Things that are like crack to me, for better or worse:
- saltine crackers - internet - television - checking my iPhone (and it's not even because there is anything to check for) - work emails - online shopping - worrying about thinning hair - self pity - potato chips - music - Madonna - little people (midgets/dwarves) porn
10. I Do My Thing - Kid Cudi (Chi Young's favorite artist) 9. Don't Turn The Lights On - Chromeo 8. Paris Blue - Lykke Li 7. Not In Love - Crystal Castle 6. Mine - Taylor Swift 5. Billionaire - Travie McCoy featuring Bruno Mars 4. I Want To Be Well - Sufjan Stevens 3. Limit To Your Love - James Blake 2. I Could be Wrong - Chromeo 1. Get Some - Lykke Li (Holy crap - this track, available for free download, is sick! Who doesn't like lyrics like "Like the shotgun, I can't be outdone. I am your prostitute - you gon get some.")
And check out how perfect this sounds against The Bride kicking Crazy 88 ass (fans are so creative):
The city's awash with Giants fever. I have never seen so many people wear orange before. And they lit up Coit Tower, City Hall, and the Ferry Building in orange. I am no baseball fan, but even I am getting excited (mainly for all the photo ops and all the catch phrases, my favorite of which is Fear the Beard). Go, orange team!!!
Yeah, this truly is a jinxed movie (actually movies, since there will be a two-parter). So the casting news is a nice ray of light. I have no idea when I will get to sit my butt down in an IMAX theatre with my 3-D glasses to see Bilbo Baggins fight off Smaug the dragon, but all good things are worth the wait.
Some photos from the EW Cast Reunion issue that just arrived in the mail. Obviously it's the LOTR cast reunion that got my attention. But where is Aragorn???
- The Hobbit finally greenlit, with Peter Jackson directing and principal photography in Feb 2011. Oh my precious.
- Fiona Apple hard at work on follow-up to Extraordinary Machine. About damn time, you crazy mad genius girl.
- KevJumba and dad did not get eliminated last week on The Amazing Race. I seriously had a heart attack. Although I have to say, I am really not hating on any team this season.
- Did I already mention that The Hobbit is finally going to get made?! In 3-D no less. I can't even tell you how stoked I am at this news. It's like telling me that Madonna is reuniting with Pat Leonard and William Orbit and David Fincher. Or telling me that Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater are now in Prague filming a sequel to Before Sunset. Or that they've found a cure for neuromuscular disorders. Or that they've canceled all my upcoming work trips. Or that I've won the lottery and can walk into work and give everyone the middle finger. Well not everyone. In fact, not anyone. I am going to be one of those classy rich people and just pack my mug and photos and ride off the sunset quietly.
The new Dove Self-Esteem for Girls campaign asks people to share What I wish I had known at 13.
My advice to any youths out there is, try everything. Good or bad - just try it. Of course I don't mean try becoming a teenage mother or something silly like that. But I mean, try sushi, try beef tripe, try piano and guitar and dance, try befriending that outcast everyone makes fun of, try suffering the fool, try being the fool, try knitting, try raising that hand, try applying for things you know for sure you wouldn't get, try foreign movies, try putting ketchup where it doesn't belong, try to wear things that don't go together, try to grow your hair out, try chopping it all off, try to read James Joyce when it's not assigned, try to sign up for foreign exchange programs, try to work at as many odd jobs as possible, try to date out of your league, try choosing Vietnam instead of Hawaii, and try durian ice cream. Yes, it's gross and it stinks, but liking it's not the point. It's like the point of taking Calculus in school, for most of us, is not actually learning Calculus; it's learning to learn. (It annoys the heck out of me when people, young or old, say, when am I ever going to use that?)
If you just try to experience everything there is to experience, the opportunities will unfold themselves in unexpected, and perhaps spectacular, ways. That's what I wanted to know at 13. And what I want to believe now.
Oh, a P.S. for the youths - also never run away from failures and never live in fear of mistakes. It's taking me a long time to believe it, but you really do grow more from failures and mistakes than your victories and successes. As long as you recognize it for what it really is, every failure is added ammunition in your tool belt for future use. You will need it somehow, some way down the road. It's like that Light of Eärendil that Frodo gets from the Elf Queen. When he first got it, he was probably like, "Great, more excess crap to carry with me on this long as heck journey." But later, when he gets attacked by giant spiders, he was like, "Aha!"
By the way, everytime I say youth, it reminds me of that exchange in My Cousin Vinny between Fred Gwynne and Joe Pesci. "What is a yute?" Haha.
Yeah, I know I am a total badass for connecting the dots between LOTR, Doves soap, durian ice cream and My Cousin Vinny.
Vitasoy 70th anniversary packaging. Been drinking Vitasoy since I can remember.
Nothing better than simple soy sauce chow mein for breakfast on a Sunday morning.
Off The Grid food trucks at Civic Center. I really like the Seoul On Wheels tacos, not so much the Korrito (Korean burrito).
Got to work really early. I like the way the ceiling lights reflect off the window. We have curvy ceilings.
I like the way moss looks. Does this not look like a map?
After over five years of tender loving care, my dwarf Meyer's lemon tree finally has a few lemons.
This is a hotel called the Good Hotel near my office. Love the sign. Love bad girls.
Chairman Bao's pork belly (with picked daikons) and duck confit (with mango relish) baos, with a ginger lychee shaved ice. The pork belly and duck confit were delicious with the relish on top, but the bao itself and the drink are pretty standard.
It's Halloween. Check out the albino pumpkin on display in my kitchen.
Inspired by this list of songs that make grown men in the UK cry, here is my own list of ten songs that always get to me (it's a random ten out of many more, since I am a wuss and tend to get all melancholy more than your average Joe):
Life's A Song - Patrick Park Time Has Told Me - Nick Drake Tender - Blur No Distance Left To Run - Blur Falling Slowly - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova Under The Bridge - Red Hot Chili Peppers Wonderwall - Ryan Adams Nice Dream - Radiohead As You Are - Travis Hand On Your Heart - Jose Gonzalez (I honestly cannot listen to this song without being transported to that time in my life - how can something that at one point filled me up with such happiness can in time cause me so much pain?)
Funniest scene on tv this week belongs to the extremely underrated Community, in which Annie chloroformed a janitor while Troy and Abed breaks into a lawyer's office...Glee has gotten worse and worse. As the first season wore on, I realize this show is increasingly uneven. The second season is just continuing the same trend. Sure, the last episode introduced the always charming Uncle Jesse/John Stamos, but then it also forced in a bunch of reproduction of Britney videos that made no sense at all in the context of the plot. And characters that were promising and endearing in the beginning have become cloying and frustrating. Yeah, I am talking about you, Will Schuester, Rachel, and Kurt. My bet is that this show is not going to last four seasons...I think my fave of the new shows is Raising Hope. An aimless young man impregnates a murderer, she gets the death sentence, and bam, ninth months later, he is left raising a baby named Princess Beyonce. He and his white trash family renames her Hope and hilarity ensues. It's the new My Name Is Earl...I am kinda disappointed with Nikita and No Ordinary Family - I thought those shows would be more fun than they are turning out to be. Nikita is way too serious for what it is (a show about a female killer who wants to topple a government secret op needs a Buffy sense of humor), and No Ordinary Family is too ordinary and paint-by-the-numbers (a show about superhero family needs to fly like The Incredibles). I guess I'll watch these for a few more episodes to see if they are worth keeping on my Tivo...While I am ashamed to say that I watch a show that features the David Hasselhoff, Michael Bolton AND Sarah Palin's daughter, I will say I am rooting for Jennifer Grey on DWTS. I am impressed so far with her dancing, and Derek Hough her partner is my favorite pro on the show...A competition reality show does not work if there is nobody to root for. That's how I am feeling about this current season of Project Runway (is this the least talented and unlikable group ever? Even the ones who've been winning - Mondo and Gretchen - are putting some pretty ugly stuff on the runway, and even by designer standards, they are annoyingly weird) and Survivor (old vs young is a bad idea). Maybe someone will emerge from Survivor as a good guy/gal (cuz all we got so far is the crazy like that ghetto (or is it hood?) girl NaOnka) - it's early yet...No problem there on Amazing Race, my favorite tv show for the last decade. This season is off to a promising start. I am rooting for KevJumba (youtube star) and his dad. I am proud of how cool he is to his dad in the premiere episode, but they actually didn't get much airtime. The stars of the first episode were the Home Shopping Network ladies and the watermelon sling challenge. Surely you've seen the video of Claire getting hit in the face with a watermelon by now. They showed it in slo-mo no less. Once you get over the horror of it, you will laugh your head off. And then once you see her get up and continue the challenge, you will think, "Hey this is a cool chick." I still remember that blonde from a couple of seasons back who wouldn't go down a water slide and got her team eliminated because of that. Claire rocks.
