it's hard to believe that the 2nd to last weekend of '04 has finally reached its end. and at times it seemed as tho i was squeezing every last drop from it. between the miserable, never-ending move from my old apt to my new digs i did manage to obtain a few moments of glee.

saturday evening found me w/kev for a viewing of Yimou Zhang's House of Flying Daggers, a flick almost as gorgeous as his Hero epic. i've had the DivX for months and the DVD only recently but i've held off home viewing in anticipation of the full-on theater experience. i'm glad i did... even tho i'd bill it as a martial arts chick-flick it was still excellent. too bad i didn't have a chick to enjoy it with. definitely one to catch in the theater first and i'm already looking forward to seeing it again (btw, Ziyi Zhang is just incredible with a major notch up in her acting abilities for sure).

today wasn't nearly as bad as yesterday... considering i was up until 2AM last night just cleaning the kitchen in my old place. talk about miserable. it was only around midnight when i discovered upon pulling out the crisper drawer in the fridge that some time ago soy sauce had spilled and pooled under the tray. this wouldn't have been so bad had this just happened. but since this must've occurred a long time ago, the soy sauce had crystallized and was practically *burnt* into the bottom of the fridge. real nice. after working on it for a while i honestly didn't think i'd be able to remove it but with much perseverance i managed to eliminate every last trace of that damned hardened soy sauce. it'll be a real long time before i ever have soy sauce again after smelling that stench for an hour.

anyways, today was much better w/the kitchen, bathroom, and the bedroom already completed. i moved out quite a bit of the remaining junk either to my new apt or the dumpster. now there's little left before i can finally be free of the place. i'll probably drink myself to sleep when it's officially over.

in a celebratory mood of sorts tonight, i split at 9PM sharp and headed to WorstBuy to pick up Call of Duty: Finest Hour for the PS2 - a game i've been wanting since i first saw the commercial. usually it's $50 as a hot new release but amazingly BB had it on sale for $30 (w/some other "hot" titles like THUG2) so i couldn't pass. even a used copy won't run at that price for several months. after a couple more quick stops to pick up some minor xmas gifts i made it into the 10PM viewing of Blade: Trinity w/10 minutes to spare! (god, i love late night shopping around the holidays - no traffic on the road or in the stores!)

unfortunately arriving 10min before showtime served no purpose other than getting the perfect seat. the fucktwats at the Randhurst AMC somehow had forgotten to queue up the flick so me and the small crowd of 16 or so sat there until a quarter past the hour until finally someone got up to tell them to start the fucking movie already. finally after the obligatory previews the movie got rolling at 10:31PM. thanks a lot, jerkholes!

i won't say too much about B:T other than i enjoyed it immensely and laughed out loud several times (during intended funny moments). i grinned at the wooden acting all around esp. at Kris Kristofferson who appeared to reading off a cuecard. after succumbing to the Schwarzenegger sad school of one-liners in the first 2 flicks of the "trilogy" the producers at least gave way to bona fide humor in this final installment w/the inclusion of Ryan Reynolds (of Van Wilder fame) and an all too brief appearance of Patton Oswalt (as well as a hilarious Pomeranian!).

besides the justified R-rating (for some reason i thought it was PG13 - glad i was wrong), i was also happy to see that Dominic Purcell ("John Doe" from the short-lived John Doe tv series) is getting work and here as the main baddie. and Parker Posey wasn't too bad as a mean vampire bitch either. sure, the flick plays out like a big screen comic book/mtv commercial/video game a la Resident Evil but isn't that what we expect from this franchise? i certainly did and only wish it were continuing w/Reynolds and Jessica Biel, who's so goddamn hot it's not funny. what's not to love about an ass-kicking hottie who also shows her emotional side?

they could start a new franchise, The Nightstalkers, and well... hey, i can dream, can't i?