Thai Temple

One of the best ways to start off a Sunday in Berkeley is by taking your friends to the Thai Buddhist Temple for brunch. They serve really good Thai food on Sundays and it is always packed full of people. First you get tokens in exchange for money and then exchange the tokens for food, I think it simplifies the server's jobs and reduces any pick pocketing. The line to get the food can be anywhere from a five to twenty minute wait. Usually I meet cool people there and on occasion there may be a celebration going on for whatever is going on in Thailand... so generally it's just a warm friendly environment where everybody is walking around feeling good from yummy food.

Boy Bands

Most people my age will hear "boy bands" and think; Backstreet Boys, New Kids on the Block, Boyz II Men, or InSynch (I think I misspelled that) and yea I do sorta. But today I uncovered a boy band that I remember with a little more fondness. Perhaps it was because I couldn't understand the lyrics. They may actually be just as dumb as those previously mentioned but I don't have to analyze the intelligence of the lyrics... all I have is the sound and the image. I remember sitting in the ISOMATA common room when it was suddenly invaded by Korean girls and the new video one of them had been sent from back home... I know you're thinking this is obvious, it's got to be Seo Taiji and Boys... of corse it is. It's the Korean super group that rapped their way into our hearts wearing ski gear and performing on a stage that seemed to always be a blaze with roman candles. Thanks to YouTube I can share Seo Taiji and Boys with the unfortunate ones who didn't have Korean class mates. Enjoy!

the American way

So Today I was trying to explain contractions to my friend from Yemen.
"It's just squishing two words together to save time... we're speeding through, abbreviating, we're in American now, so we don't want to waste time with extra letters.... so instead of are not?.."
"aren't"
"and instead of could not..."
"couldn't"
"instead of I will..."
"I'll?"
"Good. Instead of would not"
then she starts to strain a bit...
"think, it's just like these others. We use the first word and then throw out the space and all the extra letters..."
She gets it and writes down;
"W't"

Now That is beyond expectation. Fully abbreviated... this is the American Way.

A Day Off?

What better way to spend your day off than at a company picnic with all the people you work with...
Here's Coeli (pronounced Chay-lee) out of the costume dungeon;


The man in this picture is shouting at me "Hi Alexae! Hi! Hi!" Yes. This is my boss. Our artistic Director. Endearing at times.


Nichole and Renee making "pretty faces"

...and now mugging for the camera

Our chef for the day; Eric... The picture looks like it's just a guy grilling up some chicken, when in fact it is chipotle chicken, teriyaki chicken, blue cheese and carmelized onion burgers and chipotle burgers... Yum! He's cooking for everybody because it's fun.

... his charcoal-black griller's hands...


Sorry I forgot to get a picture of myself but I swear I was there behind the camera. No great insight to post today but I feel a need to post Something at least once a week. Hopefully something of more universal interest to come...

Chris Cornell

I took the night off of work to see Chris Cornell. For those unfamiliar with Chris, he was the lead singer and songwriter for Soundgarden, Audioslave, and Temple of the Dog, and now he has a solo career alongside current projects with Audioslave. In other words, he's a busy busy musician. The concert was at the Warfield which is pretty much the center of the Tenderloin (ie. San Francisco's rough neighborhood) but my friend Cheryl's boyfriend dropped us off at the beginning. Unfortunatley he had to be at work early and Cheryl underestimated the longevity of the concert... concert not over at 11pm and she leaves... yes I could have gone with them but I figured I would just clamp myself onto a group of people walking to BART and ask them to pretend that I was with them... which I did and it worked out just fine. I was not about to miss "Blackhole Sun" or "Can't Change Me" because I was afraid I couldn't tough it out a couple blocks with concert going strangers...
This is one of my favorite Soundgarden songs;

The band was amazing. It was Chris plus three guitar players and a drummer, which amounted to a thick rich ROCK sound and Chris' live vocal was at least as good live as it is in recordings if not a little better. The spot ops, however, I wanted to throttle (warning;Technical jargon ahead) because they were bleeding when they had their shudders closed, they had sloppy gel changes and couldn't hold still... I think that the real spot ops must have had the night off and had been replaced by poorly trained monkeys.
The crowd was mostly 25-30 year old white people (I'm not used to being in the majority at concerts I attend, so that was odd) and sadly they confirmed that many white people have no rythm. Chris Cornell actually has some complicated rythm structures where the guitar, the drums and the vocals are all on different counts so that may be a difficulty, but really you can just follow the bass player's head and you'll be fine. It's like a big bald conductor's baton. It also struck me tonight that the lyrics to these songs are unusually unrepetitive. Some of the older songs have chorus(es) but all the new stuff threw the chorus-verse-chorus format out the window... I love this guy!
Next time I think I may actually try being a groundling because being up in the balcony for anything but a U2 concert seems to be pretty lame. At U2, every last person in the auditorium is standing and dancing and singing along, even if they are in the very farthest obstructed view seat... in this venue especially it's all people who mostly want to sit down in these uncomfortably close seats and kind of tap their feet... Lame! But despite lame people... I still had a great time.

Redwoods

I may be in a bit of a creative funk but I went to the Redwoods again for the third Monday in a row. On the other hand it did make me want to come back again but with pastels next time. I found a new trail called "Madrone" that was particularly beautiful and climbed at a Very steep angle both directions. At some points I was crawling up the canyon using my arms to pull me up along the hill.




I think that next Monday I will either go back again but with art supplies instead of an impatient dog, or I will go somewhere I can actually meet people. It was at least quite calming to be in the woods after a trying tech week that seemed like it would never end.

Food for thought

"In Most kinds of addiction the harm comes not from the substance itself but from the fact that the addiction distracts from other things we need; substances that nourish, experiences that feed and support and gratify us. This deprivation in turn reinforces addiction."
--Phillip Slater, "Wealth Addiction"

---makes me think of tech week every time.

During tech, I go to work, then come home and have a listless night of "sleep", wake up and start paperwork for the next day of tech... then maybe I'll do some shopping for the show, head in early to get everything in order and back to the theater where we usually eat at odd times and sometimes food that is not what we need. We skip our yoga classes, we miss concerts, and graduations, we go in to work exhausted and sick, broken bones and all, our families and friends learn to expect to just not see us for at least a week solid ... and I do this at least once every three to six weeks (as do most theater people). Theater seems like a fun profession at times but at others it can be very unhealthy.

What do you do that is destructive but perpetual, "nessicary" or not?

I made Pie

The phrase is that something is easy as pie does not apply in my attempt to actually carve out time to make this pie. I bought rhubarb on Wednesday and it has been too chaotic to actually get to the kitchen and cut it up into pie size bits. I'm tired and mostly tired of the insanity at work this week, so instead of bringing it back home and plopping my baggage onto the internet, I thought I would just share how beautiful my pie finally turned out. It tasted just as good as it looks...

happy birthday to me/journal entry

Well now it's official, I am 28... unless you count by the exact hour which won't happen until 11:03 am. My final day as a 27 year old was good and then surreal and then kind of crappy. I did get my birthday package from my parents and spent my dad's "gift certificate" (cash) on yummy food at the Berkeley Bowl, including rhubarb for my birthday pie... which I hope I have time to bake. I had a job interview and got a new part time job, and then about 20 minutes later I got a call from our shop assistant asking me to come in and help her out because the shop supervisor quit in the middle of the day. I watched the designer run through... the first dress will not have costumes and well, we're just kind of treading water now. The shop assistant and I went out for drinks with the former shop manager... I met some cool guys who taught me how to play darts (beyond just aiming the darts at the bulls eye) so now I am back at home in the wee hours of the morning tired but determined to bake my damn pie! I should be upset at the shop manager or something but I'm not in any way because I could see this disaster coming from a mile away... my next concern is the car that is driving on stage for the show. In the scottish play there were horses that were on deck and made us question the integrity of the stage... Renee and I are NOT going to be under the deck during the driving scenes. Somehow I've made myself just detached enough to not be upset by my company anymore. :p

Stage Blood

I made the final six blood packs for Richard the III today. No more stained fingers for me! I may even splurge and get a manicure once the pink tinge wears off a little more. We close on Sunday... and I had Way too much fun with my little digital camera and my iMovie program. I think I've almost maxed out my hard drive and will soon have to go through and purge video files... however the result of my play time was this video that I just downloaded onto YouTube... yes I'm posting during the wee hours of the morning but I'm wide awake, sigh. Anyway check out my new video.

Pirates bad?

Ok, so everybody seems to think that Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is bad... I went to see it anyway. You know what, it was fabulous! I think however that it's not your standard Hollywood fare. It has it's Hollywood moments but it also has a lot of classic Dynamation moments. The animation is of corse supurb but the cheesy storyline, the fights and the villans are very "Jason and the Argonats" or "Sinbad the Sailor". I think that perhaps if the production quality could have been slightly lacking people might have warmed up to it more. I mean they have a voodoo priestess who blows up into being a 50 foot woman before dissolving into a storm of crabs... cheezy-awesome! Plus the first time we see Jack Sparrow is in a bizzare dream world where he is in hell (Davey Jones' Locker) and going mad in a sequence that is very indie-art-film... so no wonder people aren't as gaga about this one as the last two. It's still the same format but with a totally different flavor. I personally loved this movie as it is, and I'm glad I entered the theater expecting to be let down because I was pleasantly surprised. Oh and an added bonus was that this was a Disney movie where people were actually grimy with scars and really bad teeth (except for Orlando and Kiera but oh well)... so that was cool too.
Conclusion; cheesy fantasy movie lovers and dynamation enthusiasts will love this movie.

Happy Father's day

Well I'm dreadful at ever sending cards or presents for Father's Day or Mother's Day and although I always remember what everybody's birthday is, sometimes I fret for so long about what to get somebody that they get their birthday present a couple months after the event. So anyway today my Dad gets a phone call and this post.

I wish I had a few better pictures of us together because in this picture I look a little distracted but believe me I am at this point I am actually very grateful that my daddy helped me get through Alice in Wonderland. I wasn't exactly brave about all of these rides as a little kid especially since I had been living in the boonies and this was one of my first experiences with amusement park rides... This trip was definatley my little sister's first trip to Disneyland (she was still crawling and Mom held her while Dad rode all of the rides with me).

My dad is the best. He's always been there for us, he's supportive and always makes my sis and me feel like we are truly loved. What more can I say? I totally lucked out with parents and I'm very grateful for that, even if I don't send them Hallmark cards.

Dad, I'm sorry but you're not getting; a tie, a golf bag, a gun rack, or cologne this year. I love you!