Girl Can't Help It - LMFAO

I have about 5 LMFAO tracks on my iPod right now in constant repeat.  Loving their stuff right now.  I’m kind of bummed they’re not coming to Vancouver anytime soon.  They’re playing in Calgary, Winnipeg, and Toronto, though.  Failing to show some West Coast love.  Boo.  Maybe I can make my way down to LA again?  

Underneath the Capret Floor

We’re replacing our carpet with tiles on our basement floor.  We’ve had some flooding issues over the years, and it just doesn’t seem healthy, or practical, to have carpet anymore.  Anyways, this picture is of a stain I found on the concrete floor underneath the carpet.  To me it looks like a girl’s face.  Just humour me for a second and take a closer look.  There’s an eye with eyebrows, a slight nose, and lips.  The other eye is covered by hair around the face. I guess it’s kind of like cloud watching. What do you see? Do you see a girl’s face?

Zumi - Major Lazer

“Guns Don’t Kill People, Lazers Do” – Major Lazer.

So true, so true.

Major Lazer is a superduo comprised of Diplo and Switch. I posted Hold The Line, which featured Santigold, a couple weeks back. Today I have Zumbi, featuring… Andy Milonakis. WTF?!? From what I can gather, this song is about zombies and includes the lines, “Suck pussy on the R train”, “I’m the thriller of Manila/I like vanilla/brains”, and “Me eat up your brains til you’re dead, dead”. Oh, Andy. Still, I kind of like the song.

PS. You might have to click on the link in the player to hear the full song.

   

 

Trailer Roundup

I really believe that making a trailer for a movie is an art form in it of itself. Selling a two hour film within a couple minutes is hard. The music, the cuts, everything is purposefully put together in a way that sparks your interest so that you go out and watch that movie.

Take the trailer for District 9 for example.

There’s this mystery built up within the first minute. It makes you want to know what’s happening. It misleads you. It uses genre conventions so that you think you’re watching a preview for a documentary. That is until they cut to the shot of the spaceships and you’re sort of taken aback. It gives you just enough to know the gist without telling you too much.

And then there are trailers that pretty much spoil all the key plot points of the movie. Yet, we still go and watch, because we want to see more. We want to watch a two hour version of that trailer.

Trailers like Where The Wild Things Are elicit more of an ubeat response from you. You don’t have to think; all you have to do is watch and listen as the trailer kind of stimulates you both visualy and aurally. So, when you think of that movie, you associate it with that positive response. You’ll go to that movie now hoping to duplicate that feeling.

It’s weird, but I love watching trailers. There are some trailers that I’ll want to watch again, and then not even go out and watch the actual movie. I think the production of a trailer is something that not a lot of people think about or appreciate. Maybe one day, I’ll get to edit trailers for movies. That’d be cool.

Auto Woes

Once again, my car has failed me. For the umpteenth time, there’s something wrong with my car. At this point, my car has broken down in the middle of traffic so many times, it doesn’t even phase me.

I got my car in September 2007. At the time I was working as a production assistant. Everyday we’d be shooting in a new location, from Downtown to Cloverdale, and as much as I was content with not having a car, it was getting to be a neccessity.

The first little while, everything was running fine. Learning to drive stick was daunting at first, but it was an ideal first car. That is, until winter hit. The first time it happened was when I was picking up my friend in Richmond. After waiting in the driveway a bit, I went to turn the ignition on again, but nothing happened. My battery was dead!

A call for help later, I was standing with a pair of jumper cables with sparks flying out of them. I learned quick how to jump start a car properly.

It happened again about a month later. Then again after that. One time my car died as I was driving my mom to pick up her car at the mechanic (car problems seem to run in the family). I ended up getting a new battery, and it seemed like my car troubles were over.

Summer 2008. My car was hit and run in a parking lot, leaving a huge dent in my bumper. Although it made a good photo op (see photos), it put a huge dent in my bank account to fix it.

Auto Woes

Auto Woes

December 2008. My car stalls a few times on the road. At the time I thought it was me letting go of the clutch too soon. But then the oil check light came on. Then the engine check light. And the big snow storm of 2008 happened. Well, maybe storm is a little bit of an exaggeration, but it did prevent me from driving my car to get it fixed. Two or three weeks later, I shovelled my car out of the snow and tried to get it started. But it was completly dead. I had it towed to the gas station garage down the road. My interactions with the mechanics there could take up a whole other post. They were idiots to say the least. It ended up being the oxygen sensors this time around, and I quickly got that fixed.

Which brings us to now. On my way home from coop in Richmond, my engine starts making a rattling noise. My car always makes a funny noise, but this time it sounded bad. It became worse real quickly. Then it stalled, just as I was about to turn on to the highway. I coasted to the side of the road, got it started again, and made it to a residential street. Funnily enough, I was about a minute away from my regular mechanic. I could see it from where my car died. FML.

I haven’t even mentioned some of the minor problems that have plagued my car (bad windshield wipers, the scraping noise my passengers hear whenever I have more than 4 people in my car, etc.) but I’ll spare you the details. For now, I have to decide what to do. It’ll cost about $1500-2000 to fix my engine (looks like a new one, among other things). Do I fix it? Or is it a lost cause? Is this the last of my little Civic hatchback? Is it time to move on to a new car?

Laughing With - Regina Spektor

I remember finding Regina Spektor’s music for the first time. NME was streaming her UK-only release of the compilation called Mary Ann Meets the Gravediggers and Other Short Stories. I was so drawn by her music that I tried looking for the anthology to buy on eBay (this was before torrenting and webclients like KaZaa were a pain to use). I couldn’t find it, so I kept going back to NME’s online stream and listened to it everyday for a week.

Today we have the release of her new single Laughing With from her upcoming album Far. Enjoy it below.

PS. Click the link to hear the full song.

Laughing With – Regina Spektor

Hollywood Boulevard

So two days into the Vegas vacation, we had a mini-road trip to LA. We quickly figured out that LA wasn’t experiencing the best weather that day. It was overcast and cool, and we looked like goofballs dressed in shorts and a t-shirt.

We checked out LA Live, which included the Staples Center and the Nokia Theater. Not too exciting, but I did get interviewed by some journalist student about my first impressions about the entertainment center. I BSed my way through his questions about Downtown LA and Hollywood.

Next up, we went to Hollywood Boulevard where we saw Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the different characters lined up along the Hollywood Walk of Stars. My favourite was the statue guy, who came alive when a girl gave him some money. I got some fun pictures out of that one, but now I feel bad for not giving him any money. He was probably giving me the finger in his head while he was clowning around.

After driving through the famed Mulholland Drive and around Beverly Hills, gawking at all the excess around us, we found ourselves at a chilly Venice Beach. We hastily walked around before heading back to Vegas.

These are my favourite pictures from the trip to LA, and of course more on flickr.

Hollywood Boulevard

L.A.

Venice Beach