Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

It was my birthday on Monday! It's also been my first birthday in a long time that didn't coincide with TGIF/F. sol_se made it all magical with a present of Rifftrax and chocolate sheet cake!

Movies I've seen before are in italics

My Bloody Valentine (1981)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Rifftrax: Attack of the Super Monsters
Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
Rifftrax Live: Summer Shorts Beach Party
20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)
Godzilla Raids Again (1955)
Rifftrax: Wonder Women

Yes, we watched My Bloody Valentine on Valentine's Day. It is not good, but for the genre, it's not bad either.

I leveraged my birthday to make sol_se watch Ingmar Bergman. It occurred to me halfway through that a better introduction probably would have been Wild Strawberries, but alas. Still such a good film and unexpectedly funny in places.

Attack of the Super Monsters is... amazing. It's live action monsters-in-suits, but animated people. It seems like it should be the other way around or all animated. It's very bad and very well riffed.

I love Wet Hot American Summer and I may very well rewatch the prequel series now. I still haven't seen the sequel series all the way through.

20 Million Miles to Earth is one of the original Harryhausen classics and it stands up. It's no great shakes in terms of plot or anything, but if you want stop-motion monster action, this will hit the spot.

Mom sent me a gift card for my birthday and I used it to buy Criterion's Godzilla collection, which is all Godzilla movies 1954 - 1975 in a beautiful art book. In some ways, it's a downgrade from my existing Godzilla box set, because it doesn't have many special features except on the original, but it's gorgeous and complete and I love it. We watched Godzilla Raids Again which is... fine. It doesn't really get why the original is special and the climax is super-tedious.

Wonder Women has nothing to do with Diana Prince. It's a weird action-women-sci-fi thing, filmed with absolutely no regard for human or animal life.

Hey, it's my birthday! Another year older!

Sorry I've been incommunicado. I've been moving into a new place (the final place), waiting for Internet to get set-up, and generally getting adjusted to living in a new city, working at a new job, etc.

I haven't even read my friendslist in... too too long.  So if you've had any major life changes, er, point me to the relevant posts.

No birthday mixtape this year, I think. I just don't have the wherewithal (which is a shame, because I've discovered a metric eff-ton of cool new music courtesy of my lead at work).

Going to Disneyland on Friday for my birthday. It will be echan 's very first time going. Very exciting.  

Okay, back to the grind now. Later!

Here it is, my annual birthday mix CD. This year's a bit different in that I didn't try to make the number of tracks reflect my previous age.

This year's mix was heavily influenced by my wedding in December, which shouldn't be a shock to anyone.

( Mixin' it up at 27 )

I'll try to remember to toss a zip file online later.

In other news, on Saturday I gave myself an early birthday present -- a shiny HTC Eris Droid phone. Mmmm. Tasty.

You can tell I'm avoiding actual accomplishment when I've managed to put together my annual mix CD a whole eleven days before my birthday. I think this is the last year where it's going to be just one CD. As I add another track for every year (the mix that represents the year I was 25 has 25 tracks, the one for age 24 has 24, etc.), it gets harder to squeeze all of the music onto a single CD. Not that anybody actually, y'know, listens to 70-minute audio CDs anymore.

Anyway. Same drill as before. Each track is either a song I discovered, listened to incessantly, or that speaks to some part of the last twelve months. I offer no interpretations or explanations.

This year as a bonus, I've included a CD cover and track listing that should (I think) fit neatly in a jewel case. I'll upload a zip file of the mix as soon as I get some of the iTunes tracks converted to a usable format.

( The track listing )

( The CD Cover and Track List Insert )

Here's my yearly mix of songs that I either dug during the last year or that have some significance to stuff that happened in that time. As usual, I won't get into the reasons behind each choice, although I will note that I did do something slightly different with the format this year by including a few choice bits of MST3K-ness.

( Here's the list )

The roommate is planning something extra-special for my birthday. She has told me this much, and that I'm to keep the weekend after my birthday (Feb 22-24) open, but nothing else. She's quite keen to keep it a surprise and I am quite keen to be surprised. That's how birthday presents go. And midnightfae always comes up with the very best presents.

I also know that she has involved some of my friends in this evil (read: awesome) plot. This she did not tell me. See, my roommate, cunning as she is, doesn't know how to use a Mac. She's been borrowing mine while Dell tries to figure out how to repair her laptop and sometimes she leaves her LJ session logged in.

Like today. I opened up Firefox and there's Livejournal, logged into her account, with the words "No-Nate filter" on the Recent Comments list in large, friendly letters. You've never seen a browser window close so fast. I was practically out of breath from the effort.

I promptly went and taught the roommate how to use Apple Key + Q to completely close a program.

If you're in on the plot, don't let me know anything. Not even a vague hint. Last year, for Christmas, I randomly guessed as a joke that she was giving me Tom Servo. I swear I didn't know she'd been gathering gumball machine heads and spring arms for months (that project is, sadly, not yet complete due to various distractions). I have a terrible knack for working these things out based on ridiculously scant information and I do not want to be ahead of the game.

This has been a public service announcement for the Let's Keep Jetpack Monkey in the Dark Regarding His 25th Birthday Society. We accept generous donations of complete information blackouts and they're tax-deductible. Please, give today.

It would've been *awesome* if The Number 23 came out while I was still, y'know, 23. However, the film's release date is February 23rd. I turn 24 on February 15th. The heck you say.

Incidentally, if you go to http://whatdoes23mean.com/ you can enter an essay about the significance of 23 in your life and enter to win a Wii. The marketing people who asked me to put a button on the site for this contest (which is not why I'm linking it here) said it's because W is the 23rd letter of the alphabet and as a letter is has two points down and three points up. 23.

I think it's because the Wii looks awesome.

Every birthday, I make a mix CD that somehow attempts to capture a span of 365 days. Some of the songs are just stuff I listened to, others are more personal. This year's is no different.

I'm not providing an explanation for my choices this year (if I ever have). Some of them are self-explanatory. Some don't have an explanation to give. Others I really don't feel like explaining. So, yeah. Interpret as you will.

( The mix )

I'll throw a file up on YouSendIt just as soon as I can.