I'm A Bum

Not the type of bum who doesn't have a house, but the type who doesn't leave their house. I have this unnecessarily large bed and my mom's Netflix password and a whole season of Lost to re-watch (before Febuary 2nd 2010!!!). Sometimes I have to go to work at Fraiche, my new place of understimulating employment, but other than that, I have been doing a lot of staying in this very large bed, watching Lost, or Mad Men, or 30 Rock. And thinking about how I should be doing something else. 

But it's winter break, right? I'm supposed to hibernate. And watch a lot of television. I keep thinking I should be reading or writing, though. My mom gave me the book When You Are Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris for Christmas, and I devoured it in about a day and a half. I have loved David Sedaris since I was eight years old, and we listened to the SantaLand Diaries on a car trip, my mom fast forwarding through the naughtier parts, telling me I would think they were boring. I think I've read all his books, though W. Y. A. E. I. F. was the first one I read with my eyes instead of my ears, which is great because that means I read it in David's voice in my head. But now he's narrating my life! Not the worst thing ever. Whenever I get really into a book, I just start writing in my head as I go through daily life (usually in the style of the book's author). I wish I could write a book. Writing is fun! And I'm good at it! As awesome as I think fiction is to read, and as much as I love exercising the good old imagination, I think writing fiction would probably be the hardest thing ever! I have a profound respect for a plot that is a plot, that is whole and complete and follows conventions of good literature, but is still crazy and surprising and original (a lot to ask, I know). I think that's partly why I love Lost so much. It's rife with literary devices, classic character arcs, oh gosh. Okay, this post is going nowhere fast. 

Bottom line--I, too, wish I could write a book if I weren't so lazy. 

Also, I've been meaning to post this forever because it's really awesome. It's a rain funnel that makes music as the rain goes down it. It's in Germany, just like everything else cool. 

wow! While I'm at it, I'll post similar things that I think are really cool. 

The funnel reminded me of those crazy domino obstacle courses that I used to ogle on shows like Reading Rainbow or maybe Zoom. But there's no word for those! Thus rendering them un-google image-able. Boo hoo. I'm trying to think of words to describe such things... like contraptions... okay, here we go, Rube Goldberg:

Yeah, I wanna make a contraption like this. Mine would be cooler though. Check out these guys:
homie up there looks like a kid still... a kid I probably wouldn't let work on my contraption with me. 

Street Art

I just finished a Graffiti Art special topics class at USF. It was pretty interesting, and we got to go on some field trips. The following pictures I took at Clarion Alley between 17th and 18th and Valencia/Mission. We also traveled to Lilac Alley, starting at 24th and Mission. Pictures of my final piece for this class to come.

The Information Superhighway--I'm Getting Carsick

When I was three years old, we got a computer. It was a Macintosh, a nice little box for writing word documents and playing my favorite "game", KidPix. I used to think that when I clicked something, typed something, drew something in a pixelated way, whatever action I incurred would travel through the wires, through the walls, through tunnels deep under the city, and into a sort of factory. You should be picturing an old school phone operator, with a light up switchboard and cords galore to connect from one place to the other. In my factory, there were plenty of friendly, white collar men and women who took the information I entered, interpreted it, judged me for it, and then sent that information back through the wires, back to my house, where it appeared on my screen. INSTANTLY. They were super nimble at their jobs, of course.

"Why does this person at 615 Carmel Avenue keep using the dog stamp?"

Little did I know, computers were invented to eliminate the need for humans and their "labor"! Now, our relevance as a species has lessened even more in comparison to the machines we've taught to do our jobs. The blog entry I'm writing right now has been automatically saved every two minutes, not to the hard drive of my little computer, but to some crazy cloud cluster of servers guzzling information somewhere out in the deserts of cyberspace. Or, to strengthen the metaphor, more likely in the deep, dark woods of cyberspace. Because the woods are where people hide all their secrets. And where unnamable creatures prey on them.

And they're where I just might high-tail it to myself if all this technology business continues at the rate it's going (which, according to some model I can't remember the name of that I learned about in Computing, Robots, and Java, is exponential). While I suppose the ease with which I can access information should excite me... it doesn't. It terrifies me. I'm sure I Wikipedia various things that pop into my head at least 3 times a day. But what happened to good old research? If you really wanted to know something, you had to work for it, goddammit! And by you, I don't mean me, because my mom showed me Google when I was in 6th grade. Y2K baby! What if, as portended, the little clicker clocks in all our computers went desperately scrambling through time-space, searching for any century ending in 00, only to land at 1900 with their memories completely blitzed? Am I crazy to sort of wish that this had happened?

Largely because of social networking sites, there's no privacy anymore, no secrecy, no shame. Or very little, at least. Who knows who could have accidentally stumbled upon my humble little blog, or who could have intentionally sought it out with a simple Google search (or maybe I'm just being conceited). But worse, in my opinion, than the deterioration of privacy is the profound lack of mystery. In a virtual world where anonymity and opinion are rampant, rumor, legend, and creativity are dying. If I'm itching to know something, I won't research it, experiment with it, test it out myself. I'll search it online. Much of contemporary art even seems to be boring and shallow, based on a self-centered aesthetic. More than ever, we can view each other and ourselves from an omniscient perspective. Not only can we pick up on trends in the blink of an eye or the click of a mouse, we can post 100 pictures of ourselves being attractive little followers of this trend. I guess art movements have always been incestuous dogpiles, in which only the squirmiest, most clever canines untangle themselves. But for now I'm going to blame this one on the vapid culture it's reflecting.

If mystery is gone, so is it's pal, good old Trickery. Those in power always try to stay in power, and those in power have the money necessary to fund technological progression. These are the same people that don't want you to make fake money, fake passports. They don't want you to have failsafe excuses for why you didn't turn in a paper. They don't want you to pull off a heist and slip right out of the country leaving narry a trace. The prospect of being able to fuck up real bad, then move to another town in another state with a new name and a clean slate, well that prospect is getting pretty slim. Sure, some things are illegal... but what's the point of making those laws if technology doesn't even give us the oppotunity to break them?

Badass guys like this would be out of a job

Anyway, my point is that more and more aspects of our lives are getting subsumed by techonology in general, computers in specific. And it freaks me out. What will be the next thing you let a robot do for you? Toast your bread? Make your coffee? HA! Keep dreaming guys. At least we know THAT will never happen in our lifetimes.

Oh yeah, and if your fingers get tired from all your status updates, don't worry. A computer can handle that little problem for you, too!

Cave Drawrings

Childrens books are awesome. I think I should just become a children's book author/illustrator. Here is a really sweet children's book that I loved when I was a kid. It's called "Who Needs Donuts?" by Mark Alan Stamaty. Awesome dude. Click the close-up. Delightful. The story is weird and crazy, too. 

Maybe there will be more awesome children's book posts to come, if I find some more good ones. We'll see. 

Reasons I Suck

This isn't going to be a real reasons I suck list, because no one wants to read that. That would just be depressing. I did find a notebook from senior year of high school - sophomore year of college that was mostly lame sketches but a few lame emo journal entries. One of which had a list of things I didn't like about myself. Most of them still hold true. One I thought was funny, though, was "I don't enjoy helping the homeless". 

Public Policy and the Homeless was the only college course I have ever Failed. Well, it was an incomplete that turned into an F, because in order to complete it I would have had to help the homeless for like, two more hours. And journal about it. 

Because I am a lazy procrastinator, I had put off finding a good spot to volunteer at, like a children's center, because a child center involved me getting a TB shot. And as I said, I am lazy, and I really don't like making phone calls or appointments. So I was stuck cramming my hours in at Glide Memorial Church. Where I scooped mashed potatoes for hours behind glass, while crackheads made one, two, three, or more trips through the line past me and the other sorry volunteers. One of the times I went, the other people in the homeless-food-tray-assembly-line were white collar office people with required community service as a team bonding activity. The guy next to me was basically Michael Scott, and I wanted to punch him. He was oh-so-well-intentioned, but he was just holding the line up and almost took out a frail old homeless woman when he slid her tray over with too much vigor. 

My point being, there's really nothing wrong with not enjoying that. Okay, but my point really being that I failed a class because I couldn't overcome my fears and limitations: fear of making phone calls, fear of entering a new situation alone, my inability to journal about the hours I did actually complete right after they happened, and my inability to contact my teacher to try to work something out because of shame. Sigh. The problem, my constant problem, is that this is my constant problem.  A very cyclical occurrence.

I have figured out, as any good escapist should, that procrastination is the best way to maximize your fun time. I can shove all my assignments to the back of my mind for as long as possible, lock them away in the little box where I keep things that make me sad. And then, as the deadline gets too close to possibly ignore any longer, I will bust out with work that is luckily pretty decent, though certainly not potential-fulfilling, in as little time as possible, as close to the deadline as possible. Though this ALWAYS works (okay, with one exception), it also leads to my inevitable seasonal freakouts. At some point I will have a seemingly unmanageable pile of things I've put off that I am forced to prioritize, compromise, and then bullshit. I fall into a haze of self-loathing, as I suddenly see my life from a broader perspective--as a pattern of making the same mistakes over and over again. 

But then, somehow, miraculously, I get everything done. 

Except helping the homeless.

(Last time I was writing a 6 page paper in the 6 hours before it was due in Parina, I took this picture because I thought it was really funny that this kid had his face so close to his computer screen. Then someone told me he has, like, a fucked up eye thing. This post should be called "Reasons I'm Going To Hell")

Tonight I realized that I have an art history exam tomorrow morning that I haven't studied for at all; a class that I sit in the very back row of and pay minimal attention to. And the internet in our house is inexplicably not working. So I came to campus, took Ritalin, drank coffee, crammed for an hour and a half (only commencing once the clock struck midnight), and then found out that the Midterm was moved to Wednesday. 

Oh my god, you guys, I started studying TWO DAYS before a test!!!! For the first time in my college career! 

YYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

Now I'm stuck in Parina lounge, too cracked out to sleep. And the busses aren't running. HMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....?

Sometimes, I Think About Sad Things

Today, that happened when I saw the Roast of Flavor Flav on Comedy Central. Man, has that guy made it or what? I think it's possible that he is the luckiest crackhead in the world. The crackhead who wished on the right jimminy cricket hallucination, and got everything he ever wanted. And in fact, he resembled more of a Pinnochio-in-Pleasure-Island than an actual human being as he flopped about on the giant golden throne someone inexplicably let him sit in. He also got to wear a giant crown and drink from an oversized, heavily bejeweled sippy cup.

 

Who Let This Happen?

I believe someday there will be a wikipedia page on the genre that Flava truly pioneered--Un-reality TV (actually, there is a good chance there already is). Flavor Flav was a star on what I would like to remind everyone was the 3rd season of a reality show about washed-up stars. He got a spin off, Flavor of Love, which had three seasons. The second runner up of two of these seasons got HER own show, which spawned... actually, refer to my reality show spinoff family tree:

This took me a REALLY long time to make

All this reality show incest created was a de-evolved genre of reality TV. This is not a genre where contestants are given any rules or challenges, no puzzles, no psychological games. The work on the production end pretty much consists of finding the dumbest, sluttiest, most arrogant and bribable people (be it for money, drugs, or sex), giving them a lot of alcohol, and putting them in front of a camera. As viewers, we get pleasure from seeing people who are stupider, sluttier, drunker and more arrogant than us, and talking shit on them for being rich and on TV. Reality TV was once exciting--I still remember how nervous I got while watching immunity challenges on the first season of Survivor in 2000. It once had a spectrum of characters that were lovable and detestable, rational and crazy. Now, it's just a satire of itself, a drunken parade of vanity and insanity.

And unabashedly so. Take, for example, MTV's new show, "Tool Academy", which is just beginning its second season. The premise of this show is to take dudes who look and act like complete tools, which usually involves a surplus of testosterone and pride, and make them live together. On television. Why would anyone want to watch something so vile? I mean, if I wanted to watch a bunch of douchebags interacting there are plenty of different colleges I could have chosen to attend. But yet we watch, not because we get pleasure out of watching them, but because we get pleasure out of comparing ourselves to them.  

This is what a room full of tools looks like.

I guess I represent my generation pretty well if I'm one of the people who will bitch and moan about how pathetic we are, while indulging in both the bad TV and the haughty criticism of it myself. So lemme be positive here for a minute! At least we're ALL more literate than Flavor Flav. So I'm going to go read a book.

Why You Should Go See 500 Days of Summer

Oh My God! It's totally the new indie hit of the...wait for it... Summer! Everyone is praising it! Why is it so enjoyable to watch?

Because the main (and essentially the only) characters are painfully good looking and well-dressed.

Why else should you go see it? Erm..... because Joseph Gordon-Levitt is totally ador--wait, no. Because Zooey Deschanel got to go to vintage clothing stores and pick her--hmmm. Well. Turns are there are no other reasons to go see this movie. Just because it doesn't have the obvious boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back plot line does not make it not cliche. Just because it jumps around out of chronological order doesn't make it original, and it actually just makes it worse. The characters are certainly pleasant, but that is pretty much their pervasive characteristics. JGL is loyal and a desperate love puppy. Zooey D is self assured and presumably, but hardly demonstrably, spunky. Other than that, they are just very, very attractive people. And other than that, there's not a whole lot going for it.

Who wouldn't want to watch these record-listening sexies for two hours straight?

Here is a brief example of the shallowness of the film: I quickly noticed that every single outfit that Zooey Deschanel wears involves the color blue. A lot of the sets do too, at least her apartment, and the wardrobes of the backup dancers in what is definitely the most delightful scene in the movie (though it is delightful simply because Joseph Gordon-Levitt is hot, and he dances). I thought to my film-lovin' self, well let's see now. There didn't really seem to be any themes in this movie besides a nudge towards the whole fate versus coincidence thing, but this blue motif... why did they choose that? Maybe his whole obsession with Summer is a very blue, melancholy and uncertain time in his life, and (SPOILER AHEAD) when he meets Autumn at the end (yes. why I am even continuing?) she is wearing red, a color of boldness and definition. Well, when I peeped the movie on my favorite website, IMDB, I saw that this question was addressed in the movie trivia section. It reads, "The film's blue-centric color scheme was done TO BRING OUT ZOOEY DESCHANEL'S BLUE EYES." This made me want to kill myself almost as much as seeing a Nylon magazine with Kristen Stewart on the front, next to her own quote of, "Nobody should ever put what I say in a magaine." I'm digressing, but it seems our culture is regressing. My point is, anything you may mistake for character or concept in the movie is just hotties making you fall in love with them.

I will admit, I am a bit of a movie snob. I don't like chick flicks or rom coms that much, and bro comedies are pretty much just as bad (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, however, transcends this genre and is absolutely hilarious). So when people just cream their pants over little "indie gems" like this one, I want to cry with frustration.

First of all, if someone could explain to me in what capacity Fox Searchlight Pictures is "independent", then go right ahead. Now I'll be the first to admit that a movie does not have to be made by an independent studio to be good. In fact, I have seen a lot of really bad indie movies that probably didn't deserve to be funded at all. But there's something infuriating about the fact that an "independent subsidiary" of 20th Century Fox, part of News Corp., ultimately controlled by the terrifying Rupert Murdoch (is it crazy to think that there's a way he will now have red-flagged my blog and soon black-listed me if I post this to the vacuous and mysterious internet?) can pick up an average script and market it as independent, original, and creative, when really it is none of those things. In fact, it really just makes me feel tricked. A sheep with the wool pulled over my eyes, so to speak. It seems like someone with a lot of money paid for a lot of market studies and figured out exactly just what appeals to our generation, then channeled it to an unobjectionable flick, and stuck two beautiful yet slightly out of the mainstream actors in front of the camera.

Apparently, we are currently digging high waistlines, childhood, the color blue, the pixies, joy division, bangs, freehand drawings of architecture, and just that "out of the mainstream" vibe that their two charismatic stars embody. Corporations have figured out that we are willing to spend a lot of money on things that look cheap, "urban", or blue collar. Well, fuck me. I guess I'll buy it when it comes to clothing and art, but when you're asking me to take two hours out of my day and at least $13 out of my pocket, you better be giving me a little bit of substance to hold on to. I think the fact that so many people like this movie reflects on us pretty badly. I guess it's pointless for me to sit around futilely willing other people's movie taste to improve, but I just think we deserve better.

I guess we don't stand a chance, what with the MPAA and all. Wanna see a good movie? Watch "This Film Is Not Yet Rated". You should be able to find it for free online, because it's certainly not making any studio a lot of money. Did you know that only 13 people, 13 anonymous square-ass bitches decide what movies you get to see in theaters? Yup.

For the record, I did enjoy watching 500 Days of Summer, because Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a total babe (and a good actor too, if you want to see a real gem check out Brick or Mysterious Skin). But I also didn't pay to see it. So suck it, corporate Hollywood.

Satan's Vegetables

In the year 2000, my best friend Amber Strellis and I went to a semi-nerdy day camp in Berkeley called East Bay School of the Arts. Camp consisted of a few different activities. In addition to drama games, playing capture the flag or kick the can at a nearby schoolyard, and watching the 5th Element and Tae Bo videos when they literally ran out of stuff for us to do, we were also in a computer animation "class". The two of us, with the help of our nerdy counselor, created this little gem. I'm comforted to know that computer animation software in 2009 is far superior to that in 2000, evidenced by the extreme amount of retarded kids movies that are being done in computer animation and 3-D shit these days (e.g. G-Force, Aliens in the Attic, PLanet 51, Astro Boy, Monsters vs. Aliens). Because making Satan's Vegetables on ancient software was one of the more frustrating artistic tasks I've undertaken. Anyway, eat up baby, they're good for you.

The Magical Kingdom

Right now (i wrote this yesterday) I am lounging at a Starbucks in Anaheim, looking professional on my Macbook typing furiously, when in fact I am taking a break between episodes of LOST and putting off calling my uncle to tell him I can't meet up with him tonight. (Phone calls are bad enough, but making calls to relatives I see about once a year holds it's own special brand of dread.) I would also like to note that there is a sexy barista who very much resembles Jack from said show, Lost. This is my second self-instated vacation of the summer. Though expensive, I decided I deserved a day at Disneyland, especially since my best friend AJ is working there this summer, as a ride operator on the epic Splash Mountain (read about his escapades at http://minorfiascos.blogspot.com)

Yesterday AJ woke me up at 7:30 and verbally and physically abused me in response to my requested ten more minutes of sleep. So it was off to the park for an exhausting day of fun and illusion.

I love Disneyland. I know there are haters out there, and I guess I can understand why. It's hot (oh, is that what summer is supposed to feel like?). It's packed with people, a majority of which are obnoxious or oblivious children and their obnoxious and oblivious parents, the rest of which are middle school/high school types going through recognizable stages of bad fashion and self-importance. There are long ass lines (I would like to state, however, that if you arrive early, stay late, utilize fastpass privileges effectively, and use your smarts about which rides to go on when, you should be able to go on all the big/good rides at least once without waiting more than half and hour in line.). And Disney is like, an evil corporation or whatever. But those are pretty lame reasons. Because Disneyland is magic. Or at least their status as an evil corporation gives them the money to create the best illusion of magic, ever. Seriously, though, what's so impressive about the place is that everything is done down to the very last detail. They create completely immersive worlds within completely immersive worlds within one giant completely immersive world. Even just waiting in line for Indiana Jones or Roger Rabbit is more of a ride than.... uh, well, probably anything in the state of Oregon.

You've got to hand it to their creative teams. Those people have awesome ideas, good aesthetics, and Disney's wallet to make them your reality. Walking around with AJ the "cast member" also gave me a great appreciation for the insane amount of backstage activity constantly taking place. There are 10,000 employees working inside the park during the day, and 5,000 at night. There are expansive backstage areas for them, both around the edges of the park and inside it, between lands and rides, that we probably couldn't even find if we were looking. While riding any given ride, who knows where you are really? You could be underground, outside the park, behind storefronts... the entire park is designed to be magical right down to the last hidden Mickey.

Oh yeah, and me and Disneyland have the same birthday. It's turning 54 the same day I turn 21, which is THIS FRIDAY, WOOHOOO!

My highlights of the day included our second ride on Space Mountain (the back car goes the fastest, and later in the day the tracks are hotter, which also equals faster), Peter Pan's Flight (which has been my favorite since childhood, though as a kid, I would make my parents wait in the long and hot line for ages and then spend the entire ride with my eyes tightly shut), Tower of Terror (which just rules so hard), and Pirates of the Caribbean, which is perfect. Have you ever caught those animatronic pirates looking you in the eye? Unsettling, I tell you. And just getting the low-down, inside scoop from AJ made the whole day juicier.

In fact, there were only two instances that I found unsavory yesterday, and they both involved incompetent guests I was standing near during the (otherwise awesome) Fantasmic show. (Oh, besides the fact that our Jungle Cruise skipper was but a hair more enthusiastic than a failed-child star, and a good deal less skilled in monologues). First of all, the fact that I was standing at all at that point in the day was bad enough. The soles of my feet were aching like mad, and I had a wicked blister incubating. Then some high school d-bags decided to move in right next to me, and provide exceedingly retarded commentary to the show. Basically it involved yelling the names of the characters that were visible, as if they could be heard over the soundtrack, the water and fireworks, or the thousands of other people watching. At one point, when the evil queen of Snow White's mirror appeared, I heard the lovely witticism "Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the fool!" yelled. I know high schoolers love to ruin everyone else's good time by being loud and sarcastic, but this hardly qualified as anything more than knee-jerk arrogance.

Also, some bitch in front of me thought it was necessary to record the entire 22 minute performance on her digital camera (not camcorder). In order to get a "good shot" she was holding the camera up so that it was right in the center of the view of everyone else behind her. Okay, even assuming that the quality of the recording will be anything more than vaguely discernible or remotely reminiscent of the actual performance, I can't imagine a time when she would be sitting at her computer thinking, hmmm, I'm SO bored, what should I do? ... I KNOW!!!! I'll watch my shitty recording of FANTASMIC (which has been performed on the Rivers of America twice a night for 17 years)! And I'm so glad I have the version I personally recorded on my camera (which only had enough memory to record the first 15 minutes, before she switched to recording it on her Sidekick), rather than the dozens of versions available in high quality on youtube! ....No but really, she actually might feel the need to watch it, since she probably wasn't paying attention to the real live performance at the time because she was so concerned about capturing it with her 3x optical zoom in 8 megapixels. ... so in conclusion, she's an insensitive ho who don't know how to live in the moment.

I, myself, have ZERO pictures from my trip to Disneyland, because I forgot to bring my battery charger, and the camera immediately instructed me to recharge the battery the very first time I whipped it out to take a picture of a picture of AJ and I (and an old man with a disturbingly stoic facial expression) on the Splash Mountain drop. But that's alright. I have the mental image of AJ in his pastel flannel, red suspenders, mustard colored carhardts, and shiny nametag--all suited up for work this morning-- burned into my mind forever.

So for that, I thank you, Walt, for your marvellous vision.

Tidbits

The following website is pretty cool, has some nice art, and it's based in San Francisco.
Fecal Face
They have an actual physical gallery space here that I plan on going to soon, so I'll update more about that in the hopefully not-so-distant future.

Lara and I got started talking about a type of art movement she might be interested in writing a thesis on, and we came around to some pretty interesting ideas. When I was in elementary school, my mom worked at a small private gallery in Berkeley called the Ames Gallery. An older couple who made their living as doctors ran the gallery out of their house, where my mom did graphic design, and where I spent a summer or two vegging out on cable TV and frozen chocolate pudding. They collect and sell folk, tramp, and outsider art, which is basically really awesome, unique, crafty things made from whatever was around (sometimes by hoboes!). Very tough-economic-times-esque. Some of the art is pretty amazing, and I think it's style is seeing quite a revival and new appreciation in contemporary art, which, at least in its younger more urban forms, is seeing a courtship with street art. Check out the Ames Gallery's website for creatures made of kitchen appliances and things built inside bottles and crazy canes and intricate frames made out of cigar wrappers. At the time I didn't realize how lucky I was to be playing imaginary games and getting invited to passover seders around all this stuff, but now I want to go back. I'll have to arrange for this in the near future too.

Speaking of Hoboes, here is a video of John Hodgman doing just that:
John Hodgman Speaking About Hoboes
since being poor is really vogue and all.

That's all for now!
Look forward to: My musings on public restroom time.

Here We Go!

Here's some cool stuff I found. I'm starting to see a theme here:







and getting kinda sick of shit like this:

yeah, it's good, and i even like the aesthetic. it's just painfully unoriginal at this point. Why don't you go do an Urban Outfitters window display.

Tomorrow, Lara and I leave on our Great Northwest Adventure. Pat's joining up with us on Sunday. We're going to Seattle, Olympia, Bend, and here:

here:

and here:


I'm SO EXCITED!!!

Top 5

Top Five reasons Pat says he doesn't want to go on our roadtrip:
1. Lara
2. Lara's Cat
3. Harry Potter on tape
4. No Zune hookup in my car
5. Good weather

Top Five reasons Pat secretly wants to go on our roadtrip:
1. Lara
2. Lara's cat
3. Harry Potter on tape (he burned it for us)
4. He doesn't have a zune?
5. Good weather

Pete's top five reasons to be stoked on life:
1. skating
2. true friendship
3. summer
4. The 808 state
5. ice cream

My Top Five reasons for falling asleep right now:
1. So I can wake up early for McDonald's breakfast
2. I really want to
3. There's already a blanket on top of me
4. Jacob's already asleep
5. Lara's already asleep

Top Five songs that have to do with summer:
1. Summer Babe--Pavement
2. School's Out--Alice Cooper
3. Any Beach Boys Song
4. Any Sublime song
5. Summer Feelin'--Jonathan Richman

Art Show!

On Thursday night, my Senior Studio art class had our opening, where we displayed what we've been working on over the semester. Here are pictures!

me with my final project. This is the "wall text" that was next to it (my project statement):
Intimacy and familiarity is gained in the process of translating a face to paper. For this project, I looked first to the faces of those I loved. Yet, I am also drawn to the strange and the unfamiliar, and for this aspect, I turned to the mugshots of serial killers and criminals long gone. Studying their faces next to the faces of those that are loved and accepted in society, we are reminded that every person has a story which is inextricably caught in time and family history. Who is a friend, who is a villain, and who is just a little off?


here's a closeup of one drawing--it's my Grampaw Jack


Maro's final project was a series of supervillain costumes. He had us come over to his house a few nights before to drink Tecate and make a few of our own, so we could participate in an evil laugh-off at the opening. That is what we are doing in this picture. I did not win, perhaps my overall distate towards humanity was not convincing enough.

Congrats to all the seniors who just graduated. Woo. USF!!!!
Lara's parents bought us a mini bbq grill and a keg. Drunken parents and late night dance parties ensued, word on the street is that t-fuj got taken to jail (suprise suprise), but I was already passed out because I had to get up this morning at 7:30 for day #6 in a row at Event Scheduling. Thursday involved a series of menial tasks from the most incompetent boss ever, Joe Campos. They included: finding tables he didn't know the location of, putting a key on a key ring for him, measuring the difference in height between two tables, putting papers on our other boss's desk when he was already holding them and standing closer to the desk, and getting a ladybug out of his office for him (I refused to complete this one). I'm nearly working a 9-5 for the school this summer--dear god.

The Defining Characteristic of Our Generation