Last Night in Town

Tonight is my last night in Spokane. I'm heading out tomorrow morning for the second biggest city in the world; Seoul, South Korea. It's going to take a day in an airplane to get there, but I'm sure it will be worth it. I'm doing some last minute packing and then I'm going over to Ryder's house to hang out. I'm sure some sweet Guitar Hero 2 will be played. Probably the last time I'll play for a year. Oh well, I've already beaten "Thunderhorse" by Deathklock on Expert so I've already accomplished everything I could have hoped to do.

I took some pictures from the Poker Night Rob hosted at his house the other night. I uploaded a few. Here is the 'crew' hanging out after the game. You can check out the other ones by clicking on the pictures and browsing the album.



Also, I was blown away by Of Montreal's video to Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse. I highly recomend watching it as many times as possible.

A First Time For Everything

I bought my first album on the iTunes music store. I thought I could use an album to listen to on the airplane and have decided to move away from the illegal downloading I did in the past. What impressed me most about the process was how easy and quick it was to do. In literally two clicks I had purchased the album and in well under five minutes it was completely downloaded on my computer. In addition to that it was about four dollars cheaper than purchsing the physical CD online and about eight dollars cheaper than purchasing it at a real store. Plus it contains bonus tracks that aren't included on the phsical CD. Overall it was an awesome experience.

The album I got was Of Montreal's new album "Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?" and it is amazingly good. Amazingly good! I listened briefly to one or two songs in Jason's car last night but due to the large quantaties of alcohol and the small size of the speakers much of it was lost on me. I was intruiged though because what I did pick up on was that the album sounds completely different than their early stuff like "Cherry Peel" and "The Gay Parade". The lo-fi aesthetic has been left behind for some awesome synths and drum machines. The excellent songwriting remains.

The Best of All Time

I played poker last night at Rob and Steph's house. It was pretty fun even though I ended up losing ten dollars. McKay came over but instead of sharking his way to the top, he went out with four people still in the game. A valian effort though and much better than what I did. After that Adam, Thomas, Jason, Matt, and I went out drinking on the town and then to a house party with fussball, pool, and weight lifting equipement. Pretty fun.

Today I was introduced to the site List of Bests where you can check off all the movies you have seen from different lists. Of particular note is the recent list of 1,000 great films on They Shoot Pictures, as blogged about by Jonathon Rosenbaum and David Kehr.

I took the time to go through the list and check off the movies I've seen and it turns out I've seen 48% of the movies on the list. Not bad at all considering my movie watching has considerably slacked off as of late. Here's the full breakdown of what I have and haven't seen. I would like to point out that I'm 45/50 of the top 50 films on the list. It's the backend of the list that is really bringing down my percentage.

Clean Teeth

I went to the Dentist today for the first time in over a year. I had some cavities filled and then I'm supposed to go back to get my teeth cleaned. While have your teeth filed away with an electric drill is always an unpleasant process, it wasn't as bad as I remember it being. Certainly not bad enough to get me to confess classified government secrets.

My teeth are going to be sparkling white when I get to Korea!

Disaster Imminent

Reading some recent articles about Seoul on Chosun Daily and other online Korean newspapers I have become increasingly scared of going over there to live. First of all, earlier this week dangerous levels of asbestos were detected in line #2 of the Seoul subway system. This is the line I'm going to be using all the time as it's the one that goes right by my apartment and I'm considering getting some sort of gas mask.

Then after that there was an earthquake in a small town in the South of Korea. This prompted some speculation and dire warnings about the possability of a large Earthquake in Seoul. Lost Nomad weighed in on this and his take was rather alarming. Also alarming is the statement in the Chosun article that "there is...controversy over the fact that atomic power plants have been built on fault lines".

And then to top it all off Chosun just put out an article about the severe sandstorms headed to Korea this Spring. Add to that the massive pollution in Seoul, tensions with North Korea, and reports of a rampaging truck sized monster, and Seoul might just be the most dangerous place to live on Earth.

Unforced Errors

Yesterday I went and played pool with Adam and Jason. I did rather poorly. Very poorly in fact. We played cutthroat to see who would play first and I lost by a large margin, and then it was downhill from there. I only won one game and that was mostly due to Jason playing very badly as opposed to me playing well.

After that I met Thomas and Matt at the Baby Bar where it was iPod mix night. You bring your iPod and get to DJ for twenty minutes. I made a few pretty sweet mixes on my PC, but then I was ran into problems trying to get them onto my sister's iPod. To make a long story short I went to the Baby Bar without a mix. It turned out to be an OK thing as there were only two other people besides us and the bartender there. Matt and Thomas played there mixes and then Adam arrived (he had gone home to watch 'Heros') and we went to North Bowl to go bowling.

Now I have been playing Wii bowling a lot recently and am pretty good. I am a pro in the game and my high score is 240. In real life, however, I have not been bowling in about six years and the best I ever did was about 110. I consider it a good game if I break 100. This is fine, but it turns out Adam, Thomas, and Matt are all good bowlers so I was definatley dragging the game down.

While they were all getting well above 150 each game, I got 58 the first game and 99 the second game. I had 99 going into the tenth frame and I was convinced I would be breaking 100. Unfortunatley I choked and got two gutter balls in a row. It was pretty terrible and I learned an important lesson about the difference between real life and video games. The lesson being that I am good at one and bad at the other one.

Recently Matt has been drawing pictures of me and giving them to girls saying I drew them. He started out drawing me muscular and tough, but I convinced him to go another route and draw unicorns, hearts, and kittens. It worked well at the bowling alley and the girls Matt sent the pictures to returned us (poorly drawn) pictures of their own along with the informaton that they were there with their boyfriends and their phone numbers. A mixed message if I ever heard one.

After bowling we went to the Park Inn and Matt immediatly went about drawing pictures for the only girl in the bar whom I happened to be sitting next to. While I was talking to her and Matt was drawing next to me it was pretty obvious I wasn't the one drawing pictures and the situation went downhill. She enjoyed the pictures a lot, but nothing came of it. Matt dropped Thomas and me off at my house and we played some 'real' bowling. Wii bowling that is.

Overall the night went about as badly as a night can go in terms of losing, being rejected, and things not working out, but I had a good time. This just goes to show that you can be a loser and still be happy; if you consume prodiguous amounts of alcohol.

An Excellent Podcast

I found a great podcast and blog about life in Seoul that has a great interview with Darcy Paquat of KoreanFilm.org.