Dodgeball

Everyone's favorite sport in junior high was dodgeball, unless you were the awkward, un-athetlic type that cowered in the corner that was forced to absorb the psychological torment that apparently was so intolerable that our cowardly public schools felt the need to abolish this sport.

This long-lost relic of P.E. classes is apparently going strongly for the 20-30 year old crowd that may or may not work hard during the day but still has a desire to live like they are young. I gave the Los Angeles Dodgeball Society Stay Puft League shot and I'm sold.

Social sports can be a tricky thing, some of us want formally arranged teams and matches, but we're otherwise informal and non-competitive and simply want to socialize. With that attitude, one can find themselves either stuck in an overly Fisher Price environment with a little too much of an everyone-can-win mentality, or you end up on the other end of the pendulum amongst the serious douche bags that want to WIN WIN WIN. I've been in both environments and they equally suck.

Michael Costanza must have felt the same way when he organized the Stay Puft league. There is a mixture of the athletes and newbies that simply want to go and socialize, but while athleticism certainly helps, it simply makes the difference of dodging a few more shots or hitting a few more people and the lack of that trait does not undermine the game. Also, for the most part, people appeared not take the sport seriously enough to become all competitive. Michael has stated many times that he hates "Dodgeball dicks".

All of this is played under the backdrop of a alternative universe where today's 20-30 year olds are trapped somewhere between the 70's, 80's, as evidenced by the apparel, hair styles, choice of sport, and soundtrack blared over the soundsystem.

I would have stayed later for the obligatory post-game trip to the Happy Ending bar on Sunset Blvd if it weren't for the fact I need to save my energy for the REM concert today. I think I stumbled on to a really good thing here and I can't wait for future games. I'll always be on the lookout for more recurring fun events like this that force to to not take life so seriously.

Sarah Silverman @ Largo 6/16

Sarah Silverman will be at Largo on 6/16. I wouldn't tell just anyone this, because I know that shows at Largo always sell out very quickly... but I already got my tickets so I don't have to keep it a secret anymore.

I'd seen her once before, and I've seen almost every single cast member of The Sarah Silverman Program, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing her again.

Largo recently moved from its Fairfax location and I'm excited about seeing the location on La Cienega.

I'm hoping that my hero Bob Odenkirk will crash the party. There's not necessarily a logical reason to suspect he'll be there but come on they were on Mr. Show together it can happen!

Beyond the Infinite

I was lucky enough to notice one of my all-time favorite films, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was playing at the Aero in Santa Monica tonight.

The film is very difficult to describe, and even more challenging to view.

Mankind in its apelike form shows our earliest impulses of humanity: fear, curiosity, wonder, and the discovery of tools. A primate discovers a bone, finds its uses for hunting for food, and eventually for bludgeoning a fellow primate to death over a territorial battle. This tool is triumphantly thrown into the air as we cut to the spaceship millions of years later where mankind has reached the limits of its evolution and outer limits of space.

The entire story is told with absolutely beautiful sound and immaculate visual engineering, Bruce Logan who had worked on the film with Kubrick gave an extensive talk about his work before the start of the movie. The special effects were so far ahead of their time it is very difficult to believe that the film is about 40 years old and was in production before the first images of outer space and the moon had even reached Earth.

The film reel was an apparently-rare 70mm print, with 6 channels of sound. This meant that despite the obvious effect of aging and scratches, the picture was in the absolute highest resolution that ever existed for the film. For nearly any other film I wouldn't be so picky, but for anyone who has seen 2001: A Space Odyssey, you would understand just how important this is.

I hadn't seen the film in almost a decade, but it hit me just as hard as it did the first time I saw it. From the painful silence and breathing as the HAL9000 murders one of the scientists to blaring orchestral score that preceded and concluded the film, it was truly a journey beyond the infinite. As I left the theater, it was very disorienting to be back in Santa Monica, California after it had felt as if you'd been taken to the far limits of space.

C.R.A.N.K. mob

Last Saturday, on 5/17/08, I had the most surreal, lucid dream. I took a magical bicycle ride for many miles, all the way from the northern tip of Marina del Rey to a strip-mall-like Japanese area known as the Sawtelle and LaGrange intersection where I waited for the true beginning of my adventure.



I played hackeysack with a man on fire, a bumble-bee lady and devil-girl chatted, open-container alcoholic beverages were apparently legal, and impromptu jump-roping matches sprung up all over. This was the start of an encore of madness all with the backdrop of an army of 200 people in their 20's-30's on their bicycles, night lights blinking furiously all over.

Before I knew it, a man in a tuxedo on a retro-street bicycle pulled up, towing a baby carriage that held a massive speaker pumping 80's trance tunes. This would have held my attention, if it weren't for the fact I was immediately distracted by the pretend-fight that broke out between the cross-dressed man and the other man dressed as a gigantic pile of poo. Spongebob Squarepants then biked over and looked as confused as I was.

And we were off, terrorizing parking lots all over Westwood, heckling the automobiles that tried to cut us off, giggling at the confused-looking police officers that randomly passed by, occupying a valet-lot with bicycles held triumphantly above us, complete with fat 80's beats reigning down all over from the strange spirit in corperal form dressed in a tuxedo.

Maybe it was because I was listening to Joy Division the other day that I dreamt up this part where the tuxedo-clad bicycle DJ pumps up some New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle as we descend upon this poor Westwood 7-11:


Yeah my camera works in dream-land, sometimes (this was one of the last things to ever come out of my now-dead camera).

The insanity would reach levels as high as the sky where the fireworks we launched blew up to the terror of us and everyone. I woke up the next day a changed person, never to look at west Los Angeles the same way.

Last February I experienced this same dream, now I remember. My brother was there...so were other friends. I want to have this dream every third Saturday of every month, but sometimes life gets in the way. When things that get in the way are of equal awesomeness, it is hard to complain: I missed it in March I was busy showing a beautiful Australian girl some of the best, obscure, overlooked parts of Los Angeles shortly before she had to leave the country. I missed it again in April because another awesome girl and I were out to witness Sarah Silverman, Bob Odenkirk, Tim and Eric, the band Foreign Born, and other awesome people. But if my only complaint is that there was too much awesome stuff going on I think I have it prettaaaay prettaaaaay good.

Hello

Hercules: The Legendary Journey was a decent show, and then in one episode they announce this off-the-wall Xena character. She was kind of annoying at first, but she grows on you, after she appears on-and-off in random episodes. Then, before you know it, Xena has her own spin-off show and completely seperate plots, but the two are always friends and sometimes have adventures together.

So I've made a few post over at my friend's blog, Retox:

Tim and Eric Awesome Tour, May 5, 2008

The Duke Spirit, May 10 2008

And now with my own spin-off blog, as with Xena this is certain to quickly become more popular, and with more sex appeal than the blog it originated from...