Chris

Sorry about that.
BTW it's my birthday.

a lot has been going on lately, here's my life in shorthand
-played some shows, more shows set up
-made some films
-just finished shooting a roll of film, and i'm excited about taking photos again

kristen is coming up here tonight, i haven't seen her in like a week.

mr. and mrs smith is bizzarre for a hitchcock movie. men and women and posessive feelings and jealousy and New York City and fried chicken and sleigh rides.
Try putting apples on your pizza the next time you make one. you'd be surprised.

What movie is this quote taken from?
first person to answer correctly wins my heart.

still the king.

started working at the edit cage at school today (9-10am, 4-5 pm) no one showed up in the AM. I rode my hog over to the storage locker to get my camera (sky was still clear) then to get a burrito (no clouds) then to the balboa theatre to see rebel without a cause and on my way there the rain started pounding down. my camera is ok though (i think). it's really cold riding in the rain and the smaller drops sting your face even more than the big ones.

I read a lot of the rossellini bio during the morning hour edit cage shift. but it will take me most of the summer to get through the whole thing.

looks like other people didn't prepare themselves for the rainy weather either (short sleeves and no umbrella). I should really look at the paper before leaving in the morning.

what should I do tonight?

basically i'm homeless right now but marie is letting me stay with her...
(thanks marie)
in SC right now thinking about how cathartic band practice is going to be tomorrow. and how i need earplugs.

saw k. today. she gave me carrot cake but i haven't tried it.

everyone who likes to complain a lot at work really had a field day with the new computer system. Some people more than others. Mostly the night shift. But with the new computers we can look at updates about michael jackson's trial... at least, we could until he was acquitted and released into the wild. But we can still look at weather reports.
marie doesn't think that's such a good thing.

The guy from the TV show the shield is playing the thing in the new fantastic four movie (yes the one with jessica alba)

i'm sad i'm not living in chinatown anymore. i'll miss climbing those hills everyday.

Cortnie might give me a double-size matress. I hope it will fit into the room at steve's place.

I watched the rest of Kontroll after work last nigt with stef. people clapped again at the end. I think they were hungarian and don't get to see many hungarian movies. or maybe they just really like techno, which the movie had a lot of. i liked it but thought the story could have been better.

I haven't been wearing a hat much lately and I'm getting sunburned on my face.

The indiana pictures turned out great.

i still haven't seen star wars. can i still participate in the democracy?

time for sleep

woke up this morning and went to pack my lunch but discovered that the pizza i was hoping to eat had been eaten by my roommate. he didn't even clean up the empty box it came in. I went to class and listened to Leonard lecture on the New Testament. then i went to the soundstage to return my Straw Dogs props but found that Michelle had already put 'em back.
got home and decided it was time to wash some of my threads. called Jaime and told her I'd be going to the cafe next to the laundromat in an extended message. Iwas surprised when I saw her across the street on her way to meet me. We talked over coffee, it was nice to see her again. we caught up on our mutual friends and told tales of the city we had collected thus far.
we parted ways and i received a call from joel- he was available to shoot a film that i'd been planning for my physics class, so we went out and shot it. his character was a former theoretical physicist who's out of work after the final theory is discovered and verified. trouble was that a lot of real homeless people swarmed on us when I turned my camera onto one of them (claiming to be "the original 'parking lot red' ").
we got most of it shot and tomorrow i'll edit the piece.
later i went to the ecc to get my commuter check. marie printed out the itinerary for the trip to indiana, we leave tuesday may 31st at 7:22 AM, and return Wednesday june 8th at a more decent hour. the trip should be fun.
came home and found a response to the note that i had left for my roommate- 5 bucks for the pizza, and an apology. i felt like a dick for being so passive aggressive but oh well.
now i'm listening to phillip marlowe and dragnet shows on the pirate cat radio web stream.
i need to start writing more.

and now he's in a little movie called constantine.
big shout out to my boy bin who gave me 2 waxy cups of pibb at the metro.
and to the beer-guzzlin' couple who bought tickets to the movie and made that experience possible.

I was just scammed out of a lot of money. I wasted time sending nasty pissed off e-mails to the person. It seems to me that I'm going to have to make a few changes in my life. the fact that I fell for the scam tells me that I'm walking through these days with a blanket over my head.
I'm going to begin the rest of my life by going to sleep right now.
PS i won't say exactly how much i lost, only that it would have bought a whole lot of "rebel yell."

Bus Ride
9-3-2003
Crowded and cramped, someone didn't use deodorant. Open toed shoes make for a disaster. The ride is taking longer than expected.
Outside, Three men run by, and a police siren can be heard a few blocks away. Some more people come running from the direction of the first three/ They are looking on. Obviously someone fucked up The bus pulls over as the siren gets closer. A block later, the three guys that ran by us are at a street corner, one of them is on the ground, face on the concrete, the other two (plus the officer that was in the car) are holding him down and searching him. They pull out a keychain and a bag of weed. He is yelling at one of the original two guys, who are obviously undercover officers. Every person on the bus witnesses this because the police car is blocking the street. A van pulls up to haul the guy off, the squad car moves out of the way, and we are off.
I exit at what I think is a stop close to the skatepark. I don't know because I've never been to it before. When I get off I am at the top of a hill, surrounded by trees and shrubs. There are no visible paths or trails where I'm at. I am surprised at how dark it is, because when I got onto the bus it was daytime. Darkness fell in a mater of minutes.
I walk along the road for about a half-mile, until I can see a path leading down in the direction that I want to be going. I look down it as far as I can see, which isn't very far. I decide to say "fuck it," and take the chance. I side-step it down the sloping dirt, which is unstable and starts to slide, but I regain my balance. I see that the path splits up, one way goes up a hill and the other winds around the bottom of the hill. I take the high road, thinking that maybe I'll be able to get a better view of the park.
A better view I get, and I see that the park is huge. There are a few benches around, and I think that this is probably a great place to jog during the day. But it is not daytime, it is getting on to 9 o'clock. It is dark. I choose a trail leading toward a bank of bright lights hanging over what looks like a soccer field. I walk tall, looking as big as possible, and I hold onto my skateboard a little tighter. Though most people would later scold me for walking alone through the park at night, the walk was actually really pleasant.
As I get closer to the lights, I see that it is a soccer field. I find a stairway leading down to it, and I see the skatepark up ahead a few hundred feet. Two guys are standing next to a pickup, skateboards in hand, talking about the presence of BMXers and rollerbladers at Skateparks, mostly in a disapproving way. I nod to them as I walk by, and enter the gates.
The soccer field lights provide enough light to see one of the bowl's walls, but coming up the opposite side the lights have a blinding effect, and I almost fall over a few times. There is no way around it I see, and I'm pretty tired from the walk, so I leave.
The skate back to the Bus stop is mostly downhill and painless, though I make sure not to linger around certain corners for more than a moment's time. I don't even have to wait for the bus to arrive, it is already there when I skate up. I get on and Ride back, hungry and itching to write. So here I am. My frozen pizza (5 for $10) is in the oven cooking up. I can smell it but it's too early to pounce on. Tom Waits on the headphones, and I remember that I still have Carol's CD, one of many that she let me borrow for no reason at all. Everyone else that had only limited contact with her said she was curt and rude to them. I tried to tell them that she was really a great person, once she decided to give you a chance.
EXEMPTION EXAM!! I missed 6 points, giving me a B-. Unfortunately, you need a B or higher to pass the test. The advisor is going to show the test to my instructor, David Duhig, and ask him if he thinks that my test should be counted as a passing quality attempt. The class is overcrowded and redundant, and I would save a lot of time if I could exempt it. Tomorrow is the CINE 200 exam, at 12 noon. wish me luck.

hgey

i hung out with jamie today. it was cool, i havent really hung out with that girl in a while. i dont know whats happening. the old crew is breking up. it was bound to happen though, too much bullshit going on between everybody. everyone just needs to chill or something. im happy right now, just to let everyone know. what sucks is happiness is always fuckin taken away randomly so quickly. i need to enjoy what i have while it lasts just incase

how can you wish death upon another person. to actually wish that a person would die is fucking crazy in my mind.
i chilled with my bro ryan today at like 7 something for the first time in months. craziness! also, stuff happened, b4 i was with ryan, that made me smile all day. dont u wanna know what that stuff is. well i cant tell you, just know that im happy with my current situation and hopefully it works this time.
usually i would be bitching about my "horrible" life but since i smiled so much today, i cant say anything bad. :)

So what if the oil in my car hasn't been changed for over 5,000 miles? I don't even think that's the reason it stalled on me last night.

suzie brushes against my leg, leaving enough fur on my pants to weave a warm parka.

Open Lab today... finish project#1... move on to #2... ooga-ooga-ooga-chaka... move on to #3... ooga.

Dad, you sound like a whining little kid when you talk like that. Mom, take a breath. please. and for the love of god, at least be honest with yourselves!

New oil make car go fast. WHEEEEE!!!!

Inspiration that is. I told a friend that I'd recently been churning over some Ideas (capital I?) for a screenplay...or twelve. So the logical thing to do next would be to launch into some of those particular ideas, right? well I just didn't know where to begin, he didn't pursue it, and I dropped the subject right then and there. We talked about his script, but I left mine alone. As if I had opened the oven on it and found the center to still be frozen solid. A little more time, my dear, to roast it all the way through.

When I was younger than now I used to plan out some ways i could dig myself a hole, sometimes involving other people in it, and then cover it up (no not literally speaking) but the fun part is trying to dig myself out of the hole. Yes, I was that bored with my life. Specifics? Okay. one night I made sure to go to a party that was as far away as possible- somewhere on the Southside I think it was. I was given a ride by a friend, whom I knew would be leaving early. "How will I get home tonight?" was the challenge. I had but a few options- I could put on the infamous Dridge Charm and make friends with someone who had a car, I could search for people that I knew at the gathering (which there almost inevitably was) or I could crash at the residence of the party.

I met many people there, but one group would help me out of this rut I had dove into. I think they all went to Wilcox- for those unfamiliar with Santa Clara, one of the 2 SC public High schools- yeah, that's right. It's coming back to me- I had known one of these guys many years before. He was a drummer, too. After a few (10-12) drinks, we were able to put the whole school rivalry thing aside (not that I ever seriously bought into that- I just kind of went along with it around others) and I met some of his friends, their dates, their dates' friends, and extended that whole "six degrees of separation" theory to about a-million-and-a-half other people.
By the way, I ended up crashing there but getting a ride home with my old/new friend the next morning.

When I was about 13, a friend and I wanted to explore the area via public bus, and so we hopped on the nearest bus, bought a day pass, and just hopped on random busses for the rest of the day. I think we went all the way to Milpitas, then over to Mountain view, etc. etc. etc. etc.
Artificial adventures? not even. We met some really fascinating people on those rides. Like the guy who was so paranoid of losing his bag of groceries that he would wrap the plastic bag so tight around his hand that it began turning purple (not the bag-his hand.)

What did I just write? Oh yeah, something about perspir- no, inspiration. Right? hmm...

Psychological time- what a concept. Based on memory more than the actual event itself. I guess that I've developed an impecable ability to sink into time- so that when I come out of my 12-hour long day of class in the same underground classroom, it seems like only a few hours have passed. I've always considered myself a patient person.
But a few hours can turn into an eternity as well. If you're nervous, if you can see what it is that you want but it's just out of reach for whatever reason, then the only thing on your mind is finally attaining it. It's almost troubling, because if and when you ever do attain it, The time you spend in posession seems to fly right on by.
The set that we played onstage went by in what seemed like five minutes, when I know that our stage time was about 25-30 minutes. We were "in a zone".
Pops just came home to eat lunch (leftover turkey from the big S-bowl).
I'm going to San Luis this weekend to see K for the first time in ... 3 weeks? jeez.
I'll keep you posted as the events unravel...

Battles of Bands have always had a bad rep- now I know why. A cover band? Are you kidding me?! Even if a class-act like Slayer had competed the judges would have picked this certain unnamed Jimi Hendrix cover band as the winners.
And our manager wants us to play a show with them.
Sure, they had great dynamics, and their vocalist's mic was actually plugged in, but they operate along their own brand of genialities, while my band sticks to making sure we leave the stage in a state of complete dilapidation. Sure, it's not music for the faint of taste but it is quite a workout on the spirit. I know people who have told me that our music has instilled a vitality and strength in them at a time when they needed it the most. Music has a tendency to do this to us.
Like I said though- this was just a gig, and I told myself I wouldn't worry about the results. Maybe it was those damned acorns
It's been almost 2 months since I've had any sort of real, honest romantic time alone with K. It's so hard being away from her, speaking with her on the phone for five minutes at a time each day. I have opened myself up to others more than ever, in an attempt to make connections that the the relationship had prevented in the past. The results have been more than promising. So many interesting facets and peculiarities that people carry with them will come to the surface if you dig for them.
How long can I go without seeing her? stay tuned...
Friends are the #1 source for cuddles when we need them most. Thank you.
I'm off to my second home at the cafe

I acquired a bundle of 40 tickets for the upcoming battle of the bands at the gaslighter next month. We need to be one of the first seven bands to sell them all or we won't be able to perform.
The band is coming together really well, all are moving at their own pace, but the commitment from these guys is overwhelming. We should have no trouble selling the tickets.
A friend provided me with conversation and a warm bed to rest my aching drunken bones, and I am grateful. I still feel like a stranger in that neighborhood but this position is fading as more friends make these offers of hospitality. I'd go as far as saying that the cafe is a second home, family included, for me and a handful of others.
I can feel a draft. I must be approaching the end of this tunnel, isolating the frustrating degree of creative stagnation. A slump. The slump coming to an end.
I see so many people being dishonest with themselves and this makes them unhappy. Don't be one of these people.
And into the day I go....

I'm staying in Arroyo Grande right now, near San Luis Obispo, looking out of the window towards the sea. We are staying in Jennifer's house(Kristen, Alejandro and I) which is monstrous. There is a pool surrounded by Roman-style columns that overlooks the hills and the coast. The hills are pretty bare save for the few cypress trees scattered here and there. The pool, tough it would be perfect on any other summer day, is not very appetizing right now. The fog is still lingering and its pretty cold outside
THIS KEYBOARD IS TOTALLY FREAKING OUT SO I"M GOING TO LEAVE IT AT THAT< BECAUSE I NEED TO MAKE SOME COFFEE (SOUNDS LIKE WORK DON"T IT?)