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Thursday, September 30, 2004
FRESH AND SO CLEAN posted on 9/30/2004 01:59:20 PM by agentCB
FROGS AND BUTTERFLIES posted on 9/28/2004 09:37:28 PM by agentCB
REST IN PEACE... posted on 9/26/2004 11:52:05 PM by agentCB
EMERALD CITY ADVENTURES (PART 4) posted on 9/25/2004 01:28:00 AM by agentCB
EMERALD CITY ADVENTURES (PART 3) posted on 9/24/2004 11:43:25 PM by agentCB
EMERALD CITY ADVENTURES (PART 2) posted on 9/23/2004 02:23:31 AM by agentCB
EMERALD CITY ADVENTURES (PART 1) posted on 9/22/2004 11:22:17 PM by agentCB
MUSICAL MANNERISMS posted on 9/16/2004 10:30:38 AM by agentCB
BOY IN THE HOOD posted on 9/15/2004 01:47:51 PM by agentCB
NOT ALONE posted on 9/01/2004 06:44:49 PM by agentCB
today i came into work late... i was up late last night cleaning my house and rearranging my room. i haven't changed around my room in over 3 years or so. shiet.
it's been long overdue. when i woke up, i kept on going and couldnt stop until at least the hallway was somewhat cleared of my belongings. thowing a lot of shit away.
all the dust under my bed and other furniture triggered a minor allergy attack. sad.
spiders are upset at me for disrupting their habitat. they're lucky i didn't kill 'em (i'm starting to like spiders, they eat mosquitos).
i plan to do my studio next... that will be a pain in the ass.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004
they say that when u get a zit on your nose, you're in love. i have one on my forehead.
what does that mean?
absolutely nothing, cuz i do not see the correlation between epidermal eruptions and the abstract idea of love. the zit is starting to swell up a little, though... maybe that means i like someone. haha
today i learned that honesty is still the best policy. i cleared up some drama with a friend and we were perfectly honest with each other. shit is real. works all the time.
the outcome is not exactly what i wanted. but it's funny how sometimes u have to let things go just to give it a chance to grow later on. still i respect the decision and will wait until i grow frog legs, or butterfly wings... which ever comes first...
anyway... back to honesty. it's one of the things i value most. right up there with trust, acceptance and respect. hopefully this shit pays off this time. no matter, it's not like i'm gonna stop being honest...
SPECIAL DELIVERY
i wanted 2 respond today
even though we decided
to draw lines in the sand.
turn our backs and wait
for time to end
then start all over again.
recreating a place
where frogs and butterfiles
roam free and race
hopefully you'll meet me there
if not that's cool
i understand
no need to explain
cuz i will be the one
to decide how long
i choose to stick around
let love find me,
guide me
and hopefully
bring me back down
off this cloud above the sky
i drifted here previously
now i have to fly.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
to danny, brother of one of my best friends jonanna and her sister (and my friend as well) lisa. this saturday was the funeral. danny had fought stomach cancer for 2 years before finally succombing to the illness. jo and lisa had asked me to help put together old videos they had of their brother for the widow.
i agreed to help em out. luckily i had a day off friday and was able to scan pics, capture video and edit the project most of the day. my goal was to get as much of the interaction with danny, his kids and his family onto the video. i also wanted 2 capture what he was like as a person also. after the funeral on saturday, the family watched the video together.
i was nervous as hell.
it's not like i thought i did a bad job or anything, but you know how it is when you really want to do something good for someone, especially for something as touching and sentimental as this project. i was hoping that i picked all the right songs, the right videos. etc. i was so nervous that while i was watching, i couldn't eat my lunch because my hand was shaking. but i think i did ok because the movie evoked laughter, tears and hugs. the family loved it, and suggested i should go into business.
i'm really a musician...
but anyway, i'm burning the shit to dvd right now. all i gotta say is imovie and idvd are the shit. i don't care if imovie titling sucks. the fact that it's so easy to use and powerful is enough to overlook the fact that the titles are always off-centered on the shit.
on another note, my tranmission might be going out in my car. another thing to bring me down from the seattle vacation high. i was riding in on that shit since my plane pulled into sacto international tuesday night.
oh well, welcome back to reality
Saturday, September 25, 2004
the last day in seattle. i couldn't really believe my vacation was already over. we spent the night at chantizzle's parent's crib. heavy breakfast number four was on the khmhu tip; pork chops, chicken, buffalo vegetables and sticky rice. damn im hungry now.
we went back to the hospital to see chantizzle's brother and then headed over to the gravesite of the godfather of asian american masculinity himself, bruce lee. we had to drive around the cemetery a few times to find the plots. i had remembered what the site looked like from a picture my boy fesi had taken from his trip to seattle way back when. after summoning bruce to help us find him, lo and behold, he popped up right next to us.
it was a trip to be that near bruce and brandon lee. he's such a legend that i forgot at times that he was as human as the rest of us. seeing his grave put that message in my head loud and clear. if you go to seattle, you gotta pay respects to the man and his son.
after our visit with the dragon, we headed out to dick's for lunch. (damn, i can't stand having the word "dick" and "lunch" so close together in a sentence.) the day was nice so we were cruisin' around seattle just lookin for things to do. it was pretty hot for seattle.
i actually had to take my jacket off.
next stop was greenlake, home of the infamous basketball courts in seattle. it looked just like the greenlake court in my nba street 2 game for the ps2. crazy. we didn't get to ball but we just chilled at the lake. reminded me of lake merrit in oakland but more green.
the final stop in my seattle tour was the seattle waterfront. it's no pier 39, but it tries really hard to be something. as much as downtown seattle looks new and artistic, their waterfront looks like a floating chuck e. cheese at best. here i picked up a few pasalubong (souvenirs) for the family. a t-shirt for my dad's bday, a mug for my mom and a light for my bro. i wanted 2 get a seattle t-shirt also but i knew i wouldn't wear the damn thing.
on the way to the airport i saw mt. rainier. i'm sorry but that shit is huge! wtf. it's so far but you can still see it. i thought we had mountains in cali, but fuck, mt. rainer is no friggin' joke. too bad you can't see it most of the time because shit is cloudy up in seattle. chantizzle said that if it ever erupted, seattle would be blanketed in lava, ash and fiery damnation. ok the last thing was my interpretation of it, but man, chalk that up to one reason to not live in seattle.
security at seattle int'l was more strict than at sacto. i actually had 2 take my shoes off this time. fuckin shoe bomber, thanks a fuckin' lot. dick. on the plane i got a window seat and was hoping to get one last glimpse of downtown.
say no go.
we flew the other way and i watched the sun set over the pacific ocean, wondering what all my peoples were doing in seattle at 7:10pm. coming back into cali, we landed so hard that a woman in first class screamed. the flight attendant had to try her hardest not to laugh while making her announcement. i hope it was her that screamed because it's kinda unprofessional to laugh at your passengers. it's okay for me to laugh though. i paid good money for that ticket. shit.
i'd like to take this opportunity to send a big shout out to the seattle homies for hookin it up big time, with the memories, the food, the company, the alcohol and most importantly, the ohana. i saw pretty much everything i wanted to see in seattle. (someday ladies we'll go inside the EMP right? haha) seattle ain't so gloomy after all... especially when u have bursts of sunshine through cloudy skies to guide you on your journey.
Friday, September 24, 2004
monday morning hyper koala dropped us off at the hospital. we took a different way in to downtown over what i believe was a floating bridge or highway. hyperkoala was pointing to all the rich areas of seattle.
instead of paying attention to where all the rich people lived, i focused on the green trees and the deep blue of the water of lake washington. seattle is very green (hence the emerald city moniker) and very different to drier california. i like the green but i bet the allergy season is a pain in the ass over there. who knows.
when we got to the hospital, this woman got her motor-home stuck in the parking structure, causing chaos with all the people trying to enter the structure. at one point i found myself standing on the back of the motor-home along with a bunch of other strangers who were also commandeered to act as dead weight in a feeble attempt to free the motor-home from the garage ceiling.
shit didn't work.
i felt bad leaving those people but we had shit to do, people to see. we finally got to park somewhere with the help of chantizzle's evil kenievel driving skills and met up with the rest of chantizzle's family in the surgery waiting room.
for lunch we walked over to downtown seattle and met up with lil sunshine and the hair goddess. they didn't stay to eat with us but just stopped by to say hi. on the way back i took a lot of pictures of the various buildings and architecture. i must admit, seattle is very well designed. i think i'm trippin over the cleanliness more than anything. i really enjoy the fact that i can walk down an urban street and not have to smell urine every time i get near an alley. it's definitely a redeeming factor.
back at the hospital, we waited for chanton's bro to get out of surgery and killed time by watching "ong bak: muay thai warrior." this movie was pretty good, the main actor is muay thai superstar tony jaa. not that i know who he is personally, i just saw his name on a flyer i got for the fall asian film series in sf.
anyway, there was this one character, the main big boss enemy dude who has to use one of those vibrating voice box thingies to talk. i thought i would never hear thai through a voice box. watch "ong bak" and you will.
after chanton's brother made it out of surgery successfully we were picked up by big league and hair goddess and went to jillians. hair goddess bought us dinner as we ended the night with pool and chit chat.
big league is a pool shark, straight up. he knocked me and chantizzle what we call "the fuck out." but it was fun anyway trying to make him fuck up by messing up his concentration. i'm good at dumb shit like that.
lil sunshine shutterbug came through and was nice enough to give me copies AND enlargements of the pics we took the other day at space needle. i tell you seattle people know their tourism. not only do they take you around, they develop pictures and deliver them. wtf.
Thursday, September 23, 2004
after a night of drinking at bada, i awoke early the next day due to the bright sunrise, a rarity in cloudy seattle. chantizzle and hyperkoala were knocked the fuck out, so i entertained myself by designing a song-writing curriculum for groundworks. then i made a few beats on reason. i swear i don't know how to relax sometimes.
after everyone got ready we headed out to meet up with chantizzle's family. we had a small feast to mark the return of the mack himself to seattle and also in honor of tizzle's bro who was going into surgery the next day. a family prayer for tizzle's bro followed which was totally in khmhu. it was dope to be able experience khmhu tradition first hand. and food is hella good. i was honored to be a part of it.
***sidenote: i mourn the slow death of tradition in my own filipino culture. my family is losing the culture with every generation. i'm trying to do my part by learning how 2 cook filipino food and teaching myself baybayin. next goal is to hit up tagalog and maybe eskrima if i find a good goro (teacher). seeing tizzle's family in action inspired me to keep up the good fight.
seeing my culture die slowly makes me angry, but like sunshine suggests, i've been tryin 2 do something positive with the emotions. i disagree with her on one part however; i think anger is not bad. it's natural. acting out in anger is what is bad in my opinion. but just being angry is ok, as long as i don't hurt anyone or myself in the process.
after the family gathering, we watched big league at his game. his boys have skills. too bad we didn't get to play. i had one too many heavy breakfasts i could have burned off. and to think i made chantizzle bring up my bball shoes in his bag for nothing.
later, the pallys hooked up with us at the famous pike's market in downtown seattle. we were treated to a drug induced mime performance by this young woman who used eyeballs and voodoo dolls to pick her nose. (i am not making this shit up). i didn't know what was funnier, watching homegirl do her shit or watching all the tourists around her taking the nose pickin' shit seriously. what's worse is that the chick didn't even get any tips.
at the market, i didn't get to see any fish flung into the air. i don't know about that anyway, since the fish are frozen solid. that shit would be dangerous if u ask me. i tasted something called a "hombow" which i personally think comes from the puti mispronouncing ham + bao (bao which means bread in chinese). shit was not very tasty. i prefer chau siu bao.
next on the list was the space needle. i dragged everyone up to the top even though they've been a million times. the pallys plus chantizzle graciously agree to go since i was the nubian to the scene. the weather was beautiful and i have the rainbow in my pics to prove it. gloomy seattle was not when i was up there. we hit up a few spots to take pictures and then had dinner at ohana's. ohana appears to be the offical pally clubhouse, a lil japanese spot owned by no-doze's cousin. the atmosphere was nice and the food was decent. the sushi however was pretty good. the sake nigiri was pretty damn buttery. yellowfin was just as good. the pally's turned down my offer of free drinks for a few karaoke songs at the bar. what a shame.
so we ended the night at another bar where we had watermelon kamikazes. i hate watermelon, but that drink was pretty damn good. my geeky ass brought my laptop to the bar to show the pics we took to everyone.
can u say technosexual?
sunshine requested a copy of my music, of which i happily obliged, it still trips me out when people say the like my music. that's something i can easily get used to though.
more to come...
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
the story of my trip to seattle begins with my first plane ride in about 4 years. i haven't flown since 9-11 so you can imagine my surprise when i find out that incendiary devices are not allowed on the plane. damn, next time i'll leave my C4 explosives at home.
anyway, the flight went off without any big drama. we were met at the airport by hyperkoala herself who bum-rushed the baggage claim area like r.kelly at a girl scout meeting. i was wondering if security was gonna tackle her, but luckily no one saw her as a threat.
hyperkoala has been excited for weeks about me coming to seattle and getting to meet her "pallys". hype, hype, hype for days. but yeh, i was not disappointed.
the infamous pallys have withstood the hype being the gracious hostesses that they are. i was also treated well by chantizzle's family and his boys he grew up with in sea-town.
my first impression of seattle went something to the effect of "ooh everything's so green" as i looked from the plane window to "fuck it's cold as hell!" as i got off the plane. seattle is beautiful; a very art nouveau and cultured city. for the yay area heads, imagine berkeley and sf thrown into a blender and squished into the area from embarcadero to presidio. add about 8,558,568,494 starbucks and then spray the entire area with heavy duty pine-sol to get rid of the pee smell. voila, seattle.
we met up with mr."well, i have a league game at 4pm" (aka big league), gary gnu and big league's effervescent other half, the mellow hair goddess (hyperkoala's twin sister). of course, my first tour started down the infamous broadway strip. it was as if my seattle homies were sayin "ok, lets get all this sir mix-a-lot stereotype shit out the way." also on the list was dick's, the place where the cool hang out, and a bunch of other little places i vaguely remember from the posse on broadway video. i think we also drove by some supermarket of porn.
so to sum up, broadway = posse, dick's, and porn. got it?
oh and how can i forget chinatown. mellow hair goddess pointed out chinatown was on my right. i look out and see two chinese guys at a bus stop surrounded by a bunch of non-chinese people. great.
next we convened at the house of hyperkoala's pally, lil' sunshine shutterbug. appropriately named for her photography skills. i walk in to her house and say something to mellow hair goddess to which sunshine immediately pointed to me and said "wait... he's a smart ass, isn't he? no one told me he was a smart ass!"
finally. someone who understands me. it's good to know i make that knockout first impression with people.
i also met no-doze. one of the last pallys i met the first day or actually remember before i got faded. no-doze was lying in bed sleeping when i first saw her. a regular party animal. (jk baby)
so the crew and i walked to bada lounge, in the belltowne area of seattle. bada is a very industrial-meets-ikea kind of place. i thoroughly enjoyed the design of the place and also the music. here i met up with agent orange's cousin jameson who i chilled with part of the night discussing the finer points of audio engineering and the importance of purchasing only mac computers from now on.
i met so many people, i don't want 2 write about it. plus i was drunk so i don't remember shit anyway. all i know is that i had a free zippo lighter in my pocket and i don't even smoke. wtf?! (shout out 2 jameson for teaching me cool ass lighter tricks.)
the night gets hazy after this as i had an iv of crown and coke dangling from my arm. however, i was not as bad as chantizzle, who pizzled for shizzle all over the streets of seattle. we ended up in chinatown where no doze and i played "who can stay awake the longest." chantizzle spilled a hot pot of tea on one of his homies in chinatown before we headed back 2 hyperkoala and hair goddess' house 2 sleep.
and that was just day 1. fuck.
Thursday, September 16, 2004
i shunned my workout this morning to make some beats. they've been in my head, however i haven't had the time to unleash the creativity confined within the neurons.
instead i stumbled across my collection of mosdef songs bootlegged for me with care by the pistachio.
i wondered to myself why there were not in my ipod.
my anal ass (is that redundant to say?) just had to spend a good hour typing in each track name and information into my computer. so no beats made. they're in my head still and starting to get angry.
maybe i should let them fester some more. gritty ass drums, deep basslines. shit i have not made yet.
i was listening to the tracks that are going to be on my next cd and i noticed that there are no tracks with any sort of anger driven or hardcore groove behind it.
it's ironic because i make songs to release tension, but they usually come out as mellow or very melodical.
not to say that i am neither of the above two. however, the gritty side of me sleeps. there's an angry side of me only a few have seen. i've always been able to control it, however i still feel it inside, you know? it's time for that side to speak.
perhaps the vacation to gloom- er, cloudy seattle will be my inspiration. who knows.
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
today i feel like a little kid. perhaps it is because i'm wearing one of my dress shirts from high school. i'm rockin it with the sleeve cuffs folded back to disguise the fact that the sleeves are 2 short. other than that the thing fits.
i think it's also because i've been giddy. over the weekend i attended ctlemonade and bluefrums' wedding in fairfield. let me be the first to tell you that charles shaw merlot and hennessey do not go well together.
ok so maybe you also shouldn't take seven glasses of said merlot to the head before you perform the song you made for said couple's wedding. at any rate the song was a hit and the couple was surprised.
they didn't know anarchy and i were writing a song for them.
cmon now. you ask me to do a song for your wedding, i have to come correct and do something original. it's almost like a double dare physical challenge. the dare would be to do a standard. but the physical challenge would be to make some shit up.
ok so maybe double dare's a bad example. i used to think that only the dumb kids would do physical challenges. i'm not dumb. crazy, but not dumb.
*aside* i remember one episode of double dare where the red team was two brainy ass kids who answered every question right. they didnt do one physical challenge all night. i predicted they would bite it hard at the end, where it's all physical challenge. sure as shit, the nerdy kids got caught up in some slime and failed to finish. if you don't know what double dare is, you're probably thinking i'm still inebriated from the wedding right now.*/aside*
so anyway, the wedding was fun, with the exception of yours truly staggering over to mostly everyone i knew at the wedding and repeatedly saying that we are "fuckin family" and that "i got your back no matter what."
the funny thing is that it's true. i don't say it often. but that's how i feel. so if you heard that. you are special. if you heard that repeatedly, don't blame me, it was the $4.00 shots of henrock.
big ups to wrektangul for driving me home.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
i have been living in my house here in sacto for about 5 years now. can't believe it. time flies. i've never once posted about the infamous spirits living with me in this house. when we first moved in my brother and i got this weird feeling from the house. i walked in and felt this great saddness in the air. the furnishings were old and very dated.
it was as if i stepped into a twilight zone set.
i had a weird feeling about the house and i asked the realtor if "something happened here?" by "something" i really meant "did someone get killed here?"
the realtor tried 2 hide a sigh as she then proceeded to tell me about the old lady that lived in the house before.
now before all of ya'll freak out, don't worry, there's no jeffrey dahmer ending to this. but yeh, the old lady slipped in the shower, hit her head, stroke, death. in that order. husband survived her but there was too many memories in the house and he was sad so he wanted 2 sell it.
first of all, if i am ever 2 marry, besides having to bury one of my children, seeing my wife go before me would pretty much do me in i imagine. but being the optimist i am, i would probably find some sort of silver lining with the shit.
so yeh, we move in anyway (no we didnt get the house blessed) and things were cool.
but...
every now and then, weird shit would happen. for example, when going to sleep, i would turn all the lights off in the house and head to my room to sleep. then i would wake up in the morning to lights on in the kitchen.
i used 2 think it was my roommates turning the lights back on. but when the shit started happening when i was alone AND also to my roommates when they were alone in the house too, we started freakin out.
the worst thing that happened was when i was at home by myself (DURING THE DAY mind you.) i just finished using the bathroom and was making a song. in the background i could hear the noise the toilet makes when it refills, and sometimes that noise continues until you jiggle the handle to make sure the tank is sealed.
so there i am, trying to avoid the fact that i have 2 get up and jiggle the handle. half an hour later, i finally get my ass up to jiggle the handle. when i reach the bathroom, i am shocked to see that it is not the toilet making the noise.
the faucet was on
and it wasn't me that left it on. how did i know? the hot water was on... i use cold water 2 wash my hands. and worst of it all, the mirror started foggin up above the sink.
now i don't know about you, but i've seen a horror flick or 2 in my lifetime, and i know what happens when foggy mirrors appear; unearthly fuckers start writing shit.
i'm cool with that.
so i turn the faucet off and run back to the living room and beg whatever spirit in my house to stop fuckin with my utility bills. i let the spirit know that i'll take care of the place and treat it good.
to make a long story short, shit has been cool since.
*this blog holds the record for taking the longest to do. today is really 9-15-04 when i finally finished this one. coincidence? hmmm*
