Elsewhere

16 July 2001

-|- remiss -|- the obligatory weekend -|- musings of señor prod. -|-

To my regular visitors (both of you :), I offer my humblest apologies for a profound lack of updates in over 3 weeks. My LiveJournal has been somewhat less neglected, being populated with the odd tirade against the IOC, the drama of the little bird, and the rediscovery of a UCLA favorite of mine, the comic Sinfest.

the obligatory weekend

Friday Evening. Vancouver Joe (Architect Extraordinaire) and I went over to Hide Sushi (pronounced hih-day, and don't even start with the euphemism jokes), a local sushi restaurant which, admittedly, is quite lacking in atmosphere in comparison to U-Zen, but the sushi tasted equally good (mostly), and was, to boot, cheaper. Hide Sushi is on my list now... the albacore was astonishingly good. After this, I rushed over to Revolutionary Jenny's Luau. It was a good party, and the party confirmed that I am most engaging when talking about geeky things... I'm almost even charismatic. But I didn't just say that.

Saturday Morning. I awoke early, again, to practice music with the worship team at my ex-church, UPC. It was my third and last week as guest musician, this time playing electric guitar. My arms were aching miserably, because my trainer overworked me on Thursday with the weights. Tomorrow, I will tell him what's what.

Saturday Afternoon. Practiced with the Million Dollar Gods on our 20 minute set. Fortunately, MDKane and I didn't have to make the Garden Grove trek to practice, as we found a facility in Culver City which suits us quite nicely. The set is really coming together. Starting with our love song Supernova, following with Empire, My America, and closing with Tick Goes the Clock. Irvine ain't ready for the 'Gods.

Saturday Evening. After the Gods' practice I roved down to Dockweiler State Beach, for what I'm sure will be the most imagery-intensive portion of the weekend travelogue. I arrived at the beach (which is just due west and a barely a mile from LAX) at about 6pm. The cloud layer had come in early in the afternoon, and as soon as I arrived, I was quite pleased by the gloom. Of course, I wish it were sunnier for my friends' benefits, but you heard no complaints from me.

As I was walking from the distant parking spot to the location where my friends were set up, I stopped to watch the airplanes take off overhead. One large 757 (I think) flew directly overhead and disappeared into the clouds quickly. Other, phantom jets took off overhead already lost in the clouds. I thought to myself, there is a poem in here somewhere, but I haven't found it yet. Finally, I found my friends south of Lifeguard station 57, huddled around the fire pit. Offshore perhaps a mile was a cargo ship which, like a strange attractor, kept drawing my eyes to it. I watched the floodlights on the deck wink on... I was mesmerized.

Folding chair in tow, I arrived and was greeted immediately by Nancy saying she wanted to talk to me about affirmative action. Spencer (her husband) almost immediately tuned out of that conversation... We talked a bit about intitutionalized racism, the ineffectiveness of affluence in minority standardized test scores (I'm still not convinced), and eventually our conversation fell into the flow of chit-chat that is most easily characterized in parties where you know everyone there very well and you just haven't seen them in months. Then, with the final potential option for the evening cancelled earlier, I went home.

Sunday morning. UPC. Played guitar. One phrase from Andy's message struck me, it was on the theme of humility, but I think it works in other contexts as well: people with talents are cargo ships; the more we have, the lower we sit in the water.

Sunday afternoon. Downey trip. Brief. Dropped off checks and wished my parents a good trip to Missouri. When I got back to my apartment, Vancouver Joe was there surfing the net. "Hey," he said, "Michelle, Daniel, JD and I are planning to see Cats & Dogs at 5. Wanna go?" I had planned to make the 5.1 mile run that night. Joe asked if he could tag along, and could I abbreviate the circuit to get there in time. Sure. We went about 4 miles and I took a quick shower, then went to the theater.

Sunday Evening. Watched Cats & Dogs. It was fun and lighthearted entertainment. It wasn't worth the $9, but catch a matinee if you want to see a fun, silly movie. My favorite line was said very matter-of-factly and quickly, so fast that I almost missed it: they were going to see a Soccer game between Uruguay and Chad and a boy said, his voice fading in the distance, "... I hear he's the best one-legged forward Chad ever had."

After the movie, we went to JD's part-time workplace, Habibi Cafe in Westwood. Good food, but they charge for soda refills. After this, we went to Diddy Riese to get cookies. Daniel told us that in Germany, Riese means Giant, and we were trying to determine the etymology of Diddy, and did it have anything to do with cookies. We finally gave up, but not without traversing a circuitous route in which we debated Haägen-Dazs and whether it was an American company with an affected European-sounding name, or a Danish company. The Ayes have it, and I believe it's an American company with a made-up name. After all this, I returned home.

musings of señor prod.

The Revolution keeps, um, revolving.

Visit the Spider-Man Site. Tell 'em Tim the Producer sent ya.