So the other night on the way to the hospital, I half-jokingly said to Jessie, "Well, at least you don't have to call and check on Jeff (her friend and former boss who used to live in Griffith Park). How's Catalina, by the way? Have you talked to him?"
What I meant to say was, how was Catalina? On fire, everyone. It's on fire, too.
I feel like I just proposed a dubious situation and capped it off with, "What could go wrong?" Oh, how funny you are, universe. Classic comedy. We could all learn something.
Jeff is fine, and so is the town. Difference between comedy and tragedy right there.
There was the frightening brush fire in Griffith Park yesterday just a few miles southwest of the apartment. At one point the sun's light passed through the billowing smoke, which turned the light an unnatural orange and ash snowed down on the grass lot next door. Having ash rain down on you isn't good because it means that the wind is pushing the fire your way.
All of that proved to be an ill-portend. Later that night, we got a call from our good friend, Jake's, roommate telling us that Jake had been hit by a car. We rushed out of the house, picked up his roommate and as we made our way--quickly but cautiously--to the hospital, we couldn't help but notice that the southwest hillside looked like a volcano.
Fast forward past one frazzled night waiting by the emergency room then in the ICU waiting room and past one head and leg surgery, and it seems like our friend is on the upward climb to recovery. He's got a plate in his head and pins and rods in his leg, but fingers and toes are moving and he's responsive when spoken to. And he's still got that sarcastic wit, although I'm trying to convince the doctors to go ahead and surgically remove that while he's there. Then there would be no one to challenge my supreme wit! MUUUUUUHUHAHAHAHAHHAHAH!
PS - Remind me to tell everyone how Jake and I lead parallel lives (not to worry, I got my knocks out of the way already on this one) and how fire forecasts a trip to the emergency room. For another time...
I, uh, haven't updated this thing in forever. I've been working to some fair extent, but that hasn't really been a big part of not updating. I got into the daily routine of things and blogging just wasn't part of that routine. A-whoops.
I just got a job promotion, a job which should have started today. I went in and everything. I only found out after working for nearly two hours that the shoot date had been pushed a week. Some pretty poor communication on that front. No big whoop, though. I got some stuff organized, saved the company almost $2000 and charged them for a full day as I left at lunch. All in a half day's work for this guy.
Other than that, I made a promise to myself to watch decent movies again. As such, I have a pretty extensive movie list this go-round. Certainly not all decent, but it's definitely got more gems in it than usual.
Oh, I picked up my first laptop, too. I got it as a work organizer/writing aid. It's pretty cool. It's got Windows Vista and--after the updates, of course--I'm up and running smoothly. I've even got a little LAN setup in the apartment. I got so excited when I discovered that I could watch movies from Jessie's hard drive on my laptop across the LAN. Oh, the nerdry!
For those keeping track at home, that's a wedding ring, a computer and a car in about two months. My credit's going to be a force in about ten years.
I think I'm going to try out Netflix's "Watch It Now" feature where they stream a movie straight to your computer. The way it breaks down is--at no extra charge--Netflix will stream you an hour of movie for every dollar you pay a month. I pay about $25 a month for their service, so I would get 25 hours of streaming movie. I'll report back how it works.
*UPDATE* I just watched The Motel with Netflix's "Watch It Now" feature, and it was great quality with no lag or hang-ups the entire movie. The film itself reminded me of indie movies made in the early nineties when there was still an indie scene to speak of. You know, it had the thrills of bucking the system and the pratfalls of a student film. Still, it was nice to watch an immature, small movie again. I had no idea people were still making them like this.
This was the first time I'd seen Rocky III. Things were different in the eighties, clearly. Exhibit A: Skip to the 3:00 (or the :25 remaining) mark in the video below to see a grown, married man in short-shorts splash around in the beach's surf with another grown, married man in short-shorts. Some unorthodox uses of the male gaze in these running sequences, too.
Exhibit B: Robots flew completely under the radar in the 80's. I'd completely forgotten it until I watched Rocky IV again. Apparently the 80's had so innoculated me to robots that it made no impression on me whatsoever when I first saw the film.
