great time catching up, especially considering I hadn't seen him in about four months. Now I've just got to go visit him sometime in NYC...

Macbook Being Serviced, PC Standing In

For a while I had been experiencing problems burning CDs with my Mac, so after doing a bit of online troubleshooting, I decided to take it in to get a new disk drive. Although this is free due to my 3-year warranty, it unfortunately takes about a week to fix, so in the meantime I've been struggling with my old PC. In fact, it's been about 15 months since I last even turned this old Toshiba on, and its age is really showing. Everything runs slowly on it, especially iTunes (I'll save this for a later post though); my Mac files were all copied as PC files, doubling the amount of information on my external hard drive; and the internet was particularly hard to setup again, especially wireless.

Let's just say I'm dying to have my Mac back. What I'm really learning from this experience though is how much better Macs (particularly new ones) are than PCs. Seriously...

Ghostbusters

Last night Candace and I were looking to watch The Shining by buying it at our local Best Buy, but it was a bit too expensive for me (special edition), so we found a bargain-priced boxed set of the two Ghostbusters films for under $15 and went with that instead, and being a huge fan of Ghostbusters growing up, I decided this was pretty much a must-have.

Let me just say that in all these years since I first fell in love with this movie, it hasn't really diminished in any serious way, despite having grown up and all. In fact, if nothing else, it's just funnier now that I'm older (and certainly a less scary). This movie really does manage to walk a fine line between being both a comedy and a horror flick, and the characters and plot are still interesting after all these years. As a side note, isn't that trailer above great? I especially love how much it shows its age, as well as how scary they were seemingly trying to make the film look at first. Classic.

As you can assume, Candace and I plan on watching the sequel soon, so be looking out for that post too...

Deadmau5 @ Swerve

Last night Candace and I made our third trip to Swerve night club to see yet another big DJ whose hype seems to outweigh his skill at connecting with an audience. Deadmau5 (yes, the '5' in his name is correct) is responsible for the latest craze in house remixes, largely due to his interesting blend of house and trance not all that dissimilar in concept from that of Benny Benassi (although the execution is much different). So, I was excited to see him DJ. Once again, this DJ spun in a style not all that similar to his own, leaving me yet more frustrated with trying to see a DJ whose set I'll hopefully really like based on their own tracks. Thus far, I've seen Dubfire, Armin van Buuren (twice), Benny Benassi, Kaskade, Dave Dresden, and Deadmau5 spin, and with the possible exception of Kaskade, none of them have really delivered for me.

Ultimately, I'm starting to think that somehow I've managed to be both someone who loves dance music and yet finds it hard to actually dance in most situations. It's not that I'm self-conscious so much as being REALLY picky about what I choose to move to: if a DJ can't really grab me, then it's not going to happen. I guess I really do belong on the other side of the turntables, where I'm much more inclined to get into the groove. I guess it wouldn't be all that surprising if many other DJs find it much more comfortable spinning than dancing, but it's still kinda strange that a DJ would have a hard time dancing...

DJ Mix 5 is Finished

Well, although I technically didn't finish DJ Mix 5 until today, I burnt my first full rough copy a week ago (the day I moved in to my apartment), and the adjustments I've made since then were small and were only halted by my move and new obsession with my Xbox. So, although the mix officially took me 19 days to finish, had I been free I probably would have finished it in my predicted two weeks, which is definitely a marked improvement over my past two mixes.

Anyway, I've been kinda up and down with my personal reception to this mix over the past few weeks, but now after a total re-haul of the last half of the mix and some small adjustments during the past week, I feel it's safe to say it came out pretty well. Its biggest flaws are probably its relatively slow build-up and its length of 20 tracks (both of which are related). Although it is certainly the most homogenous of all but possibly my first mix (which I have essentially disowned due to its lack of technique and attention to detail), I think it managed to work fairly well, building up and settling down a few times, making the mix not seem too much like a simple sequence of similar tracks. As always, there were a few new technical skills I picked up when doing this mix, but with the exception of possibly my most compositionally minded set of blends ever (and even my first ever true VS. track), there's nothing particularly new here that's immediately obvious to the listener.

One thing I did learn from all this is how burnt out I am with mixing other people's music lately, so I think I'm going to take a break, doing either a creative reworking of an entire dance album (namely, The Field's From Here We Go Sublime) or redoing/touching up my first two mixes (respectively). And who knows, maybe it's just time for me to start doing some original stuff now that I've got a good feel for the software...

The Big Lebowski

As I mentioned before, Evan, Candace, and I watched The Big Lebowski for my first time on my birthday, and I have to admit that I didn't really get it. The movie has so many different small story branches (along with a lot of side characters) that it's a bit hard to follow. Sure, it's kind of an artsier stoner movie, especially having been done by the Coen brothers, but is that really enough to make this a cult classic? I suppose John Goodman's Walter is my favorite character in the film, and I also enjoyed Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman's parts, but I'm not sure the film as a whole really did it for me. Maybe I just need to see it again (like Napoleon Dynamite?)...

The Golden Compass

I originally saw this movie months ago in the theatre, but recently Candace and I rented it, largely due to the fact that she had finished the first book of the series (which I had given her for Christmas) months ago and we had kept putting the movie rental off. Although I was a big fan of the movie the first time, I think Candace and I were both a bit disappointed by it this time around (her first time). For her, this was largely due to the movie not sticking to the book that well, but for me, I think it was mainly that I realized that what had attracted me to the film initially was not the realization of the book, but rather the subject matter itself:

The Golden Compass is the first book in a trilogy which is essentially the counterbalance to C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series: where Narnia is a thick allegory about Christian beliefs, The Golden Compass is the same for free-thinking and provable truth (therefore, being quite the opposite to religion). For me, the allegory works much better in this story, as it concerns a political, cultural, and social topic that is quite relevant in today's world. Another really neat thing about the story is that humans in the world of the film have animal familiars called daemons which represent their souls, entirely separate from their physical bodies and minds. This concept is key to the whole story and is quite beautifully conceived and realized. Unfortunately, I think the film fails to be much more than a sum of its innovative ideas, so once you've absorbed these, it's much easier to see the production faults. I have no idea how the book is though...if I read it, I'll let you know what I think.

My 27th Birthday: Presents

This year's birthday requests centered around getting an Xbox 360 gaming console, which I did get from my parents. I only asked them for two games though: Guitar Hero III and Lost Odyssey, both of which I got as well. On top of this, Candace gave me one more game, BioShock, which she picked off a list with about fifteen games I was interested in getting. I've played BioShock and Guitar Hero III a lot, but Lost Odyssey, a role-playing game, has been a bit harder to get into, mainly due to its REALLY slow start (it took me 2 hours of gameplay before I really started fighting anyone!), and its fairly difficult (and hard to read) set of options for equipping your guys. On top of all this, the game doesn't do that great a job of teaching you how to play, so you end up just trying things out until something makes sense.

Guitar Hero III is every bit as addictive as I had imagined, but in a more mindless entertainment kind of way (I'm already almost done with both the easy and medium career modes and have unlocked all the songs), whereas BioShock is easily the best game I got. BioShock is a shooter set in an alternate history where an idealistic group of people made a colony underwater called Rapture which eventually goes to hell. The whole thing is loosely based off of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which I've been meaning to read for a while now but now have much more reason to do. The game is a bit gruesome and scary at times, but it's really engrossing and the story and environment are really well thought out.

In addition to games, I got two Miyazaki DVDs, a neat block-based board game (Blokus) that Jaclyn and Ryan gave me, and season three of Batman: The Animated Series and The Umbrella Academy TPB comic from Dave, rounding out a really indulgent set of presents giving me plenty of fun things to do with my time in my new apartment. Thanks to everyone for their thoughtful gifts!

My 27th Birthday: Activities

I'm going to split the account of my birthday this year into two posts, one for what we did and the other for the presents. Being my move-in weekend as well, it's a bit difficult to distinguish my birthday activities from my move-in hullabaloo, but I guess my birthday stuff didn't officially start until Saturday (the day before), when Candace and I met up in the city for her to take me out to dinner at a unique steak restaurant called the Highland Tap, which was kinda a cross between a hunting lodge restaurant, steak house, and dive bar (which you first see upon entering). Afterwards, Candace really wanted to take me out drinking or to a comedy show, but since I had moved Evan in that morning, I was pretty exhausted, so we ended up just renting The Golden Compass and chilling.

The first half of my actual birthday was spent with my family, first at the Cheesecake Factory with my sister and her husband, and then at our home (my old place, if you will...) for gifts. After this, I went to my apartment to tear into my new Xbox 360, and after some gaming, Evan fixed Candace and me a delicious birthday dinner, complete with drinks for the evening. Evan was determined to get me plastered (especially since we watched The Big Lebowski for my first time), but I think he ended up getting the worst of it...

Overall, the birthday was a unique but fun one: for the first time in a while I had my girlfriend, roommate, AND family celebrating with me in person. Add to this my general disorientation and fatigue due to living in/moving into my new apartment, and you've got a fairly memorable birthday weekend.

My Birthday in Holland

Seeing as yesterday was my 27th birthday, I plan on writing a full post on that soon, but first, I want to look back at last year's birthday (my 26th) which was spent in Holland. Actually, it was a kinda strange birthday, because I barely celebrated it, at least not in the traditional sense. First off, it was at this time that I was working at my short-lived job on the beach bartending, so because it was my birthday, I asked off for a couple days in a row in order to allow me to go out drinking the first night and not have to get up early the next day hungover. So, although my birthday actually fell on the second day, I did most of my interesting stuff on the first.

My treat to myself was taking a day's worth of traveling to nearby small Dutch cities, probably my favorite thing to do in Europe. This time I went to the two small port towns of Enkhuizen (two photo albums are referenced under 'Enk' and 'huizen') and Hoorn. Enkhuizen was perhaps the cutest city I've ever been to, especially when you include its quaint outdoor museum. That night, I returned to hang out with some of my guy friends, with whom I pregamed and then went out to my favorite dance club in town, Paard van Troje.

My actual birthday was spent lazing around the apartment, treating myself to some dessert, and talking with my parents via Skype for a long time about my possible move home. Overall, it was a bit of an anti-social birthday, but that's really not all that different from my life in Europe in general...the only time I really socialized was at night, and the rest of the day I tended to just sit around or go see movies.

Anyway, this year's birthday was certainly much different, but more on that soon.

Move-In Day 4

My final move-in day consisted of getting up early to help Evan move all of his stuff from one apartment to the other within the same complex. Fortunately, we were joined by one of Evan's coworkers and Evan's girlfriend's dad, who brought an appliance dolly, his truck, and a towing trailer behind it, making our work much easier. Still, it took about four trips to take care of everything, and despite the dollies, we still had a lot of heavy lifting to do. Fortunately, this whole process only took us about two hours, after which Evan and I relaxed a little bit before putting most of his stuff together. Now our apartment is actually starting to look like it should, even though I'm not sure how much time I'll actually be spending there this weekend, considering my birthday and all. Overall, I would say the move went as smoothly as it could have gone, especially with my stuff, and I'm happy to say I finally have my own place in the city!

Move-In Day 3

Writing about moving in is getting a bit repetitive, so I'll try to make it short. Today, amidst trying to finish my first rough copy of DJ Mix 5 (which I did), my dad and I managed to move everything I hadn't yet moved to my apartment. Although I'm missing a bit of furniture, my room is starting to look like it's lived in. In fact, it's almost eerie how much this room looks and feels like my apartment in Athens those last three years, leaving me feeling a bit nostalgically unsettled. I think once Evan moves in tomorrow (my last day of moving-in), or at least once we settle into a routine (as my birthday weekend promises little time spent in my apartment doing normal stuff), things should get better.

All in all though, I'm really quite happy with my new apartment and am looking forward to both the independence living on my own and the social activity of having a roommate who is a peer will bring me.