The sea was choppy and the weather was moist the last couple of days. Humid. No rain fell in Santa Monica today, but all day it looked like things were churning.
One of my coworkers is a contractor who’s time is up next Friday, so we decided to head out to Malibu and get dinner at Gladstones. She regretted not coming out to the beach more since being at Hulu. I figure I should probably go more often. So there I was.
It’s hard for me sometimes to take a deep breath because I’m always paranoid that I’m going to get fired, that any stability that I might have foreseen will be stripped away from me at any minute, that even though they tell me I’m doing a good job right now that sometime real soon something will turn and they will tell me to get out get out I don’t want to see you ever again you fucking bastard.
I know that’s not the case because I do a good job and they wouldn’t have hired me on full time if they didn’t want me there. But there are always those whispers in the back of my mind.
It’s been a year since The Grandmother died. The year has gone by quickly. I’ve gone from being filled with anxiety about reentering the real world and needing to get a job, to going on an epic road trip through PCH and Vancouver and Montana, to getting a job at a really shitty company that didn’t pay me, to coming back to Hulu full time and actually being able to afford shit.
It’s been quite the year. I wonder what the next year will bring.
10 years ago, a bunch of us Angelenos got together and helped make LAist the best fucking blog about all things Los Angeles. Fate and destiny brought us together, but the work and fun we all had helped forge our relationships despite never being in the same room together.
Back then our editor and lordship Tony Pierce would host bbqs where we would finally see each other face to face and have a great time. All of us oldies decided to get back together yesterday, and it honestly felt like being transported 10 years ago. Seeing and catching up with the folks made me wonder if we all got together on a project just how much fun it would be.
Thanks to Tony who planned this, hosted this and even bought the Trump pinata. There were tons of hot dogs, I brought a Hello Kitty ice cream cake and Madd brought a platter of watermelon. We finally went out to beat on the Trump, and what started looking like this:
ended with a tragic accident:
Madd and I ended by getting some sweet tea in her ‘hood and talking for another couple of hours. It was a good day.
Starting Monday, and nearly 10 years after I first interviewed at some YouTube knockoff, I am once again an official Hulu employee. I guess you can come back home.
Like the last two times I returned to Hulu, I started this tenure as a contractor back in April . Unlike those times I wasn’t disgruntled. Part of that has to do with not having the stress of The Grandmother looming over me. Also, I’m not moonlighting as a sportswriter. Oh, and the fact I can Metro it to work and not have to sit through over an hour of traffic helps the psyche a lot.
I’ll just say it’s nice having steady income again and not have to worry about paying bills. Working at the Korean place the last time was just the pits having to juggle bills and all that nonsense.
I knew I’d be dead to the world half of today since I was out late last night and went to a show. Staying out late on a Friday night is tough after a day of work, but it’s not like Mr. Kitty is doing a five-day residency in town. And I knew the loud sounds would wreak havoc to the ever so fragile headmeats that seem to deteriorate more and more with each passing day.
I woke up at 10:30 which for some reason is embarrassing to be right now. I would have been all right with it even five years ago, but now it’s just foolishness for some reason. Most of the day was spent laying around watching Will and Grace reruns on WE TV up until about a couple of hours ago when I ran out of fruits to eat at the manse.
I got there in the middle of Scorpion Warrior’s performance. The surreal dancer perfectly captured just how ethereal and other-worldly the music was. Their stuff could easily have gone to a bad Dead Can Dance ripoff space if not for the foundation of good dancing beats. Sure it’s pop base, but everything else that adorned it made it compelling.
There was this one Latin guy who caught my eye by the bar. Included with the all-black uniform we were all wearing, he added a pair of suspenders which really highlighted his perfect ass. His beard was neatly trimmed, his eyebrows thick accented by his perfectly quiffed hair — he was the look of violence personified, like if I bumped into him by accident he would punch me out then brutally fuck me before going back home to his wife.
I caught a glimpse of him leaning against the bar, and his eyes bored right through me. Was he cruising me or just wondering what this malformed lump of flesh is doing looking at him?
Before I could get carried away with my thoughts, up came Bustié (pronounced as “bustier”.) As you can tell by this blur of a picture above, they are all kinetic energy. They are constantly in motion, screaming and letting the music violently wash over everyone. If Gravy Train!!!! went dark and more industrial, they would be Bustié.
It’s clear that Andy Deane, the mastermind behind The Rain Within, enjoys the fuck out of what he’s doing. One moment he’s crooning along to the synthpop soundscape he created along with Mike Johnson hitting things to the beat. Next he’s cracking a grin and mugging for the audience. It was one of the most charming performances I’ve seen in a long time, and it was fun to fall into the spell.
Rough Trade and I kept playing this game before Mr. Kitty got on stage: I would look over to find him staring; at other times he would look over at me staring. It was a dance that we kept going, a dance that made me forget about the guy he was with.
One thing broke the spell: something the guy he was with said made him laugh. It was such a kind sincere laugh. I saw the tenderness in his eyes, the kindness in him that wouldn’t walk up to me and punch me out and fuck me in the alleyway.
And like that, I was done. He probably never wanted me in the first place, but now my lust was completely gone.
I loved Mr.Kitty’s album A.I since it came out in March. The music itself is very synthpoppy and dancy, but the lyrics are very dark and personal dealing with depression.
Armed with his own lights and accompanist, it was cathartic to live the album for the 45 minutes or however long he played. His dancing onstage was very much taken from the dancing-in-the-bedroom scenes, but the music is very much suited for that. He even got in a cover of Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” which made this oldie smile.
There was one bit of annoyance which had nothing to do with the music. In the middle of Mr.Kitty’s set, this group of girls made their way next to me to get up closer. Fine, they want to dance, and I let them. At 1:30 am, it’s a miracle that my old ass is swaying to the music. I heard one of the girls in between songs mention how much they hate it when people who don’t enjoy the music just take up space right as she was looking at me.
I really hate this fascist militancy of fun: that in order to prove I am enjoying something, I must show it the way they do. Sorry girls, I don’t have the energy as your 20-year old selves and can show it. I’m here letting the music wash over me and making me move. Well, more like sway in place, but that’s as good as it’s going to get.
For some reason, it reminded me of this entitiled Miss Thing I knew back in the day named Christiana Dominguez.
Anyhow, that was my evening, my reason for being almost non-existent for most of the morning. And now I’m done with this and will probably cry in the corner. Or something.
The northeastern corner of California had been a simmering obsession of mine for a while now. I can’t remember how it started. Most likely I was looking at Google Maps one day and got curious.
But unlike the Pacific Coast Highway, not a lot of people head over to the Eastern part of the state. Ask anyone in Southern California what happens if you keep going north of Mammoth, and you’d likely get blank stares.
For one, there is Mono Lake:
After the City of Los Angeles realized their initial water source of Owens River was not enough, the Department of Water and Power decided to keep moving north and divert the creeks that feed into Mono Lake back in the early 40s. While the diversion of the Owens River caused Owens Lake to dry up, environmentalists and citizens up there fought like hell and forced the DWP to not take all the water. Thus, we still get to see Mono Lake, although it’s nowhere near as deep as it was before the diversion began. But it’s still better than its all-time low in 1982.
This trip was a last-minute one for me. I didn’t know if I was going to do the trip during the Memorial Day weekend, but on Friday I finally decided to just do it. Here is the rough map of the trip:
You can zoom in the map and see pretty much the exact route I took. I left Saturday morning and got back home Monday morning driving just under 1,500 miles. It sounds very impressive, but mind you I was by myself only had to satisfy my own whims.
This is from Red Rock Canyon State Park on Highway 14 after you get past Lancaster and Palmdale. It was Saturday morning as I drove through this landscape that took my breath away. I had to pull over on the road to take pictures.
This was taken on Highway 395 just before you hit Manzanar looking up at the Eastern Sierras. Being in a drought these last five years, this image is truly remarkable and stunning. Usually by this time of the year, the passes going through the Eastern Sierras are open. But because of the tons of snow we got this winter, most of these passes are still closed.
One of the sad by-products of this road trip were all of the suicidal bugs. Here is an unfortunate butterfly that didn’t survive my nearly two-ton vehicle travelling around 75 mph.
Here is the part of Highway 395 after the turn before Susanville that keeps going north into Alturas and Modoc County. Like I said, it’s an obscure part of California. This trip made me realize I have to come back through these parts more often and discover more of what’s up here.
Since there were hardly any cars, I didn’t have problems with passing people through this leg of the journey. But the next day as I headed back south, I realized there are a lot of people who did not know how to pass on these two-lane roads. As I was on Highway 97 headed down to Weed to meet up with the I-5, I got caught up in a 10-car line where the front cars refused to pass a truck.
Here are some photos of Alturas. Most of these were taken at around 7 pm after I had gotten into town and checked into my motel. It’s a small town, so it wasn’t that hard to walk through Main Street.
The next morning I went over to the Lava Beds National Monument about 60 miles away. For all the road trips I take, this was the first time I saw actual deer: I saw one scampering off through the forest to my left; there were two just chilling to the right of me as I drove past.
To get to the visitor center, there is a rough road that you could barely call as being paved. It was like driving on a road that has been torn up for repaving. For a good 15 miles, that’s what I was driving on.
But it was worth it. Perhaps the best part of the visit was that despite it being Memorial Day weekend, there were only 15 cars in the parking lot when I got there at just before 9 am.
Because this was a last minute trip, I didn’t pack any hiking boots. So I had to make due with my Converse. In addition to hikes, there are caves that you can explore and go spelunking.
The Black Crater trail blew me away because the trail is on the lava. You can hear the hollowness with each step.
In addition to the geology, you learn about how the Modoc tribe fought the US government who was trying to give their land to farmers. They were actually successful for a while until infighting got them captured and sent to Oklahoma.
Since I’m also obsessed with man-made borders, I decided to head north and travel on Highway 161 which straddles the California-Oregon border before dippping into California and bordering the Lower Klamath Lake.
I headed down Highway 97 to the I-5 and went into Sacramento where I stopped by the Capitol. I’ve physically visited the Capitol buildings of Louisiana, Texas and Montana, but in the 30 years of living here in California, I have never seen the building.
So here it is.
I spent the night in Kingsburg just south of Fresno on Highway 99 (where apparently people feel perfectly content in driving in the passing lane.) And I got home the next morning beating all of that traffic.
That was my quick Memorial Day weekend roadtrip. 1500 miles. A lot of the places were new to me. So all in all, it was a success.
I know I must make it up to that part of California again.
Saturday was a night for destruction, and the Night of Destruction in Irwindale was the place for Yobo, Staci and me. But I didn’t know just how personally it would hit me.
We agreed to meet up at Yobo’s in Silverlake at 5:30. Before I leave my place at 4:30, I decide to check my mail. In my hands are my phone, iPod, water bottle and keys. One piece of mail looked like it was urgent, so I decided to open the letter while walking. And right there my phone slipped out of my hands and hit the sidewalk.
Crack.
Fuck.
*sigh* Fine. I can deal with a crack in the glass. It’s no big deal. It sucks, but I can’t really cry over something that was caused by my own idiocy. Sure it’s a Galaxy S7, but whatever. Those sorts of things don’t bother me too much.
I get in my car and get ready to text Yobo saying I’m on my way when
…
The phone won’t turn on.
FUCK!!!!
This means I need to get a new phone, and I’m going to be late meeting up with them. But of course I can’t text them to let them know I’m late.
Fuck.
First things first, must go to the Verizon store to get new phone. After 45 minutes, I get in my car with a Galaxy S8. All in all things could have been worse.
It’s just before 7 by the time we get to Irwindale which is when the festivities start — so we made it on time while I spent most of the car ride over there downloading and installing my apps.
It’s amazing that in my nearly 40 years on this earth, I have never been to anything like this despite my redneck heritage. What I imagined were a bunch of monster trucks running over cars, fire-breathing metal dinosaurs destroying everything in their paths. But here what I got were a bunch of mainly motorcycle races climaxing with an exhilarating destructive trailer race.
The one race that was really compelling was the figure-eight race which went as you could imagine it went.
After a Demolition Race where a bunch of cars just rammed into each other until one car was left running, there was the trailer race. Here are the participants before the race started:
You can see that the cars were towing boats, campers and even jets skis.
Here is what things looked like about 3/4 of the way through it:
Though it was quite as destructive as I wanted, it was still fun nonetheless.
Afterwards we went to Glendora to Donut Man for the delectable strawberry donut. It’s shocking both Yobo and Staci had never been. But it was great, and that little bit of sweetness was nice to balance the destruction.
Everyone knows how I’m a sucker for arms, muscly arms, arms that would choke me to death if they so choose. On the first day at the old/new job, there is a muscly Asian boy who took my breath away. I’m sure the folks at the other end of the building could have heard my gasp, a most necessary one or else I probably would have fell over from my chair onto the floor in a hyperventilating mess.
By the title of this post, you might think that looking at him gave me an erection, but alas no. I don’t think that has ever happened to me. So this lad unfortunately never gave me a hardon. But had this happened, it certainly would have been deflated by what I witnessed in the bathroom one morning.
I was in there to take a piss (which happens quite frequently since I take a water pill for my blood pressure.) And by the sink was this lad futzing around with his hair. In the time it took for me to unbuckle my belt, unbutton and unzip my pants, take my dick out, release my urine, shake so that urine doesn’t drip in my pants, tuck my underwear back over my dick, rebutton and rezip my pants, buckle my belt, the lad was still there at the sink still futzing with his hair.
And in my mind, my eyes rolled so far that they fell out of the sockets and got stuck under the urinals. Of course guys with muscles like that are quite vain, that shouldn’t surprise me. But it really is disappointing to see the vanity in all its glory.
So now I see him around the office, and I can’t help but sigh.
Most days I wake up stupidly thinking and hoping that it will be a good day until minutes later realizing that this is life — MY life, after all — and reality crashes upon my illusions I become disheartened then go about the motions of getting through with my day.
But yesterday wasn’t like that. I woke up and instantly knew it was going to be a shit day.
Friday night, Madd texted me wanting to go to the Brewery Art Walk on Saturday. Since I know hours of ignoring the world and sitting on the couch watching reruns of Golden Girls, Roseanne and Mama’s Family on Logo is not the healthiest way of spending a weekend, I agreed to go.
But when I woke up on Saturday, I had no energy. I felt completely sapped and drained for some unknown reason. Later in the morning I asked Madd what time she wanted to meet up hoping that she would say her back was still bothering her and that she would cancel. Unfortunately she said she wanted to meet at 2. Alas.
I really was lying on the couch doing my best impression of The Grandmother, and just as I started to nod off I realized it was time to take off. Fuck. I put on clothes, and this is what I looked like:
By the time I reached Madd’s place, I was still drained. Much to my pleasure, Madd was also just as drained so we nixed the Art Walk. But I knew that it was Independent Bookstore Day or something contrived like that, so I did want to go out to Los Feliz to visit my favorite bookstore Skylight Books.
However on the way from Madd’s Mid-City apartment to Los Feliz, we passed by Kim’s Home Center in Koreatown and I realized I needed to get some home-things: drain catchers, a scrubby washcloth, some food storage containers. I did not buy these huge jumbo nipple clamps, though.
Then it was off to Skylight books where they had a veggie platter and cookie tray to celebrate this Independent Bookstore Day. There were quite a few people there, and I bought these books:
I bought some books.
A quick jaunt to En Sushi was in order since Madd was starving. She got a mango albacore poke bowl while I got the Hama roll (yellowtail, avacado, chives and cilantro) and some veggie tempura. Then back to Koreatown because we wanted to get red bean shaved ice as the sun was setting.
Then I remembered I should really buy a replacement to my four-year old Converses that are on its last legs. So off to the cheapy Warehouse Shoe Sale to get a pair of black pleather Converse hi-tops for under $50.
What a strange day in that it started out dreadful (in the most literal sense of the word — I was full of dread) and ended up being quite pleasant.
I overheard the following conversation in the kitchen yesterday:
Dickhole: I find cooking to be quite therapeutic, but I hate the logistics of it.
Friend of Dickhole: What do you mean?
Dickhole: I hate grocery shopping. I hate pushing the cart and having to decide what I need to buy. I’d love cooking if someone could do the shopping for me.
