It was hot when I walked out of Bob Hope Airport in Burbank yesterday. After freezing my ass off in New York City, I welcomed the sun as I shed all of my winter clothes why standing along the curbside of Terminal A waiting for Nicky to pick me up. I made her drive to the Valley and she was dressed like it was the middle of summer.
It gets hotter in the Valley than on her side of the Hollywood Hills. One of my favorite episodes of Entourage was when Johnny Drama protested to a trip to the Valley in the middle of summer due to the intense heat.
We grabbed a bite to eat at Mexicali. I always get the Rotisserie Chicken Cobb Salad burrito there. How can you go wrong with bleu cheese, bacon, and cheese? They have an interesting thing on your bill. It lists the tipping percentages for 15%, 18% and 20%. I left 20% because that's my standard tip.
It was a mellow Friday night in LA. I felt like crap most of yesterday with the lack of sleep and the lingering cold. Showcase gave me some medicinal marijuana to feel better such as Maui Wowie, Bubba Kush, Afgoo, Strawberry Sativa, and Purple Diesel. We watched the earthquake episode of The OC, then got caught up in a weird indie flick called Primer written and directed by Shane Carruth. It was made in and around Dallas, TX for as low as a budget as you can get at a paltry $7,000. That's less than my poker bankroll. Most Hollyweird flicks spend that much everyday in food.
Despite the fact that Carruth had no idea to make a film, his first attempt opened a lot of people's eyes. Primer won a Grand Jury prize at Sundance in 2004 and beat out Garden State (Zach Braff/Nat Portman wank fest with tons of whiny indie rock music as a soundtrack). Primer was also nominated for four Independent Spirit Awards.
Primer was slow to start and it sucked me in. I couldn't change the channel despite the fact I had no idea what was going on most of the time. It had plenty of problems. Flawed screenplay. Blah acting. Serious pacing issues in the first act. Hectic and frantic last act. Below average production quality that had awful lighting, muffled sound, and parts of the flick were out of focused. Carruth and his crew literally shot it in their garages. And you know what? You didn't care about that because the story held your attention. Both fascinating and confusing, you had to really delve deep and thing about serious issues like the paradoxes in time travel.
Primer reminded me of a Philip K. Dick short story without any of the drugs. Here's a plot spoiler: Two engineers making money on the side stumble upon a new way to use their invention where they manage to go back in time. It's been listed as sci-fi film and has the same production value of Pii. It's a thinking man's indie flick and makes you ponder about implications of time and what would you do if you could go back and how that ripple in time would affect the remainder of your life and the world.
I need to see it again because I still don't know what was going on. The story line is very confusing. Very. You need to see it four or five times to figure it out. Yet, there are zero special effects and the film blows the last three Stars Wars flick away.
Check out the trailer for Primer.
I woke up at 4am today and didn't get out of bed until 5am. I lurked around Nicky's dark apartment before I sat down at the dining room table. I fired up the laptop and checked email. I transferred some money, paid a bill, and read email. I noticed that the website to my high school was down.
I wrote for a couple of hours including a post for the Las Vegas Blog and the Tao of Poker. I uploaded a few pics to my Flickr gallery. I'm about 75% done with adding all of the Australia pics. I finally got up to Sydney, which was the last city on my tour through Oz. Maybe it will be done by Monday.
I watched two college hoops games back to back. Three top 20 ranked teams played. #16 Georgetown came from behind to beat Villanova. Jeff Green from Georgetown nailed a mid-range jumper to seal the game with 20 seconds left. Those are the types of plays and I like to look for in teams when gambling on them in March Madness, especially when they did it on the road.
UW played at #5 Pittsburgh. Pitt held on to the victory when they hit key free throws down the stretch. That's another great quality I look for when betting on the March Madness... late game free throws. Pitt converted in crunch time and won. Vanderbilt is on a rush and I missed their upset of top ranked Florida. I caught the highlights and at 18-8, Vandy is a legit threat after beating Kentucky, LSU, Tennessee, Alabama, and now Florida. Currently, I got the Michigan-Indiana game. Michigan is up by 2. I'm been jonesin' for college hoops. Sure I got to watch plenty of cricket in Oz, but aside from the Australian basketball league (NBL), I did not watch any other hoops down under.
Recent Writing Music...
1. James Brown
2. Otis Grove
3. Greyhounds
4. Taj Mahal
5. Delta Nove
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