I probably won't be posting again until Wednesday. I'm leaving tomorrow night for Laughlin with some folks for a cheap little getaway, which should be fun. I'm also walking in the OC AIDS Walk tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be too hot. So far the forecast looks good. Hope you guys all have a good weekend.

I don't know what this game is called, but it's really fun. It takes awhile to figure things out, but basically click to make your guy grab a block. You want to get four same colored blocks in a row to clear them. It's a clever twist on the standard puzzle game.

I had never heard of this movie until it showed up on Nate's top movies of the year, but if you're interested, it's playing for the next few days at the Spielberg theatre (located at the Egyptian theatre) in Hollywood.

The story revolves around - you guessed it - Mr. Lazarescu, who is an avid drinker, but is convinced that he's having pains related to an ulcer surgery he had several years before. It takes a while to convince his neighbors that he's sick and not just drunk, it takes a while for the paramedic nurse to show up, it takes a while for the paramedics to get him admitted into a hospital that will perform a scan on him, and then it takes forever for him to get prepared for surgery..

If this movie teaches you anything, it's: don't get sick in Romania. If it teaches you anything else, then it's probably striking a chord with you about the messed up health care system, as well as a general need for people to show a little respect and care for fellow humans--especially one who seems to have no one and who is obviously not in a great physical condition.

The Death Of Mr. Lazarescu is almost like a documentary in how realistic its scenes are, which makes it all the more effective. At first as an audience member, I kind of considered Mr. Lazarescu like his neighbors did: he drank way too much. But as I watched his mental capacities failing while he tried to converse with various people in the film, my heart went out to him, and the way he was turned aside in so many places was incredibly sad.

The movie isn't without its humor, and from watching an interview with director Cristi Puiu, the Romanian audience found it to have more humor than I thought it had. I'm not sure all of that translated easily over to me, but I caught on to much of it. The interview with the Puiu showed how much he put into this movie, from research to themes. He's certainly a thoughtful man, so if you've got the time, it's worth a watch. Actually, he talks so much about each question that gets put to him that I ran out of time. Haha.

Since the film moves about as ploddingly as Mr. Lazarescu's journey towards surgery, it definitely took me a little while to warm up to its style, but in the end I was much more engrossed than I expected to be. In fact, I thought I had enough time to watch the movie, but the Netflix sleeve was wrong about the runtime, so when I ran out of time and had to stop, I told someone, "I can't wait to see how it ends!" - which I later thought was pretty funny, considering the film's title.

It's been a long time since last saw Travis, which I didn't realize - three years! They're back with a new album that came out this week. I listened to it when it was up online for free listening, and I'd have to say my initial reaction is liking about half of the music. Their first single off the album, "Closer", is a classic though, and the video is very fun as well (complete with Ben Stiller cameo).

As always, lead singer Fran was very chatty throughout the night and joked around a lot. He played his harmonica solo for Battleships in advance to prove to the audience that he could do it right, in case he messed up during the actual song. He also said that this show was one of the most important to them. It was the day after Coachella and he asked how many people had gone, and those gluttons for punishment raised their hands. I was glad I just went to this show. Heard it was pretty hot out there and that all the local celebrity posers were there.

Oh yeah - the concert! The band chose a wide variety of songs, thankfully, and brought back a lot of oldies and hits. All I Wanna Do is Rock, Happy, Driftwood, Why Does It Always Rain On Me (complete with pogoing audience interaction), Sing, Flowers in the Window (Fran's great literally unplugged version), Side, and a few others rounded out the set, which included a good few from the new album.

The band was full of energy, and Dougie even got to sing his verse and debut a song he wrote. He in particular was all smiles and interacted a lot with the audience, and Andy traveled into the audience as well as climbed and jumped off a giant speaker. It was great to see them again, and especially in a more intimate setting than their last show, which was at the Wiltern. Good music and good times!

Danny (who we now know is the #2 Danny on the Internet) added a nifty Search Cloud for my blog. To see the most popular search terms that lead people here, either scroll to the bottom of the main page or click here. The more popular, the larger it appears.

As you can see, Absolute Sandman is the search that most frequently refers people to my blog. In fact, there was a brief time before the book was released that I was the top result on Google for that search. #1. That put me ahead of both Neil Gaiman's blog and Amazon.com. With the book out now I'm at #3.