All Settled In

Okay, so I have to apologize- I think this post is almost a week late. Which is a lot, considering I only post once a week. God I have a fair bit to talk about, so I'll just jump right in. The craziest thing that has happened in the interim by far was the night of the Lakers game. So it really wasn't a big deal for me- I'm not really a Kobe fan or a Lakers fan, and I was really rooting for the Celtics most of the series, them being the real underdog and all. Let's face it- Kobe's good, but he's not the Second Coming... it gets a little old. So anyway, the last game turns out to be a really good one, right? About five minutes to go, we all start talking about the possibility of a win, and then I realize- oh, shit. I'm literally just minutes away from the place all this is going down, and if they win, this city is going to go insane. Come the win, and me and three of my roommates are like- dude, we have to get there. We call a cab and race over to Figueora Street, as close as we can get to the Staples Center, and we get out. There are cops fucking everywhere. They aren't letting people anywhere near the main road, so we decide to loop all the way around for the scenic route and get there another way.

So we do, and all the while cars are screaming past with massive Lakers flags and people honking nonstop, yelling, et cetera. We're running through some pretty sketchy parts of downtown, some with lights...some without. But it was whatever, everyone was so psyched up that it was absolute impossible not to catch the disease, and I was shouting at every car that honked soon enough. We went from street to street, trying to get closer and closer, and finally we get to where it's within sight, but the police literally would not let anyone within a quarter mile of the stadium, so we contented ourselves with exploring the mobbed areas nearby. Now, I'll be honest here. Because the police were all over the place, it never got anywhere near as crowded in one place as the night of the Heels victory in the national championship, but for sheer craziness, I'm pretty sure the Lakers fans won hands down.

You may have read the stories about the rioting, but guys were literally jumping up and down on cars, breaking really random shit in the streets and using them as drums... one guy we came across said he was in an ESPN Zone and literally people smashed through the glass of the restaurant windows to get inside. And here's the most ridiculous thing we came across. I knew the moment I saw this girl what was going to go down. She was a fairly large woman, standing up through the moonroof of the car, and she's looking completely out of it. Like, horse tranquilizer out of it. So she's looking around, looking around, smiling, and then BAM, she pulls down her top and starts shaking her massive boobs. So of course that gets the crowd excited right? Apparently, because about three guys were so excited that they literally reached up and grabbed her boob. So she gets pulled back into the car, and I'm like- "Wow. I can't believe that actually just- oh, shit. She's back." She was up again, and sure enough, pulls her top down again, and a HORDE of really horny Latino guys crowd the car, all clamoring to get a piece of her. And when I say horde, I mean horde. Literally there were so many people around this car that it had to knock people out of the way to get out of the pack. No joke.

So that took the cake for crazy stuff. Otherwise, this post is going to be a little scatterbrained- I can't exactly remember what happened when two weeks ago, so I'll just give you the highlights. I've now been fortunate enough to go to two advance screenings- one, Haywire (which used to be called Knockout, if you want to IMDB it) is Steven Soderbergh's new film. He must have one hell of a need to make actresses out of non-actresses, because this marks his second large-scale effort recently to do so. He tried to make famous porn star Sasha Grey into a reputable star with his film the Girlfriend Experience, and now he has recruited an MMA fighter to star in this one. And yes, as I'm sure you're hypothesizing, she's absolutely awful. But she's the only thing gone wrong in a great film- there are supporting actors as varied as Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, and Michael Fassbender (who is ungodly as an actor). And the action scenes, of course, are absolute dynamite. So I was pretty conflicted, but if you ever see that movie on the shelves and you're itching for hard-hitting action, go for it.

The other film I got to see is premiering in September- it's called Easy A, with Emma Stone. Without a doubt, whoever you are, go see this movie. It's fantastic. The best comedy I've seen in a while- I won't give too many details, but let's just say that even Stanley Tucci shines. Literally, that's all I'm going to say, just go see it.

Anyway, in other news. I got to go to Ventura Beach this past weekend with my roommates as well. The funny thing was (oh, and as I told Amanda, I succeeded epically at not getting second-degree burns), the beach kind of sucked. It was packed full of driftwood and people, and the sand was so damn deep that it was impossible to do anything athletically enjoyable. But it was a good time anyway, most of it spent discussing filmic material. We also ran into some real beach bums, where I first heard the term "sponging" to refer to bodyboarding. Huh? But the great part was Ventura's downtown. We had no idea how to get there from the beach, but my roommate Ian needed to get his dad something for his birthday, so we decided to ask this woman in a car next to us. She goes "Oh, you...you turn right up here." Of course we were supposed to do the exact opposite, but we merrily drive in the wrong direction, unfairly goaded on by cruelly ambiguous street signs until we finally decide she's full of shit and pull a U-turn. But we get there and the place is really one of the nicest downtowns I've been to- it's also the place where I entered an American Apparel store for the very first time in my life.

I know, it doesn't sound all that epic, does it? But it is, it is! For this really terrible Art 554 (Imagining Otherness!) class I took this past year, I chose to do a paper on the founding father of American Apparel, the sketchiest skeazeball you will ever read about- Dov Charney. Yeah, he's the guy who is charged with five million sexual harassment claims, and who has maybe the most fucked up fashion sense I know. Literally, one of the pictures of a model wearing their clothes was a 20 year old guy wearing short shorts, a dazzlingly painful striped shirt, and a clearly glued on fake mustache. And he was working it hard, too. But I'll give this to them- they have created a T-shirt that is literally lighter than air. It's almost like gauze, and it's the thinnest, craziest, coolest fabric that I've ever tried on. It literally clung to my skin- I can't explain it, so if you ever get a chance, visit the store and throw one on. Ironically enough, that visit was followed the next day by a visit to the American Apparel factory store, a place that is surely sketchy enough to merit Dov Charney's ownership. I ended up buying a couple things for this Electronic Daisy Carnival that's coming up in a few days, so yeah, I could be a little hypocritical.

Tonight was pretty interesting- I got to go see my first film at the LA Film Festival, called the Wolf Knife. Very good independent film, by a girl whose background is in photography- it was "a road trip movie without the road," which I thought was a great idea. The best part was the fact that the director (who was also the writer and editor) and the two main actresses were there to do a Q & A about it afterward. This blew my mind a little bit, even though it was a small film and Q & A's are standard practice with almost every film in a festival, just because their portraits in the film were so raw and uncomfortably intimate that it was weird seeing the two of them standing up in front of the small theater. Very cool- and I threw in a question to the director at the end, since I had promised myself that I wouldn't leave until I had done so. It's too often I let myself just fade into the background and let everyone else do the talking.

I do have to hold a grudge against the LA Film Festival on other grounds though, because earlier in the week Dave, Ian, and I all went to get in line to see Edgar Wright, director of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead talk about his new film. We were there two and a half hours before the talk started, because we had to wait in the "rush line," since we didn't have tickets- they would let us know ten minutes before how many empty seats were left, and then take that many people out of the line. We were about ten people back from the front of the line. They took 3 people. Three. We waited close to three hours before they said that they weren't taking any more... the most annoying experience ever. It's a good thing we didn't try and wait in line for the Chris Nolan talk a few days earlier- it would have been pointless. Oh and apparently joining Edgar Wright was J.J. Abrams, so... there you go. One day when I'm rich and famous and you're attending my party I won't give either of you a goodie bag at the end of the night.

I think that's about it. Work has been pretty standard, I've been running back and forth a little more than I like, but I'm starting to really get along well with everyone at the office/"frat house" and I'm finally starting to cut my teeth on all of these scripts, which is what I'm really here for. Oh and my boss gave me a 50 dollar bottle of wine the other day... so that was nice. I'll keep you posted on further interesting details, but no, I haven't met Sam Jackson yet. Patience, my friends- patience.