Category Archives: Journal

Lost hamsters

After dinner earlier this week, look what I found in the parking lot. On the base of a lamppost in the parking lot was a cage with five hamsters. They were adorable. I watched them for a couple minutes, unsure of what to do.

I didn’t really want to just leave them, but what would I do with hamsters? Plus, what if it was an accident and there was a family rushing back to the parking lot while I stood there? In the end, I didn’t do anything. I sure hope they’re okay though.

gem named them Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, and Tiger.

Three degrees of separation to Simone Legno

Last weekend I ate at one of my favorite restaurants, California Shabu Shabu in Costa Mesa. It’s a fantastic shabu shabu restaurant with great service, fantastic food, and incredible decor. This location features awesome paintings all over their walls along with a cool collection of custom vinyl toys and other toys. I love it.

As we approached our seats during this last visit, one of the employees commented that we must be tokidoki fans. Of course we are! We each had a tokidoki shirt, and I was wearing a tokidoki hat. We made a couple more comments and proceeded with our dinner. At the end of our evening as we were leaving, he talked to us again. He mentioned WonderCon, and we spent a minute talking about that. Then he got on the subject of the artist behind tokidoki, Simone Legno. Apparently his girlfriend (or maybe it was his ex-girlfriend) once dated Simone Legno. That’s pretty cool! He mentioned that Simone was a cool guy, but I’m not sure whether they know each other personally or just through mutual friends. Regardless, I thought it was fun to run into someone who knew Simone!

Improv to the Future!

If you didn’t watch Improv to the Future tonight, go back in time and watch it! Improv to the Future was an improv show celebrating the Back to the Future movies and hosted by Alex Foster. It was at the STAGEStheater, which I didn’t realize was somewhere I’d been until I got there tonight.

As one of the first to enter, I passed the clocks lining the edge of the stage and took a seat in the front row. They were synchronized to each other but not accurate. Eight o’clock came and went, and the show didn’t start as scheduled. Suddenly, Alex Foster ran to the stage, frantically checking the clocks. They were slow! He was late for the show! It was time to start!

The show itself was hysterical. I particularly liked the portrayal of a Back to the Future scene set in feudal Japan. My favorite scene of the night was Doc and Marty starring in a 50’s style educational video on the dangers of time travel. If you’ve ever been worried about becoming your own grandfather, this educational video would be perfect for you. If you’re like me you’ll get pretty worked up as you see Doc seductively play the role of your grandmother, but you’re going to have to try to resist as Doc lies back and spreads his legs in the air. Spoilers incoming – the solution is apparently to kill your grandmother and collect your inheritance early.

After the show I decided to read about Back to the Future online. Now I feel hyped to rewatch the movies. It’s been years. And then there are those adventure games. The only problem with Thursday night improv is that after an evening full of laughs, I need to get to sleep for work tomorrow.

Archery lessons

gem and I took archery lessons this weekend! I haven’t used a bow since attending a summer YMCA camp in elementary school, so it had definitely been a while.I was surprised that it wasn’t physically difficult at all, although I guess we had bows for beginners. It was pretty fun! I wasn’t very good, but on the other hand, the sights were a little screwed up. I don’t think I’m ready to buy a bow, but I’d enjoy coming back in the future.

A birthday celebration at the Dinner Detective

To celebrate gem’s birthday, I got us tickets to the Dinner Detective, a murder mystery dinner show. I’d been wanting to do this for her for some time now because I know she likes mysteries. This was the perfect time!

The show was fantastic. It was incredibly funny and more of a show than I expected. I thought there’d be more mingling (and I wasn’t sure how that was going to be), and there was a little, but there was only 10 minutes or so of it total besides talking to the people at our own table.

Having actors mixed into the crowd meant that you weren’t sure if someone was part of the show or not, which really added to the fun. Everyone wore name tags with aliases. gem chose Charlotte Charles (“Chuck”), so I chose Ned to match her. (It’s a reference to Pushing Daisies.) Roleplaying was encouraged, which was really exciting yet odd. It made the evening feel kind of surreal. Usually when you socialize, you’re getting to know people, and you might make new friends. At the show, I socialized with people without knowing if they were choosing to tell me about the real them or a make believe them. I think it’d be fascinating and fun to throw a party at which each person was supposed to roleplay as a made up person. In fact, it’d be fun to attend a normal party and just make up a personality.

Unfortunately, gem and I didn’t figure out who the killer was. Despite having figured out very few of the clues, Pete actually won!

We didn’t get a chance to take any pictures at the show, but we took one after the show with our name tags still on our shirts. gem is holding her birthday gift from my parents. You can tell that Labbit is smart and distinguished from his magnificent mustache.

My 27th birthday

Yesterday was my 27th birthday, and it was a fine one at that. It had been cold lately, but the 27th was nice and warm. It was nice to really feel the sun’s warmth sink into my skin when I went for a walk. It was the first time in a while that I didn’t need a jacket.

My birth-minute is 1:27 on 2/27, so I spoke to gem on the phone at that time. After work we went to Polly’s Pies. Because we’ve been watching Pushing Daisies, which often takes place at a pie restaurant called the Pie Hole, I had been craving pie. We split a slice of apple pie with ice cream and cherry pie. Both were delicious! We brought a slice of peach pie home too for another night.

At home I took a shower, and that’s when festivities took a slight detour. The shower was clogged. Once that was settled, it was time for part two of the amazing pie night – pizza pie! We headed to Gina’s Pizza, my favorite pizza joint, for a chicken, meatball, roasted pepper, jalepeño, and pineapple pizza! It was delicious.

gem got me a gift too. She bought me a box of peanut butter chocolate protein bars and a box of assorted protein bars! It’s kind of sad that this excited me, but it did. There are even a couple flavors in there that I haven’t tried yet, chocolate chip and peanut butter crunch.

It was a very nice birthday.

Frank Miller’s Sin City

gem had never seen Sin City and wanted to watch it, so I borrowed it from my brother on Sunday. We watched it last night. Wow, I forgot just how good it is! It’s like a dark, film noir playground in which Miller can explore his fantasies.

The first thing I notice is how great the casting is. Jessica Alba, Mickey Rourke, and Bruce Willis were all great. I didn’t even notice that Kevin was Elijah Wood, who also did an excellent job, until gem pointed it out to me.

I love how the film captures the feeling of a comic book. The stylized use of color to highlight and accentuate was obviously used throughout the film. Even the stark white bandages on Marv’s face stood out from the rest of the scene. I absolutely loved the large, fat drops of white rain on a dark background, coming down almost like a solid sheet. Noir fiction couldn’t be noir without heavy rain, right? I just loved the style.

According to Wikipedia, Sin City 2 will be released this coming October. I really need to read those graphic novels.

World of Color

After having talked about Disneyland earlier today, I realized that I never mentioned World of Color! Obviously I’ve seen them preparing it a long time ago. Having a big, empty, concrete reservoir in the middle of Disney’s California Adventure was quite obvious. However, I never went to see it. I’m not really sure why.

A week ago we finally got around to watching it. It was amazing, although that shouldn’t surprise me. We were right in the front but a bit to the right, giving us a great view. The only problem was the temperature. It was freezing. It was freezing in the car with the heat. It was freezing at home. I sort of felt like I couldn’t even heat up the next day!

Rather than showing a cohesive story like Fantasmic, World of Color shows various scenes from different Disney properties. It’s a water show featuring fountains, lights, lasers, fire, screens of mist, and video projections. It’s very well done, but I felt like it was missing the classic Disney characters. I love Mickey, and I love seeing him dressed as various personas. I like Goofy, Pluto, and Donald. I want to see more of them, Disney!

I’m glad I got to see it before my pass expired!

No more Disneyland

Our Disneyland Annual Passports are expiring, and thanks to the holiday weekend, Friday was the last day we could go that wasn’t a blockout day. We managed to go the Matterhorn Bobsleds for the first time since it reopened, which was a relief. gem really wanted to go on it last time we were at Disneyland, but they kept closing it temporarily.

We also went on Star Tours a number of times. Since it reopened as Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, we always get the same second scene, Naboo. We’d seen both introductions, two of the three first scenes (never having seen Kashyyyk, two of three transmissions (never having seen Yoda), and only Naboo for the final scene. We decided to spend our final time at Disneyland going on Star Tours again and again in an attempt to see the rest. We got to see Kashyyyk, which was cool, and finally, on our last ride, we saw the Death Star in the final scene. No, we never did manage to travel to Coruscant, but this will give me something to do in the future!

The fireworks show was cancelled, so we didn’t get to watch that unfortunately. We did, however, get an apple pie caramel apple. Then, on our way out of the park, we stopped at the front to get our picture in front of the “True Love” sign!

I miss my annual passport already. I don’t want to spend the money on it right now, but I doubt I can stay away for too long.

My fun Sunday: Aladdin, Social Distortion, and more

Last night was the rescheduled Social Distortion concert at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney, so we decided to spend the day at the parks. We went to California Adventure, checking out some of the shows between a few rides.

First, we caught the Red Car News Boys, a little song-dance show set in the 20s about Mickey wanting to move to Hollywood to make it big. These mini-shoes that Disney does really helps set the mood and magic, I think. Next we headed to Paradise Bay to watch Instant Concert! …Just Add Water. This was a show featuring recorded music, the fountains, and Goofy conducting. It was fun but nothing too special. We caught Operation: Playtime! – Featuring the Green Army Men as well, which is a percussion show (for the most part) featuring the green army men from Toy Story. It was mostly for kids, but it was enough.

The last show we saw was the most amazing. Disney’s Aladdin – A Musical Spectacular was a incredibly entertaining, albeit short, musical of Aladdin. The effects were great with clever use of smoke, trap doors, lighting, and character doubles. I also really enjoyed the genie’s use of current events in jokes. When Aladdin lamented that Princess Jasmine didn’t love him, Genie replied something like, “there are plenty of other princesses out there. I heard Disney just bought Star Wars. Maybe you could try Princess Leia!” If you haven’t seen it, I’d really recommend it. I’ll make sure to watch it again in the future.

Among the attractions we rode, of course we had to hit up Toy Story Mania. I love this ride! I was wearing my new Evil Dr. Porkchop shirt that day, so I pretty much had to go on the ride. The game seems screwed up to me! If I beat gem, why do I get the stupid cat while she gets that super awesome beaver? I know, I know. It’s because she’s super awesome, I suppose.

The concert itself was a lot of fun. The first opening band was The Interrupters, from LA. They’re a ska/punk band comprised of a singer, guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, and drummer. The three instrument-players are brothers, and they actually brought their dad on stage for one song during which he played trombone. I love brass, so it wasn’t unexpected that that song became my favorite. I’ll definitely need to keep my ears alert for them in the future.

The second opening band was Eddie Spaghetti on guitar and vocals with an accompanying guitar player. Eddie’s one member of the Supersuckers. Make note of this so you can avoid them, because I thought Eddie Spaghetti was pretty terrible. Wikipedia describes the Supersuckers as garage punk, grunge, cowpunk, and southern rock. I had to look up cowpunk, but I could guess at what it meant. Cowpunk is a genre fusing punk and country, and that pretty accurately summed him up. At first it just seemed okay. He wasn’t much of a live entertainer, and the music was only so-so, but so-so can be okay sometimes. When all his songs became about drugs (and not just marijuana), I started to lose interest. I realize this was a punk concert, but trying to use as many cuss words as possible isn’t cool, and getting the crowd to all flip you off at the same time isn’t some amazing feat. When he was done, the woman behind me said, “well, that was painful,” and I heard a lot of agreement. Some people clearly clapped and cheered just to be respectful, but I don’t believe it was warranted. Half way through his act, I pulled out my phone to continue reading my novel.

Eventually Social Distortion came on the stage. I don’t actually know many of their songs – maybe three, and of those, they only played one song. The lead singer did bring his adult son out to play with them for a little bit. I think one of the best parts of live music is having guests play with the band, so I always enjoy that. Social D was a lot of fun, but there was more than just music; watching the mosh pit was entertainment itself. From the large dude with the huge beard who seemed very friendly while slamming people, even offering onlookers the chance to shove him, to the absolutely crazy girl who would go nuts for thirty seconds before disappearing for five minutes again, it was very entertaining.

At 11:30, four and a half hours after the doors open, I left. I don’t know how much longer they played, but it was time for bed for me.