saint francis of assisi-ish

so today, i had to back my car out of the parkway so that phillip could bbq some delicious sirloin (home made patties!) burgers... and as i pulled out, i noticed a lizard run across the pavement pass phillip. it was apparently in a rush.

i get out of my car and joined phillip and ana in the shade.

apparently, the lizard was lounging around under my car and i ran over its tail, which led to the blood on the pavement and then soon after, it running to hide in some grass.

i can call the animals to come to my yard, and then eventually, i hurt it or kill it accidentally.

:(

boo.

i saw it maybe twenty minutes later, scurring around the yard. i think the tail is still smushed and on my tire... i don't want to look too closely for it.

my sugar is raw (sticky and sweet) and botoxed

at least i know that if my car broke down, madonna could come over and push it to the local car repair.

madonna's 4 minutes to save the world is starting to grow on me the more that i listen to it.

although i don't think the video is great, it's at least pretty interesting. it sorta made me feel weird when i saw the two couple making out and you can see their internal organs, but a good weird feeling.

i like the fact that the video alludes to justin timberlake just finished having a threesome with that couple, like a hired femme gigolo.

it's a shame that we have one of the best dancers of the 80's, 90's and one of the best dancers of the 00's and the dancing SUCKS. i blame it on madonna's obsession with yoga and pilate poses. it hints to slow-mo break dancing, except that she'd probably break a hip if she did try real break dancing.

one thing that i've noticed is that madonna is really into climbing through things. she did it heavily in 'hung up' and 'sorry' and 'jump' and 'me against the music' which leads me to think that's a metaphor for something kabbalist.

the black/clear thing that eats into each scene is pretty cool. it reminded me of the nothing in "the never ending story" as well as italian futurist, surrealist, and cubist angular paintings. notice the repeated shapes (triangles) in the following youtube video.

futurism, cubism, surrealism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewRQ7xQTScA



cool right? i studied that in college, so i thought it stuck out quite a bit.

madonna's overall album is amazing. i hated 'confessions on a dance floor' A LOT. i thought it was very self-helpy and weird in a bad way and by no means a dance album. i cannot wait to see the music videos for: candy shop, give it 2 me, she's not me, beat goes on (i think this will be the second single...) and i find 'incredible' wwwwaaaayyy too long and is more of a filler since i think even pharrell was bored by it. 'spanish lesson' is just pure bad pop. i also think that 'devil wouldn't recognize you' has a similar beat to justin timberlake's 'cry me a river,' and i also love that song. so i'm very excited to buy the collector's edition as well as the regular edition of the album when it comes out on tuesday. two bad songs on an entire album is not bad at all.

two reasons why i think this album is successful is because it has such a great combination of euro pop with american hip hop/r&b. it's gritty but still light. i have to say that when you feature kanye or pharrell, you're gonna get something that deals with 'being unmodest yet modest about being flashy/rich and candy,' which is so addictive for some reason. i do feel that pharrell probably suggested some reject beats that came off of gwen stefani's 'the great escape' album. and the second reason is that madonna's voice is slightly smoothed out to give it a cleaner sound. actually, a third comment about why this album is good is because it sounds as though it was written for a young black female r&b singer, like ashanti or beyonce or shareefa or even maybe estelle.

madonna - 4 minutes to save the world ft justin timberlake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5-BJY00nHI

the new roommates (videos & photos)

tell me you can resist this face! this all white one is named priscilla for the time being.



here's some of the litter! the white one on the left is priscilla, the spotted middle one is lola, and the spotted one on the right is frenchie (it has a frenchman's moustache). ana wants to keep lola and oliver (runty skinny gray one) and i want to keep priscilla and frenchie. they are so cute!



here's lola crawling around waiting for her bottle to warm up.



here's lola sipping on some milk.



gray gray unnamed feeding. tooooo cute!



here are the photos of the nine babies. the gray ones are a little too hard for us to tell apart. phillip likes the one with the biggest head. there are 1 white, 3 spotted, 5 grays. there were two more but they didn't make it. :(

i gots the (verbal) diarrhea

i went down to san diego yesterday to visit my parents during my spring break as well as see my friends who are moving to spain next month. i was planning to hang out with my friends more than my parents because my parents are crazy asian parents.

when i got home, i had to use the restroom. all i had eaten before i arrived in san diego at 6:30pm was two granola bars and a large iced vanilla latte. yeah. i know.

when i got home, my mom wasn't at home, so i'm like "YES! PRIVACY!"

so i'm in the bathroom and i hear my mom, dad, AND strangers walking in the living room and chatting.

so i go out to the living room and i greet them. it is my mom's cousin by marriage. i remember the photos of her holding me when i was a newborn baby, but i haven't see her since. they live in the bay area. she's there with her husband, and two of their kids. they're down here cause the younger one is here to check out ucsd. she's a high school senior. and the other is 26 years old.

what is so important in this is that when my mom was escaping vietnam via a boat with her sister, this woman was also on the boat with them. so they share a momentous event during the traumatic point in their lives. that was pretty cool.

everyone my parents introduce to me think that they have to speak english with me because i apparently look way americanized. the aunt laughed as the uncle stutters upon each english word that he utters. he's more terrible at english than my dad and mom.

and she was like "just talk in vietnamese." and he's like "do you speak vietnamese?" and so i start speaking vietnamese and this happens each time... they realize that of my generation, i probably have the largest vietnamese vocabulary. i can't talk politics, but i can live in vietnam and not worry about anything. and so the rest of this continues in vietnamese.

so i cancel my plans with my friends who are moving to spain. i told them i'd hang out with them all day friday. my parents really want me to go to dinner with them.

during our talk before we head out to eat, the girls ask me how new york is like and the weather, and my life there. and then they asked if my life was anything like "sex and the city." EXCEPT they said... "BLANK and the city." and i was like, "what?" and then the older one whispers it to me. "sex! we're not allowed to say that word in front of our parents. especially my mom." and all i could think at that moment was "um, you're a goddam married 26 year old. grow some balls." but of course i said, "ummm, oh. okay."

i mean, i know. it's uncomfortable to talk sex with your parents, but if you're in a conversation with your peers, and your parents are having their own conversation, chill the fuck out. and i mean, i don't tell my parents about my sex life, but let. it. go. maybe my parents are more liberal. but trust, my parents are definitely right wingers. my mom is still a supporter of bush. to. this. day. but i guess it is different. i say "fuck. shit. goddam," etc with my parents. but that's because my parents have mouths like vietnamese sailors. i guess it's different because i cuss in english and they cuss in vietnamese and chinese.

so we finally leave for the restaurant and they're like "how do we decide who goes in what car?" and i said "young folks go in my car, old people in the other."

sounds like a good idea.

one thing that i got from that statement from the older sister is that 1. she's either totally playing the good daughter but is totally a slut. or 2. she's actually a goodie goodie because she believes that she is a goodie goodie... BUT she also has her crazy/weird streaks. so being the polite chauffeur, i asked them what kind of music the want to hear... and they're like "we like canto-pop."

canto-pop is cantonese pop songs. it's SO bad. i mean, unless you're into all time bubble gum knock offs of american pop, it's great. but NOT IN MY CAR. what irked me the most is that THEY DON'T EVEN SPEAK CANTONESE. WTF?

and then the older one say: "i've been listening to itunes a lot lately. there was a period when i was really into hoobastank." and then my autopilot mental judging began.

and she followed that up with: "i just discovered bjork. have you heard of her? oh. i love this new singer, beyonce. do you know who beyonce is?"

DO I KNOW WHO BEYONCE IS????

and then she goes... "oh. i also just started listening to janet jackson."

and then i uttered: "oh, i have janet's last album."

and then she uttered: "oh, you own her album??? i love track 11!"

this girl is 26. she's not that young. she was born in america. the bay area is NOT a rock.

so we get to the restaurant... and my dad does his usual smoozing. he shows off that he's done this and done that and that and knows this person and that person....

i am polite. i wipe all the tea cups, spoons, dishes.... the older one caught on and started pouring the tea.... it was like we were all in saigon 1932 and i was wearing a rice paddy hat.

somehow the conversation drifted to the parents living in vietnam. they started talking about ghosts. vietnamese people are super-superstitious. like, ubersticious. and we find out that my uncle is really really scared of cementaries and ghosts... and then he tells the story that ghosts that appear as beautiful women and then they seduce the men and suddenly, they vanish and the guy is left with a mouth full of sand.

what i wanted to say was: no. those guys were with hookers and then got robbed, too embarassed, and told everyone a ghost story instead.

and i said out loud, because for some reason, i started thinking that 1. i'm getting old. 2. i should be more mature. "those are stories that people tell to scare you. parents tell their kids these stories (equivalent to fairy tales in europe) to scare you into submission. and then the stories get passed around. mature response right?

and then the aunt goes "do you really think that?" and i said "YES."

and then while eating quail (or as i suggested, it was probably pigeon, which freaked my mom out...) my dad decides to tell a joke.

here's where the dilemma occurred. vietnamese adults born in vietnam, to the most point, are very prude. my mom and dad showed off to everyone that ang lee spoke at my college graduation. "ang lee!!!! he spoke at the graduation. he directed crouching tiger, hidden dragon! he's very famous!"

and when ang lee got all that hoopla for directing a gay cowboy movie, NOT A FUCKING PEEP OUT OF THEM ABOUT THAT. why? cause it's a taboo subject. you can say "seduce, sensuality..." but you cannot say "have sex." it's all alluded.

recently, there was this vietnamese girl who's on a show in vietnam. it's the equivalent to a wholesome hannah montana. she's a studious girl who is trying to resist daily temptations. she's a virgin and wholesome." anyways.. this girl, the actress, had an ex-boyfriend who studies in the states. anyways, he videotaped them having sex and then it leaked out onto the internet. like BIG time. (i saw it, it was soooo boring) she show was cancelled immediately. the vietnamese public began its mob mentality. they hate sexually active and provocative issues. give them melodramas about boozing husbands and almost falling in love with the maid who turns out to be his daughter or sister... as long as it doesn't actually happen..." that shite my parents eat up.

but if god forbid, a girl (actually i believe she was an adult) has sex outside in her own personal life... it's an equivalent to "lets kill her."

anyways, i was sitting with my mom when that news story broke out... and she's reading it in the newspaper, but she refuses to discuss it with me. she avoids it. and with that, if you avoid it, it will go away mentality is what irks me about her. but i can't change her generation. doesn't she realize vietnamese is the next asian country to have a major sex-trafficing issues? that means there are plenty of sexually promiscuous girls in vietnam. and i'm sure there are tons before the vietnam war, and there still is now.

anyways, but to the dinner conversation about the quails...

let me preface it with this. in vietnamese, there are slang words for genitalia. penises are called a word that doesn't really translate to anything i am aware of. it's like "dick." and vaginas, like america's version of "pussy" the vietnamese slang for vagina is "bird."

anyways.... here's when the shit hit the fan.

my dad's joke:

"what kind of bird has nipples/breasts?"

and i should have held my tongue.... but it all comes out of my mouth without missing a beat:

I SAID "A WOMAN."

i turned bright red immediately.

my aunt shrieks in laughter out of embarassment. i turned to my mom who has the visual defintion of MORTIFIED. and then she breaks out in a nervous laughter.

my dad is sorta oblivious cause he's too concerned with the answer.

he goes: "no, a bat! a bat is a bird that has nipples!" (the wholesome answer)

not neccessarily aware of my over the top sexual pun, my dad is defending his answer.

here's the other thing... my parents were educated in the fifties/sixties. they were educated in a third world country. it's totally logical to think that bats are birds. because they fly. but i've taken biology. bats and birds are not the same thing.

so i correct him. and he's like "if a bat isn't a type of bird, what is it?" and i said "it's a mammal, like us. they bear live young, hence the nipples."

he's in his own world and totally not believing me. i turn to the older girl who is sitting to my right and asked her and she too, quietly agrees.

i am still red and laughing under my breath because what i did is a huge faux-pas in vietnamese etiquette.

like, huge faux-pas.

my uncle sorta was laughing, but at that time, i definitely knew that i made a tacky mistake, however clever my response was. afterwards, they eat their watermelon dessert and we leave the restaurant.

we drive them to their hotel and we go home. no conversations about my wise ass answer.

so my relatives are in san diego at ucsd on friday. they were planning on going to the beach and relax and hang out and leave on sunday morning.

my parents, being who they are, insisted that they dine with them again (i am gone all friday with my friends). even though my parents know that they are here for only several days, they find it rude if you don't take them out to eat every night they're in town. it's good intentions.

so my parents decide to drive to the hotel today even though the relatives didn't answer their phone calls... their multiple repeated phone calls.

they go to the hotel and find out that my relatives have checked out of the hotel.

my dad calls me to find out if i have the daughter's mobile number. my response was basically "i've met her once. why would we trade numbers since we don't have anything in common and she lives in san francisco?"

apparently my dad had copied their number down wrong. his 0 and 9 were mixed up and also i'm sure he got some of the numbers wrong... or maybe they didn't want to hang out with my parents. one night is enough if i do say so myself.

an hour later i get a call from my mom. "your aunt hates me! and i hate her too! i don't know why she hates me, but i hate her!" so then i find out that my mom called them repeatedly for two hours and they didn't pick up the phone. so my parents headed out, find out that they checked out. my mom goes home, calls their home number and leave multiple messages. she then says "they're not returning their home messages!" and i was: "umm, if the kid's school orientation is in the afternoon, and it takes seven hours to drive up to the bay area, how are they supposed to get your message?" and of course she responds, "their other kids live with them!"

i told her that if i got a message for my parents, i wouldn't pick up the phone and would tell them once they got home that they have a message.

and then i said "maybe they don't want to hang out with you guys. maybe they want to be a family on their own and spend their own time together. it's their family. they can do whatever they want. why are you jumping to conclusions???"

she then cools down maybe half a degree and we get off the phone.

i start thinking that it was my faux-pas and that their family doesn't want to hang out with such trashy people. see how my mom's crazies start when i talk to her? she is the reason i feel any type of high-stress anxiety.

later that night, i called my dad to find out what the happened and if the whole situation was resolved. apparently the relatives finally called. they had some car trouble so they decided after the orientation to go home.

logical excuse. so i asked him if my mom is satisfied with that and he goes: "don't bring it up. she's still pissed."

and i of course go: "but that's a logical reason. why is she still pissed?"

and he goes: "um, that's your mom. she's pissed. i'd stay out of it."

and that is what happens when i hang out with my parents.

the end.

the night is young and we break the dawn

soho nyc on a walk with ming. july/august 2007

twinkle

so here's the mama bunny probably a day or two before she gave birth!

she's so awesome!

i initally thought she was a giant... but now that she's given birth, she's not as rotund and is more slim.



and here's a short video where you see one of the babies kicking its leg immediately at the beginning of the clip. we didn't open the nest just to look in. there were two that got out and was cold, so we opened up the nest to put them back inside and then we closed it immediately after.

in the springtime for his voodoo

i've been having a weird/bad/off week. i think it's because it's my spring break, one of my good friends is moving to spain next month for several years, three of my friends met up for dinner to catch up in new york and i wasn't there, friends are moving around doing things, and i'm sorta feeling a little trapped.

springtime... when nature goes off balance to prep us for the rest of the year.

there are good things that happened this week, i had my first bbq at my place. phillip made a nice beef tip roast thing... and we made thai beef salad and also phillip made adobo chicken. brad came over which was great. justina and will were busy. i called several other people but no one else picked up the phone. that was sorta disappointing.

something sad and traumatic happened this morning.

first off, for some reason, most likely the warm weather, my turtle tank is getting more algae than normal. the water is turning green! so i decided that i would clean it up last night. i finished doing my taxes at brad's place, drove home, ate dinner and around 2:30am, i started cleaning it and i finished around 5am.

today, is trash day. so i had my left overs from dinner in the garbage, so i had to go throw it out in the trash so it'd be picked up.... at 5:15am, it's still dark.

i turned on the light in my back door and i proceeded to walk to the trash on the curb. and as i walked swifty, i slid on something round... like a twig or something. i didn't fall. i just slid for a second.

i stopped to see what it was... and it was too dark for me to figure out what it was. i ran to the trash can, dumped my trash, ran back, stopped, stared... and as my eyes adjusted, i saw something pink. it looked like a fetus. a human baby. about five inches long, in the fetal position.

first thought... someone had an abortion in my driveway. no. it couldn't be a human baby. then i thought it was the alien in alien. i ran inside the house, paced back and forth.... grabbed my camera to take a photo of it, just in case i was dreaming/hallucinating. i'm odd that way.

i go look at it again. whatever it was, i killed it.

i take a photo. i go online. i see that ming's online in nyc. we start messaging each other. i tell her it's not human. it's not a mouse, it's not a rat. it might be a bunny but it didn't have long ears... i upload the photo onto my computer to look at it. it has long legs!!! rats don't have that long of legs! and it has slightly white hair all over it. and sadly, blood and stuff was coming out of it. i think that maybe it's a kitten or a puppy. ming image googles baby rabbits and it's definitely a rabbit.

i start quietly freaking out.

i leave a note for ana to find in the morning when she gets up to get ready for work. "ana, i accidentally killed a bunny. it's next to the driver door of my car. please take it away for me. thank you. bunny killer."

i go lie down because i have never killed an animal before. well, not to my knowledge and i feel sad.

i am dead tired. i lie down and go to sleep. ana wakes me up several hours later and we're sorta both freaking out.

i am slightly not conscious. i go back to bed. i wake up around 2pm when saul comes over. and he walks right past it. and i'm in the bathroom going, "saul! i killed a bunny this morning by accident!!!! please take it away!!!!!" thankfully, he did. as he's cleaning it up... all i hear him say was "OH MY GOD..."

:(

later, we look over to the side of the house and there's a nest of white fur... the size of a volleyball. saul and i had to go around 3pm to cal state la, so we leave. ana calls me when she gets off work... and i tell her there's a nest of fur. she gets home and calls me around 4:45pm saying that i need to go home asap because there are a ton of bunnies in the nest.

i had to go to the post office to mail off my taxes after going to cal state. i am slightly squirmish for some reason. i'm sorta queasy (school issues, unsure if i did my taxes properly) so i stopped by starbucks to get a large iced vanilla latte. it's 5pm and i hadn't eaten anything except half a glass of pelligrino and two trident gum.

i get home and ana is like: "we have babies!!!!!"

but there are all these ants around it... so we start to pull out the fabric that was laying next to the nest as well as under the nest but we find two bunnies in that... and they're totally cold. they're squirming but cold. so she pick them up (they're the photos i've posted, one pink and one gray) and we cleaned them off of all the ants that were biting them (the gray one had these bite marks on the tail and it was sorta raw). so ana then puts them back inside the fur nest and then we pulled out the fabric and it's covered with ants. the reason why they're there is because of the birthing fluids from the mommy rabbit. it's also moist.





we take that out, and replace it with some soft downy fabric and we cut up another towel that is soft so they wouldn't hurt themselves if they squirm outside the nest. we let the original fabric dry up and then we put it back near the nest.

they are the cutest things ever. ana says she counted eight or nine of them.

we swept out all the ants to make sure they wouldn't bite them or kill them.

we've left it alone pretty much since then.... but we're totally going to check everyday to see their progress.

it's sorta sad happy that i had to kill the bunny for us to realize that there were bunnies.

ana, saul, and i then start looking at bunny clips on youtube.

we're excited.

i am feeling a little less bad about accidentally killing the bunny.

anyone not dancing is a rapist

maskinen - Alla som inte dansar är våldtäktman (anyone not dancing is a rapist)

the song is pretty fun and catchy. i wish they would do innovative dance stuff like this in america. long live the swedes!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yexeBCx7oow

a space odyssey

sometimes i feel like the whole point of my existence is to find something that is broken, try and fix it and when it's fixed, i expect it to get up and leave me. even though i know i'm not being abandoned, it sometimes feels like that.

when i say this, i'm not saying that i find people who are completely broken, it's more like they need a little company to get through life at that moment. and then there's a sudden disconnect.

and that saddens me because i am exactly like my mother. and i don't want to end up like her. she's sad, miserable, and angry that everyone leaves her and doesn't come back. she doesn't have many friends, but many people do respect her because she's so street smart and that she's done a lot of things and is a great problem solver. but some part of her is missing, and it doesn't allow her to understand why she drives people away.

i kind of feel the same way. i think there is a part of my brain that doesn't get the whole picture. but at the same time, i do feel like i do get the whole concept, but i know that part of it is missing and i can't turn the corner to see what it is... it'll always be around that corner. and i strain my neck and i still can't see it.

i'm not saying that anyone is asking for my company or help. i just feel like they need me, or rather, someone, to be there. i by no means, feel like i'm being a greater person for doing what i do. i am not asking for anything in return. i am just being myself. and i feel the disconnect that i sometimes wonder if my mother feels too.

i also want to make my mother happy, but i don't think that i could ever because she knows that i've already abandoned her, even though i see her more often now then i have for most of my twenties. it's sort of a silent abandonment. it isn't invisible. we both see it and feel it.

lately, i've been feeling the abandonment, but i know that it isn't anyone's fault. it just suddenly happens. and that sudden-ness is what worries me.

i'm a little sad today.

i just need to keep on truckin' and i'll be alright.

beware: guard bunny

so several months ago... around 3am... i was on the phone with victor talking smack about something.... and i was also taking the trash out... i lift the lid to my garbage bin thing... and out of the corner of my eye, i saw something white run from 12 o'clock to around 4 o'clock of my view. it freaked the shite out of me.

seriously... i hate going outside at night when it isn't lit properly... i've seen house of wax way too many times (and by that, i mean, one time).

anyways... the white thing ran past where i parked my car so i went over to see what it was... and it was a rabbit! A GIANT RABBIT.

and then continuously for one month, i would see the rabbit almost every night nibbling on my yummie grass. ana and i tried to feed it lettuce but to no avail. it totally kept its distance.

i originally called it ester... as in the ester bunny. but ana said no... and i really didn't like the name anyways... it was just convenient. so we started calling it bunny.

after one month, i was able to touch it once and phillip touched it twice. and then, one night, as we pulled into the driveway... we noticed that bunny had brought over a friend! a brown bunny! i immediately called that one vincent gallo. (and right now, i've decided to call the white bunny chloë. remember when chloë said this: "I'm Chloë, not Chloé.")

and then.... we never saw them again. for months........ i hypothesized that it was sorta springtime-ish and it's probably having babies. another possibility was that it was eaten by a cat... but the rabbit is HUGE.

and every couple of days... i would look around for it... but failure was all i saw.

and then one day, while pulling up to my driveway... we saw the bunny again!

and then we didn't see it for another couple of days....

but on monday... we found the bunny lounging around underneath our patio chairs and table. so of course, ana got excited and took out a carrot (yeah, we're that stereotypical... is that like saying "i'm not a racist, my best friend's black." and of course i proceeded to photograph it.

so it's been here since monday... and i hope bunny never leaves. in the evening, sometimes, it just lounges next to my lavendar bush on the front yard... like it's a guard dog... and then moseys on over to the back and eats grass.

i hope the opposums and cats don't get it. i love my bunnies! nature's lawnmower.

oh, i fed it plums yesterday and it totally ate them up! :)



oh... yeah.. one of the neighbors got a new dog i think... that thing BARKS ALL DAY LONG! like, seriously... ALL DAY AND NIGHT LONG.....

zach braff

i was going through the free stuff on craigslist.... and found this gem!

malls

I HATE MALLS.

when i am bored in los angeles, there are few things i can do outside my home that is near me. one of the things i do is go to the mall. I HATE THE MALL. it's one of the few places that will temporarily distract me. although, when i say distraction, i mean, distraction by annoyance. i hate going to the same stores that are found in every WESTFIELD malls: old navy, the gap, hot topic, torrid, the body shop, hollister, frederick's of hollywood.

the other day, phillip and i were bored and so we decided that we needed to do something. so he said "lets do what you love to do... go to the mall." and that sorta bothered me. cause in the near decade that i was in nyc, i was in the manhattan mall maybe a total of five times... and in those five times, it was because i couldn't find the right exit for the n,r,q,w train and ended up on the escalators for the manhattan mall (the subway is connected to it for you non-new yorkers).

this weekend, phillip, ana, saul, and i went to the glendale galleria. i've only been there once before, for approximately ten minutes because juanita was looking for her wedding dress at macy's and the only macy's with the correct size was at the glendale galleria... so we got there ten minutes before closing time to pick it up. i don't even remember if she bought it.... but that was my only taste of g.g. before this weekend.

after trekking through the mall for THREE hours.... i decided that I HATE MALLS FOREVER.

the same stores in every mall... victoria secrets, the gap, the body shop, bath and body works, hollister, american eagle outfitters, a&f, frederick's of hollywood... i hate it i hate it i hate it.

i think i had a panic attack and broke down.

i went to southcoast plaza last year for about two hours. it's better than the other westfield malls... but every store is a mini-store. they had a gucci, ysl, chanel, etc... but they were mini-stores. it was nice, but at the same time, that mall mentality drove me insane. the ramps, escalators, mini-stairs, giant christmas tree, and that feeling of going in circles started to get to me and i left.

i think i'm slowly going crazy because of this.

someone send me a ticket to nyc now. or maybe even paris. i need to go visit paris tout suite.

immature / premature

is it terrible that i laughed out loud tonight while i was reading this article on cnn about autism?

it's about a sperm donor and a woman named gwenyth JACKAWAY who had a baby with guy's sperm and it turns out that of the six other children sired by this guy's spunk, two maybe three have autism.

seriously, her last name is JACKAWAY and it's about a SPERM DONOR. i am so immature.

for the birds

here is a piece i did for a previous art class. the assignment was to recreate the color wheel with iconic figures. i chose bird silhouettes. it was a really fun project and i'm really proud of the results. i used cell-vinyl paints and depending on the color, the consistency of the paint varied. that's why my violet looks terrible. it was super viscous and when it dried, it dried like crusty spackle. the color progression begins in the middle with the eagle. it is red, orange red, orange, orange yellow, yellow, yellow green, green, blue green, blue, etc. so it's primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. needless to say, this is a mobile phone photo so it doesn't really show the smoothness of the real piece.

and i'll leave you something i saw yesterday on youtube. apparently, the bbc found a flock of penguins that fly! they even flew to the amazon! amazing!

when i was a child, i fantasized about having a pet puffin. then about two years ago, my friend rose d. told me she was going to go see puffins in real life... and that totally totally brought me back to the third grade. (i made a pillow for art class and i stitched a puffin on the face of the pillow. i'll try and look for it when i go visit my parents). so of course, i immediated googled puffins and it played the calling sounds of puffins and we cracked up! they sound HILARIOUS!

flying penguins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYVBaTD0zqw



obviously this was an april's fool day joke! pretty awesome though!

puffins: (the creaking noise you hear at the beginning is how they sound)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndDDeZ3O-Ls

je ne peux pas chanter pendant l'examen

i'm taking a screen printing class and this is one of the first images i am working on. it's taking longer than i had hoped. the words aren't black once i start the printing. i had to change it to black to burn onto the same screen as the photo so that i don't waste time on a fourth screen. i can just block it out and then unblock it when i need to print the type. it'll be a lavender color. more info than most of you guys will care to know...

the other day, i spent about an hour mixing paints to create an ideal color and then on the way down the stairs to go home, my bag ripped and my glass jar of paint dropped and broke into a million little pieces. :( actually more like, fifteen pieces... but you know what i mean. i am hella clumsy.



nada surf - inside of love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Ac3Pc8etA

wanderlust

yes! finally, a good music video from bjork! justina emailed me the link to the making of this and it's pretty awesome. it's shot in 3-d but this is the 2-d version. missy elliott also did a 3-d video... but the issue with that is... if you don't have 3-d glasses, how are you suppose to watch it???

until someone can answer that, i hope you enjoy this video. i imagine it's something similar to the way the live action "where the wild things are" will look like... i could be wrong.

bjork - wanderlust

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNXTt1_mf3E