keep an eye out

I'll be spending a great deal of moolah over the week, eating.
I have three dineLA reservations lined up starting this afternoon and there is a strong likelihood that I'll be adding another.

Where will this magical mystery cash come from, you ask? Nowhere that I know of. I might as well be pulling bills out of thin air. My checking account dwindles quickly before my eyes, but all I can think about is food. I, the insatiable appetite, the black hole stomach, eternally hungry.
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Since it's already old news, here is the Oscars recap as short 'n' sweet as possible.

FASHION: A majority of the ladies looked like a sophisticated version of...
BAM! Glenda the Good Witch from the Wizard of Oz. Mickey Rourke looked rather spiffy in his unique, white suit. RDJr. looked equally spiffy in his classic black tux. Many men had the satin tuxedo-stripe-down-the-pant-leg action.

AWARDS: No comment, neutral. I haven't seen many of the films so I really can't protest and fuss about undeserving winners or more deserving losers. You're all amazing, putting on probably some of the best facial expressions I've seen when the camera cut or panned over to your faces watching speeches. If only I could have such a convincing face while merely sitting and listening.

SPEECHES: I am belly belly happy too for you, Yojira Takita. Here is the rest of the Departures crew speaking (some of it unintelligible but too darn cute!)


And, of course, sank you my Kunio Kato, for giving da bomb speech of the evening.

PARTIES: I wouldn't know, I wasn't invited for some odd reason. Bruincard isn't accepted everywhere.

THE SHOW: Hugh da man! I already had a longstanding love for him, my music man, but he is "off the hizzoook", for lack of more sophisticated words. Surely most viewers' gag reflexes were worked during this lavish, dramatic, and oftentimes cheesy Oscars, but i absolutely loved it. C'mon, we'd all be much gloomier people without song and dance!
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I always end up blogging in reverse, backtracking on my days. Bummer, unlike Benji Button, I'm not aging in the same way.

Saturday was a fulfilling day. I received another reality slap-check in the face upon picking up two sisters who are both regular campers at Camp Kindle--for children infected or affected by HIV/AIDS and a beneficiary of UCLA Dance Marathon. The home was cramped, far too small to accommodate the girls, their mother, father, two puppies. Appliances were basically falling apart, dusty vent on the floor taking up the whole width of a three foot hallway leading immediately into two cramped rooms. I was promptly reminded of how strong these kids are and just how meaningful the one week at camp each year is, not only for them, but also for their families.

The younger sister has ADHD. Unfortunate, yes, but also one of those situations where the CK family can laugh about it and move on. Let's just say if my car had one of those "eject" buttons, little Z would've been shooting out of my car a minute after she buckled in. Never has anyone pushed so many buttons inside my car over a span of five minutes--lock, unlock; windows up, down; radio stations galore; "What's that?", "a GPS", "Can we turn it on?", "Ohhh not right now, we're two minutes away..."; air freshener open, close. Meanwhile, her older sister sat in the back attempting to comment on the songs as they changed rapidly. The elder is stability and it's sad that she has to be that figure for the family at such a young age.

Anyway, we finally arrived at UCLA for Dance Marathon. I stayed with the Camp Kindle kids and danced for about four hours, ran to the car in Lot 8, drove to the apartment, took the quickest shower, tornadoed my room in the process of getting ready, then was off to Kollaboration, aka a CelebrAsian! All in all, the night was 100% entertaining with talented performers, amazing dance crew sets, my life saver Burger King, a dip in fun with an awful first hour at the after party, but concluding with the usual dance partaaay and me losing my voice singing along.

In related news, BoA's self-titled, U.S. debut album has been pre-ordered and been sitting in my Amazon cart for a while. I'm not quite sure what to make of
Oh! Eye muffs! I guess it's good to draw in the U.S. crowd. After all, she's not 14 years old in Korea anymore. Hopefully she doesn't get distracted and maintains the high caliber of actual dancing skill and choreography that shot her into super-stardom way back when. That was a smart move in deciding to use the American version of the "Eat You Up" MV just for intro/promo clips and release the Korean version as the official video.
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Continuing to read Beloved, Mrs. Dalloway, The Handmaid's Tale, and our film directing book for classes. This quarter is so-so. I'm anticipating the short, but much needed spring break to refresh and recharge.

NOM x 6

Susan and I tried out LUNA PARK from the dineLA list tonight. The restaurant was definitely opposite of what we expected--though we're not sure what our expectations were either. Located on a deserted and shady corner of La Brea/Wilshire, the only landmark immediately nearby was a Blockbuster across the street. We passed by trendy tweens while crossing the street as well, scoff.

'Twas packed. We stepped inside to a Disneyland size crowd by the bar and I observed an overall small, very dim-lit, bustling room with a casual chic crowd. Slightly awk, but, the service was impeccable* and the food...Oh My Gawd, the food. I thoroughly enjoyed every dish start to finish.

Apologies for lack of photographs, but a camera flash in their lighting would've been like the light of Jesus blazing through.

Appetizers:
+Warm goat cheese fondue with green apple slices and bread:: Inspired to melt all the cheese in my kitchen and dip everything else in my kitchen in it.
+Hawaiian marinated tuna "poke" with fried wonton chips:: Basically a light citrus marinated tuna tartare with nicely fried crispy wontons.

Entrees:
+Grilled marinated flat iron steak with salsa verde and french fries:: Wifey is a "meat well-done" but thankfully the waitress convinced her down to medium well, and even luckier for me, it came out more like medium :) Delish, tender steak!
+Grilled salmon with braised greens and grits in whole grain mustard over mashed potatoes:: The whole grain mustard n grits was the only thumbs down of the meal--incredibly bitter >_< (sometimes aZn emoticons are most expressive). Everything else, nicely done.

Desserts:
+Make your own s'mores:: Yesss. Cup of bittersweet fondue o'er candle + cup of molten mini marshmellows o'er candle + house made graham crackers. Leftover chocolate was appropriately slurped up with spoons.
+Deep fried apple pie:: 2 cute deep fried apple "dumplings" with caramel and cup of rich vanilla ice cream.

Then, we exploded.

*Impeccable service comment includes our server being thoughtful and intelligent enough to have the kitchen split our entrees, so we each had a plate of salmon and plate of steak. Four plates?! Fatties are we. It was probably just an optical illusion, but I felt like the split gave us even more food than we would've gotten--my stomach definitely felt the difference.

They also re-filled our water every five minutes, switched out silverware, wiped table before dessert (all things I thought they only did in ultra-fine eateries).

I don't dock points for the slight lag in taking our order, the place was packed, and I just accept the fact that restaurants in America just take forever and a year to complete the bill.
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I should get sleep soon because tomorrow morning I need to pick up two Camp Kindle campers from Santa Monica and bring them back here for Dance Marathon! Originally, I'd planned on taking the free practice LSAT on campus from 12:30-4:30pm, but I think I'd like to spend some time at DM with CK (hopefully you got that, not trying to pull a cool slang thing).
Also, 4:30pm might cut it close to when we leave for KOLLABORATION. Woot woot! I expect the Asian half of UCLA and of other local universities to be there, plus Matt and Alex!

SO EXCITED. Five other CEC-ers that I know of are also going. We takin' over...

48 hours later...

Pulled two consecutive all-nighters and am consequently crashing now.

I am not fancily equipped with a scanner and was too lazy to photograph my work, but I created my first-ever storyboard! Three non-consecutive scenes illustrated by yours truly via mechanical pencil--alas, I left my crayola workshop at home--based on the script for AUTUMN IN NEW YORK! Whosa Whatsa? No, not the Keanu Reeves movie; that's SWEET NOVEMBER, silly, but basically the same bittersweet conclusion (pretty lady must pass on).

Thumbs down and frown to me for procrastinating on this project. It's something I'd never done before and had I not waited 'til the last minute, I would've thoroughly enjoyed the process. Definitely felt great to have pencil in hand sketching/drawing again. The artistry did not come back easily--I tried my bestest to sketch Richard Gere and Winona Ryder, but they all ended up looking slightly Asian, and Asian they are not! After numerous rough sketches and scrolling through google images, I came up with neutral looking sketches of man and woman, decently Caucasian looking too. All my childhood bad habits rushed back instantly with this project. I spent far too much time on detail, erased erased erased, then erased some more. I guess in the shots of close-ups, the detail in the eyes did come in handy. Eyes are so tricky! And hands! I never could draw those well, still can't. They looked more like Freddy Krueger claws, so romantic. Hopefully the professor/TA takes into account the fact that some of were clueless going into the project.

In other pressing and interesting news, I found a piece of pepperoni in my purse. Not suprising since I consume at least three Wetzel pepperoni twists with butter and Parmesan a week while sitting in the CEC office with purse in lap.

Tonight will be a cozy and casual potluck: meat, meat, meat; Chinese brocolli courtesy of Jo. If interested, basic Korean BBQ marinade is easy peasy:

Soy sauce / Sesame oil / Sesame seed / Sugar / Pepper /
Pineapple juice (balances the sugar and soy sauce) / Diced garlic (because it's garlic!) / Onion (diced or puréed mixes better) / Diced green onion

**The last four aren't absolutely necessary, but they definitely add more flavor!
Then, Magic Bullet that sh*t. Or if you don't have one, stir that sh*t.
Then you can either soak meat in bowl of sauce and cook it pronto, or put meat in freezeguard Ziploc and pour sauce in so it's fridge/freezer ready. Orrrr you can vacuum seal as my dad loves to do and preserve in freezer for many, many uses.

a place for my stuff

"If it's true that our species is alone in the universe, then I'd have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little."

Year-old news, but the rents and I just caught a re-run of the Mark Twain Award for American Humor to George Carlin from 08. I'm in the same boat as all the comedians and friends who came out to tell their Carlin stories and intro their favorite clips, speechless. The world lost a whole lotta finely-tuned funny as well as a critical mind with his death and it's a shame. Both Carlin and Twain were geniuses, comically and linguistically.

Did you get all that? from NYC at his sprightly age of 68. I don't think there's anyone to match his way with words and expansive vocabulary, a pioneer in comedy i.e. his Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV.

Hopefully you've been able to come across some of Carlin's brilliance. He truly made you think about things subconsciously while you were consciously laughing. All our comic favorites today (Maher, Black, Colbert, Leary, Cho, Stewart...) were influenced by him as he was by some of the greats before and during his time--Richard Pryor, Danny Kaye, Lenny Bruce among others. If you have the chance, his books are some of the best reads.


Hats off to you, Mr. Carlin.

would you expect anything else?

It's Valentine's Day! Mother is playing online Tetris*, father sits beside me watching online tv, I write this post while setting reminders on all the chick flicks coming up tonight. YEAH! Would you believe me if I said that I have three blind dates lined up for after dinner? No? Okay, I wouldn't either. I'm just happy to be home--it's refreshing to get away from school for a few days.

*A note on mom's mad Tetris skills: her highest level is twenty freakin two! She gets to 15 easy now. When we used to play on our old Nintendo, yup this classic,she almost beat it...got up to level 19 (out of 20), got distracted, and in a millisecond, death. In her disbelief and anger, she threw away the remote. Unfortunately, old Nintendo iz broke now, duck hunt gun and all =(

Tomorrow I'll be working on something rather new to me. We are to somehow bring to life three scenes from a movie based on the script. Wha? Of course, this is what I signed up for when I enrolled in Film and TV directing, but it's definitely foreign ground. Just selecting the script has been a painstaking task so I've narrowed it down to either THE APARTMENT or AUTUMN IN NEW YORK. I have not seen either. Regardless of the poor reviews for AUTUMN, it might be slightly easier to take this on rather than an extremely well-known, high-intensity action or drama since I have no idea what I'm doing. Eek!

I'll also be starting some T.S. Eliot, Morrison's BELOVED, and Woolf's MRS. DALLOWAY (one of my favs). Luckily, I've been wanting to read the first two as well, so that should make it less homework-y and more enjoyable.
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Last night's dineLA outing was an eventual success. Aside from L.A. traffic being miserable, downtown L.A. is miserably confusing. Missed the 4th/3rd exit--which is combined under the 6th/5th sign only to separate to 4th/5th? or something like that. Finally had to whip out Mr. Garmin GPS who gave a series of "Keep left, then keep left, then keep right, then left..." To my utter disappointment, changing the voice to British-English actually ended up being more obnoxious. Darn.

Finally! We got to Wolfgang Puck's Bistro on 6th, drove around about ten minutes to find the cheapest lot possible ($3). Honestly, the bistro was tastier to me than Grace--again, I'm only making judgments based on the dineLA tasting, but sometimes a good ol' steak or burger and fries does the job. Plus, it's decently cheap so I just ordered from the regular menu: Tuna tartare appetizer (yum!), tortilla soup (so-so), and the bistro burger + fries (NOM!!!), which altogether ended up $2 less than the dineLA price. Of course, the set dinner and desserts were also delish, especially the steak au poivre. My only criticism is that everything was a tad too salty--that tends to be the flaw in a majority of American cuisine, too rich or over-seasoned.

The drive home at midnight was GLORIOUS! No traffic, but also not deserted--perfect driving conditions. Mom is paranoid about those cases where people pretending to be cops pull women over at late hours and dot, dot, dot. "You don't ever have to get out of your car. You have the right to ask for I.D. Don't get out of your car." "Okay, okay mom!" My foolproof plan if anything should happen: act crazy. Chances are, my attacker-kidnapper-___er won't want to deal with a troubled person.

Once home, I went straight for HBO On Demand to see what I'd missed the past how many weeks. Watched DEFINITELY, MAYBE, cried (duh, when Isla Fisher cries at the book and Abigail Breslin cries to Reynolds at the end), then fell asleep. Sigh.

Annnnd, dad just revealed a newly bought RATATOUILLE DVD! I'm all smiles!
Good night to you!