Not a Long Weekend
Not in the States at least.

Dropped by the other uwcrew house on Friday evening. We had take out, and I worked on the message for Sunday while we watched DVDs, it turned out to be a marathon of father-son movies.

Audition
Japanese horror flick about a widower whose son encourages him to find love again. His TV producer friend offers to help by setting up an audition for an imaginary TV show, in order for him to meet girls. He falls for a girl who turns out to be a psycho. Some extremely disturbing imagery. Henceforth will be known as Johnny's S&M flick, since he picked it. Not worth the time by any means. 1.5/5

Together
A Kaige Chen film about a peasant father working for the success of his violin prodigy son. Interesting characters, touching moments, and a storyline that unfolds rather beautifully. Redeemed the evening from the previous film. I normally avoid cheezy films, but this one was heartwarming without being cliche. I actually felt a little like happy by the end of it, highly recommended. 4.5/5

Rebel Without a Cause
Watched this at home afterwards since I couldn't fall asleep. Not what I expected at all. I was expecting James Dean to play some kinda bad boy, but he plays the only decent character in the film. Interesting portrayal of youthful idealism against the ineffectual Dad played by the old guy from Gilligan's Island. 3.5/5

Spent the majority of Saturday working on the message for Sunday. It was on the same passage (Isaiah 43) I taught for the intern class about a month ago. It went much better the second time around, after having had some useful feedback, and a lot more time to mull over it.

Saturday evening was Sinyee's birthday. We went to Left Bank for dinner, a little early at 6pm. Left Bank's a small chain of brasserie style restaurants owned by the chef of the much fancier La Folie in San Francisco. Food is ok, but not spectacular. We ordered a bunch of appetizers, mussels florentine (with spinach), half a dozen oysters, quenelle (scallop/salmon mousse in lobster sauce), and fried calamari. I got the duck, a seared breast and a confit leg. Duck's always good, though this one was not too special. I tried the lamb which was pretty good, a little better than the duck.

The plan for the evening was to go to the Vbar at Hotel Valencia, but since we finished dinner pretty early, we just hung around for a while. I finally picked up the Yeah Yeah Yeahs album (the singer, Karen O, sounds so awesome). Anyways, we get to the Vbar sometime around 10, meaning it's not quite picked up yet. There's a good number of hotel guests milling around, but the average age looks to be 30+. Couches are all taken, so we went upstairs to check out the rooftop patio. Hung around there for a while, but since it was rather cool, we headed back down around 11. Looked like it had picked up in the bar when we headed out - the music was louder and the lineup was longer. Felt rather old leaving that early, but I needed to finish off the message anyways.

Which I didn't do. Well, I didn't finish writing up the entire thing. I wrote up about three quarters of it, and finished the last part in point form. If I finish writing it up, I'll post it.

Taught at YAF on Sunday morning, not a bad experience, since I was pretty satisfied with studying and preparation. On the other hand, I didn't think it was particularly great either. I just don't have any flair for speaking. I don't think standing up and teaching's my thing, but it was still a good experience in case an opportunity or need comes up again.

Sunday afternoon, drove up to Berkeley for a Dido concert. Popped my new CD in the car CD changer where it promptly jammed. Bummer. At least I ripped it via iTunes the night before. I'm not a huge Dido fan, but it was a welcome distraction. It was odd, being a live concert with a very electronic sound. Given the reverb occasionally added to her voice, I wasn't quite sure if it was real or not. I'm tempted to believe that it was digitally enhanced, because she sounded so perfect. The production was much deeper, more ambient, and with a much stronger rhythm than the CDs. There were a few sets where she tried to get the crowd up, but I was happier in my seat. The only sore point was the overtly PDA couple right in front of me. Hey, I'm usually all for it, but when they're between you and the stage, it gets to be a little too much after the first hour. Anyways, if she has a remix of Life for Rent with the concert sound, I'd be tempted to get it, it was the perfect chill-in-a-deep-couch-with-a-hard-drink music.

White Flag
I know you think that I shouldn't still love you
I'll tell you that
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
Where's the sense in that?

I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were

But I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

I know I left too much mess and destruction
To come back again
And I caused nothing but trouble I understand if you
Can't talk to me again

And if you live by the rules of it's over
Then I'm sure that that makes sense

I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

And when we meet, I'm sure we will
All that was there will be there still
I'll let it pass and hold my tongue
And you will think that I've moved on

I will go down with this ship
I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be