Where to begin?  I suppose I could start by saying that my singing group performed tonight, and I was extremely happy with the show.  A couple of people in the audience caught me on my way out to specifically tell me they thought I had a great voice.  This makes me happy.

I suppose I could go back to Friday night, when I was kind of sort of roped into doing this Jew thing with a bunch of UCLA people.  Given that it’s been a while since I’ve been to a service, I responded by making smartass comments to my friend.  Then later on, I was talking to a couple of cute women who told me they’d just graduated—given that my friend’s girlfriend is a UCLA grad student, I assumed they meant from grad school.  Then it became clear that they meant undergrad.  Then they asked me when I graduated from college, and I responded with the year.  They said, “Oh, we were in 9th grade then!” I responded by taking full advantage of the open bar… perhaps a little more than I should’ve.

Last night, amandarin and I went to see Lord of War.  Not just because it’s a Nicolas Cage movie and I like him, but also because the critics hated it and the liberal audiences enjoyed it, so that piqued my interest even more.  What I expected was a slick drama glorifying gunrunning and seeing Nic suddenly have a change of heart and working everything out in the end.  I think one of the reasons why I enjoyed it so much was specifically because it wasn’t.  There wasn’t any redemption.  There wasn’t any neat, clean, Hollywood ending.  Yeah, it was funny in parts and there were the usual quick-witted lines, but it was also gritty and eye-opening and real.  And the subject matter really kind of got to me too.  It accurately showed some of the abject poverty and violence that much of the world has sank into. 

Disturbed - “Land of Confusion”
Right-click and save as.  Thanks to Sledge for pointing this one out to me.