guys it's the end of an era. remember those college days of yore (more yore for some of us) when you'd sit in the room of the only person in your dorm with a TV and cable (usually me) and you'd drink or smoke pot or just drink water from your oh so excessively large nalgene water bottle and you'd watch elimidate. And the big question was always....where do these people come from! Well sad news to deliver. elimidate has been cancelled along with blind date. It's true, we are officially old. I mean granted i haven't actually watched elimidate since i was a senior but just knowing that it was out there was enough for me.

Let's just have a moment of silence for all of the random hook ups that will never happen because elimidate has ended. thanks for the tip ramit.

target meets asia

Ok i just road my bike down to target for no apparent reason other than boredom. Oh and i wanted to check out the SWEET bike accessories that they have so that i can pimp my bike up like the baller that i am. but v. strange, target is apparently doing a whole asian motif thing since they have chinese terra cotta soldiers you can buy to put in your garden like the kind they have at pf chang or let's say china. Anyways v. strange and then i walk in and they have clothes for dogs and one outfit was this chinese themed outfit that had a very "dericate rittle frower" thing going on. Anyways i mean really target, fake terra cotta soldiers? Anyways they also had this awesome foldable floor rocking chair that i really wanted since i sit on the floor alot to watch tv and read. I was thinking that i could totes just throw it on my back and ride home like that but ha, that would have been really stupid, so i'll just get cathy to take me tomorrow to get it when she picks me up. I hope they still have them.

a day in the life

so i just wanted to give you guys a little glimpse into a day in my life and cathy's life. i include cathy mainly because she is at work really bored and i am at home really bored so we talk online all day. And sometimes we get into fights because i want to leave the house but she doesnt' want me to leave her on the internet alone and i argue with her that it's different when she who is at a desk getting paid spends 8 hours a day online, vs me who is not getting paid but is just wasting my days off spends all day on the internet with her. are you seeing my point of view?

Anyways the fabulous bobby was supposed to come and visit us this weekend but is disposed and will nto be making it. truly tragic since we had made a really intensely planned itinerary which included partying with unemployed losers in the afternoon on hermosa beach, going to a matinee to see "step up," eating vietnamese sangwiches (apparently these are different from normal sangwhiches) and basically doing all the things that people do who live in the suburbs of LA. We even had costumes that were purchased at pac sunwear. so sad.

Anyways cathy and i were just having this really deep discussion that i'd like to propose to you all. Ok so i cant' really go into detail about how this topic came up but basically we were discussing how we can't understand how ugly people mate. I kind of think that there is an objective attractive and an objective ugly, therefore how can somoene who is objectively ugly get it up for someone who is also objectively ugly. Or in some cases how can someone who is objectively attractive get it up for someone who is objectively ugly. cathy's response

cathy: (10:37:55 AM): cuz ugly is ugly
cathy: (10:37:59 AM): it don't matter who thinks so
cathy: (10:38:04 AM): let's go to vegas

I have no real idea where that last part came from but it's true, ugly is ugly. but it happens as i found out this morning from an old friend so i guess love really does find a way.

Anyways another topic we were discussing was paris hilton and how much i hate her and how much cathy idolizes her. Cathy claims that if she were young and fabulous and ridiculously wealthy she too would just spend all her time partying and drinking and throwing events and going to vegas and traveling the world in her private jet. So basically she thinks that she can understand paris hilton's POV. I kind of agree but i also just kind of hate how the media is obsessed with her because i thnk she's kind of just a giant wste of space and should not be famous just for the sake of being famous. And it just goes to show how americans love to reward mediocrity which is what i've learned from reading about celebrity gossip and watching enough american idol. And it's just really annoying. but maybe i'm just jealous because i can't go to st. tropez and party with puff daddy. And then cathy said "i mean she is cutting a record" which then brought me back to the reality that i still really hate paris and even though that song is kind of catchy i refuse to listen to it or buy it on itunes because it SOUNDS JUST LIKE "THE TIDE IS HIGH" MIXED WITH GWEN STEFANI "UNDERNEATH IT ALL"!! does anyone else see that too or is it just me! ugh just, i'm done with you paris. I guess the point is that while i do appreciate her lifestyle i do not aprecccccccciate her. are you seeing my POV?

so anyways the plan for the weekend since big b is out is that tomorrow we are going to do what we have been trying to plan all summer: staying home and watching as many movies with dance off end sequences as we can. I LOVE dance off end sequences! can they win! can they go to nationals! can they make it as regulars on D TV!! but actually the real quesiton is, can they find love????

So i leave you with this imagine. hey it's paris and my BFF pauly shore!!

LA by bike

my readers I must share with you the most spiritually cleansing twin peaks experience i have ever had in my life. I went to drop off my car so that it could be shipped to michigan. I didn't have anyone to drive me home since everyone is at work so i was planning on getting in touch with my fellow angelinos by taking the bus. I know right! the bus in la! anyways turns out no bus would get me from this place to my house so i had this brilliant idea to ride my bike. I mean let's forget the fact that oh i don't know, i am really out of shape, i can barely run for 2 minutes straight before i have to start walking. And let's just ignore the fact that i haven't ridden a bike since like freshman year of college. To me this was more of a challenge than anything. could i do it? i figured the ride was about 5 miles give or take. I didn't really know how long it would take me but i knew that i would just keep riding until i hit my house no matter what it took. Holy fuck it was the most intense experience of my life! it was 5.6 miles of biking through the ghetto of carson into the harbor gateway. There were pot holes, dirt roads, poorly paved roads, i had to ride over the 110 freeway at one point. I definitely thought i was going to die more than once. I even got caught in a net of some sort. It was....yeah. Cathy said that riding my bike through LA meant "You officially earned your badge as a Mexican. Like you probably got a shade or two darker." and i agree since the only other people riding their bikes right now were my fellow mechicanos on their way to some job i'm sure. I think i definitely felt an endorphin kick in there. I even had to put air in my tires cuz all the backroading i was doing flattened my back tire. it was that INTENSE!!! also i'd like to send some positive energy to the am/pm gas attendant who didn't make me pay for air even though "by law you have to buy gas in order to get air." i was like "um...i'm on a bike so i don't really need gas." Thank you my friend. I shall pay it forward someday.

So my recommendation to you, people, ride a bike someday to some destination you'd normally drive to. Perhaps it will change your view on life too. i guess i'll be doing a few more of these bike rides since i am without car for the next couple of weeks. It will be like high school again only in high school i had a car. so basically it will suck. Maybe i can ask my friends to drop me off at parties and the mall and the local amc 20 and stuff.

Quinceneras and other topics on my mind

so i'm talking to cathy right now and it's really tragic because she only has the intRanet at work, or like some really toned down version of the internet where she can can only use aim express and gmail but no perez or anything. tre tragique! she can't even google chat. it's really bad. aaaaaanyways...

so last night my mom and i drove out to irvine to see the much talked about independent film "quincenera." this is not to be confused with the really horribly cheesy 90's movie "quince." Anyways we always are up for supporting our latino peeps in the movie industry and this movie was actually pretty cute and REALLY quite realistic. All the kids really looked like they would be messican kids from echo park. it was real deep. FYI Quinces are big gigantic coming out parties that latin people throw when a girl turns 15 because this symbolizes her ascent into womanhood. There is all this shit that goes along with it like she has to pick anywhere from 1 to 15 men and women to be in court and they are called damas and chambelanes and then they all choreograph this really cheesy waltz which we pronouce "valz" and there is mariachi and cheesy pink roses and a big ugly white dress and it's all kind of a mess if done the wrong way. Anyways i didn't do a formal quince i just had a big 15th birthday and got a car. honestly though it would have cost as much as a car. the way that people offset the cost is by getting random people in the family to sponsor something and they are called the padrino of this and that so you have the padrino of the limo and the padrino of the cake and the padrino of the banquet hall and it's all a big community event only growing up i had no mexican community so the whole padrino thing wouldn't have really worked for me. Anyway this is kind of what it ends up looking like...
Anyways this is in no way what i was planning on talking about today since i had something else pressing on my mind, namely how i noticed that i talk in wierd code that i started using as a joke but now i can't really remember what the real worlds were. like how i call sandwhiches "sangwhiches." And yesterday i was out and i saw a place that sold "sandwhiches" and i thought "that's wierd they spelled it wrong. don't they mean they sell sangwhiches?" and then i was reminiscing about being in vegas and how i always refer to the burberry coast which is actually called the "barbary coast" and the thing is that when i think about what it's really called i have to really think hard because i can't remember because the only think that goes through my head when i think about it is "burberry coast." Anyways there are lots of other things like craycray, and totes, and ridic, and eemagine that i won't go into detail about but i'd just liek to apologize for not always making sense.

viva las vegas etc etc and so forth

So i just spent the last hour attempting to revamp my my space layout. I really have no idea why i waste so much time on this goddamn website. i absolutely loath it but part of me wants something spunky and reflective of my personality as my background. What says cool yet apathetic? I too can't find anything. Not to mention the fact that all of these editors i tried were not working out the way i had hoped. Anyways if anyone has a suggestion for how to get a cool background image while still having my typed stuff be visible please comment and let me know.
Otherwise onto possibly less intersting but more pressing matters...Namely vegas. Oh vegas. Vegas is like that disease infested whore who keeps calling my name and everytime i go i say i will never go again and yet she traps me in her chlamydic grasp and i just can't control myself. so anyways here was a breakdown of my weekend

Friday
So anyways after a pseudo blow out with my parents regarding my independence, i lost the battle and ended up flying to vegas on an all expense Papi paid trip. The flight there was kind of scary because 30 minutes before we were supposed to land the plane started dropping altitude really quickly and suddenly started getting all shaky and turning in crazy direction and at one point i looked out the window and could see the moon (even though it was still light out) and i thought "is this going to be the last thing i see before i die? Flying does this to me. Ever since i was set to fly out of DC on sept 11th 2001 i have been a wreck on flights. Anyways we landed 5 minute later in a flurry a whole 20 minutes before scheduled. I still think something was really fishy because the attendants were frantically running to their seats liek they didn't think we were gonna make it. Anyways i made it there safe and alive and headed to the strip on a shuttle. of course no one was going to caesar's but everyone was going ot the gross part of the strip: ie excalibur, luxor, mgm grant, etc. Here was a notes that i wrote to myself.

"saw the moon during my landing, scary, lots of unsavery people headed to the golden nugget. not a surprise."
"loud southern woman behind sounds like weeza (sp?) from "steel magnolias." Staying at Flaming O. Sounds like Paula Deen. she is asking her husband what hotel has a pyramid as we are parked in front of the luxor. Apparently she does not notice the GIANT pyramid shaped hotel that we are in front of. "

So i made it to the hotel and the weekend of couply vegas began. vegas was not as ridic as usual but i was still drunk 95% of the time and i ate alot. What was lacking though was the vomitting, the strippers, the steaks, the gambling at 3 am, the listening to "purple rain" on repeat for 3 hours while lying in our underwear, the DS's, my captain's hat, "i salute you". Anyways i was expecting caesar's to be classy, you know some nice tile and maybe a little bit of gold inlay. I mean it is roman so i expected some gold. what we got were mirrors everywhere, a giant hot tub in the center, yes center, of our room. A ceiling mirror with spotlights so that you can see all of your imperfections. All in all though i think Mariah Carey would have termed it "demure." Who am i kidding, it was built to be a den of sin.

David headed out that night to hang with his friends for bachelor related things and i stayed in glad to see that nick at night was running a full house marathon. I gotta say i was shocked to see that i actually found the girls to be kind of, dare i say, cute...i can definitely see how people were enchanted by the olsen twins. good stuff! Even Jodie Sweaten was cute! Uncle joey was still really gross and i never noticed how hot uncle jesse was because i was pre adolescent but that whole "have mercy" bit made a lot more sense now. Anyways i woke up a few hours after passing out to find david stumbling in drunk, talking nonsense and "whispering" but in reality yelling sweet nothings into my ear. He was down 100.

Saturday
We were abruptly woken at 9:30 by the maid knocking on the door. Ok beef, what the fuck is up wiht vegas maids knocking on your door at 9:30 am! this is vegas! It's known for it's nightlife! this made no sense to me! Anyways we got up soon after and headed to paris for some early morning gambling and cocktails. this was the beginning of a theme for this trip: me trying to convince david that it took 30 minute to cross a street in vegas and david trying ot convince me that actually everything was really close. I still stand by my theory that since everything is huge in vegas you don't realize that one block is actually half a mile. Cathy and I found this out the hard way once when we left the boys at a gay club and headed to a hotel that was 3 hotels away. 2 miles later in heels we made it to the burberry coast for 3.99 eggs, bacon, toast, and hashbrowns. sustenance vegas style!

Anyways i digress...I was a little uneasy about drinking at 10:00 am but then after 3 drinks i realized that time doesn't matter in vegas. the morning vegas crows is mainly old asian women, ie cathy in 30 years. It was real interesting. David had made some money so we headed to bellagio for a nice romantic buffet. I was please to see that david is actually a really intense buffeter. Nothing worse then taking somoene to a buffet and seeing that they have no strategy whatsoever and fill up before they can even do a second and third round. poor form, poor form. David on the other hand had to take a 5 minute bathroom break to really think out his "game plan" as he put it. It was the most intense buffetting that i've seen since mr. bob deharo.

many hours later we decided to walk off our excess calories and headed into the forum shops. We talked about all the things that we could nto afford because he is a lowly med student and i am a soon to be lowly grad student. But david decided that when he becomes a world renowned rheumatologist and when i become a world renowned social educational psychologist/professor/consultant/whatever i become he is only dressing in hermes, ferragamo, and zegna, and i am draping myself in louis vuitton, burberry, and st. john. done and done.

We did alot more casual drinking, gambling, shot some craps and lost miserably. I stand by my theory that i am the worst person to gamble with because i have a perpetual auro of bad monetary luck surrounding me. case in point vegas 2006, Cathy lost $600 in 5 minutes with my egging on. It was the most tragic display of addiction mixed with my aforementioned bad luck that has been seen. It was bad. David's losses weren't as bad but they were relatively speaking equally painful. Anyways we went to margaritaville and i was remembering how with my friends we were so drunk we couldn't find margaritaville even though there is a giant sign that says "margaritaville." Anyways we met up with the Belt-one who happened to be in vegas too and attempted to do some clubbing but failed miserably as david and i quickly realized that we are kind of over clubbing. What can i say, i'm not paris hilton. So after a couple "i'm going to the bathroom, cristina"'s which relaly meant "i'm gonna sneak off and play some roulette" we called it a night.

sunday
we went to lunch at a really nice restaurant in the venetian and i decided that although it's not bellagio, the venetian is my favorite hotel. Hell i think it's even better than the real venice, no birds and all. Then we headed to the wedding. here are some key things i have to say about that.

the song the bride walked down the isle to was "wind beneath my wings." Also the wedding was not in a catholic church and i have always felt since childhood that weddings not in catholic churches always seem to be missing something. no lasso to bind the couple for life, no communion to symbolize the sacrament of marriage. it's all very strange to me and david agreed there was something missing. She had a beautiful dress but her shoulder tattoo was showing. guests were wearing cotton skirts and flats...cotton and flats! at a wedding! my abuelita would have rolled over in her grave! during the ceremony i started thinking about what i was going to say to the groom as i danced the dollar dance with him. then the ceremony was over and we headed to the dancehall for food and stuff. they did the first dance and then the father daughter dance and then we ate and something was missing. i discussed it with david and we realized that white peopel don't do the dollar dance. Only people from 3rd world countries do the dollar dance. Other things that white people don't do: take shots of tequila, have mariachi's, have their drunk uncle (usually my father) stand up and sing with said mariachi, have old ladies who dance merengue. It was all and all a big culture shock for the both of us and we decided that blacks and mexicans really make a wedding. I mean have you ever BEEN to a mexican wedding. We rock that shit until like 2am non stop like what! what they did have was a fully stocked open bar, and they played lots of good country music (i know, what?). I of course after a couple of cocktails was immediately drawn to the gay groomsman and the bitter chubby bridesmaid. I really felt bad for her so to make her feel better i played the part of patrick swayze and let her be Baby when they played "i've had the time of my life." she kept yelling "no one puts baby in the corner" and i was reiterating for her sake "no one!!" it was kind of tragic. But i have to say all pride and gloating aside, i looked objectively really good. i mean serioulsy we both looked really good. if david ever downloads the pics from his camera i will post them but serioulsy, best hair day of my life, great dress, great shoes, i sizzled like the "spicy latina" that david claims that i am.

well the wedding ended at about 7 and we headed to the airport to talk over our weekend and relive the good parts. Like how caesar's palace kept playing paula cole "where have all the cowboys gone" and i kept being swept back to being 15 with braces wondering really where HAD all the cowboys gone. Also we decided that after being forced to watch the celine dion "a new day" concert commercial on repeat in the hotel room we would definitely have to see her someday soon. There was all this dancing and costume changes and "my heart will go on" and honestly i think i know more celine music than i care to let on and i didn't even realize i was a fan until i felt this urge in me to tell david how he was my strength when i was weak and my voice when i couldnt' speak. I mean really how can you not be moved by celine. She's not quite a songsmith, but she's up there as far as cheese and awesomeness goes. anyways future goal, pay as much as i have to to see celine before she leaves vegas.

So like i said, this trip was alot more tamed although equally fun, just in a different way.

misty water colored memories...of the way we were

So i was having a big le sigh moment as i was organize all of my pictures of the last 4 years. Le Sigh indeed. I decided to share some of my favorite pictures with all of you.

Graduation 2004, or as i call it "the first time around." Some of my peeps decided to dress up in chicken suits and ride around on a tandem bike. Sadly the tandem bike fantasy was shattered when they were informed at the gate of the stadium that no bikes were aloud. sadness...
Anyways i came across this pic and thought, GENIUS! seriously though they were so hot inside of those suits because it was i think 100 that day and we sat in the sun as sandra day oconnor waxed lyrical on civil services or something.

My next memory involved Christmas 2004. Look closely and you can see the gigantic drink in one hand and a magic mic in the other. for those not in the know the magic mic is this totally awesome filipino microphone that you plug into your tv and it's a karaoke machine. Anyways at some point my cousin went to the filipines with her husband and they bought one and it has been a christmas tradition ever since.
Here my cousin Brett and I are doing our annual rendition of "a whole new world." I think i was bending my head because i was about to belt out "every moment red letter!!" As you can see alix is in the background texting away. Apparently we were not so entertaining as our one audience member is distracted. Oh i love the magic mic so much.

Another graduation memory only this time it was my master's graduation. we got these awesome hoods but we didnt' actually get to wear them so they just hung on our backs. Well i was like, fuck that and with my cousin nathan's nudging we figured since i was a master of psychology i should do the whole master jedi pose thing.
this was the result. sometimes i hate myself...

My view from my old SF apartment. Isn't it ridic!! Can you believe i lived with this as my background. Ugh the things i miss that i did not appreciate. such is life.

Another great SF "view." So note the run down building across the street from us that says "delicatessen: famous beef jerkey." Well the entire year that i lived there the iron gates in front of this so called "market" were eternally locked. sometimes ivan and i would be walking by and we'd see an old chinese lady at the check out counter counting what looked like dollar bills. Also the first day we moved there we went to get something that we needed and the market was empty and had like a few coke cans and rolls of toilet paper sparsely thrown about. it was really creepy. to make it even more shady sometimes we'd see people ring the doorbell in front of the gate, get let in, and then disappear. We decided that they were doing illegal people trading. Chinatown is a shady place.

I never really got to see pictures that david took of us in Arizona mainly because he didn't download them until last week. Note that we took this trip in april.
the glee in my face is due to the fact that i was really amazed that the cactus looked just like they do in cartoons. it was really wierd. saguaro cacti are some freaky shit. they are also gigantic. apparently it's illegal to shoot a saguaro cactus in the state of arizona. why this is a law i do not know. David explained that in arizona people like to get drunk and shoot things. Oh arizona, such a wierd place.

And i end with my favorite picture probably of life. The background story is that Cathy and Paloma had arrived in vegas the night before we did. Instead of resting up for our arrival Cathy decided that it was only appropriate to stay up all night drinking and gambling. apparently she passed out in the hallway of her hotel and someone called the paramedics because they thought she was dead. she woke up and informed them that she was merely passed out. If you've ever been to vegas with Cathy you know that this type of unsavery behavior is pretty standard. Anyways by the time we arrived she was a hot mess, still in her clubbing clothes from the night before. She passed out in the lobby of the tuscany suites hotel. the only problem was that we needed her signatur to check in and the woman would not budge. So we all had to hold her up on the couch as Ivan put a pen in her hand and forged her signature. A little boy walked by with his mother and said "mommy what is wrong with that lady?" People, I have said it before and I will say it again, this is why you don't take children to vegas!!
Anyways we then carried her to our room after the lady finally gave us our room key and threw her on the bed. she started throwing 5$ gambling chips all over us, $100 worth i think. we collected teh chips, took her cell phone and told her to stay put. she proceeded to pass out once more at which point we felt appropro to memorex the moment. Why i was wearing chanel sunglasses and a burberry scarf, i do not know. I would like to point out that these are the very same Chanel sungless of which Ramit Sethi will discuss in his upcoming book "i will teach you to be rich" in which I make my debut as "my friend who doesn't know how to budget within her means." Shout out to www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com, one of my 3 readers. holler! But in conclusion, this photo embodies vegas to me in a nutshell.

And there ends my trip down memory lane. i suggest you all go through your old pics and relive the memories. and if you find any pics with me in them please email them to me. Also if anyone has pictures from my birthday party this year, "Hot Professors and Slutty Students," please forward them on to me.

forgotten memories

do you ever have one of those moments where you are in it and you are saying to yourself "god i have to remember to tell my friends about this" and hten you get out of the moment and you forget to tell anybody and then suddenly weeks later (or 1 week later as is in my case) you see something that reminds you of the moment and you realize you didnt' tell anyone and you are like "shit i totes forgot to talk about that awesome moment!" anyways i'm havign that moment right now.

first off i can't believe europe was but a week ago, cuz it feels like months. this is just generally how my life is though. now onto the point, i am watching tv because the second episode of seasons V of cathy's bootleg vietnamese sopranos dvd's isn't t working so i am stuck and can't move forward with the series and consequently am looking for things to entertain me for the next 30 minutes as i contemplate a shower.

anyways tv guide channel, i see a commercial for that movie "8 below" with paul walker and it took me back to when i was on the plane on the way back from europe and i'm not gonna lie when this movie was out i kind of secretly wanted to go see it because i have a penchance for realllllly bad movies. well anyways on the way to europe i noticed that the movie schedule showed 8 below and "take the lead" (antonio banderas, mad hot ballroom with teenagers) as playing on my flight back and i'm not gonna lie this knowledge is kind of what kept me going because i reeeeally wanted to see these movies but couldn't rationalize actually renting them and having people know that i wanted to see them. so the flight back i was kind of stoked. actually i'm remembering now what happened was on teh way there 8 below ws supposed to be playing but the tape wasn't working so the channel was blank and i'm not gonna lie, i was a little disappointed.

so anyways dreams came true and i got to watch 8 below on my flight from zurich to dulles and it was AWESOME!! paul walker is a guide in antarctica and some scientists goes to the USA station in antarctica and wants to hire paul walker to take him to the top of some arctic peak to get a meteor peice of mars that has landed (this is all based on a true story! i know right!) and anyways paul walker takes his trusty 8 wolves and they have one of those sleds and it's all very white fang, another great movie. (SPOILER ALERT!!) The dogs are so cool and save lives and shit but in the end there is a big storm and all the humans have to fly out of the station but they don't have room for the 8 dogs and so they have to leave and promise to come back but they can't cuz winter in the arctic is a bitch and so they can't fly and paul walker is muy muy triste for like a year and decides to go back finally after getting funding and what do you know the dogs are alive!!! and the whole movie is partially paul walkers depressed life after leaving the dogs and the dogs surviving in the wilderness, a la "milo and otis" and it's so heartwarming.

I must explain though that i love wolves because my dog growing up was an american eskimo and so was part wolf and these animals touch me cuz my dog Q-tip Hernandez would not have let anyone hurt me ever and she was the best dog. and the whole story of how a little mexican girl at 7 ended up with pure bread American Eskimo for a dog is one for another day. it involved my dad's ghetto family stealing 2 pure breeds, mating them, and having lots of babies that they gave out to our huge mexican family. Yes, mexicans are sometimes ghetto. Anyways i'm not gonna lie, as i was watchign this movie and the dogs were all sad because paul walker left them i shed some tears. who are we kidding, i cried buckets! thank god the lights were off cuz i could hide them but it was too much for me.

i can't say the same for the emotions that "take the lead" evoked in me, which were none. it was basically sister act 2, with dancing instead of singing, and Yaya from ANTM was NO lauryn hill. But seriously, part of the problem was that the tape they were using was bad and the sound kept cutting out every 10 seconds so i missed part of the dialogue and this may be why i didn't really feel for the characters. I mean, also ever since antonio married melanie griffith i haven't really been able to take him seriously because melanie is so gross and old and nasty. ok sorry for that rant but i just want to say if you like animal movies and are home alone one night and want to give into your secret desires, rent "8 below."

fashion...why

a couple of comments on fashion and things that generally upset me. i understand that fashion is ciruclar and so it all repeats itself at some point or another but like look at these choose. i mean...really? i was reading vogue the other day and these are apparently the new it shoes of the season. is this the shoe that i should be purchasing for the fall season! i think not. they are...clunky and horrendous and a flashback to things that i might thave purchased in junior high at wet seal. and they look like a bad version of something my gradma would have worn when she was a flapper in the 20's if my grandma had lived in america or been a flapper or been born in the 20's for that matter.

this next shoe is like...well just look at it yourself.is this a shoe? it's like a loafer meets and heel meats a sandal? no, just...no. and then there is my all time favorite shoe, the clog. why god why! who said the clog was a good fashion choice. actually for that matter who said birkenstocks and teva's were fashionable and could be worn with skirts. but another digression for another time. i leave youwith this image for you to ponder.

Brit Brit...le sigh

ok ok seriously watch this please

http://www.thesuperficial.com/2006/08/04/britney_spears_is_very_truly_o.html

dear god britney why!! ok ok i would just like to state for the record that although i did like "hit me baby one more time" "sometimes" and "email my heart" when i was 16 i have never considred britney to be either attractive, interesting, or talented for that matter. and yet i am drawn to her southern drawl like a moth to a flame!

so tell me, do you think she's high or just stupid?

got yourself a gun

so I am 30 minutes away from finishing the 4th season of the sopranos. and it's only noon!! i started it last night. one whole season of a show in less than 24 hours. this might be a record for me. actually now that i think about this it's not that great an accomplishment since there are only like 13 episodes per each season. psssh this is nothing compared to the time i watched 27 hours straight of season 2 Alias. THAT was an accomlishment. but what can i say, michael vartan does crazy things to my will power. so you might be wondering, "why is she writing this? isn't she supposed to be somewhere in barstow on her way to vegas by now?" yes i am, but due to some changes of plan which include a broken air conditioner and my father's crazy over protectiveness i am now flying this evening. yes that's right, flying. Oh ernie, you slay me sometimes.

Vegas, $9.99 steaks and buffets here i come!

So tomorrow i'm driving to Vegas to meet up with David for one of his friend's weddings. I preface this with the fact that this wedding is being organized and held by Caesar's Palace, which we all know is pure class, so it's not a ghetto vegas wedding. Well being the broke as bitch that I am (too much amber and murano glass) i decided to recycle an old black strapless dress i had lying around. yes, i'm wearing black. Don't worry i already ran it by Bobby, my etiquette consultant from Napa and we decided that were this to be a wedding in nantucket this would be way inappropro, but this is vegas and therefore only risky, and i am willing to take that risk to save myself $300. Anyways i decided to kind of dress down my dress i was going ot try to buy like a bolero of some kind to wear over my shoulders for during the ceremony. yes yes i know boleros are very much last season and i never actually bought into the whole bolero thing even when it was in style but i'm willing to risk that. anyways i went to the del amo mall and the galleria which i gotta say both really really suck. i mean their nordstrom has like the 1% of the reject stuff that most nordstroms hide in the back. so annoying. and don't even get me started on del amo, which all of us Angelinos know sucks a fatty. So needless to say i did not find a bolero at either of these fine establishments so i headed to every girl's not so secret shameful backup store, forever 21. Forever 21 is that place you go when you need say a wierd piece of jewelry, a mesh tank top for your Gwen Stefani outfit, or a black lace bodice for a Britney Spears get up, or in this case, a pseudo cute decorative bolero/shrug sweater. Anyways i saw your typical Forever 21 shoppers: super skinny asian girls, super skinny white girls with fantastic bodies but woof faces, fat girls that definitely do not fit into any of the riduculously small clothing that Forever 21 sells. sad sad. I wanted to tell them "go to torrid across the way! this place will only make you depressed!" but i digress. anyway point being i found no bolero so i will have to just make do with what i have.

So anyways vegas! i've never done Vegas without my peeps so we'll see how this goes. on the agenda is definitely the bellagio buffet, so good. maybe we can fit a 9.99 steak dinner in there somewhere. one can only dream. the only problem is that tomorrow night onto saturday morning david's going ot be doing the whole bachelor party thing so i will be left to my own vices. part of me wants to walk around, gamble, drink alone, i don't know. but there is another part of me that wants to sit in the room that i'm paying a lot of money for, lay down on the nice sheets and continue watching the saga that is the sopranos on my computer. would you judge me if i did? would you? have you ever watched the sopranos? it's so good! i'm on season 4. anyways toodles.

return from europa

well my trip to europe is over. it was long but memorable. i saw lots of things and i have posted them below. i'd scroll down to part I and read on up.

enjoy


**I just want to preface this little novela with the fact that I make many references to the sound of music. Thus I decided that from now on it will be known as SOM, so just beware.

PART VII - LUCERNE

we left munich really early, 7 am and ended up stopping in liechtenstein. this sign was basically it. there was nothing really substantial to say about liechtenstien other then it's there and that was that.
We made it to lucerne by lunch and walked around town. they have this really beautiful fountain with a carving in the mountain.
it's a lion that is supposed to represent the swiss guard who were hired to protect the tuileries palace in france. anyways they were massacrd during the french revolution but they styaed by their post and that's why the swiss guard is the bomb and now protects the pope. it was really a beautiful sculpture. mark twain said it was the saddest sculpture he had ever seen.
we went to this open air market and they had a mexican food shack. it looked gross up close. they had fajitas and really nasty looking nachos. the things that foreigners must think of us mexicans just based on the crap that gets exported.
our hotel had another mexican restaurant in it called "la cucaracha: fajitas and steaks." their bathroom doors said "romeo" for men and "julieta" for women. good old romeo and juliet. that's what i think of when i think mexican. ugh
at this big outdoor music festical i saw a table for dianetics. those damn scientologists are everywhere!

and that is my last picture of the trip. here were my final thoughts.



so here i am in lucerne, switzerland. it is my last night in europe and we leave tomorrow morning. ahh america. so quite a few of our hotels have had 2 twin beds as opposed to two queen sized beds. this is the kind of thing that would never fly in america. america is all about excess. a few thoughts i was having today. first off germany definitely had the best toilet paper of all the countries we visited. it was definitely more than one ply and was like 45% close to being charmin. the rest of europe is like 5% close to being charmin. how have they not discovered charmin! i do not understand. i have used toilets throughout switzerland, northern italy, austria, czech republic, germany, and lichtenstein and germany wins. tonight in lucerne along the water front they were having a music and craft festival called blue balls festival 2006. definitely gonna google that when i get home. anyways travelling with my mom has been wierd after doing trips on my own with my own money. My mom loves to eat in the most central, most expensive restaurant/cafe in the middle of downtown where all the tourists go who don't know any better and spend way too much money on coffee and salads. this is so odd to me because i usually don't have any money when i go on vacation. i mean when i went to vegas we had to do the quiznos 2 for 1 coupon for dinner one night so that we could save up our money for strippers.

PART VI - MUNICH

so then we drove to Munich, which is actually called "munchen" but again, we can't say it right so we bastardize it with Munich. anyways we drove to bavarian beer country. ok wait random, so in czech republic they have a beer called "budwieser" and it's the original budwieser. so during communism they were not allowed to sell it internationally but now that the country is a democracy they are trying ot sell it around the world but america's bud is suening them. well come to find that czech bud has been brewed for like 500 years so actually american bud should change their name. random. anyways i saw lots of hops fields throughout bavaria. and then we drove into munich and i saw this!! another accenture building!
this one was pretty centrally located too.
we got to our hotel which was part of a chain of hotels called "novotel" it was pretty cool and had really nice funky decor. i recommend it. it's mainly business oriented so they have interent, a big plus. not my super cute organge purse i bought on the streets of lugano switzerland.
this was downtown munich and if you look really close you can find me up in front. i'll give you a hint, look for that mangy little blue hat. oh there i am! My mom and i ate a brat which was fucking amazing. we had to go back to split another because it was that good. then that night we went to a haufbrahauss. it's basically a beer hall and they have an oompa band and stuff. it's suuuuper cheesy and touristy but this time it was done in the right way.
apparently hitler used to hang out here. totally creepy. in fact alot of the buildings when they rebuilt them all over the city they left the bottom parts messed up to remind people of the horros of war.
so here was our waiter carrying over big steins of beer.
no serioulsy they were huge.
I put it next to my head so you could get some understanding of how huge it was.
and also i decided i kind of like german beer. pretty tasty and all that for 6 euro! eeemagine how drunk you could get on 12 bucks.
it was the end of the trip so in honor of being a tourist i decided to do an homage to the greatest tourists in the world. the japanese...this buds for you guys. Actually interesting story that this girl on the tour told me. this coudl be a lie but i choose to believe it. so i was wondering why asian tourists always do the peace sign. do they really want peace in the world? are they trying to spread love? well according to this girl it started because of the obsession with hello kitty. girls would put up their two fingers on both hands and hold each hadn up to their cheeks so it looked liek whiskers, hello kitty whiskers. anyways this got shortened and became the one handed whisker which we mistake for the peace sign. do you think this is true? i do.
i found this picture later on my mom's computer and i dont 'even know when she had time ot sit with a bunch of german men in leiderhousen. so random.
in the back they had these racks with locks where regualrs could rent out a spot for their stein. taht way when they come in they get to use their own glass and they drink beer from their glass. So basically that was all i did in munich, drink and eat. not much more to tell.

PART V - PRAGUE & CZECH REPUBLIC

So we left austria along with the alps and headed to the Czech Republic. but before we left we stopped at this awesome restaurant/raodside cafe. i love this place! it had a salad bar and was kind of like a road stop sizzler. they also had a counterpart called "rosenberger." if you are ever in austria i recommend it.

So then we entered Czech Republic and the scenery imediately changed to sunflowers. there were sunflowers as far as the eye could see. like you could really frolick in them for miles.
another thing that became very noticeable was the poverty. i mean you could really tell that it had been only 17 years since they ended communism. it was deep. there was alot of farmland but it was all abandoned because after the russians left they made the land available to whoever could rightfully claim it. well there is alot of land that has yet to be claimed probably either the people died or they moved to another country and dont' want to go back to reclaim their land. but it's there. We stopped in this small village that had a run down castle which was apparently owned by the king of lichtenstien, a long lost member of the hapsburg family of vienna. When austria became a democracy they kicked out the royal family, took all of their land, art, castles. basically left them pennyless. but apparently these were some distant relatives who were ruling lichtenstien and they still rule. so when WWII started the austrian govt had all this great art that they wanted to save from the bombing so they asked the king of lichtenstien to store it for them. so they smuggled it out of the country into lichtenstien and after the war they wanted it back but the king of lichtenstein was like "um what are you talking about? we didnt' sign any papers. this is now our art." totaly fucked up right. so anyways there is this castle in a village in the czech republic belongs to the king of lichtenstien and he got it back after the russians left and he's fixing it up so he can put all of what used to be austria's art there and make money off of it. that is some shady shit if i ever heard it.
this village was way creepy. it still had the loud speakers up on the phone lines from when they used to blast communist propaganda. you think they'd take them down. apparenlty alot of people now realize how much everything costs with the euro and they thing communism would be better.
"sale" in czech.

So anyways we left the village and headed to prague. At this point i had heard that prague was cool and whatever but i really had no idea. it is awesome! so beautiful. here is the view from a mountain.
i really like the tall gothic church that is in the middle of all of it. It's amazing that their architecture and buildings survived communism, and even more amazing that it was not hit at all during either of the world wars. Again this was another place where i have no idea what the things i saw were called because czech is way too difficult to decipher.
in front of the palace they have the weakest changing the guard i have ever seen. ok i've never actually seen a changing of the guard but i would imagine that it woudl nto be this ghetto. the guys totally were checking out our czech tour guide, they did move even though they weren't supposed to, and you could walk right in front of them and take pictures with them and stuff. i dotn' know what they thought they were protecting.
palace inner courtyard. we somehow made it through the guards.
here is that catherdral from up close. i gotta say for me it competes with notre dame in beauty. it was really amazing inside. too huge to get into a whole photo.
up in the mountains they have a replica of the eiffel tower that is slightly taller because it's on a mountain. come on prague! you are better than this!
here is the tour guide that i spoke of. her name was sara in czech which is "sarka" which is pronounced "sharka." she was pretty cool and told us about how she grew up in communism and her grandma had to secretly baptize her. and how she moved to america for a few months and worked as a maid to learn english and now she's in law school in praha. i liked her. my mom on the other hand was obsessed with her. she took all kinds of pictures including this one.
i gotta say though, sarka, the denim body suit/bodice/mini was not the best choice.
here i am in front of the astronomical calendar. it tells solar time, or astrological time, or regular time, or all of them. i dont' know i really couldn't understand what sarka was talking about. anyways it's a highlight of prague. there is my hat again, rearing it's ugly head.
we went to a little bar and drank czech beer and this very somber looking man played us czech music and he totally was a communist. i can tell. anyways he looked like he's seen alot in his lifetime.
and there is a final shot of prague. i highly recommend it. i didnt' get to go out at night because i was with my mom but i will definitely return with young people. but prague was a shoppers paradise. they are well knows for their amber and garnet and there was jewlery everywhere. also they had lots of bohemian glasswear (crystal) and that giant cathedral had stained glass that was made of crystal. sooooo cool. again i blew some major czech money on some good jewlery. it was good times.