Sunday, March 23, 2008

The Real Jeff Orr, goes on vacation, step 6: The Return

So after the longest Saturday of my life (technically 40 hours) I am back in California. As you may have noticed my posting quickly tapered off. This was mostly because of two things. One, I was busy having fun in Tokyo. Two, as Pat will tell you (at length if you dare ask him), blogspot utterly blows for posting lots of pictures. Now that I'm back in the states I have some time to post some of my adventures in Tokyo...but I'd much rather tell you in person, preferably at a bar or party. Here's a few last pics to give you an idea of what our time was spent on.


Shrine seeing

Fun Japanese folk meeting

Karaoke singing

Drunken playgrounding

Waking up after drunken playgrounding

Studio Ghilbi Museum visiting

Tokyo Tower viewing

Serene rock sitting
That's it, now I can get back to some more important matters in life...like reading Dune...and catching up on the episodes of Lost I missed.

Monday, March 17, 2008

The Real Jeff Orr, goes on vacation, step 5: The Birthday

Yesterday was Mikey's birthday. We did another nomihodai and then met up with some really fun Japanese people. We didn't end up making it back to Mikey's until around 6:30 in the morning. I'm not really feeling up to posting right now so I'll just let this one picture speak for the entire night.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

The Real Jeff Orr, goes on vacation, step 4: The Parade

So it turns out my phone can shoot 15 sec of video at a time...it also turns out we snuck into the St Patrick's Day Parade in Harajuku. The two collided to bring you today's post.

Unfortunately my camera doesn't have a mic so I'll have to describe the sounds you should be hearing. Most of the people watching the parade were generally quite with the odd group of drunken Irish cheering every now and then. In the background there was a battle of music between a highschool marching band playing the Back to the Future theme and a group of Japanese men playing the bagpipes. In the end of the video I explain that we had somehow made it into the parade.

Friday, March 14, 2008

The Real Jeff Orr, goes on vacation, step 3: Tokyo

Quick post full of pictures
Day 1

On the train ride into Tokyo I was almost destroyed by a Kamehameha blast


This is the view from Mikey's room...basically his back yard is full of dead Buddhists

Five minutes after getting into Tokyo Pat partakes in the local culture

Japanese arcades are pretty wicked...mostly because you can drink and smoke in them.


Towards the end of the night we had a few beers with this cat...what happened next is a bit hazy though


Trying to follow my Mom's advice to not look retarded in every picture


Day 2:

On our way to Japanese Denny's

This is the cities main municipal building...its pretty much one of the tallest buildings left in Tokyo after they passed an ordinance against them in 1985. They were just attracting way too many monsters



This guy had a PA system on top of his car so he's pretty much like the Blues Brothers...only instead of inviting people to a kickass concert he's spouting a bunch of hateful anti-american nationalist stuff. Pat got a picture with him.

SMILE!

We found this pretty cool little cafe called the Cafe Cotton Club...its coolness to emptiness ratio was off the charts

We ended the day at the Horse Shoe Cantina where I was forced to abandon my horse


Wednesday, March 12, 2008

The Real Jeff Orr, goes on vacation, step 2: The Flight

So I'm posting this from Mikey's place in Japan, it's about 9am here and Pat and Mikey are srill asleep...the O'Riley clan are know for their prodigious ability to slumber...conversely, the Orr's are relatively early risers.

Getting to Japan was pretty fun but I'm sure you don't really want to read all the hairy details about the plane ride so I'll bust it down into a few bullet points.

  • Pat and I didn't actually have an actual ticket for any actual flight
    • Pat's mom worked for American Airlines for years so we were on some "no-res" list or whatever Pat calls it
      • This means we get to take whatever seats are left over for as cheap as free.
  • We had to fly to Texas first because there weren't any seats left on CA to JP flights.
    • Two planes leaving to TX at the same time, we would be #s 17 and 18 on either flight's stand by list
    • Pat and I choose the correct flight and are rewarded with literally the last two seats on the flight
      • The fact that these two seats were next to each other was merely an omen of the fortuitous road ahead
  • Five hour lay-over in TX
    • Plane isn't nearly as full
    • Pat somehow manages to snag us the last two first class seats on the plane
I'll probably post again in a day or so with a shit ton of pictures. We're in the Asakusa neighborhood, so if you know anything around here that we have to try then let me know.

Sunday, March 9, 2008

The Real Jeff Orr, goes on vacation, step 1: the drive

So I made the drive down to Southern California and I have one thing to say, "Fuck Yuba City." Every time I drive down the 99 I dread the ten minutes I have to spend in that godless shit-hole (is shit-hole hyphenated?). The highway through Yuba city is always under some sort of construction and is always full of more potholes than Rip Torn's grizzled visage. Whenever I drive through there I get a slight glimmer of hope that the two lanes might allow me to pass some of the slower traffic. However, the facts that the stop lights in that demon-pit are fucking schizophrenic and the drivers there are borderline retarded, always results in me getting stuck behind even more slow cars than when I entered this Mos Eisley of the north state.

Aside from the trip through Fuckwitville the drive was decent, I think I come up with some of my most interesting ideas on long solo drives. I've got a couple new theories on how fake Jeff Orr's could exist. One of them involves an alternate time-line/time-traveling witness protection program, I'll post it when it's more fleshed out.

Monday night I fly to Texas with Pat, sit around the Dallas airport for a few hours, then fly to Japan at some ungodly hour on Tuesday morning.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

The Real Jeff Orr, gives a sub-par post

Here's some things that the real Jeff Orr has been enjoying recently:

Professor Layton and the Curious Village. A game on the DS that is entirely hand drawn and is all about solving puzzles. Although the puzzles aren't the hardest in the world, there are a few head scratchers and the animation is pretty wicked.

Wizard People, Dear Read. This is hands down the funniest fucking thing to come out since 2004. Brad Neely, of Washington, Washington fame, recorded an alternate naration for the first Harry Potter movie. You download the track, play the movie with the sound turned down and play his narration at the same time. I'm bringing it with me when I head down south Saturday, so if you're in Camarillo then resist the urge to youtube this shit because we'll do it up right sometime soon. If you're in Chico then I'm planning a screening when I get back into town later this month.

Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln's Killer. This book may very well turn me into something I detest. The story behind Lincoln's assasination is so fascinating that I can't help talking about it. Soon I'll become "that-guy-at-the-party-who-only-talks-about-Abe-Lincoln" and that scares the shit out of me.

VACATION! If you didn't already know, I'm going on vacation for the next few weeks. Pat and I are going to Japan to visit his brother. If our plane crashes then we aren't dead, we're just on some mysterious island trying to come up with interesting and convoluted back stories so we can fit in with all the other assholes on the island.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

The Real Jeff Orr, an introduction

What's the deal with "the real Jeff Orr"?

For years I had blissfully walked through life without even the slightest notion that this seemingly bright and clear world could hold vile beings in its dark and murky depths. Then, in high school, I started to get a feeling that something was amiss. I heard rumors of another boy, one year older than me, who "looked just like" me. I never actually met this wraith face to face, but numerous people informed me of his existence. Somewhat perplexed, I devoted some free time to exploring the circumstances that could create "another me". Through the years I studied the sciences that are only discussed in the fringes of society and I've developed a number of theories. I'll save those for a later date, for this is simply a brief overview of my experiences with fake Jeff Orr's.

The high school dopple ganger never really caused me any serious inconvenience and after a few years my interest in alternate Jeff Orr's started to wane. That is, until my sophomore year in college. Creating a personal website was all the rage in my circle of friends and after the success of devlindonnelly.com (now defunct) and curtbanner.com I decided to join the scene. However, I soon realized that jefforr.com was in use, by a man proclaiming to be me! Not only was this impostor using my name to further his lot in life, he was using the website to promote his wedding! I feel a great deal of sorrow for the young lady, for she no doubt believed she was marrying the real deal. Not only was this thing using my domain name, but he sat on it for years. Long after his sham of a wedding his site still existed, announcing a wedding that was now only available to time travelers.

Months ago I received a friend request on the highly acclaimed social networking site Myspace. It was from none other than Jeff Orr. At first I was a little put off at the thought of being "friends" with a fake me. Then I came to the realization that he was a musical artist. Things were starting to look better, perhaps there were people out there doing cool things under my name. But my hopes were quickly dashed against the jagged shores of reality. This musician Jeff Orr was of the worst variety, he was a middle-age-still-trying-to-look-hip-douchey-wuss-christian-rock-musician. He has also taken over jefforr.com. Visit the site if you want to feel some of my hate radiating through the internet. I have more to say on the subject of this, my most hated duplicate, but I shall save it for a later post.

After the "rock star" (quotation marks denote irony, not an actual quotation) Jeff Orr incident I decided that I could not take this in passivity. I must act fast and let the world know that I am the real Jeff Orr. I'll be using this web-log to inform the world of my many theories on the subject (which include multiple varieties of time travel, cloning, alternate spatial dimensions, and the awesome paradox). This site will also chronicle my existence so that the world may bear witness to the actions of the one true Jeff Orr.

Until my next electronic communique,
I remain,
The Real Jeff Orr