Category: San Francisco

on sunday, instead of watching the whole superbowl, i took a break and watched the movie “Tape“. it’s by the same director who did Waking Life and Slacker. the crazy thing about this movie is that the whole thing is shot in one hotel room. there’s only 3 actors (Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke being 2 of them). there aren’t any crazy special effects, chase scenes, or anythhing else fancy. it’s just a very interesting story filled w/ several moral, philosophical, and psychological questions. i totally loved it. i’m all about movies that make you think and question things, and the fact that tis movie was able to do that in such a simple fashion was really cool.

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over the weekend i went to two parties. friday night we went to a party in the richmond at one of brandon’s friend’s house. the party wasn’t very good. in fact, we were all not down, but there really wasnt much else to do that night, so we ended up staying around for a while. the only cool thing about the party was that there was access to the roof. it made me totally wish i had a place where people could chill on the roof. sure, it’s kinda sketchy, but it’s pretty neat. afterwards, we all went back home and i ended up kicking it w/ colleen and john till like 5 am talking about religion, growing up, death, and all sortsa crazy shit.

the following night, caryn and i went to a party at li’s house. the theme was 40’s and pretty much everyone actually drank 40’s instead of wussing out and drinking other stuff. unlike the party the night before, this one was really fun. it’s good to be at a party when you know basically everybody. caryn made this cake called “dump cake”, that was super fucking good. um, yeah, i know the name is gross, but it’s called that because you just dump the ingredients in the pan… not for other reasons. oh yeah, the other weird thing that happened that night is that for some reason there was this scary blow up doll at li’s house. it had a weird face drawn on it and was just pretty damn bizarre. when joey and brian got drunk, they started forcing people to pose w/ it….

(and why is tom crying in the background of this photo?)

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thursday night i was driving home and npr was interviewing Afghani film director Siddiq Barmak about a movie he just released called Osama. Despite what most people would infer from the title, the movie actually isn’t about osama bin laden at all, instead it’s a look into life in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule. the story is about an all female family that is threatened w/ starvation because the Taliban does not allow any women to have jobs. in order to survive, the family has to dress their youngest daughter up as a boy in hopes that he can get a job and earn at least some money to buy food for the family.

i totally want to see this movie. it’s completely bewildering that life can be like that for some people, and that a story like this took place just a few years back and is not from some ancient history book. starting w/ september 11th, Afghanistan was thrust into the world spotlight for 2 years and all anyone could talk about was the terrorists that lived there. sure, there was some banter about the “poor suffering people” that we were hoping to “save” by invading, but a scant 2 years later, as soon as we found a new country to invade, Afghanistan was abandoned and is now hardly mentioned at all.

i think it’s awesome that there are films being made about the country and that people like Barmak are raising some kind of interest in a country that has been all but ignored by the rest of the world except for when it was being invaded. it was actually a pretty crazy interview. Barmak was only able to make this movie last year because the Taliban was overthrown. before that, there were no movies allowed to be made in Afghanistan. in fact, he tells of how when he found the girl who would later play the main role in the movie and asked her if she wanted to be in his film, her response was “what is a film?”.

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lately i’ve had to do a lot of work using linux. in fact, over the last month, i’d say that like half of my work has been linux stuff. when i first started using it, a little while back, i was absolutely fucking clueless. i spent a whole day just trying to figure out how to do the most simple of simple things like how to install programs. i hadn’t the slightest clue about gzip, tar files, rpm packages etc etc. and dont even get me started on the insanely cryptic and evil VI editor. ugh!

but now, i’m really starting to get used to it. it’s pretty cool to know how to all this crap from a command line and not need the graphical interface. i feel like i’ve learned sooo much over the last few weeks. i’m definitely not yet proficient or anything, but it’s been a lot of fun figuring stuff out and learning new shit.

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i watched the movie Thirteen tonight. the movie was about a thirteen year old girl who really badly wants to fit in when she gets to junior high. to do that she befriends the most popular girl in school, and is soon drinking, taking drugs, getting piercings, blah,blah, etc. her mother who loves her like crazy, is slowly being torn apart trying to deal w/ her crazy daughter.

while watching the movie, i totally couldnt help but think of all the shit that i pulled when i was young. i started going to raves when i was 16 and of course did all the stuff that goes along with partying. of course i didnt think it was a big deal at that point, but looking back on it now, it would be impossible for me to say that i would think it was no big deal if i had a 16 year old child doing that kind of stuff. and as time goes on, kids grow up faster and faster. they’ll be doing what i did when i was 16, when they are 13 or 12 or who knows! the worries i have can only be about things that i know about, and things i did myself…. but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. who knows what kind of new insane fucked up shit there will be for kids to try when they are growing up years from now. i’m sure the future will hold much more treacherous things than piercings and ecstasy.

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the rv that sharon and dave bought is fucking humongous. 30 feet. it is a monster, and they’re planning on towing dave’s car behind it when they go cross-country, making it even longer. i can’t even imagine how hard it must be to drive that thing! last night, a few of us drove down to santa cruz to check it out. sharon and dave took us for a tour inside:

this thing was so roomy! i always thought the inside of an rv would be cramped and stuffy. but in this one, sure there were a few tight squeezes, like the one dave is in on the left, but other than that it was nice and spacious. a big bedroom, a kitchen w/ fridge and stove, a living room. there was 6 of us over there and we fit perfectly. hell, we could have invited even more people!

anyways, they’re still working on the RV. they’re hoping to get all the repairs done by this saturday and finally start their cross country voyage. i bet they’re gonna have an insane amount of fun in the apollo three thousand.

oh, yeah, one more thing. we all went to saturn cafe too. it sucked! what the hell happened?? that place used to always be so fun and cool. now it was all stale and boring!

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after about 20 months, a couple thousand dollars in fines, 4 separate trips to the tow yard, and a grueling 2 hour long way down at the DPT, i finally got my J parking permit. now i can park in front of my house. of course, now that i finally have it, i will only continue living here for another 5 months, but still… at least i shouldnt get anymore tickets from now on.

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saturday was liv’s 35th birthday and to celebrate it, she had a potluck at her house. caryn was looking up recipes for what to make on the internet, and she found this cool recipe for making penguins out of stuffed olives:

liv’s party was hella fun. sharon brought this pen that shocks people when they try to click it. we got several different people to unwittingly try it out and yelp when they did. later on in the night, liv, sage, and gleb all did some fire spinning which was pretty cool. sage and gleb just used the regular poi with balls on the end, but liv used these hardcore ones that had huge sticks that completely engulfed in fire:

as the night went on, and people drank more and more, kevin started talking about his “sour skittles” experience. apparently one time he ate a whole bag of sour skittles, and then the following day, he had layers of his tongue peeling off. peeling off?? a lot of us were doubtful that that could happen. i mean, come on, sour skittles? are they even that sour? well, a few minutes later we drove down to 7-11 and 3 of us tried to take the challenge.

the first couple of handfuls were really no big deal. hardly sour. but then, as we kept eating… things got more and more sour. pretty soon each bite was becoming literally painful!:

by the time we got to, and finished off, the powder left in the bag, our tongues were hella hurting.

two days later, when i woke up this morning, my tongue felt hella weird. most of it felt like it couldn’t taste or feel anything. i looked in the mirror, and yes, the top layer of my tongue was peeling off. fuck! how can they sell this stuff to little kids?!! i dont get it!!

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friday night caryn and i went over to joey’s house to watch a movie w/ him and catherine. the movie we ended up watching was Thirteen Days, a movie about the cuban missile crisis. in high school, despite the many years of history we had to take, unfortunately we never really spent too much time concentrating on any modern history… like pretty much anything after WWII. sure we kind of glossed over the vietnam war, kennedy, and the cuban missile crisis, but we really only learned a tiny bit about each and most of that information i’ve already forgotten.

watching that movie was pretty crazy. it’s totally insane to think just how close we came to having a nuclear war that would probably have wiped out most of the planet. the nuclear missiles that russia had in cuba could travel to the US in a mere 5 minutes, so any attempt at defense or hiding in bomb shelters etc would have been totally useless. due to some insanely lucky circumstances, and a president who wanted so badly to avert war, we somehow managed to pull through the situation. but it so easily could have ended differently. what if a situation like that had happened when we had an incompetent trigger-happy president like bush in control? i shudder to think what might have been.

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Stephanie and i broke up over a year ago, and since then i’ve only seen her a few times. i think maybe 3. several month ago she had a kid named Hunter. i know i’ve already posted this several times in my journal, but still i must reiterate that it still shocks me every time someone my age, who i know, has a kid. so weird! anyways, i’m not big on babies. they kinda make me nervous, and i’m definitely not down to hold them, but if someone makes one, i feel like i should probably go see it. so here and there i’ve talked to steph and we’ve tentatively planned to meet up at some point so i could check out this baby.

today she calls me out of the blue and says that she’s in my neighborhood and is down to stop by with her baby. so she comes over. sooooooo weird! i gotta say, it was truly bizarre to see her w/ a kid. her son was 5 months old already so he was pretty big and could smile and stuff by now. so we kicked it for a bit and talked about her son and life and stuff. turns out she is probably gonna move to nebraska! crazy eh? well maybe 8 or 9 minutes later the baby started crying and getting antsy, so she took off. luckily i never got asked to hold it or anything…

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