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| Since my last entry, I have done the following:
Radiohead at the Hollywood Bowl with Rach!! I was not a big fan but they are AWESOME and now i kind of love.
Laura came to visit and we went to hang out at the house of leisure in Escondido AGAIN. Luxurious weekend of non-stop eating, golf-kart off-roading and vegetable-picking amongst wild animals? Yes, please.
John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl! Was fun because place was full of nerds who turned on their light sabers when they played the Star Wars theme.
Laughlin trip!! Jet skiing in Lake Mead!!! Try jet skiing without smiling. It is impossible.
FOUR weddings 0mg (cholesterol).
John Mayer in Irvine ..not as amazing as I had hoped but still love.
Jamaica ..the most chill and fun trip with the most awesome person ever.
So You Think You Can Dance tour at Nokia Theater. OMG THIS WAS THE MOST AWESOME THING EVER IN LIFE!! I really don't know how anything will ever beat this. Lol.
Oktoberfest twice. I suck so much now at drinking beer.
Weezer + Angels and Airwaves at the Forum. SO HAPPY!!
Worked a lot .. I am wired for 10 hours each day and then feel like garbage as soon as I get off the 405. F the 405!!
Ate a lot. Some of my current favorites are Ketchy's II, Tito's Tacos, the Marukai food court in Gardena on Redondo Beach Blvd, Shanghai Palace on PCH by the Ramada Inn, Noshi Sushi, Lisa's Bon Appetit, Beard Papa on Sawtelle and, of course, the Brentwood Soup Plantation.
I left a lot of things out but
Expected future plans:
David Sedaris doing a reading in Long Beach!
Laura visiting in November :)
Jason Mraz at the Greek!!!!!!!!
MY BIRTHDAY!! shit i'm 24 this year and i'm still writing in my xanga.
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| - The meaning of the name Barack is Blessed
- The origin of the name Barack is African
Form of the Hebrew name Baruch.
This post refers only to Barack of Israel who believes that Radiohead is the band of the century.
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| David Sedaris and his boyfriend Hugh go to Japan for 3 months. There, David tries to quit smoking for the first time and sucks at learning Japanese. For obvious reasons, this entry will be dedicated to Steve, Jason, and Hubert.
The Smoking Section
Beside the Imperial Palace, there's a park, with a big koi-filled pond in it. Hugh and I were just nearing the gate yesterday when a pair of young men approached, saying, "Yes. Hello. A minute please?"
Both were students at a local university and were wondering if they might show us the sights, "Not for money," explained the larger of the two, "but to help improve our Engarish."
"I don't think so," Hugh told him, and the young man who had spoken, and whose name turned out to be Naomichi, turned to his friend. "He is saying to us, 'No, thank you.'"
Then I piped up. "Oh, what the heck," I said to Hugh. "Come on, it'll be fun."
"Are you saying, 'Yes, lease'?" Naomichi asked. And I told him that I was.
For the first five minutes of our guided tour, we talked about the ruined buildings. "If this is the shell of the guardhouse, where's the place the guards were guarding?" I asked.
"Burned down," Student No. 2 told me
Except for a few walls, it seemed that everything had burned. "Why don't you build stuff with stone?" I asked, this as if I were scolding one of the three pigs. "If fires were a problem, and they obviously were, why not move on to fireproof."
"Not our way," Naomichi said.
"We did not then have the skills," his friend added.
It was here that we lost interest in the park and began asking the students about their lives. "What's your major?" "Do you live with your parents?" "How long have you been studying English?" While Hugh and Noamichi talked about the declining popularity of sumo wrestling, Student No. 2 and I discussed the majesty of nature. "What wild animals do you have in Tokyo?" I asked.
"Wild animal?"
"Do you have squirrels?"
No response.
I pretended to fill my cheeks with nuts, and the young man said, "Ah, sukaworra!"
I then moved on to snakes an asked if he was afraid of them.
"No. I think that they are very cute."
Surely, I thought, he's misunderstood me. "Snake," I repeated, and I turned my arm into a striking cobra. "Horrible. Dangerous. Snake."
"No," he said. "The only thing I am afraid of is moutha."
"The snake's mouth?"
"No," he said, "moutha. I maybe saying it wrong, but moutha. Moutha."
I was on the verge of faking it when he pulled out an electronic dictionary and typed in the word he was looking for, ga, which translates, strangely enough, to "moth."
"You're afraid of moths?"
He nodded yes and winced a little.
"But nobody's afraid of moths."
"I am," he whispered, and he looked behind us, as if afraid that one might be listening.
"Are you afraid of butterflies too?" I asked.
The young man cocked his head.
"Butterfly," I said, "colorful cousin of the moth. Are you afraid that he too will attack?"
Hugh overheard me saying this and turned around. "What the hell are you two talking about?"
And Student No. 2 said, "The wildness."
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Fate
There's no other way to say this: fate irks me. First of all, it makes for incredibly lazy plotting. Every hack in Hollywood relies on divine intervention when actual inspiration fails them, and so we have an endless stream of romantic movies that hinge on chance encounters and phony "sudden realizations" on the part of star-crossed lovers. These movies tick me off. Yes, I know; I've sat through a million action flicks with plots of equal (or greater) laziness, but I've never taken them quite as personally. Well, there's a reason.
Romance is important. Essential, even. Explosions are not. And because romance is important, it's a crime when it's evoked lazily, which is why the notion of fate is so upsetting. Fate, if you think about it, is the opposite of romance.
. . .
I don't for a moment mean to say that there aren't such things as soul mates; there are, but they're made, not born. The status of soul mate is a destination, not a starting point.
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| things i enjoy and am determined to hit up this weekend:  
   
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