Tuesday, 21 August 2001 11:59pm
T
his week I've been staying at my folks' place in LA. Well, Downey. Whatever. Anyway, I came out on Friday night to celebrate my dad's birthday by going out to lunch on Saturday, but I ended up staying here so that tonight I could go out with Trista. I picked her up from her place near Westwood, and we drove down to Johnny Rocket's at the Beverly Connection and then drove up to the Griffith Observatory.
Neither of us had been there since we were young, so it seemed like a pretty good idea. When we got there, it was apparent that a lot of other thought it would be a good idea too, so we had to park down the road a ways, but that was OK because it was a nice night, and there's a great view from up there.
When we got there we looked at some of the exhibits and then got in line to look through the telescope at Mars. The line was about 20 minutes long, and the result was... well, disappointing. When I looked through the eyepiece, Mars was there, but really, not much bigger than I could see it with the naked eye.
I think they didn't magnify it very much so it would stay in view without having to constantly adjust the telescope to compensate for the earth's rotation. But still. Heh. I remember getting a more impressive view than that with my tiny 3" diameter telescope when I was a kid.
But it was still fun. And we got to take a nice pic of us with downtown LA as the backdrop. Yup, that golden haze is the result of smog. Good ol' LA!

Friday, 24 August 2001 11:59pm
G
eez, is it really almost September? Anyway. Wednesday afternoon on my way back down to San Diego, something possessed me to go and visit the San Juan Capistrano Mission. If you grew up in California I'm sure you learned all about Father Junipero Serra's missions and their historical significance in California and all that. Anyway, most of us probably also built models of one mission or other in elementary school.
I actually built my model to look like the San Gabriel mission, however, when it came time for my sister to do hers, we visited San Juan Capistrano. It really was a beautiful place, and it's literally within a mile of the 5 freeway... all these years I've been driving back and forth between LA and San Diego, passing within a mile of the place and I never stopped by for a look.
So for whatever reason, I did stop in. It's a beautiful place, and it's like old and stuff. It's also where I took the pic of the lillies. You can see all the other picks in the big repository, as usual. Actually, there are some new Disneyland pics in there too, from last weekend.
Tonight, as in Friday night, a bunch of us went to see Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and it was thorougly entertaining. As the proprietor of a successful internet message board, I was also amused with their portrayal of internet message boards and the kind of people that post on them... very accurate.
I've been playing with a Nintendo emulator that runs on Sega Dreamcast... playing all my old favorites. The emulator isn't 100% on, but good enough to play most of the games, and as sketchy as it might get sometimes, it still starts up a whole heck of a lot more than my original Nintendo Entertainment System, which really, is a challenge to get started up. But the dreamcast emulator starts up every time :) Ahhhh... Super Mario Bros. I feel like a kid again :)

Saturday, 25 August 2001 11:59pm
S
omebody at the apartment management company thought it would be a really good idea to bring in some guys to tear down and replace the supports for the balcony of the people next door and ours. Somebody also thought it would be a good idea to not tell anybody about it until the day it happened. Somebody also thought it would be a good idea to start doing this work using hammers and circular saws at 8AM on a Saturday morning.
I mean really. Why on Saturday? If you do it on a weekday, at least most people are already awake and either getting to work, or already at work. I thought weekends were the times when most people would try to be sleeping in? I dunno. But 8AM is when I woke up this morning.
Anyway. Man I was so bored tonight. I decided to go down to Hollywood Video, and get an account and rent some movies or something. Blockbuster doesn't like me anymore ;). Anyway, Requiem For A Dream caught my eye, and I had heard a lot about it. So I decided to get that. Until I saw one in the "Pre-Viewed" DVD section where they were selling for $9. I figured it would be worth it, I mean, that's less than the cost of 2 rentals.
And true to the word I had been given, this movie was really depressing. Of note though, I got the "edited" version. The original version had this one overly graphic sex scene in it that would have caused the MPAA to rate it as NC-17. So for the theatrical release, I think they chose to just release it unrated.
Problem is, major rental chains won't carry NC-17 rated movies, so, they edited that sex scene for the rental market. Actually when I first noticed that I had the "edited" version I thought I might be missing a lot, but after the movie I did some quick research and found out that it was just that one scene... the movie is plenty disturbing already.