William Reardon’s Blog

We landed safely in Beijing last night. The trip itself was long, but uneventful. I think door-to-door it was some 23 hours of traveling (getting to LAX, being 3 hours early for an international flight, a 2 hour layover, etc.), with 14 hours of flight time.

14 hours confined to a small portion of a small metal tube is a lot of time to do some self-discovery. For example, one thing I learned about myself is I have an amazing knack for picking really bad, really long movies. Finding most things related to espionage interesting, and, though I’m not sure I should publicly admit this, a fan of Matt Damon, I started with The Good Shepard. A good 90 minute movie, that unfortunately is 3 hours long. Ugh.

I followed that gem up with another one, Blood Diamond. Holy crap, DiCaprio, you suck. The whole time watching it, I could escape the feeling that DiCaprio had seen the response Don Cheadle got for Hotel Rwanda (a very good movie) and thought “Hey! I can be socially relevant too! I know, I’ll make a socially conscious movie about Africa too! This will be as good as joking with Al Gore at the Oscars!!” The only upshot to the move was DiCrapio dies in the eye. And no, I don’t feel bad if I just spoiled it for. I just did you a favor. I actually wonder how many people will now go out of their way to request conflict diamonds specifically to spite this movie.

That’s all for now. I’ll write about Beijing once I hook my camera up to my laptop.

Dear Mr. David Chase,

Fuck you too.

Sincerely,
Bill

With Paris Hilton temporarily under “house” arrest, the newsphere was abuzz of her new accommodations. Moving from a dumpy (albeit solitary) prison cell back to her luxurious 2,707 square foot, 4 bedroom, 3 bathroom, 1.7 million dollar home.

Google Sightseeing into the act, revealing her address is 1467 N. Kings Rd, West Hollywood. I live at 733 N. Kings — we’re practically neighbors! Now I know where to knock when in need of a cup of sugar.

Here’s another odd thing. I have periodic aspirations of purchasing real estate. I wouldn’t say I’m actively in the market, but I’m on a few realtor’s mailing lists, etc. Around here, 1 million gets you a nice condo. That’s about it. Not even a great condo, but a nice one.

Only a month ago, I went to a open house for a dumpy duplex (each a 1 bedroom) and it cost $1.1m.

So here’s the strange thing. 1.1m gets you crap. 1.7m — a difference of only 600k — gets you true millionaire lifestyle housing. That makes no sense to me. Another sign that this market is completely irrational.

Oh well, maybe Hilton will need a pool boy when she gets out.