Life Update: January 2005 in 15,000 Words
If pictures are worth a thousand words, then here's fifteen thousand to sum up a few highlights of January 2005.
So some of you might be aware of my crazy, eccentric side, but my apartment mates have some eccentricities as well. See, there appears to be a sort of silent, ongoing war between the other two adjacent bedrooms in which they randomly decide to sabotage the other's doorway in the middle of the night, in an attempt to create confusion and frustration come the following morning. It started with Trent and Carl taping empty pizza boxes in front of Dave and Dan's door, who in retaliation one-upped them by pushing the dining room table against their door and stacking all the swivel chairs on and around the table. Trent and Carl, in return, taped sticky saran wrap to their doorway in hopes of catching a "sticky surprise" on video. However, the ultimate, you-can't-top-that act of madness occurred on the night seen above, when I was interuppted from whatever I was doing in the middle of the night by some commotion in the living room. I came out to see almost all our furniture piled up against Trent and Carl's door, creating a towering barrier to the rest of the world as you can see. While there was no video documentation, Carl described how he opened the door fifteen minutes before class and struggled just to break through; Trent had similar difficulties later that morning. So I don't know how Trent and Carl plan to top that... oh, and neither of them have snagged Chris and I because we are always the last ones to go to sleep. :-P
A few Friday's ago I ended up not going to sleep until 9am on Saturday. Don't ask why; as much as I enjoy sleep when I'm sleeping or tired, I fall victim to the overachieving American standard in which my long list of things to do prompts me to think, "I don't have time to sleep!" Probably verging more on the extreme side of that. Anyway, at about 7am I was sitting peacefully at my computer listening to the band Television when I was disturbed by a loud ruckus. See, our bedroom window faces towards the inside of our apartment complex; while at the start of the year I was disappointed that our room lacked bright sunlight and a "view", I find that our situation provides me with many more chances for mischief and entertainment. For example, at the beginning of the year my roommate and I were awakened one morning at 5 or 6am by a clearly intoxicated male pounding away at someone's door, screaming and crying profanely for them to open up and repeatedly exclaiming that someone broke his "$400 cell phone." A few neighboring girls opened their windows during this and screamed back at him to "shut the f-ck up" to which he tried desperately to explain that he was sorry but these people broke his $400 cell phone and wouldn't let him in. He also made exclamations about how he was going to "break the door down" and maybe even that he was going to "kill" somebody. I don't know. In any case, I think the cops showed up and somehow the situation fizzled away rather unspectacularly.
Another time, the night before the UCLA-USC football game, there was a big fight that broke out on the 4th floor catwalk between students of the two schools. Upscale party-going girls and guys both going at it, I saw one guy get kicked in the head, and there was collective fear of someone going off the railing to an untimely death in the planter or on the concrete about 50-60 feet below.
Our window also provides a convenient spot in which to participate in the finals week "Midnight Yell" tradition, when everyone screams their lungs out for a couple minutes each night. The temptation has also arisen many times to shush people being too loud, like when we tried unsuccessfully to plug my microphone into my computer and drag the speakers over to the window, turning up the speakers full blast so I could pretend to be the voice of God telling a group of potheads to "go to sleep" (speaker cord not long enough, and too much feedback).
Back to the story at hand. The loud ruckus at 7am which prompted me to peek outside and then dive for my camera before it was too late, was a large group of Asian guys snickering as they carried over a very large television set and a bookcase in front of someone's door. As you can see, they were playing some sort of prank, ducttaping the bookcase to their door and pushing the TV against it as an extra barrier (Trent and Carl, take note.) In the picture above the boys are taking some photographs, proud of their accomplishments. So deciding to have a little fun before sleep, I confused them by taking my own flash picture through the blinds. They were being a bit loud, so I shushed them once...then they started chanting a song, so after that I took out my panflute and played a tune, which prompted some confusion but not much else. I set up my digicam to rest on the windowsill, which they pointed at and laughed...(since the blinds were closed they couldn't tell who it was)...finally before I went to sleep I peered out of the blinds with my Halloween skeleton-reaper mask and amused myself with their confused looks. Ah, fun times.
This picture was taken when I went to see UCLA play Stanford a couple weeks ago; we lost miserably. Still, it was a fun experience and I'd like to go to another basketball game (hey, we beat USC). I've since rekindled an interest in basketball video games ever since... NBA 2k2 on Gamecube is fun, but you don't know how good it felt to bust out NBA Jam: Tournament Edition on Super NES when I went home that weekend.
Here, Eric Chao (i.e. the quintessential indie rock suburban Asian boy) makes a toast to something at our "wine and cheese" party a couple weekends ago. See, we decided to create a list on our fridge of things to do this quarter, among them being a 200 mile+ road trip, getting drunk before noon, going to class drunk, the ExtravaDANza (Dan's 21st bash), the Century Club, Edward Fortyhands, and one involving "Eiffel Towering" a 50-year old woman in the Mojave desert so bizarre I cannot even remember it...One novel concept, however, was the idea of a psuedo-classy "wine and cheese" party with cheap boxed wine and supermarket ourderves, a classy dress code and sophisticated classical music. It turns out the party was set way sooner than I expected, so there wasn't much time for elaborate planning or even the purchasing of plastic wine glasses.. but people showed up in droves dressed all nice and fancy. Now the crazy drunk of our apartment would have to be the other Dave...and even at a refined event like this we couldn't stop him from getting shitfaced. Which, as we will discover, lead to disastrous results.
This is me being silly with a Costco root beer keg alongside the boxed wine. Chris, my roommate, wanted to dissolve EZ Cheese in wine and trick someone into drinking it. When that didn't work though he suggested I spray a little EZ Cheese in the other Dave's hair...bad idea. While we got the initial act on video, you won't see the part where crazy drunken Dave poured beer on my new shirt and sprayed EZ Cheese back in my hair. We had to take showers and I wasn't having too much fun soaking my beer-soaked, cheese-stained shirt in the bathtub at 3am. The best part was seeing half the partygoers start screaming and running wildly out of the apartment in the midst of Dave's chaotic beer-and-cheese dual attack. Oh well, one for the memory books. (::cough:: Asshole ::cough::)
Classy ourderves: EZ Cheese and Ritz crackers, Kraft Singles and string cheese delicacies.
I like this picture because Dan looks a little, well, flustered.
My mom told me that Knott's Berry Farm was offering $17 admission with a canned good. Now this is a great deal considering normal price is $45. So a few weekends ago Chris and I ventured down to Yorba Linda and met up with Cody and Tyler for a day of crazyness at Knott's. This was taken in the parking lot around 10am.
Chris says thumbs up for crowd-free Sundays at Knott's. Being the theme park enthusiast that I am, I wouldn't be caught dead going to a theme park on Saturday and insisted we go Sunday. The park was even emptier than I expected...we hardly waited in *any* lines all day, even for the brand new ride Silver Bullet...it was a-w-e-s-o-m-e. How does this place make any money? (A: Halloween Haunt)
(A #2: All the idiots who pay full price, like last summer when Cody and I handed out a stack of extra coupons we had out of pity...if the Knott's suits saw what we were doing they would probably have a fit...losing control of their little "Sims"...see the bonus picture below.)
Tyler and I BEFORE riding the Perilous Plunge....
Tyler and I AFTER riding the Perilous Plunge. (115 feet high drop angled at 75 degrees, creating a 45 foot 180 degree splash. This ride has a death toll.)
There's this very nifty arcade machine. It's an electronic drum set in a booth and for like a buck, you can play along to a song of your choice. It's fun for anyone to play but especially for real drummers like me! So on a whim I decided to bust my skills. The best part was that they had an actually GOOD song - Metallica's "Fight Fire With Fire!" This song was perfect for creating some attention and amusement. This song is extremely fast, loud, and simply brutal. I pounded those rubber skins like I was headlining Shea Stadium in New York (where the Beatles played for thousands). Chris got some killer video and apparently I drew a crowd. By the end even some security was checking it out! That was great. I almost died after though, I was breathing so hard. The rush was definitely worth it, though. Next time, next time...
I changed clothes in the bathroom, but this extra tight dress shirt and clip-on tie made me very hot, very fast. Can you notice my increasing disgruntlement? Needless to say that didn't last long. I could barely even breathe.
Chris and I met up with his family to have lunch at the Chicken Dinner Restaurant (which was *very* good, by the way...the best part was how they showed the original prices on the menu... $1.25 for the chicken dinner in the old days...today just move the decimal one to the right. Haha.) Anyway, we saw this guy taking a nap in the store while we were waiting. I hope he was enjoying his sleep, I know I always do.
A picture of no one at Knott's Berry Farm, after lunch.
So after lunch we were to meet up with Cody and Tyler, but I decided to have a little fun with them. The park map says no costumes/masks allowed in the park so we waited until we pinpointed their location in Fiesta Village. They sort spotted us though so as Chris strolled over I went in for a surprise attack around the side of a wall with my skeleton-reaper mask and Chris' jacket. They were pleasantly surprised. This is me in line for the dragon swing.
The train ride at Knott's always features these robbers that come on board and terrorize the guests just for fun. They don't expect you to do anything, but last time I tried to counterattack. They don't really know what to do in these situations... this time I spooked them with my mask, then offered them my leftover chicken. They weren't interested. I also spooked some pedestrians from the open window, but one girl waved to me which was nice. Later I also put the mask on *during* three of the roller coasters (Ghostrider, Silver Bullet, Xcelerator - that one was fun, putting the mask on while accelerating to 80mph in a few seconds, up hundreds of feet at a 90 degree angle) .... so that my mask would show up in the pictures. The Silver Bullet censored our picture ("sorry, your photo is unavailable!") but the other two showed up. It might not sound funny but trust me...more than my friends were laughing at the pictures suggesting the Grim Reaper made a surprise visit to brave some thrills at Knott's Berry Farm.
Anyway that's what I've figured out about myself and my true nature - I enjoy being WEIRD and doing random, strange things that make me laugh. Hopefully other people find them funny too but whatever....I'm happy being me and being weird, doing things just to do them and say I did them. I have accepted my weirdness as a positive trait. It's not even "weird". It's more like..."quirky." I like that. Quirky. Alright, longest entry ever (maybe not) so peace out!