Fish Sticks and Green Jello

I saw Unleashed today with J and J after hitting the Hayes Valley Block Party in SF.

Quick side note here, I went there to go to a trunk show at Azalea to pick up some fabulous shoes made by eighty twenty (or 8ighty 2wenty). - View the site: I got the ones that look like pointed converse in purple/white with purple ribbons, except mine are black/white with black ribbons.

Anyways, Unleashed kicks ass! Literally! Har har!

It has some of the best realistic fight scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie. No wire flying around pulling punches looking crap. Bob Hoskins is a great villan too. Parts of the plot were a tad silly and it dragged in some places but this is one of the first movies Jet li has really gotten to “act” in. I really felt for his character Danny.

This movie was orignally called Danny the Dog when it was released. Cool name! The original soundtrack album art was much cooler looking too.

Excellent first time sountrack by one my fave electronic music acts, Massive Attack. I'm going to pick the soundtrack up for sure.

Two thumbs up!

See the trailers (search for 'Unleashed') - There is one music video and 3 trailers!

Listen to the Soundtrack clips.

Btw, How lazy am I? I copied this mini-blurb from an email I sent my ex about it. Hee.

Baking with Splenda = Great!

Gummy Bears with Splenda = Great!

Diet Coke with Spenda = Another kind of bad, chemically after taste!

I can't tell if Diet Coke with Splenda is just plain bad or if it's because I'm not used to that kind of after taste in my diet coke. Years of aspartame training maybe.

I bought a 12-pack of this crap. I'll either drink it all and eventually like it or I'm going back to aspar-crap.

See, marketing does work? I'm a sucker for it.

I hope this re-hashed roller skating trend means I can buy some decent skates this summer. Something cute... and pink... and cute.

There's going to be a movie called Roll Bounce. Believe it or not. It's made by the fine folks who did Barber Shop and Soul Food. The trailer actually looks kind of fun. I like Soul. I like Roller Skating. Why not? The competition scenes look killer at least. Although it does Star Bow Wow or Lil' Bow Wow as I remember him. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing...

Anyways, Roller Skating in the 70's was hot. I had my shiny synthetic fabric yellow skirt/top combo and we used to get glow sticks to skate around with. Yes, glow sticks were around then, PRE-rave days.

See the trailer courtesy of Apple.com.

Read about it on imdb.com

By the way, love love love those giant headphones with the antenna on that kid in the trailer! If you're too young or whatever to know what that cool song is on the trailer it's "Lovely Day" by Bill Withers. That guy has so many great songs!

I'm still trying to come up with a store name. The name has to encompass not only jewelry but clothing, accesories and crafty stuff etc.. I have a few ideas but I'm not going to put them here! Instead I'd love to hear your ideas! Heh. Help me out though, seriously!

I also have a few questions maybe someone can answer. First off if I don't get a .com name will people not be able to find me online as easily? I assume if you give someone a name like "hamburger" they'll assume they need to do a search for hamburger.com. If I used maybe, maybe.com is easy to spell, remember etc. "Maybe" doesn't really invoke store names to me though. Johnny came up with a cute one but I'm still wavering on if that one can be associated with fashion at all.

I did think of a cute one but the .net and .com for it is taken. Plus if you're kinda dumb you won't be able to spell it very easily. Seriously, I know so many poor spellers. I could use a .biz name but will people remember that? Hey, remember back when .com was community, .net for network (tech), .org for organization etc? No one ever used those they way they were supposed to be used. Well almost no one. It would have been cool if they were designated correctly though. Instead of .com being the standard... that way you could use the same name for different purposes and people would get it right away when they saw the extension. Bah.

Anyways, leave a comment or send me an email with ideas or feedback about this .com/.biz thing. Oh and spelling, is it hard for you? :)

I took a ring making class at The Bead Shop in Palo Alto last night. It was really fun! The women in the class were really nice and I learned a lot about wire wrapping. Basically we used 14 gauge wire to create these "wrapped" rings. Then to fill in the holes we picked out beads to fasten into the gaps in the rings. It was great to be right there in the shop while making this so if I screwed up I could get more wire or walk around for awhile to find the beads to fit in the ring. Plus, since I was a "student" I got a great discount on materials. I should just keeping taking classes and get the discount! Not only will I learn stuff but it makes my supplies that much cheaper.

Anyways, I got inspired to make my stepmom some earrings since my dad wasn't able to find any for her while we were up in Seattle. He really likes to buy her earrings as a gift when he's out and about. I saw the earrings they had at the glass museum in Tacoma and I told my dad I could make those earrings for at half the price... and I did! Except mine are much prettier. :P

So here they all are! I wish my ring photos turned out better. I think I need to take a "how to use your digital camera correctly" class or a "how to not take crappy photos" class, whichever. Not a bad idea actually... I really should look into that. I know the local adult ed has them.


Red Disc with silver foil bits inside them / Fuschia Swarovski crystal / Silver findings

Green/Blue/Floral Chinese Lampwork beads / Turquoise Swarovski crystal / Light Silver findings

Red/Pink/White Floral Chinese Lampwork beads / Rose Swarovski crystal / Multi-size light silver findings

Left: Floral/Silver Chezk floral bead / 14gauge Fine Silver wire / 20 gauge Sterling Silver wire for wrapping
Right: Clear Quartz Crystal / Fuschia Swarovski crystal / 14gauge Fine Silver wire / 24 gauge Sterling silver wire for wrapping

Lousy photo of chezk floral ring (I will take better photos later!)

Lousy photo of crystal ring (yes, better photos are coming!)

Okay... enough already! Yet ANOTHER roller dancing/skating commercial. This time for Diet Coke and yes, ripping off another song I love. The song in this one is pretty darn old though, circa 2002 here people! I think Apple is one of the few companies that can use brand new songs in their ads without making the band seem like a sell out (um, Kasabian. Car commerical. hello).

Oh and Diet Coke now has Splenda! That's actually pretty cool. Aspartame/Nutrasweet isn't really that great for you and Splenda tastes a lot more like sugar than any of that other junk.

Here's the rundown...

Watch the Diet Coke commerical (you have to go to the site, then click on 'Sparkle' in the middle section)

See the Oakenfold video, featuring Shifty Shellshock (from Crazytown, youknowTHIS!)

Check out the Bunkka album.

The weirdest part about this was I was reading up on roller skating last night and I was recalling how Skechers came out with the 4-Wheeler roller tennis shoe deal a few years back. Of course it barely caught on so they quickly disappeared from the market. You'll be hard pressed to find very many of them left anywhere, including on Ebay. You'll have an even harder time finding the Puma 'Roller Kitty' and Nike versions of these skates. Anyways, it's a roller revival! This time it may just catch on. I'm betting it will. Makes me wanna buy skates again.

On that note, I got an email from the Bay Area Derby Girls. They're having a fundraiser for a team member who got their two front teeth knocked out during practice (don't try that at home kids!). Check out their website for some pretty gruesome photos and find out how you can help. They're a pretty cool group of gals. Every little bit helps!

WARNING: The photos are pretty harsh so if you are the least bit queasy about this kind of thing don't go there. Love the website in general though. Pretty cute.
http://www.bayareaderbygirls.com/

I didn't know there was a 'Hipster Handbook'. I also didn't know I knew so many hipsters. I do know that Seattle is FULL of hipsters though. I think the hive/nest is located there and the drones are spawning out from there to infect the rest of the world one by one with their black geometric/blonde chunk hairdo's and their vegetarian art school-ism. If that makes any sense.

Take the hipster challenge! Let me know what your results are.


You're Not a Hipster!
Take What sort of Hipster are you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

Apple has a new ipod commercial out with roller "dancers" in it. They're bustin' moves to 'Feel Good Inc', the new Gorillaz single (with De La Soul) which I discovered ages ago! Yes I actually heard something BEFORE it got uber popular! Anyways, the commercial rocks and so does the song. I love them.

Watch the Ipod commercial.

See the Gorillaz Video.

Learn how to Roller Dance. Watch the video clips, they're awesome. I want that Lionel Ritchie song as my ringtone!

Jess turned me on to this band. I really really like them. Some of their songs remind me a *bit* of the Psychedelic Furs. They've got kind of an 80's flavor to them. They do fall into that indie rock cateogry though like all the other bands out there. I'm happy though that we're finally back into an era of memorable music. The 90's were horrible. Can you say Spice Girls or Backstreet Boys? Anyways, I had planned on seeing them this last weekend but they were one of the casualties of being lazy and seeing other bands instead. Oh well.

This weekend when I'm in Seattle Jess, Cristy and I are going to go see Bright Eyes and The Faint. Two more casualties from last weekend... There were plenty more bands I wish I'd seen but they've already toured through here. Honestly though as I said in my review, that venue just wasn't that great for getting up close to any of the bands and it was too crazy and crowded.

I need a name for an online store that may become a brick and mortar store one day. Clothes, Jewelry, New/Used etc. Something to do with the word Maybe, er..... maybe? I need suggestions!

I just saw this movie in the theater tonight. Ohman was it funny! I was laughing my ass off throughout most of it. It was hilarious, touching, sweet and violent. The violence wasn't gorey and over the top but just the suggestive nature of the violence in some scenes make it too much for kids to see it I think. Maybe too much for some conservative adults even.

I have yet to see Shaolin Soccer but I'm going to check that out next for sure. Go see Kung Fu Hustle if you haven't yet! Support Stephen Chow and foreign films. Check out the official movie site or view the imdb page.

Taking a page out of someone else's book on this topic, and since I spent way more time drinking by/in the pool then going to shows I'll just quickly post some final details about the weekend.

Seeing Bauhaus, Fantomas, Prodigy and (dare I say) the five seconds of Chemical Brothers really made the whole thing worth it for me (the most out of anyone else I saw which was hardly anyone, YES I KNOW!). I'd seen a lot of the bands before so those were my favorites. Yes I missed a lot more than I should have but I had a GREAT weekend nevertheless.

I'll probably go next year depending on the lineup. If we didn't have the setup at the house we did I probably wouldn't be as eager to go since it was more crowded this year than last year's banner crowd and it far outmassed 2003 when I last went. Yikes! The overlapping schedules and the hike between tents and stages, plus the overflowing crazy packed tents were not the greatest way to see these acts.

Other highlights:
- The Chophouse in Palm Springs, excellent food! The king crab and steaks were amazing. Very $$$ but worth it.
- The weather was perfect! Not too hot, and while windy at night was moderate enough to feel perfectly comfy outdoors.
- Gambling at Agua Caliente. Been there before but always good for some entertainment. Just like being in Vegas... or Reno rather. I think I dropped 100 bucks within the first 20 min of being in there, bastards! Hah.
- Ruby's Diner has a breakfast burger, heart attack on a bun! That's fried egg, hamburger, cheese, bacon and more. That was a first for me, it was super tasty though!

Lowlight:
- The cell phone signal situation. I was the only person in my group that had signal consistenly. Everyone else (on verizon no less! all of us!) had little to no signal at all. This made meeting up a NIGHTMARE! I didn't see any of the people I knew there plus it was WAY too crowded. It took 30 minutes for my friends to find me and we tried to fix our position down with text messaging once calls didn't work. Even then text messages were coming in late. Ugh! Next year we need signal lights, walkie talkies and god knows what else. Otherwise we shouldn't separate.

Other than all that we BBQ'ed all three days, drank two tons of scratch strawberry daquiris (with tons of whipped cream! fatty fat fat fat), went through a few cases of beer, sat in the hot tub, floated in the pool and watched every single episode of Arrested Development at least once.

I have a nice quote that Mike Patton of Fantomas said during the show on my other blog but I can't put it here since it's um, not appropriate for wide audiences, haha! It was highly amusing! Okay that's it, I hope I didn't forget anything. I probably did... I plan on making some sort of Palm Springs, here's where we stayed, what we liked etc. page for future visits.

Super fun weekend! I'll post more later but for now I'll say that I got to see two of my fave acts, Bauhaus and Prodigy among other acts I saw at Coachella this weekend. So all in all it was a good trip. I'll be visting my Grandma and family in Seattle this weekend then possibly at E3 in LA the weekend after.

Just an update!