Two Gallants; Niko Niko's; Resident Evil; Packing

6/18

After their previous, disastrous show", Two Gallants were kind and upstanding enough to make it up to the scenesters of Houston by playing a free make-up show.

It maybe wasn't as good as their last one (well, the part of it they were allowed to complete), and it was certainly less exciting, but hey, what a great thing to do for your fans.

6/19

Band practice...

6/20

For the first time in months, there was a new Wii game worth buying. Sure, it was a re-release of a previous-generation game, but I had missed playing Resident Evil 4 the first time around, and the new Wii controls, which included point and shoot aiming, made for a compelling buy. I managed to (barely) swing by Best Buy to pick it up (I have to say, they've certainly gotten extra business from me thanks to handy in-store pickups and 90-days no interest on my Best Buy credit card) before joining Dan and Cindy at Niko Niko's for a $1.75 gyro in celebration of their many years in business. The line was out the door, and the wait was long, but that's not all that unusual for Niko Niko's. And the gyro tastes sweeter when you barely pay anything for it.

I started Resident Evil that night and would be fairly addicted to it over the next few weeks. For my non-gamer readers, the RE games generally involve zombies in some form or fashion, this volume in particular was, unlike its cinematic counterparts, critically acclaimed.

Certainly, firing it up for the first half hour or so, on the big screen with the surround sound and the lights out, it scared the crap out of me. It takes place in a Spanish village, and, as you make your way into it you discover that the villagers are a) homicidal; b) possessed or otherwise zombie-like; and c) surprisingly resilient to being shot, and you are armed only with a pistol. After taking out the initial one and having a crowd of villagers drawn to you, death seems inevitable until church bells ring and, suddenly, the villagers file away.

As you gain firepower, things get easier. Thankfully. The pacing manages to keep you on edge for attacks that aren't constant but do feel as if they could occur at any moment. And there are some amazing set pieces. Like when you find yourself barricaded in an old house, surrounded by zombies, and they start coming in through the windows, through the doors. And you try to hold them off, but they keep coming. So you have to flee upstairs. You knock the ladders away from the windows, you throw grenades down the stairs, but ammo is running low. I must have played that part of the game 5 times or so before I managed to outlast the things.

Did I mention I seem to have a fear of zombies? Something to do with claustrophobia, I think. So the game manages to be particularly effective, but also therapeutic. Sadly, there are some points at which the game feels too easy, and the emphasis on gunplay takes away from the horror elements. But for every level with such issues, there's another one where ammo is limited, and fuck, how am I going to make it out of this?

I'll confess I never actually finished it. I seem to have formed a habit of making it 95% of the way through a game and then getting bored. When you get too close to the end, the need to find out what's around the next corner goes away, and with it the drive to play the same damned sequence 5 or 10 times. I certainly don't have the patience I had back in the old NES days.

But overall, Resident Evil 4 is a great piece of work, and well worth playing. Even if you loathe the undead.

6/21

I helped out with the grad school night for the college summer students, as per usual, and pilfered some food to repurpose for dinner. After some ugliness with somebody who parked in my parking space (which usually results in only a strongly-worded note; as much as I hate people parking in my space, I hate more a) tow truck drivers and b) having my car vandalized), there was dinner and Sopranos.

6/22

After staying a bit late at work to wrap up a few things before going out of town, Cindy and I got some Tapatia for dinner, I snuck in some Resident Evil, and I managed to pack ahead of our unnecessarily early flight the next morninng.

Cecil's; Steak & Sopranos; Happy hour & farewell

6/11

A good old-fashioned Monday night at Cecil's.

6/12

Cindy and I had, independently, concluded that we needed to experience "The Sopranos". So I joined up with Blockbuster's by-mail program (at the time, clearly a better deal than Netflix, though I'm considering a switch), and we prepared for a night in.

Cindy found some cheap steak, which we decided to dress up with a chimichurri sauce. Now good steak is its own reward, but sometimes you want steak for cheap, and in those cases it doesn't hurt to dress it up. And chimichurri seems to be good on just about anything that's been grilled, particularly beef. On the side, we put together a nice salad of corn, avocado, tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro. A nice, south of the border-style meal all around.

As for the Sopranos, well, we enjoyed it thoroughly and found it and its characters compelling. I question how well it held up over the course of the series, and as such I think that, taken as a complete work, it's not as good as some of the very best of television such as "Lost". But it's still some of the best TV around.

Actually, this whole TV-on-DVD experience has highlighted for me the way I watch television in the DVR age. The best shows are the ones that have the same sense of scale as movies, and I think to just refer to them as "television" just connotes too many images of yokels slack-jawed in front of the idiot box. I almost never watch live TV now; to sit down in front of something I don't care for when there are so many other rewarding things going on is just boring. I watch the shows that I want to see, and avoid other things. Sometimes I am guilty of having it on just to have it on, but even then it's something I was at least interested in enough to record.

So, perhaps calling the Sopranos "TV" is doing it a disservice. "Serialized cinema", perhaps?

6/13

From here on out, if I skip a day, Cindy and I probably just stayed in and knocked out a few episodes of the Sopranos.

6/14

At the genetics department retreat every year, a contest is held and monetary awards given out for skits and videos. The money is administered by the school, though, and must be used for something that is ostensibly "educational" in nature. Used to be you could at least get an iPod, but it's apparently getting harder to swing fun things.

Except, apparently, beer. One pair of winners decided to share the wealth and throw a departmental happy hour. And there was a lot of beer. And when 5:00 rolls around and you've already had a few, the sensible thing to do is to just call the day "over", which Cindy and I did.

So after that, we had a little "good-bye" party for the grad student in lab who always managed to get on my nerves. Beers were had at Gingerman and then dinner at Nit Noi. After that I think Cindy wanted to watch some sort of televised sporting event and I may have snuck a nap in after all the beer.

Well, I forgot to make notes for this week. I've reconstructed it as best I can. If it's not on my calendar (the two concerts were), not on my credit card bill, not in my e-mail, and not in my notes, it's lost to history, I suppose.

6/4

Thanks to Bryan's IM logs, I now know that I saw Knocked Up. I remember being entertained. Not a brilliant film or anything, but funny enough. Thanks Bryan.

6/6

I'd been wanting to try Alton Brown's meatloaf recipe, which verges on the untraditional, so Cindy and I tackled it. Despite some geometric issues due to my lack of a loaf pan for shaping, the loaf turned out moist and tasty. I had many a meatloaf sandwich in the ensuing days.

6/7

Since I had last seen the Hold Steady, their album went from being something I'd listened to once to my favorite of the year. So, needless to say, I was excited about the show. And I had a plan. Obviously, music that revolved so heavily around drinking required much drinking to be properly enjoyed, right?

I had recruited Will to join Cindy and I, figuring that he would enjoy both the drinking and the blue-collar-rock-as-tool-for-literary-analysis-of-blue-collar-teens-and-young-adults. He came, we drank many beers very quickly, and the world's best bar band took the stage.

It was absolutely perfect. The drunken community of the crowd, shouting out lyrics and such ("who-o-o-o-ah"; "gonna walk around and drink some more" etc.). The band's beyond enthusiastic performance. It's one of the few times I'm glad a show was packed. All the elements of that night worked synergistically. And I had made Cindy drive.

6/8

OK, so I may have been not at the top of my game the next day. But it was worth it. And it was of little significance; the boss was leaving for his big summer sabatical. He took a few of us out to lunch, gave us a pep talk, and the smell of sweet freedom was in the air.

That night, Cindy and I had tickets to see Calvin Johnson (of Beat Happening, K Records, the Halo Benders, a fuck-ton of cameos, etc.) at the Aurora Picture Show up in the heights, taking a break from its usual role of screening underground and independent films to serve as a music venue. I'm pretty sure the building is a converted church; I'm too lazy to check the, but at least take that facts, but at least take that for its descriptive value. I'm pretty sure we sat in pews. I had been told that it was kosher to BYOB, but I'll tell you that regardless of context, it feels weird to slip your cooler up under a pew.

The opener, a young lady who played solo, was good if I recall correctly. But I'm too lazy to look up her name.

Calvin took the "stage" primarily solo with some occasional instrumental assists, but the format was of little concern, because even without a band the man is an electrifying performer. His commanding yet awkward boom of a voice, combined with his theatrical stage presence kept the audience quiet and rapt. I particularly enjoyed the Halo Benders (his project with Built to Spill's Doug Martsch) songs that he played. I don't think he played any Beat Happening but I'm not sure; I'd imagine that most of his material came from his solo work, but it could also have been from other bands of his with which I am unfamiliar. In keeping with the indie pop/twee tradition, his songs were sparse, prescious, funny, and surprisingly affecting and powerful. It was an interesting counterpoint to the night before, and a genuinely beautiful show.

The man himself was personable afterwards, guiding me in my choice of CD purchases and t-shirts—I chose his "Impeach" t-shirt, which he explained was what he would rather see people wear than something with his name on it.

Work; Parking; Goofing off

OK, holidays are over, I'm returning to routine, so that should mean I can squirrel away some time for writing.

5/29

Work on the paper continued...

5/30

More work. I had to redo a figure for the Not My Paper because the primary author was too fucking stubborn to follow directions. Afterwards, Cindy and I went to have dinner with her friends Jim & Nikki, who would shortly be moving to Las Vegas.

5/31

Part of my ability to work harder over the past week had been due to the freedom afforded to me by Jeff's sweet, sweet, sweet parking pass. It was very hard for me to part with it, but I did return it to him. On the way home, to assuage my sad, sad soul, I picked up another round of Jimmy John's. Later, I ended up at the Volcano with... um... some people?

6/1-6/3

My notes for these days just say "goofing off", but specifics elude me. Honestly, I have no idea. I don't think I managed to take Friday off from school, but I might have claimed to have been "working on the paper at home". Remembering to 6 months ago is tough.