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	13 August 2005 PHOTO DIARY. The Home Depot Center is hosting the Land Rover Challenge, in which Land Rover owners finally get the opportunity to drive on real hills of dirt.   Back to main PHOTO DIARY. It's that time of year again: the JP Morgan Chase Open. This year isn't as great as last year due to all of the injury dropouts, but it's still big fun. After watching Dementieva take an outclassed Garbin to school and back, we were disappointed to learn that the doubles quarters were postponed due to (again) injuries. So the Home Depot Center decided to hold a 6-game, no-ad exhibition match between Haynes... ...and Mattek. I guess Friday is Britney Spears day. Anyway, it was a silly affair, with drunken catcalling from the stands and Mario Tennis-like showboating on the court. At one point they changed Haynes' name on the scoreboard to read cupcake. Which made us giggle.   Back to main PHOTO DIARY. I hung out at big bro's new gig over at Motion Theory the other day. They had this prop for a commercial they've been working on, in which a skinny white guy controls Mech versions of famous NBA atheletes. The concept? Disturbing. This prop? Swee-e-e-eet.   Back to main PHOTO DIARY. We went bowling at the Shatto Lanes in Koreatown. The place hasn't changed since the early '70's, and features beautiful, authentic decor. It also had an awesome soda vending machine, complete with an auto-sliding dispenser door and the declaration, Refreshing drinks served with ICE!... ...as well as a coffee machine with true mix-and-match functionality.   Back to main PHOTO DIARY. Been skating along the beach in the wee morning hours. Along the way are concrete benches left over from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.   Back to main 11 August 2005 PHOTO DIARY. A scooter with diplomatic license plates. All it needs are little teeny flags attached to the handlebar ends.   Back to main 10 August 2005 PHOTO DIARY. While filling up the tank the other day, I noticed that the colors of the flowers at the gas station... ...matched that of the gas station logo.   Back to main 08 August 2005 PHOTO DIARY. We babysat little Eric last weekend while One & Jung celebrated their anniversary. Man, does he cry when he gets hungry. But it's nothing a bottle won't instantly fix.   Back to main BOOK: TOKYO CANCELLED (2005). Travellers stranded at an airport during a blizzard begin telling each other stories to pass the time. I felt compelled to keep reading this not-very-good debut collection of short stories by Rana Dasgupta because it reminded me of the kind of magical realist stuff I used to write in college, full of earnest naivete and Chuck Palahniukesque drama of the juvenile. And yet this Dasgupta guy is published, and I'm not. Huh. Some of the stories are new takes on old ideas (Guy de Maupassant's The Necklace retold through a tailor in modern India), or scary in a Bluebeard kind of way (a country woman finds herself living in the mirror-house mansion of a man who forbids her to go to its top floor), or just plain wacky (a dot com sells memories back to busy city dwellers). No story ever feels quite on the mark, or ever leaves any other emotional impression than that of mild puzzlement. Occasional pop-flashes of dazzling prose didn't do much to quell the feeling that I was watching a Twilight Zone marathon dressed up as Masterpiece Theatre. And yet I kept at it, despite Nicki's protests, ultimately giving this book far more of my time than her standard One-hundred Page Grace. I was looking for clues, potentially embarassing pitfalls of storytelling, examples of what not to do. The uncomfortable proximity of Mr. Dasgupta's chosen sub-genre to mine kept me rooting for him even as he caused me to reflexively slap my forehead with exasperation. See, at the end of the day I really really do like wacky tales tinged with the surreal (see Haruki Murakami), and when I'm not trying to create it myself I'm always on the lookout for my next literary high. Sadly, this was not it. Isabella had become a store on Madison Avenue.   Back to main MOVIE: WEDDING CRASHERS (2005). Two dirty rotten scoundrels fake their way into weddings to seduce women at their most emotionally vulnerable. This latest edition to the growing Stiller/Wilson/Ferrell/Vaughn comedy dynasty, while damn funny as hell, might represent a peak of sorts—Vaughn's loose-cannon ratta-tat-tat and Wilson's perpetual dreamy wonderment have been polished to a high sheen, with not a single rough edge to be seen anywhere. And strangely, it gave me that same feeling I felt during Shallow Hal: is comedy's most brilliant bunch of dumb guys in for a decline, like the Farrelly brothers? To reiterate: don't get me wrong, this movie is damn funny as hell. The premise is one of those high-concept, "A-ha" inspiring moments of cleverness; the comedy, founded on a bedrock of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels banter and Down & Out in Beverly Hills high society trickery, cannot not succeed. At times I laughed with sheer astonishment, especially during the film's many Vaughnian rants, which have been taken to new levels of virtuosity (it's been a long time since Swingers, man). But still, Crashers feels a bit too thought out at times, and lacks the delight and random magic of Napoleon Dynamite or The Royal Tenenbaums, for example. But that's to be expected, because this movie is not that type of comedy. It instead relies on more conservative themes: the intimidating father, an angelic love interest, her monster of an intended husband. The film thankfully knows better than to stray into dog slapstick territory, but the saccharine improbability of its conclusion, which borders on the outrageousness of Shallow Hal's feel-good pandering, and its corresponding movie poster line ("Life's a party. Crash it." Dodgeball's tagline of "Grab life by the ball" similarly felt the need to hint at a morally substantive, "But seriously, folks" core.) both imply a larger sale made in the screenplay O.R. Still: damn funny as hell. We'll see what the future holds for the Dynasty. Yeah, well, the proper girl in the hat just eye-fucked the shit out of me.   Back to main Archives. 17 August 2003 — 24 August 2003 — 31 August 2003 — 07 September 2003 — 14 September 2003 — 02 November 2003 — 09 November 2003 — 16 November 2003 — 23 November 2003 — 30 November 2003 — 07 December 2003 — 01 February 2004 — 08 February 2004 — 15 February 2004 — 22 February 2004 — 29 February 2004 — 07 March 2004 — 14 March 2004 — 21 March 2004 — 28 March 2004 — 04 April 2004 — 11 April 2004 — 18 April 2004 — 25 April 2004 — 02 May 2004 — 09 May 2004 — 16 May 2004 — 23 May 2004 — 30 May 2004 — 06 June 2004 — 13 June 2004 — 20 June 2004 — 27 June 2004 — 04 July 2004 — 11 July 2004 — 18 July 2004 — 25 July 2004 — 01 August 2004 — 08 August 2004 — 15 August 2004 — 22 August 2004 — 29 August 2004 — 05 September 2004 — 12 September 2004 — 19 September 2004 — 26 September 2004 — 03 October 2004 — 10 October 2004 — 17 October 2004 — 24 October 2004 — 31 October 2004 — 07 November 2004 — 14 November 2004 — 21 November 2004 — 28 November 2004 — 05 December 2004 — 12 December 2004 — 19 December 2004 — 26 December 2004 — 02 January 2005 — 09 January 2005 — 23 January 2005 — 30 January 2005 — 06 February 2005 — 13 February 2005 — 20 February 2005 — 27 February 2005 — 13 March 2005 — 20 March 2005 — 27 March 2005 — 03 April 2005 — 10 April 2005 — 17 April 2005 — 24 April 2005 — 01 May 2005 — 08 May 2005 — 22 May 2005 — 29 May 2005 — 05 June 2005 — 12 June 2005 — 19 June 2005 — 26 June 2005 — 03 July 2005 — 10 July 2005 — 17 July 2005 — 24 July 2005 — 31 July 2005 — 07 August 2005 — 14 August 2005 — 28 August 2005 — 04 September 2005 — 25 September 2005 — 02 October 2005 — 09 October 2005 — 30 October 2005 — 06 November 2005 — 13 November 2005 — 20 November 2005 — 27 November 2005 — 04 December 2005 — 18 December 2005 — 01 January 2006 — 08 January 2006 — 15 January 2006 — 22 January 2006 — 05 February 2006 — 26 February 2006 — 12 March 2006 — 19 March 2006 — 26 March 2006 — 02 April 2006 — 16 April 2006 — 23 April 2006 — 30 April 2006 — 07 May 2006 — 14 May 2006 — 21 May 2006 — 04 June 2006 — 18 June 2006 — 25 June 2006 — 16 July 2006 — 23 July 2006 — 06 August 2006 — 13 August 2006 — 03 September 2006 — 17 September 2006 — 01 October 2006 —