Month: July 2005
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I, Constipated Robot
Something is horribly wrong. I spent most of the day thinking “I wish I weren’t at Disneyland.” Black is white! Up is down! Actually, I guess it’s more accurate to say: Southern California is hot! Disneyland is really crowded during the summer and even moreso after they’ve opened a new ride! So in other words,…
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Meditations on an Empty Mini-Bar
Another week of airports, rental cars, hotels, theme parks, metering lights, and smog. I won’t say that the novelty is dead, but it has been beaten savagely and left lying on the side of the road. The project itself is still extremely cool. And taking short convenient flights to stay in nice hotels in nice…
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The Accidental Tourist
For this trip, the company put me up in a pretty swank hotel right smack dab in the middle of Hollywood. (I like referring to Disney as “The Company” because it makes it sound like I’m working for the CIA or something). i’ve always wanted to see more of H-town than just the sign and…
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Sunny and Clear
I read a whole book by myself! It was The Partly-Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell. It left me feeling strangely disconcerted. Here’s where I explain why: 1) It made me feel stupid. Not ignorant, but stupid. And she’s got a whole essay about Bush vs. Gore that re-iterates a basic truth: people don’t like to…
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Harry Potter and the Half-Assed Social Commentary
I was fairly nonplussed about the new Harry Potter book coming out, but the package tracking from amazon.com has gotten me back around to plussed. I pre-ordered it, more out of laziness than omg omg i’ve got 2 know what happens!!!! excitement. I kept seeing promotional countdowns all over Borders and Barnes & Noble, and…
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Laudable.com
I don’t know from audiobooks. Just not my scene, man. Even if I did have the attention span for reading material that lasted longer than the time it takes to have a bowel movement, I get nervous and my mind wanders when I don’t have more than one source of input. What are you supposed…
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Credit Dauphine
Or, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Television Again.” I finally got around to watching the last disc of season 1 of “Alias” last night. Man, they weren’t kidding about the “big cliffhanger” thing. Murders, everybody finding out all about everybody else, simultaneous torture scenes, the return of some old favorites from the…
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Joims!
I’d planned on skipping War of the Worlds until it came out on DVD, or at least until I was watching it with someone else. But I was in Japan Town for dinner, one thing led to another, and I caught the late show. I think Mr. Spielberg has been reading my blog, and I’m…
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The poppies make him sleepy
Maybe I haven’t embraced the fast-paced LA lifestyle as much as I’d thought (or as much as my new co-workers have told me I’ve “gone studio”). A flight to LA and a day-long meeting were enough to knock me out; as soon as I got back to the hotel room, I was comatose. I’d planned…
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Hello? Is it me you’re looking for?
So yeah, I’ve got the whole personal technology/gadget fetish thing going on. No shame in that. Or at least, if there should be shame in that, I haven’t felt it. A while ago, at the beginning of spring, when a young man’s fancy turns to big screen TV’s, I considered replacing my brick-sized Treo 600…
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Who’s a great big birthday boy?
While I was getting my annual pass from the Disneyland Bank, the effusively friendly lady behind the counter took my ID and got all excited. “Happy birthday!” she exclaimed while grabbing a sticker and asking me what name I wanted written on it. I tried to point out that Monday was my birthday and wearing…