Moons Over My Bloggy

So, not much has changed since you last heard from me. I still live in Chinatown, I'm still tutoring/teaching/interning/balling, and my thick black moustache is just as full and bushy as ever. But a few exciting things have happened in the past few days that I think are worthy of having words typed about them.

For starters, a good friend of mine just moved back into da hood. In case you were wondering, that's not slang for my returning crack addiction. I'm three days clean and I have a Dave N' Busters game token to commemorate it. My friend-from-Jordan-who-I-met-in-Prague-and-who-goes-to-school-at-Occidental just returned from taking a year off from school, during which he directed commercials and such in Jordan. He's my film homie. And he's back in LA! Which means it's about to get twisted.

We are two wild and crazy production designers!

On Friday, for instance, we saw a House of Blues show with my friend from Whittier. It was my boss/co-worker's birthday and she was promoting for one of the bands, so she scored a bunch of free comp tickets and invited me to bring some friends out for the show. Hey man, if scoring brownie points with bosses means I get to go to free HOB concerts, then call me Duncan Hines.

It's slightly cheaper than Betty Crocker and I can't taste the difference.

The show was a lot of fun, and a cool experience since my only other HOB encounter was San Diego my sophomore year of high school when I went to see Shinedown and Trapt. Had my first "wall of death" mosh experience and everything.

When this was cool, I was THE coolest. But you see the problem already.

And yes, my dad DID chaperone.

The three of us had a great time just being out and listening to live music; we even got food after the show at this restaurant on Sunset Strip called Carney's. It's a revamped train car, which I think is something we can all get on board with.

Chew chew

Cheap, delicious food-- especially if you're a vegetarian, because hot dog and hamburger joints assume that any food without meat in it is worthless.

And wouldn't you know it, Saturday evening held adventures as well. My Jordanian friend-- we'll name him G-Baby, because that's what I call him-- and his Jordanian friend-- we'll name him Salami, because that's what G-Baby calls him-- came over and hung out after I got off work. It is moderately entertaining hanging out with two dudes who randomly cut into 5-minute conversations in Arabic and use trans-culturally ambiguous phrases, like "Good boy." Not really knowing what to do, we decided to walk around Chinatown and maybe grab dim sum or something. Well, that sum went dim real fast once we realized we had walked right into Chinatown's annual Chinese Moon Festival. Crowds flocked to Chinatown to celebrate... the moon. I'm not saying that because I don't actually know what it's about, I'm saying that because that's what I read on About.com. Downtown was all a-flutter with food vendors, craft tables, displays and demonstrations, confetti bombs going off every five minutes, rides, acrobats-- seriously, I saw this guy balance teapots in ways that will forever change my life.

And I had NO clue this whole event was going to happen. But as someone who is incredibly impatient when it comes to waiting for Christmas, this was a pretty stellar surprise. G-Baby, Salami and I got to watch gnarly acrobat/dance/theatre performances and enjoy all the sights, smells, and colors of the festival.

Dragon tales.

As an added bonus, I was finally reunited with sushi burritos at my favorite food truck, Jogasaki. And for dessert, a bomb-diggity green tea shave ice off this truck called "fluff ice" or something. It had red beans on it, which I decided is actually pretty good. Never in a million years did I think I would ever be okay with beans, let alone the concept of putting them in a dessert; but hey, you move to Chinatown, crazy shit happens.

You mean like giant balloon replicas of the moon? Yeah, something like that.

After we had our fill of the festival the three of us decided to drive out to Santa Monica in the evening-- 'cause why not-- and we bummed around the pier, which was as colorful and glow-y as ever. Some dude was playing a didgeridoo (spell check seal of approval), making him the Pied Piper of kids on drugs. That was amusing.

In less amusing news, the bakery has dicked me around for a solid month now, meaning I should have moved on three weeks ago. Maybe I should bake a cake for the anniversary and decorate it with dollops of frosting poop. I only held on because they kept acting like I was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but being a bakery I should have known they would place more stock in cupcakes. Sigh. Kind of a bummer; I was excited to romanticize the shit out of that crummy little minimum-wage position. But now I get to move on, meaning I'm going back to the drawing board and trying to figure out how to juggle five jobs and an internship in a way that is somehow profitable. I think this all proves that I have work ethic but am a complete moron.

What else is gnu.