A posthaven for Eric…

Passion Pit's "I've Got Your Number" is my new KEXP mp3 crush.  I've been playing it everyday since I downloaded it Saturday.  Nice beats, very cool New Wave sound, and quite appropriate lyrics for nasty gray days in New York (or Seattle that matter).   Check it out....

WHOA!

It'd been a while since I just sat down and watched a film by myself for the sake of just enjoying good cinema.  So tonight I grabbed one of the several movies that arrived from Amazon over the last few weeks.  I figured The Machinist (2004) would be a good option to watch alone since my girlfriend would never want to watch it with me.  I ordered it because I'm a big Christian Bale fan and I kinda like weird movies. 

Well, it did not disappoint.  Up until the last, maybe 10 minutes, I had pretty much no idea what the film was about besides Bale's character becoming more and more insane from insomnia.   I won't give away the ending, but I will say this film reminded me of Momento, Solaris, Mulholland Drive and strangely, a little bit of Punch Drunk Love.  All of these are favorites, so if you like them as well, and you like Christian Bale, I say check this one out.  It is 102 minutes of weird shit but I think Bale's acting, the score and the cinematography all make the final resolution at the end worth waiting for.

So I just completed the road to pg. 238 of The Road to Serfdom.   Hayek's 1944 tour de force is a must read for all up and coming libertarians.  It's my first experience with his work and I was very impressed.  For me it is a warm-up for a later read of his longer Constitution of Liberty which waits on my bookshelf as I type this. 

Though it is very dense, I really enjoyed The Road to Serfdom.  His arguments for the competitive economic system are water tight.  I think if you or any of your friends are confused about socialism, economic planning, price fixing, etc. you should read this book.  After completing it, I think you will find that, in light of the alternatives, regulated competition is the only economic system that can hope to improve the material condition of its participants without impinging upon their basic liberties.

Rick and Laurie stayed with us this weekend.  As you can see in the pictures, various activities were enjoyed by everyone, except Josh who had to work pretty much all weekend (lame).  

However, the best part of the weekend was the part that Josh actually could attend; karaoke Friday night at this crazy azn place, Karaoke Duet on 35th.  Of course I didn't remember to bring the camera, but if you were there, you know it was awesome.  Colin came and we saw Javier and Erin for the first time pretty much since leaving Suncoast (our high school).  This was not my first time doing karaoke but it was my first time doing it in a private room.  Basically, all the karaoke energy gets trapped in a small space and feeds on itself, leading you to get just real drunk and rowdy. 

Later that weekend, we also had BBQ at Blue Smoke and hit up that Lion King on Broadway, but the high point of the weekend was definitely established on Friday.   It was all downhill from there, but hey, it was still fun, so um... hakuna matata.

Another especially nice weekend in New York.   Special lady came out to see me.  Hit up Olives on Friday night with Andrew and Jeff, then dropped in on Sachin's going-away thing at The Musical Box.   Saturday, we walked six blocks to the Mercury Bar and partake'd (to put it lightly) in an open bar for the 111th Big Game with the Cardinal Young Alumni.

Anyway, we were listening to KEXP on Saturday morning and heard some fresh cuts we liked.  Here are a couple we downloaded and played a bunch this weekend.  Both are pretty rad.  Enjoy.

Wow, where to begin...  Halloween this year in New York was killer.   First of all, special lady friend came out to see me which is always super great.  Next, we enjoyed two nights of Halloween thanks to the fortunate occurrence of October 31st falling on a Friday + my buddy Jesse throwing a party on November 1st.  Finally, I just saw so many good costumes.  SLF and I were Moulin Rouge which were just "ok" costumes compared to what most of New York was wearing. 

In full costume, we took the subway down to the West Village to get dinner and watch part of the parade.  Then we stopped at a party on Central Park West which ended with us in a limo headed to one of the big clubs (Mansion).  The people outside had awesome costumes but there were way too many of them waiting to get in and we couldn't get a table anyway, so we just went to a restaurant back on CPWest.  Despite not making it into one of the big NY clubs, the night was still sufficiently crazy for Halloween.

The next night we went to Jesse's costume party in Brooklyn.  People really had some great ones at this gig which was semi-remarkable considering it wasn't even Halloween anymore.  My top 5 had to be...

1. Lumbergh from Office Space
2. The Smurfs*
3. Treasure Trolls
4. Nancy Kerrigan & Tanya Harding
5. Miss Piggy & Kermit the Frog

*In the Village parade, not the party, but made the list due to its exceptional creativity and accuracy.

Ladamian finally got his new crib in Capital Hill up to the standards of [theLifestyle(tm)] so he decided to throw himself a little bit of housewarming party last weekend.  All the usual suspects showed up.  I managed to make it from NYC and take these pics.  It was pretty solid, though I ended up a bit jettlagged/drunk/drunklagged.

Here some pictures from our trip up to Sonoma.  We drove up to Healdsburg, CA the second week of October during the crush.  It was my last weekend of living in San Francisco and we really made the most of it.  We rented bikes and rode to the Michel Schlumberger winery for a winery tour and then stopped at a winery on the way back into town.  I wish we had more time because we kinda had to rush up there to make the tour and then rush back to return our bikes before the shop closed. 

We ate at Charlie Palmer's Dry Creek Kitchen which was way, way nice but you'll have to take my word for it since I forgot to take any pictures of the restaurant or the food, though I did manage to take pictures of some sick! cars outside the restaurant.  I do remember that I had this huge steak and a bunch of other delicious stuff such that I was so stuffed it hurt the next morning.  We stopped in Berkeley on the way back for lunch.  It was more underwhelming than I had expected which I guess is fine since I didn't take any pictures of it anyway. 

Grilled Provolone sandwich with tomatoes, olives and spinach, aside a bowl of butternut squash soup. Not bad at all.

Having french toast at The Smith by Union Square. Coffee and fresh air have nearly relieved my massive hangover. Looks like the long walk from Midtown was worth it, this is delicious...