The emo kids bounce to “Holiday,” which opens up The Get Up Kids‘ set… “What became of everyone I used to know? Where did our respectable convictions go? Your words don’t match the story that your actions show, but what do I know?”
Even to this day, There is still a vacancy for snow. Though no snow remains, there was still some ice about at the end of last week. I slid around in my flat heeled shoes (and also my non-flat heeled shoes) the day after heavy snow when the ground turned to ice. I nearly slipped again on Sunday, which was courtesy of a rogue bit of ice camoflaged as concrete. It’s a little scary when one is walking and suddenly slides on a patch of ice, imitating a world where friction had became obsolete. I saw girls out walking in high heeled shoes and envied them as they trod on ice without a care in the world. Not too long after the discovery of ice, homo sapiens realised they weren’t supposed to be on it, let alone use it as a medium for transport and/or recreation. So what do we do? We invent ice skates. I got an e-mail today from my outdoors recreation’s officer (i.e. my friend H) who reminded me that we need to go skating soon. Hopefully she’ll be able to round up a sufficient number of the herd to go risk injury for just one day, next week. I think the last time I went ice skating was around 3 years ago and although I feel I am better than your average “fall flat on the face” skater, I never did perfect my backwards skating technique. Perhaps it’s due to the part of my brain that tells me “You’re on ice and you’re prone to injury when you’re skating forward, so why the hell would you want to skate backwards?” {Sigh} I miss the snow.
I’ve been hermitose (potential new word to copyright) for the past few days, just catching up on recreational reading and trying to progress in my Java programming. I’ve been at a standstill in Java for a while now and even though the books I’m reading are good, it would be interesting to hook me up with electrodes and check my level of progress with a red blooded male Java textbook (i.e. a Java book written by Sarah Michelle Gellar). I think when it comes to learning, a little skin and/or eye candy always helps, as proven by the website where Britney Spears shows off her little known ability as a semiconductor physicist. It’s pioneering websites that these that open up science to all the people in the world whose knuckles drag on the ground, or those who are just curious of course. I think by now everyone has heard of the website of Danica McKellar, who used to play Winnie Cooper on the retro TV show The Wonder Years. But on top of such a misfortunate career where she had to lip-lock a young Fred Savage, she’s a complete mathematical whiz. But there’s more… on her official site (appears to be down at the moment), she offers to help youngsters with maths problems and also other problems pertaining to relationships and sex, for free! Furthermore, she’s out to save the environment with her involvement in enough campaigns to make Sting reach for his hankie to wipe his brow. All that and it’s very strange that I’ve never ever had a crush on her. Strange because just about every guy I know has admitted to a crush on her at some point in their adolescence. But then again, she has snogged Fred Savage (”Number Three,” AKA “the Guacamole guy” in Austin Powers 3: Goldmember). I rest my case.
So on Monday, it was the day of The Get Up Kids concert (with Koufax supporting). I met Chris in the afternoon to give him his belated birthday present. To keep with the theme we decided to belatedly catch a showing of the new Michael Moore docu/film, Bowling for Columbine, which turned out to be quite a marvelous film. We both went in not really knowing what to expect and Moore delivered something we could only yell “We want more Moore” at. It explored the gun culture in America, which led up to the incident at Columbine high school and did so graciously with well-timed wit and editing. It explores so much more beyond that too, with morals and humanity coming into discussion too. It plays like fiction, with all the laughs and emotions of a film, but when the real life footage rolls, you remember that it’s not fiction at all. I can’t recommend this film enough to anyone intrigued in gun laws and firearm culture. No, let me rephrase that… I can’t recommend this film enough to anyone. Despite the 18 certificate, I think early to mid teenagers should still be allowed to see it. It throws a lot of the American youth’s perceptions on firearms into the light and serves as a “Don’t end up like this” model for comparison.
Before we went into the cinema, Chris and I swung by Chinatown to pick up the obligatory “foreign” cinema snack. Clutching onto our paper bags concealing freshly purchased rice and pastry based snacks and Pocky, we realised we weren’t sure of the cinema’s policy on bringing outside food into the theatre. Nevertheless, in a way we ascribe to routine, we waltzed past the ushers in a manner that could have been mistaken as serruptitious to a blind person.
So we’re watching the film doing a good job of making Charlton Heston (president of the National Rifle Association) out to be a total evildoer and suddenly, a dark object scurries across the elevated panel at the base of the screen. This dark object had eyes and a tail, and was made of the same stuff that would make vintage housewives stand on their kitchen stools and yell, (you guessed it)… “Mouse!!!!!” Only, it wasn’t a mouse. It was its Rodentia relative: a rat. Why there was a rat loose in the auditorium, I don’t know, and I doubt everyone else who saw it (that must have literally been everyone) knew either. One thing was for sure: the rodent was stealing the limelight from Chuck Heston and I doubt he would have been pleased being upstaged by a rat (having previously been upstaged in his career by apes). It disappeared for a while and to make sure it left a prolonged feeling of flabbergast in the audience, it returned towards the end of the film to scale the screen. I’d never seen a rat climb a vertical binding like that before, but it climbed like some sort of lizard. Through the silhouettes, the only thing missing was surely a long sticky tongue and a fly’s demise.
After the film ended we decided to inform the management of their problem and perhaps try to conjure some complementary tickets out of it. At what Chris assumed was an auspicious time to negotiate future visits to the cinema (that would be free), the woman manning the ticket booth seemed to think otherwise. Instead of offering to call forth a person in management, she insisted that they were aware of this rodent problem and had tried to correct it. Before Chris could launch his missles of adjudication, she decided to cut his attempts short by raising her hand and pointing to the Head Office address displayed on the wall behind her. Obviously, missles are no use against a warhead, so we left but not before taking note of the cashier’s name. She was really blasé in hearing us out and didn’t seem to express any concern for rules drawn up by the folks at the department of sanitation.
There were people in the queue beside us purchasing tickets for the next showing and despite our complaints they had failed to inform the moviegoers of the rodent problem. If anyone has a nasty allergic reaction in the auditorium, then I’m sure they’ll be in the national newspapers. I would have appreciated at the very least a notice that stipulates that all patrons must leave cheese products outside the auditorium for comfort reasons. We had brought snacks in and I would have found it rather inconvenient trying to enjoy my Pocky whilst a rat pumps my leg for information.
Chris: Nowadays, if you don’t complain, they’ll walk all over you.
Me: If something is clearly out of place, then you should complain.
Chris: There is no way we could let something like this pass, especially not after watching a Michael Moore movie.
Me: But if you complain all the time, you know you’re getting old.
Chris has written a letter of complaint and enclosed our ticket stubs along with his receipt for the drink he bought there too, for good measure. I suggested he mentioned “free yearly passes” and “ice cream vouchers” but I think they were left out of the final draft. Imagine that? Hello, free ice cream. Hello, size 36 waist.
Bowling for Columbine touched on many issues in society and one of the interesting ones was the role of fear in society. To prove this point, Moore and a professor in fear studies paraded openly around South Central LA during the daytime. Most people would assume it to be a very unsafe area to be walking around in during any time of day (do that in the evening if you have a deathwish) but statistically they were in about as much danger as anywhere else in LA. I understood this fear of paper tigers and paper nemeses when I was driving around the more run down and shady parts of LA with confidence, whilst my friends in the car were telling me to get them out of there ASAP. I was largely calm and fine with driving around those parts but my nerves did dwindle upon seeing a group of young males with their pistol shaped palms lingering around the front of their baggy jeans, and remembering that the SUV I was driving was a bright yellow colour. Upon this realisation, I decided to hit the pedal to the metal before someone thought they’d “bus’ a cap in some Asian foo’ driving a phat set of yellow wheels.”
After the movie we ate at Soba. We were seated in the middle of the restaurant/noodle bar. If we were sitting further towards the back, there might have been a good chance that the roof would be joining us at the table. Duck tape had provided what they must have deemed satisfactory support for securing the large cracks in the roof. Despite it looking a little tardy, I could imagine a time when that roof would have provided its own version of “the fear.” In a restaurant, the only thing worse than having roofing plaster fall into your bowl of noodles is having a bloody plaster fall in. I was thinking of sneaking a quick snap at the ceiling with my camera, but I was being watched with stealthy eyes by the waitresses. Out of the fear of having them baptise my food with phlegm, I refrained. Anyway, I was plucked from my reverie when the food arrived and my disdain for the bar’s interiors decimated when I took my first bite. Mmmm.
I took some pictures at the gig too. I’d never been to the ULU for a gig before and was quite glad it wasn’t such a spacious venue because I find the smaller ones more intimate when it comes to sound and performance. I decided to stay around the sides, towards the back to avoid the heavy moshing that would be taking place during the rockier tunes. I was surprised that it wasn’t so moshy compared with when I saw The Get Up Kids last time (when I actually stood right at the front to get in on a little moshing and crowd surfing action) at the then London Astoria 2 (now called The Mean Fiddler). As Chris pointed out, you could almost separate the room into 2 types of fans. There were the general rock/emo/punk fans who had their belt-line situated a comfortable distance below their navel and there were the hardcore punk kids who had a belt-line circulating their buttock cleavage. The gig was really good in my opinion, with the Kids playing a set that was a neat amalgam of old with new. They’d gone progressively mellower with each successive album, which for me was the favoured route. An acoustic guitar made an appearance once on their their previously last album and in the new latest one the acoustic guitar seems to have taken the driving seat, facilitating the Kids’ newer folkier rock and roll sound.
By the end of the gig, my legs and feet were aching. I thought perhaps I was getting too old for this, but Chris confirmed that his legs and feet were also aching. I thought how cool it would be to bring one of those “wear like a rucksack” portable folding chairs (like the ones fishermen use) to the next gig. I could just go towards the front, then prop my seat right there and enjoy the show without subjecting my bones to punishment. I could start a trend. Or maybe I’m getting too old for this. Nahhh.
