There are few things fetching as a bruised ego on a beautiful angel.

Monday 2nd
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Four words:
Dan the Drumming Man.


Tuesday 3rd
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Emily sent me a letter via REAL physical mail (essentially to cheer me up over the whole job loss thing). It's easily one of the most goddamn thoughtful things that anyone has ever done for me.
Taking into account that she:
A) Lives 3000 miles away
B) Works a full time job
C) Has a boyfriend that is more than a handful (in more than ONE way, har har har...)
D) Was preparing to leave for a 2-week trip to Italy

I have no idea where she found the time to write/do something this awesome and actually mail it out before she left for her trip (they had already left by the time it got to me). I mean...how often do people that aren't your parents (or bills) send you a physical letter these days?
I may be overreacting a little bit over all of this, but her timing was also impeccable. If you've ever had one of those moments where you just want to bury your head in your lap and fucking scream your lungs out, and then all of the sudden someone calls you to see what's up, and you're just totally fucking relieved.
Her letter had the same type of timing.

Erik, I'm stealing your girlfriend from you.


Wednesday 4th
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Today was a rough day. Lots of contemplation on what to do with my life. The big decisions basically lie between staying in the field I'm in (either freelance or hired), getting an office management job for a corporation, getting into the video game biz, becoming a doctor, or traveling to Japan for an indefinite amount of time. I spent the day researching the Peace Corp. and ultimately decided I couldn't meet their 2 year minimum requirement, it's just too long.
I guess I have a lot of thinking to do.

A client of mine back at Moviola offered me a job involving flying out to North Carolina to tape a Sobe/Budweiser modeling competition. I told him I'd have to check my schedule, which he somehow took as "Yes." So when I told him I couldn't work the dates he needed me too (because Alyse, Steve's girlfriend, is coming out here and I'm supposed to help her prepare to move them out here in a month) he got pretty upset with me.
I felt bad...not a very good start to my freelance career. Hopefully he'll still consider me when he needs help for his Yacht channel shit (he seasonly travels on yachts and tapes it, for a channel devoted to rich people with yachts).

After that whole fucking fiasco, on top of my self-loathing, I got a letter in the mail from the Los Angeles Court. I figured it had something to do with the claim I filed against Jay, low-and-behold it was actually a letter serving me jury duty next month.

Off to a great new start here Derek.

Went to trivia night with the usuals, as well as my Matt and his friend. We got our asses handed to us, I think we need to get back into the groove.


Thursday 5th
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Three or four years ago today I was in NYC with Elise, Dan and a bunch of their Jew friends. I distinctively remember that evening I bought a loaf of bread and ate the whole thing just to spite them.

That aside, today consisted of the craziest 12 hours in my entire life.

It started by going to pick up Don at 3:00 p.m., a quick stop at the grocery store for supplies, and we were on our way...on a mission. Mission G.R.I.N.D.H.O.U.S.E.
Cooler?
Check.
Lawn chairs?
Check.
Laptop and DVD's?
Check.
Beer?
Check.
Smokes?
Check.

The rumor was that the theater Tarentino has been showing his films in the past month and a half (the "Grindhouse Festival" mentioned in previous posts) was going to show "Grindhouse" as it's final feature.
Added to this rumor was that the man himself was going to be there to host it.

Because of the significant heft behind the so-called "rumor," Don and I decided that we should probably get there a little early so we'd have a place in line for the tickets.

About 7 hours early. (The movie was scheduled to run at 11 p.m.)


We rolled up around 4 p.m. to set up camp on the sidewalk.


We were about the 15th people in line, the others said they showed up at around 3:00.


Those are the knees of the one guy to my left, he showed up right after we set up camp.


One hour down. Six to go.


By this point I have fashioned beer cozies out of tin foil. A technological break-through that melds the cooling powers of a beer cozy with concealing power of a brown paper bag...and...reflective power...of...foil. I expect to have a patent for it by this time next year.


The view to my right hasn't changed much.
(Notice the grey painted image on the wall next to Don? That's going to be important so make sure you remember it.)


To my left, about 20 or so people have shown up. Looks like they have chairs too...fancy.


20 minutes later Andrew showed up while I was in the middle of a phone call...


...I had just received a call from my sister, Danielle, who has a tenancy to always use her boyfriend's cellphone. Yeah,
THEY GOT ENGAGED!!!
Holy shit...I'm going to see Grindhouse AND I'm going to have a new brother-in-law. Words could not describe the feelings coursing through my body at this point.
Stunned with no idea what to say, the only thing I could think to do was keep repeating "I'm so happy for you guys!" and "Congratulations!"
Seriously man, when you're that taken by surprise it's really hard to describe how excited you are. So I opted to say, "Now guys, still no doing the "hokey pokey" until you get married!"

It was funny because months previously I had had conversations with both Andrew and Don about how I hoped my sister was going to marry her boyfriend someday, because I really liked him.
So that was fucking amazing.

I also talked to Brenna about it, after the fact, and we both thought it was funny that Danielle beat me to the whole "marriage" thing. Brenna and I always thought we were going to be the first to do it.
Ah life's little quirks.

Speaking of quirks...


About 10 minutes after my sister told me she was ENGAGED, I'm still excited/weirded out that I'm going to have a new bro in law, these people show up out of nowhere with their fancy cameras (SLR and Film) and asked us what was going on. Apparently they had picked this day, out of all days, to do a photo shoot RIGHT in front of the wall that Don and I were camping in front of.


Apparently Tom, the guy that started MySpace (who is automatically your first friend when you sign up for an account with it), graffiti-ed this picture on this wall to advertise for MySpace when it was a brand new site. So they chose today of all days to take some pictures of him in front of it now that he...sold it for billions of dollars...(for nostalgic purposes?) while unbeknownst to them a bunch of film geeks were raiding the same territory!


Soooo we were kind enough to move aside for them. That's Tom on the right. Remember the grey painting that was next to Don in the picture above? Yup. That's right where we were sitting. IN FACT, those are our chairs and cooler in the foreground.


And look at FUCKING that. We've got Tom and his partner sitting all up in our shit (while the cooler my parents gave me for Xmas two years ago is hogging up the spotlight). They thought it'd be funny to make it look like Tom was waiting in line with everyone else.
What do we have HERE!?! Is that a patented Derek Beer Cozy in the middle of Tom's shot?


Why I think it freakin' IS!


Now Don is sitting in a famous chair and spot!


Soooo, only 5 more hours to go...


The guys to our right decided to whip out an intense game of chess.


While quite the crowd has developed off to my left.


In fact now it goes all the way down the sidewalk...


...and keeps going...


...and bends around the corner of the block, and you can barely see all the way to the back of the line, which actually started to go back into an alley to the left by the end of the night!


In the mean time we were drinking beers and watching DVD's with the most famous cooler of all time.
In fact! I had left to go take a piss a couple hours later, and when I came back a journalist from the UK was talking pictures of Don eating soup with the cooler...


Apparently my cooler is an international star now.


Notice the theater sign says "Sneak Preview," I wonder what it's going to be!!!?


dunna dunna Anarchy! dunna dunna in the UK!


This is my interpretation as what Don will look like in the popular United Kingdom magazine: "Boys Eating Soup Monthly: Slurp Edition."


Well it's pretty dark out now, and it's actually getting pretty close to 10 p.m. At this point in time Doug and his roommate had showed up with a bag full of cheeseburgers. MMMMmmm. And now it's time to actually stand in a formed line for the moment we've all been waiting for! BUYING TICKETS! Wooo...ooo....oo.


Pizza has been eaten. Beers have been cozied.


Now we get to sit in a theater for an hour while we wait for the movie to start. What better way to entertain ourselves than to take pictures of what we THINK we'll look like during the movie! Don is going to scream like a little girlie man.


Andrew is going to get blazed?


Doug is going to have his soul stolen by his camera, while his roommate practices Dave Coulier (Uncle Joey on "Full House") impressions of "Cut. It. Out!"


Or perhaps he's trying to be gangsta'? WHO KNOWS!


This is the guy in front of me. According to what he told his friends, he had dropped some acid AND taken some ecstasy. Ya know...just in case the acid didn't kick in. So during the whole movie he was freaking out, screaming random shit, flailing his arms, and generally being the most obnoxious douche bag I've ever seen in a theater.

The women to his right, whom was his dirty hippie friend, decided half way through the film that she would flop ALL of her hair over the back of her seat so that it could rest on mine and Don's legs. And we're talking DIRTY ASS hippie hair. It was disgusting.
So the moment it hit my right left, I crossed my left foot over my right leg (as if to sit cross legged) and pinned her hair against the back of her seat with my foot. Then I slowly dragged her hair downwards until it started to pull on her head.
She tried to pull her head forward, but it just made things worse. TAKE THAT DIRTY HIPPIE WITH ACID TRIP INDUCED FRIEND!!! After that she pulled it back up into her own damn territory. Don't be messin' with ma' shit dirty hippie bitch.

In the mean time, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarentino decided to walk in and sit 3 rows in front of us. I wasn't really thinking about it at the time but I was kind of wondering why this 40-year-old balding dude kept looking back at us.
Apparently Quentin likes to see the crowd's reaction.
Considering the variety of freaks the theater was packed with it didn't really click with me until Doug and Don pointed out it was them when we got out afterwards.
Regardless I get to say I watched "Grindhouse" WITH them, and that makes me sleep pretty damn good at night.

Now might be a good time to add that Rodriguez's "Planet Terror" is now my new all-time favorite movie. It's a fucking zombie flick with portions heavily set around a BBQ joint. I <3 Rodriguez.
Plus he shoots digital. So I want to hump him.


So this was the crowd when we got out of the movie (at around 2:30 a.m., a mere 12 hours since we had started the whole adventure). None of us will ever be the same.


They were doing interviews for the DVD (they were shooting crowd reactions the whole time in the theater as well). We were a little too tired to get in on that so...yeah. I'll just insert my "Hi mom!" here.

So that was basically it.

1) My sister got engaged.
2) MySpace's founder, Tom, was pimpin' it with my cooler and beer cozy.
3) I watched "Grindhouse" with the two men responsible for it (amongst many other great films).

It was a pretty fucking kickass day.