New Shoe Leather: LA

Showing posts with label LA. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

malls gays and high school

Well I'm back in ann arbor after a world wind week in LA. Ok it wasn't really world wind but i relived my high school days and i had fun in the process. I came to realize that i think my post sickness blues may have actually been a real funk and in the end i really just needed to go shopping at a good quality mall and hang out with the gays. It's so amazing to me how gays have such regenerative powers. I have been months without them and it makes me feel like my goal this fall should be to wrangle up some awesome homosexxxxxuals from the incoming class of students. Seriously, it's most necessary for my livelihood. It also makes me wonder if the gays feel the same way about a good hag.

So Thursday Ivan and i went to the southcoast plaza, the bombest mall within a 60 mile radius of us. We ended up having to leave super late because his mom was using the car so he had no means of getting to me. High school moment 1. We discussed many things on the way to the mall, like how fire crotch isn't quite fire crotch but rather the "color of sunburnt leaves" and we listened to "big girls don't cry" etc etc. My goal at the mall was to find ankle boots. but after trying a few on i realized that my ankles are kind of skinny and this would not be an easy thing to do much like finding pants can be an epic journey to morgdoor.

So anyways some of the things i bought over a 2 day period.
- along cardigan from club monacco
- 2 pairs of tights, one wool, one very mall fish nets. I decidd this season i'm exploring the world of dresses and tights which is why i needed teh ankle boots
- a couple of sweaters from zara which has totally awesome stuff this season.
- this totally awesome belted black wool coat from zara that has all kinds of buttons and things and look very russian military. I cant' find a pic because zara's website sucks, as do all european clothing websites (read H&M)
- a knock off missoni dress from H&M. Knit, crazy shapes and colors = awesome
- and then i bought these boots! i am kind of excited about them. they are kidskin! but i'm also really insecure about them because i feel like they are a bit much for where i live. the part that folds over kind of cinches more so they look slouchy. Imagine them with dresses...can you? Would they look ok?? will i look ridiculous? make me feel better about my purchase, leave a comment

- i also bought new bras and my cup size shrank which is like yay i lost weight but also like..oh shit i have small tits.

We had to head home because i had to be home for dinner (high school moment 2). Then on Friday night Cathy decided we should go bowling since i never really got to go bowling in high school with cool people. I told her i had gone with my church youth group but she said that didn't count so we went bowling. I still suck at bowling. It was kind of retro but not on purpose type bowling alley with regular and women named lavern and a karaoke bar and a really mean racist bar tender and so after we lost we drive around teh corner to this place called the Bull Pen. wow that was a trip! we walked in and were literally the youngest people there by like 20 years!! It was all these 40 year old cougars getting wild on the dancefloor to this 60's cover band and i mean they were getting down! like slutty style dancing and everyone was trashed and i saw my freshman year religion teacher!! The one who taught my bff ryan that transubstantiation literally meant eating the body and drinking the blood of christ. literally! Anyways cathy and i were cracking up but the boys couldn't hang so then we decided to head to in n out to truly end our high school night. At about midnight all the kids started rustling out of in n out and we realized....curfew. Then we discussed high school experiences and how mine sucked and how i may never fully recover.

Saturday my parents decided they wanted to plant trees in the yard. They are on this tree kick like they swear we live in the middle of nowhere where you can plant tons of trees. Liek hello! we live in the suburbs of la!! But anyways they kept making up excuses to plant trees liek "oh this is to commemorate your health, and oh this is to commemorate your graduation from college" which ps was 3 years ago. so anyways we bought some awesome trees. Something called a silver dollar and a palo alto tree (get it!) and something called a hong kong orchid tree. As we were digging the hole for the hong kong orchid my dad found an old bone that my childhood dog must have buried. It got me a bit eeemotional missing good old Q-tip Hernandez and so i decided to throw the bone back in for good measure and that tree would be in honor of Q-Tip. Then i went to a family party which was fun. the babies are walking! so crazy. And then a 13 year old girl asked what grade i was in...in high school!! yes, she thought i was 15. Refer to bra size change above. My aunt wanted to make these cupcakes from a famous bakery called sprinkles here in LA but she ran out of time. But she had been talking up these cupcakes so much that i was like, oh hell no, we are definitely making these cupcakes. So somehow i ended up making cupcakes. Adn i gotta say, i have not baked in like 10 years. I'm not bad! they were pretty good. Light, fluffy, airy, derrricious.

Sunday Cathy took Ivan and I to try some korean delicacies at an all you can eat korean bbq. so many ssssspiced meatsssssssss. so many pickled things. It was quite good i must say. We sat in the corner and talked about all sorts of things over stinky meats and bim bom bi bop sauce. How i won't have a threesome but everyone else will, how i must be horrible in bed because of all my rules. People think that my strange mannerisms in real life will somehow carry over to the bedroom and i just wanted to tell them that i am quite normal if not awesome in other areas of life! i am not josie grossie anymore!! And just because i dont' like you touchign me wiht your feet doesn't mean i won't let a lover caress me. uughhh.

So then we went to the mall and then the movies. Seriously being in la is liek being in the high school that i never actualy got to experience. The mall and a movie, typical. We saw "becoming jane" which i knw was not going to be the greatest thing since "sense and sensibility" but i knew it would be informative and perhaps make me feel better about my fear that i'm going to end up an old spinster, cast away by her lovers for being too smart and not having enough money. And indeed it was just that. Before the movie even started the previews were those kind that get you relaly eeeemotional with the right kind of music and the plot that just kills you and so we were all crying. One preview that really got to me was for "the jane austen book club." It's all these women who get together to read jane austen and they can relate to various characters like "i'm an emma!!" etc etc. So anyways there is this one character who i think is the emma who falls in love with a high school kid and her husband is yelling at her "high school is over!" and she says back in a really pathetic way "high school is never over..." and it was that moment. Ivan and i looked at each other and we were liek....holy shit that was deep! because i seriously feel like high school isn't over and i knwo that's a really lame thing to say but i have so many unresolved issues from high school. It scarred me and i feel like deep down in side the fat girl wiht braces just wants to be asked to prom!! the prom of life!! and then i started thinking about how this stuntedness could lead me to end up like this character, having an affair with a super hot boy in high school who makes me feel like i never felt when i was younger. How wretched. S

Then we went to pinkberry afterwards because i had seen that they opened one in long beach. Basically it's hip froyo for a very high cost. The store itself had all kind of crazy stuff liek rock carpet, and hanging lights, and lime green everywhere and orange plastic designer chairs and all kinds of harajuku music playing and toppings like black berries or captain crunch. It was utterly ridiculous but pretty tasty. Although cathy claims we still have to try TCBY which i am all about sampling one of these days. Also cathy noted that this over priced froyo was identical to a water based vietnamese soft serve. interesting.

And then we took pictures and ivan and i decided that we are going to continue our brangelinaesque W spread of us in various locations looking unhappy (puerto rico, 2nd street corner, bowling alley, pinkberry) and we will compile all of these pictures and turn it into a calendar that we will send all of our friends. awesome!? i think so!

And thus ended my week in Los Angeles, good times as always. Now i'm back and i have to serioulsy jump into my work week. seriously! but this weekend i'm going to chicago to fly kites and go to the zoo with orges and it will be awestacular.

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

abuelito

so tonight i joined my mom for her weekly dinner with my abuelito. Dinner with my grandpa is always kind of interesting in that "talking to old people and getting wisdom from them" way. My grandpa always has this look of apathy and general boredom but as it turns out he's just kind of a quiet man of few words who prefers to observe. This is rather odd since he spawned five very loud women who spawned lots of loud brown children. But as my grandmother used to love to point out, we all had more of her blood than his. She was kind of a cruel woman.

Anyways he's 76 and his daily habits consist of waking up around 9, showering, grabbing some beers and a cooler and sitting outside in a lawn chair gardening, drinking beer and listening to old spanish love songs. Sometimes he'll drive ot my house or one of my other aunts' houses to do their gardens. Then he goes inside, grabs another beer, and watches old movies. he loves to sit in his chair and watch gladiator over and over again. he also really loves clint eastwood movies but his favorite actor is Steve McQueen. Anyways the man drinks like a fish but has never been sick. i asked him once how it is that he never ever gets sick. he told me "hija, es que no voy al doctor." Basically he doesnt' believe in doctors, because he thinks they jsut make up diseases and they make you take drugs that you don't need. This is in stark contrast to my constant state of hypochondria. Apparently in addition to the loudness, we also got the crazies from my grandma's side of the family.

I asked him what he eats to stay so healthy and he said he usually boils an egg in the morning, has a peice of cheese and an apple. And then he said he doesnt' eat until dinner in which he makes chicken soup or other chicken dishes. so essentially he stays away from sweets, breads, red meats and anything with taste. And look! he has lived to be 76 without ever getting sick, he still has his mental capacities all intact, and the only real problem is that he drinks alot. i guess we truly can learn from the old. Sometimes i ask him to tell me stories of the old days, his time as an immigrant worker in american before the influx of illegals. Someday i'll share those stories, interesting stuff. Lots of cool shit like his dad essentially kidnaped, raped, and forced his mother to marry him and moved her to his hacienda out in the middle of nowhere. shit like that. you do'nt get stories like that anymore!

"little children"

You know when you have those days where your success of failure is all dependent on one thing going right because if that one thing goes right it will trigger a series of events through which the rest of your day will go right? And then that one thing does not go right and you feel like you might cry because you have banked your day's happiness on that one thing. Basically what i'm talking about is those days where things go wrong and then finally the straw breaks the camels back and you break down in front of complete strangers in some public place like a coffee shop or a mini mall, and someone comes up to you and say "are you ok" and you incomprensibly mumble phrases like "yeah iiii'm fine it's just (tears) nothing EVER goes right and just to top it off this and why me!" So today wasn't quite that but i just wnated to set the tone.

All day long, and cathy can attest to this, i have been craving an in n out cheeseburger. If you have never had an in n out cheeseburger you are sorely missing out. I mean, the perfectly cooked meat, the melted cheese, the crispy toasted ring around the edge of the bun. I have travelled far and wide (really only to like 6 states but still) and have never found a burger quite as pleasing as the in n out cheeseburger. Well all day long i was telling cathy how my plan was to go to the movies at 1:10, but on my way stop at the in n out down the street from the theater, use the remainder of my gift card my cousin gave me to purchase a cheeseburger so i coudl sneak it into the theater and eat it during the movie. A wonderful plan, i thought.

I had been contemplating this since last night. I had gone on wikipedia and teh in n out website just to get myself mentally prepaired. i mean I WAS EXCITED! I was learning all of these new facts, like for instance did you know that animal style means your meat patty is cooked in mustard? i did not knw this. I knew all the other stuff but this mustard cooked patty was kind of mysterious to me. Like what does a mustard cooked patty taste like? This all got me talking to cathy about how i'm really not a very exciting person. i generally stick to what i like and i order that forever. For the first 18 years of my life i excuslively ate hamburgers. In fact, i think i didnt' actually have my first cheeseburger until college on a trip to, of all palces IN N OUT! well since then i have been on a strict cheeseburger fad. I have this thing where when i'm looking at a menu i think "ooh that looks good. but what if it's not. what if i order it and it's not really what i want and i waste all of those calories and money on something i dont' even like or enjoy! but i'm so boring. i should just try it." well i get myself all worked up and by the time i make it to the ordering booth i say to myself "do it! order something new" and then what comes out of my mouth is "cheeseburger, no onions." so what i'm saying is, i am a creature of habit. Well after talking ot cathy today for about an hour about how much i love cheeseburgers and because of this love was a bit scared to try to double double animal style she finally convinced me. So i got in my car, drove to in n out wiht 10 minutes to spare and rolled into the parking lot to find....

25 fucking cars waiting in line for what i can only assume is the same damn double double animal style! goddamnit! i was filled with such rage. I definitely did not have time to wait in that line or i would for sure miss my movie. So i made a rash decision. i drove off and called cathy to complain about how wretched and cruel life can sometimes be (in a very uncruel way, i mean you know, this is all for dramatic value). I told her i was on the verge of tears, which i really was, and i told her how much i hated americans because "what kidn of disgusting peopel are eating in n out for lunch on a work day! i only eat like this on vacation! god, i hate americans! this is why they are so fat!" And really i ask, who eats fastfood on a normal lunch day? if you do i think you shoudl really stop, buy yourself some wheat bread and turkey and chow down on something healthy for a change! because seroiusly fast food should be reserved for a few rare times a year when you let yourself enjoy, like for instance VACATIONS! so anywyas i was very bitter and ended up just going straight to the movie theater and feeling really upset that my whole plan to enjoy a nice double double animal style had been ruined by a bunch of gluttonous people who also had the urge to eat in n out that day on their lunch break.

so i saw this movie "little children" and it was really good. And it's nto really teh kind of movie where you can talk about plot and stuff liek that, but it's the kind of movie that leaves you thinking. And after i came out it really put that whole in n out debacle into perspective, and i dont' realy know how, but it did. It got me thinking about my life, and what i value, and how sad it is that not getting a double double animal style can throw me all out of wack, because really, what does this say about me?

And then i was driving home kind of pensive, when i saw this old mustang with a for sale sign. I dont' know anything about cars so i cant' say what year it was, but it took me back to a day when i used to want an old mustang. I remember asking my dad for one and he said it was a very impractical car and my parents are all about practicality. And the reason that i wantd the mustang was not that i cared about how it ran or anything like that or that i knew anything about engines and shit, but it was because i used to watch 21 jumpstreet and johnny depp's character drove a mustang and i stuck with me. I mean, i was a really big johnny depp fan at the time. i also really wanted an old VW bug. I had these memories of my aunt lucy, who later became my "crazy aunt lucy" when she used to pick me and Jenny up and take us to the movies in her old sky blue VW bug. I thought that car was teh coolest and it seemed very me. Well i didnt' get a bug. Instead i got a boring, green, honda civic. And the irony (in the alanis morrisette way) was that this other mexican girl who had almost the same name as me only with an H had an old VW bug. and i always had this feeling that she somehow was the cooler, more confident version of me (with less controlling parents). She wasn't even that pretty, and boys liked her, and she was tall and had an awkward body wtih a flat butt, but again, no one seemed to notice. And she was smart and we had fun together when we got put in the back of our AP history class because we were the only girl who didnt' show our coochies to our dirty history teacher (turns out he was a pedophile and we were the on;y non slutty girls in class). And i always felt liek in some alternate world we would have been friends. It reminds me of this quote "if i had been someone else in a different world Id've done something different, but i was myself and the world was the world, so i was silent." That's how i feel about a lot of things, and that's kind of how the movie "little children" made me feel, when i say "i felt pensive."

So i leave this entry with no conclusion, except to say that i went to in n out afterwards. there was still a line, but i waited and i got a double double animal style. It was too big for me. i only ate 3/4 of it and threw the rest away. Sometimes we shoudl listen to the signs that life gives us.

The Overstimulation of Our Children

So i spent all day Monday babysitting my nephew ben, and what a time we had. He's a good boy and really onlly cried when he wanted something like food or a clean diaper or a nap. And his mom never once had to come down and intervene because i was such a good babysitter, i knwo right. So anyways wanted i wanted to talk about though was the fact that children nowadays are so overstimulated. if it's not the hdtv it's the gamecube, and the mini hand held PS whatever it's caled and the ipod so they can have music while they play video games. I give you exibit a and b

a) Ben's walker/entertainment center. This swivel walker thing had mirros, and twisty things and a noise maker and a song machine and stuffed animals and bright colors and really anything a child could want to distract them from the world. mind you he is 5 months old. What is all of this stimulation going to do do the poor boy's imagination?

b) his jungle mat, thing. It was made to look like a baby is lying in a junge with hanging animals and mirrors again, squeezy toys, lights, and twirling butterflies. It was excess at it's best and it made me tired just lookind at all of it. excess people, excess.

but overall i did like some of ben's toys, my favorite being this wierd sea creature named "captain uniqua."

Captain uniqua is from some nickalodeon show, and she's called uniqua because she is unlike any other creature in the world. Dont' you love teh subtle acculturation into the American way of being? i do! so this captain Uniqua was a one eyed pirate and she would sing these ska/reggae songs about pirates and treasures. By the end of the day i was singing them to ben and he was laughing and laughing. I decided to take a clip of uniqua's awesome songs, but sadly my dinasaur camera can only take 5 second clips....

so basically watch the first 2 consecutively and then i will write teh lyrics later.

so this first song goes:
"If you wanna be a pirate be up on your feet
you can't be a pirate if you're sittin in your seat
throw your hands up, and stand kind of bow
and make this noise wherever you go
argh argh ARGH!
a pirate, a pirate, a pirate says
ARGH!!"

The second song she sings is all about like treasure and finding treasure and she does this awesome falsetto. Anyways she said other phrases liek "let's walk the plank" and stuff like that and was generally awesome. I kind of want a captain uniqua.

So i leave you with this last image of Ben and I, relaxing 3 bottles, 2 poops, and 3 naps later. Proving once again that i might never want my own children, but i dont' mind spending a day with other people's really cool ones.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Oscar night! i'm really glad i got to be home to watch the oscars with my parents. my mom and i like to just wear pijamas all day, get some kind of take out (in n out in this case) and just watch tv all day. how much this differs from our usual weekend activities is very slim but not the point.

i'm in a real Journey mood. I've been listening to Open Arms for no reason other than i just love the sound of Steve Perry's voice. Normally i would say "is that wrong?" but i knwo for a fact it is wrong so i will avoid the question altogether.

I'm gonna go babysit tomorrow. woo babies! but yes, a great week of suburban madness. bar "hipping" in hermosa which was truly dreadful as would be expected, and then 5 hours of awesome fishing. who knew fishing was so much fun. pictures to come at some point when bobby emails me.

yeah i really have nothing to say other than, i relaly didn't like gweneth's dress on her, and her hair was like marcia brady, which is not a complement.

Friday, February 23, 2007

liek Papi like daughter

holy shit i just finished a fucking 25 page paper and it is detailed like WHAT!! it's a draft so i'm sure it will be torn apart and whatevs but the poitn is i'm done. Too bad i missed teh mall and all that good stuff. I really have to shower because i realized that i have not showered in 4 days. I don't know what is more gross, the fact that i havent' showered, or the fact that i had to "realize" it. who am i??? I also have a giant pimple on the side of my mouth that looks like a cold sore but IT'S NOT! I SWEAR!! and everytime i see someone i want to say "i don't have herpes!! i have a blemish!"

Anywyaas i locked myself in my dad's office since 7 this morning writing this paper because it was the only part of my sunny house that semi reminded me of my basement in ann arbor. Isn't it strange how i came ot LA to escape and yet i spent my first day here in a michiganesque type room?? i find it odd. Anyways i realized something. I take after my dad alot in many diferent ways, but more importnatly we have a really similar aesthetic. this is not to say that either of us have particularly good taste but we both liek really wierd things that have special significane to us, like my coconut heads. basically we collect crap, is what i'm saying. His office is pretty neat and he has lots of wierd paraphenalia on the wall like machetes, marathon medals that he won, mexican art, lots of tequila on a shelf, and a wierd don quijote painting. He has this obsession with don quijote, and i'm not really sure why but i think it's part of what makes my dad cool to me, that he has a 3rd grade education but has read don quijote in 2 languages.

so as i was sayiing this painting is cool.

I do'nt knwo where my parents bought it or at what point my mom kicked it out of the mian part of the house and relegated it to my dad's office but the story goes that when you get really drunk (or high as was the case of my parents in the 70's) don quijote starts to look like he's running toward you and you are in hell. One of my cousins tried to get my dad to give him the painting for his house and i was liek "what the fuck!! giving away my stuff! no dude that is my painting!" the goal is to someday put that painting in my office when i get older. I know it kind of looks liek an eyesore but i feel liek you have to see it in person and know my dad to see how cool it is. maybe it's just me.

But the fact that we both like crap is not the main reason that i think we are similar. I went to use his desk and it was basically covered in crap (paper, receipts, old mail, calendars and day planners tha thave never been used, organization boxes that are unused). As it were it turns out my father in all his order is just as big a mess as me, which is nice to know. but what i think is strange is that his desk looked exactly like my desk, exactly! and he leaves wierd notes to himself that i can't read and that i'm sure he never looks at. So the odd thing is that i didnt' really spend that much time with my dad growing up since he worked alot, so these habits and ways of living my life are kind of more nature rather than nurture because this is so very not my mom. So i find it odd that the person i am most like is the person i spent the least amoutn of time with. We both have minor cases of OCD, we are both control freaks and get really stressed when things dont' go our way, we are both messy but anal, we both hate feet. the list goes on.

so anywyas i'm gonna go shower now, and wash the caked dirt from my body. nastiness.

but here is a little something for you all to read.

"uncle bernie"

he looks really old in that picture...and really mexican. In fact that picture of the wall in his office and teh bright reds and orages make it look like i live in chuntarro city.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

LA!!!

I am going to LA in 2 days and i am SO EXCITED!! I have these moments when i'm really tired and i have lots of stuff to do and all i want to do is take a shower and as i'm letting the water run down me i start to think "i just want my papi to take care of me." It's this wierd missing of my parents that's unlike anything i can explain. Like there are times when i just want someone to take care of my food and buy me toilet paper when i run out and get me medicine when i'm sick and do my laundry and all this stuff that takes so much time. I guess i just don't want to be an adult.

....but i digress. LA! it's my spring break, which is odd because usually spring break happens during the spring...So David's coming down and Bobby is gonna be in town and it is gonna be such good times. Here is the itinerary. We're gonna shop, visit little saigon, hit up my old high school hang outs (hermosa peir!!), skiffing and fishing in orange county, and dinner at a churascarria. mmmm beef. The theme is "the suburbs, this is my life: a looking glass into the life and times of Cathy."

so for now i count the hours, and do research. but tonight i took the night off. I had a nap at 8 (i know, who am i?) and for now i've been lying in bed watching ltos of TV like Dance Life and "engaged and underaged." Ever watched this show? It's peopel who are under 21 and getting married. Ok seriously this show is like watching a train wreck, you just have to keep watching! first off people get married for the dumbest reasons. secondly sad to say that most of these people will stay married in disfunctional relationships probably forever, which i don't know how i feel about that. But this show continues to make me fear not the thought of marriage but more the thought of a wedding. Weddings really freak me out. It's like a combination of everything i hate: flowers, white, long dresses that make short people look stumpy, hair spray, makeup, chicken cordonbleu, cake, diamonds. These are things that i could do without and yet these are traditional wedding fare. And i don't even like cake!! For me i just want to be in a photogenic catholic church, and then have a big party afterwards with no food, just liquor and good dancing and friends. But all that bridezilla stuff, and the year of preparation, and going into dept, like it's all too much. I remember my cousin's wedding was so stressful and the whole time she was really upset because things weren't perfect, and it was relaly nice! So anyways i dont' know what i'm talking about but i'm off to watch more disfunctional relationships on "the real housewives of orange county." Jo!! just break up with Slade already!!

Thursday, December 28, 2006

"i'll be tasty tasty!"

wow the other night was HELLA good times, proving once again that if you put me, ivan, and cathy (and obvi bobby, but he was not present) in the middle of nowhere we will have good times. A while back we were trying to think of places to go and cathy and i thought it would be funny if we went to the south like to colonial williamsburg or something just to prove that we can in fact have a good time. The reason i mentioned colonial williamsburg was that in that movie "shag" the girls don't want ot go there, they want to go to the beach to meet boys and dance the shag. this leads me to believe that it must be a pretty dullsville location

aaaaaanyways point being, we had fun. we went to dave and busters. for those not in the know this is grown up chucky cheese with a bar. I personaly don't care that much for video games because i'm not good at them and stuff, but when i heard half off all drinks after 10 i was like...yes, i will drink with you. so i will list off to you in bullet points highlights of the night.

- driving to The Block in cathy's kia sssssssspectra drunk and belig (not cathy, but the rest of us) singing fergalicioussssss. Ivan kept singing in falsetto "i'll be tassssty tasssssty" on repeat

- cathy continually telling us all night "this is my life! suburban LA! this is my life"

- realizing that while teh block used to be kind of cool it's now super ghetto.

- everyone talking with lisssssps all night long until finally i was liek "do you guys know that when you elongate your ssssss's you are mocking me." some people didn't know. It was like the etimology of the lisssssssssp. then cathy alluded to the story of when i first found out that i had a lisp. senior year, knott's scary farm. I girl i didn't really know from my clas said "you know, you have a really cute lisp." she may or may not have been a lessssbian hitting on me. Well i was like "i don't have a lisp??? ryan do i have a lisp? margaret do i have a lisp?" everyone was liek "yeah we thought you knew." People i had known like all my life! and then i asked my mom and she said she was going to send me to speech therapy but the doctor said it wasn't that bad. eeemagine!! learning all of this at the age of 18!! needless to say i have never quite recovered.

- yelling beligerantly at our waitor gustavo. "where the HELL is guuuustavo!! i need my gimlet! gustavo!" gustavo was actually right behind me and i felt really bad so i left hiim an extra dollar.

- attempting to take pictures of ivan only to prove the point once again that ivan is the most unphotogenic person ever. i tried different angles but alas. he kept yelling "you knwo i hate my profile!!!"

GAY!!!

- paloma continuing to my chagrin to use that damn aZian peace sign. Paloma! you are not in china right now! you are mexican! please stop!

i proceeded to tell paloma the story of how the azian peace sign came to be. I cant' remember who told me this but it was a realiable source, and i may have written about this before so just bare with me. so back in the late 80's early 90's all of hhhhhapan and asian was obsessed wit hello kitty. And so girls would do the 2 fingers on both cheeks to represent kitty whiskers. Well this got shorted to one hang holding up 2 fingers to represent whiskers. now everyone thinks it's a peace sign or "v for victory" when in fact it might all just be about the love of hello kitty.

herrro kitty!!

- heckling a group of white kids at the trivia game and then kicking their asses and forcing them to leave. this game was awesome! it had a big trivia board and a wheel o topics, all automated. And had like 6 seats whch 3 buttons on them (a,b,c) and when the question was asked whoever hit the right answer first got points. so you got points for correct answers but also for speed. the top winner got up to 190 tickets, while 2nd and 3rd place got like 60 tickets. this was a really good game for winning tickets. Anyways we heckled these people, made them lose, took all the tickets, and they walked away. team mejjjico and indochin lives long!

- noticing a girl walking around with a hello kitty backpack and thinking..."um really a hello kitty backpack?"

- realizing she had won the backpack and dave and busters and at that moment deciding that i had to win that backpack so that next year my halloween costume can be a harajuku love child. eeemagine!

- returning to the trivia game to find it full of asians and one black couple. it was at that moment that cathy and i realized....this was racial survivor. the light skinnded asians vs. the messicans and dark skinned asians. it was ON!!!

right next to us was Hai, some kid that paloma knew from u penn. He too was vietnamese. we had an alliance with him. brown power!! I believe the question we are trying ot answer was a sports question. the sports ones were our waterloo, and those damn white asians were sooo good at them!! i feel bad cuz the black team didn't win at all. the only answer they got was one about outkast. v. sad. at one point i was liek "cathy they are from uc irvine!! come on cathy! we went to private school!" so since hai had also gone to private school we were fighting for all of our kind. turned out they went to ucla...not so big difference. anyways we fought like warriors but in the end we really only made it up to like 2nd place and they kept mocking us. I had to plea to them "guys! can you just let us win! All we want is to get enough tickets to buy a hello kitty backpack!" then they were like "where did you guys go" and i yelled "stanford bitch!!" and he was liek "we kicked your asses at football. to which cathy responded. "football! football! who gives a shit about football! we win in the game of LIFE!!" oh snap!! Finally in my moment of true glory the subject was tv and films, the question was "who plays peyton on the show 'one tree hill.'" I COULD DO THIS!!! i totally knew the answer because, yes, i watch one tree hill!! finally my love of bad tv was paying off!! i was the only person to get that answer and in the end it won us the game. Racial survivor!!! Mexicans/vietnamese reign supreme (for one round at least)!

- we combined our tickets and realized that we had 5000 tickets. eeemagine!! it was at that moment in the gift shop where it hit us. We coudl buy not one, but TWO hello kitty backpacks! in the end amanda wanted some lame speakers for her birthday but i did get a hello kitty backpakc in the ultimate moment or irony.

ivan and i posing with our hello kitty backpackssssss. i know you're jealoussss

"why hello babar!" "why hello zebra!" ivan ended up getting the stupid babar elephant. "why helooooooooo!!"
ivan amongst the stuffed amminals

"dah!"

heeeeeey! we also got a gay care bare! yay rainbow homo bear stare!!! as we walked by the asian guys who had kicked our asses cathy started yelling "i know you're jealousssss of my hello kitty backpack!!!" I love vince's face in this picture. He truly looks like a harajuku.

then we drove to cathy's friend, amanda's house and on the way there we had this awesome convo that went like this
vince: "i have to pee!!!"
cathy: "just go!"
me: "vince just go!
cathy: "just go"
me: "fergie did it! it's ok"
ivan: "i'll be tasty taaaassssty!!"
all of us "haha you are stupid!! haha!"

then at amanda's house she wooed us with her lessssssbian vagina whaling strummy la la music.

paloma sang us "wiiiilld horsssses, couldn't drag me away" and we had a lesssbian orgie. juuuuust kidding! no but it was all hot. especially as that mexi melt was coming back up in the form of heartburn. overall a great night. truly good times to be remembered.

in other news david called me a few days ago with his usual greeting
"i have good news and badnews"
my response is always "bad news first"
the bad news was, that he had gone to the scottsdale mall to check out all the stores that i frequent and he concluded "you have REALLY expensive taste!" He went into burberry and thought he'd get me a scarf only to realize how much they cost. Then he said he went into louis vuitton which he thought would be cheaper. nope in fact it was more expensive. In the end who knows what he got me, but after discussing it with grace we realized that we are not very good at manipulatin gour men to get us things that we want. i do'nt do the whole "let's go shopping os i can show you things that i like and hint to you htat i want them so that you can buy them for me later and then manipulate you and then you can 'surprise' me with something i told you i wanted." fuck that! i usually see what i like...weigh the cost and in the end say i'll just buy it for myself. this is also why i don't really like shopping wiht peope. i don't like them ot see how much money i spend on my thingsssss. perhap sthis is why men have never given me good gifts. to me a good gift is something that someone never knew they wanted or needed but once they get it, they are ever grateful. best gift ever, when jorge gave me a tivo. hands down! hands down!!

so on that note i got david what i think are awesome gifts. A 6 month subscription to the economist because everytime we go to a bookstore he likes ot read it but says it's too expensive for him ot purchase himself. I also got him the equivalent of "now that's music" in spanish because he's always asking me about spanish songs he hears on the radio and i do'nt have spanish radio so i don't know and his spanish is realy bad so i can't understand him. so hopefully this CD has all the songs he likes. and then i'm thinking i might get him a little something else, not sure what. In the end i'm pretty sure my gift will be better than his to me, but i admit, i'm really hard to shop for so it's not for a lack of his trying. and he does nice things for me all the time liek taking me out to nice restaurants and listening ot me when i'm upset and stressed (sometimes) and so in the end some stupid gift one day a year does not equate to all the nice stuff he does for me throughout the year.

Saturday, December 23, 2006

bebeeeeeesss

babies babies babies!! let me preface this with, i don't think i want any babies. they are so damn time consuming. like they suck away your life! that being said i like other people's kids for 10 minute periods at a time. oh and i also relaly like 3 and 4 year olds.

ALESSANDRO! Ok this baby has a certain charm to him. He's not traditional looking but something about his mini fro is just so cute

plus i particularly like his velour track suit. he looks like a little goodfella.

now for ben who made tamales with us last night

i really have to tell you, that you have to see him in person cuz these pictures do not do him justice. he is soooo cute. but whenever the flash flashed him his face went wierd.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

the most wonderful time OF THE YEAR!!

Christmas time is here....la la la la.

yes my friends, it is that glorious time of year when poor only children whose stipends have run out come home and are showered with gifts from their parents. It's christmas time!! ok not showerd but i usually get one really good thing. Most families do the whole christmas morning wrapped presents tradition. My mom at some point in her attempt to "simplify" her life decided she wasn't going to wrap presents or ask for any gifts. But she still wnated to buy other people stuff so she decided that instead of buying them things they might not like she'd set aside time ot take people she cared, namely my father, me and my cousin jenny, to the mall. Shopping at the mall with my mom is always a good time. Our christmas tradition as of a few years back consists of us driving out to the south coast plaza, walking around to all the different stores, picking things that we like and then waiting for my mom to say "i will sponsor (fill in a certain percentage) of that (fill in bag, shoe, jeans, whatever)." This year was no exception as i finally got what i have been covetting since my time abroad in italy. yes, my friends, I HAVE FINALLY MADE IT!! I am the proud owner of a gucci purse! gahhhhh i love it! it's so pretty! guys guys, you can take the girl out of the materialistic enviornment and stick her in the midwest, but you can't take the materialism out of the girl....or something. Basically, what i'm saying is, i'm a materialistic whore. judge me!

so i know it's not christmas yet but here are my gifts.

gift 1: from my papi
my dad got my grandma's ruby ring reset. It had fallen out of it's setting a few years ago and we just never got around to doing it. It's the only real thing of value that my grandma had so i actually really love it for sentimental reasons even though it's kind of big and borders a bit on gaudy.

gift 2: from myself and my mom
a jade necklace that was 65% off at macy's. 65%!!! It's a square and has some kind of stone in the center and i think it's cool

gift 3: to myself
Headbands...i've decided i'm getting back into them. i used to wear headbands all the time when i was younger but i think i associate them with catholic school uniforms so i never wear them anymore. well i'm bringing back the headband to my life! HEADBANDS!
PS also on sale at jcrew

gift 4: to myself
a burberry scarf to replace the one i lost. uughh i still can't believe that scarf got lost somewhere in my move. Anyways i got the original print only a little modernized. I had to get it because my dad gave me the old one and he doesn't know that i lost it so my mom and i thought we should make a quick switcheroo

gift 5: from mom
and now for the big guns, the big gift of the year. Last year it was a watch (much appreciated). this year it's "the bag. " in honor of the biggness of "the bag" and the fact that i never get to open up gifts i decided to have the ladies at gucci wrap "the bag" up and i'd document opening it up for you all.
the bag. gucci wraps this shit up so nice!!

the box
in the bag

the tissue paper
in the box
in the bag

ISN'T THIS FUN!!!!!! I'M HAVING SO MUCH FUN!!!

the protective bag
in the tissue paper
in the box
in the bag

and finally without further ado

THE BAG!!!

CLOSE UP!!

Ivan, did you just die? Cathy, are you judging me? Bobby, are you clapping and yelling "gay!!!" Orges, are you thrwoing things and screaming at the disgustingness of capitolism???

My dad was liek "what are you doing??" and i was like...taking pictures of my excess. he took the camera and started taking of action shots.

EXCESS in motion

SEXY EXCESS

and now, at the behest of my papi I include his own personal christmas miracle. My father came to this country 38 years ago with nothing but a pair of corduroy, a white hanes t shirt, and converse all stars. He has made a name for himself in rough world of roach coaches, he has travelled the world, but all he has ever wanted is to buy a rolex. When we got DSL 2 years ago he would come home everyday, go on ebay or wahtever and look at rolexes to pick out the exact one he wanted. But there was always an excuse. "oh it's too gold." "oh it's too sporty." "what would i do with a rolex?" etc. Finally about a year ago he went into a jewler ready to buy it, tried the one he wanted on, took out his hard earned money, and as he was about to pay he realized it was not the watch he wanted but the idea of the watch. The idea of that watch had motivated him all these years and he realized he didn't really want the watch. The watch was just an excuse, something to remind him what he was working for. In the end he opted against purchasing it. Ever since then my mom and i have had to suffer through his pros and con lists for why he should or shouldn't buy the watch. Everytime we'd go into a mall we'd have to go to every watch store, watch him try it on, and then say "no no nevermind. i don't want it." Finally a month ago we both told him, that we would not go into any more jewlery stores wtih him unless he was going to buy the damn thing.

Well recently my dad sold his old lunch truck. Something about that sale made him feel nostalgic. His old truck had been with him for 36 years. It had put me through college, paid for all of our good times. he wanted to commemorate that truck wiht something tangible. he wanted something that everytime he looked at it he would remember all the hard work he had done. my mom and i were liek "rolex!! rolex!! rolex!!" So last saturday my father became the proud owner of a rolex. not too sporty, not too fancy. Like goldylocks, it was juuuuust right. And so i present to you our family of swiss watches. my papi's rolex, my mom's omega, and my movado.

Before you go and judge, just remember that each watch represents something for my dad. A goal achieved, 70 hour work weeks, etc etc. They were given with love and we know it and appreciate it, and never let him forget how much we appreciate him and all that he does for us. Cheers to my family and to my dad! May all of your famlies be blessed in ways that go beyond just the material...but the material is always nice. And as a wisewoman once said "we are living in a material world, and i am a material girl."

Friday, December 15, 2006

babies!

My nephews!!! Benny and Alessandro. aren't they cute??!! OH man i can't wait to see them at christmas

Sunday, November 19, 2006

So I'm in LA which is like 80 degrees or so. David came up last weekend and we had good times. Things i have learned about myself. I've changed. I like football, or rather i like winning. Fuck Notre Dame! fuck USC! Especially fuck notre dame! My mom and i spent last Friday visiting Benny and baby sitting him for a few hours. Isn't he cute

All he did was cry so that was kind of lame but he's still super cute. I can't until he does stuff. Then David came into town and we watched the big game on Saturday. I got to show him all the cool spots of LA like the Redondo pier and the AMC 20 on Crenshaw. More importantly we drove to the grove and saw the American Girls store. Now I never actually had an American Girl doll because my mom thought they were silly and overpriced and i must say it has been something that has haunted me for life. David's sister on the other hand did have an American Girls doll and he confessed that he kind of secretly wanted one when he was really little because he loves historical fiction. This store was crazy. It had a hair salon for you to take your doll so that her tangles could get brushed out for the low low price of 20 bucks. It also had a hospital where you could take your doll to get broken arms and hair to get fixed. It was surreal and there were all of these little blond girls walking out wiht bags of doll clothes and dolls and accessories and i felt supremely jealous.
Then we went to watch the planes take off from LAX which led to some awkward encounters as we soon realized that we were actually at the local make out point. We were the only nerds not making out because we were actually watching the planes take off. Being the loser that I was growing up I had never actually been to a make out point so i never realized how gross they were. There were all of these SUV's and people would randomly get out of them, watch the planes, get back in them, fog up the windows, etc etc. It was gross.

Aaaaanyways a short list in no apparent order of the awesome (read kind of lame) things that i have done while in LA

- seen lots of movies: Marie Antoinette (knew it was gonna be bad but mom recommended it for the sake of watching the "excess."), Casino Royale (seriously this movie was the dick! it was really good), The Departed (really really good. I am oddly reattracted to leonardo dicaprio after all these years. The one man where i say "yes, keep the facial hair!")

- reminsced about 90210 with cathy because this show was seriously good

- sent myself into even more debt by purchased 90210 season1 on DVD which was completely worth it.

- got hella drunk with casey and emily and watched said 90210 DVD only to note that the OC is so very not original and totally jacked entire scenes from this awesome show

- drove my mom's BMW, so choice

- drank and watched Tokyo Drift. I will admit something, i secretly love the Fast and the Furious franchise of films. I also secretly love japan and want to be a harajuku girl.

- discovered the glory of stuffing. how is it so good!

- watched entire first season of "how i met your mother" because, i'm not gonna lie, this show is pretty good. It's like friends during it's glory days (don't act liek you didnt' watch friends and like it. we ALL watched friends). Also felt really old when casey, emily, and I did the math and realized that on season 1 of friends they were 23 years old. younger than us! ugh so disturbing.

I have nothing really to say. I am feeling nostalgic for my post college angst years so i'm watching "kicking and screaming." Favorite line of post college nostalgia flick (a genre that emily and I coined after watching this, "reality bites" and "st. elmos fire"). The character just graduated from college and teh night of his graduation begins to ponder what he is going to do with his life.

"you know, what I used to be able to pass off as a bad summer could not potentially be a bad...life."

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