Festivals

I'm always amazed by how uncreative we are as human beings sometimes. I don't understand why we have a 'Walnut' street in every town, why we have a 'Newark' in New Jersey and California, same goes with 'Pittsburg' in California and Pennsylvania...you get the point. Is it really hard to come up with different name?

I'm not a big festival type of guy. Yeah, the atmosphere and vibe is nice but the food is usually overpriced, there's always a big line for the bathroom and you always end up missing one of the acts because someone else is playing at the same time.

Thank being said I had a pretty decent time at FYF Fest this weekend. It was all because of Explosions in the Sky.

Goodbye Hooray.

Well, it's finally here. One of the most dreadful days of the year, the last day of summer is finally here. I have to say, it was quite a productive summer and one of the shortest summer I have ever encountered.
Here's what I want to remember.
Live Music I witnessed:
June 11: Title Fight, Shook Ones, Touche Amore, The Menzingers
June 17: Andrew Jackson Jihad, Shinobu, O Pioneers!!!, The Wild
June 22: Two Gallants, The Mumlers
July 25: Rademacher
July 28: The Henry Clay People
August 5: Jimmy Eat World, Dead Country and Dustin Kensrue
August 12: Joyce Manor, Shinobu, Four Tomorrow
August 16: Bomb the Music Industry!, The Sidekicks, Hard Girls

I also had the pleasure to attend my very first San Jose Giants game, Los Angeles Dodgers game and after a three year hiatus, I made a visit to the Angel Stadium of Anaheim to watch the halos play.

There were also very 'firsts' for me this summer...I went to the Santa Cruz boardwalk and rode the big dipper for the first time, played Scrabble, Ride the Bus and Pictionary for the first time and went to the Palm Desert for the first time in my life.

Along with many other productive things, I'm glad I started and finished four books this summer...Ask the Dust by John Fante, Catcher in the Rye and Apathy and Other Small Victories by Paul Neilman and Ham on the Rye by Bukowski.

As always, I do have few regrets about the summer, but at the moment I rather just focus on the good things that happened.

La Quienta Police

Panther Beach.

If I had to write one sentence to describe this summer, it would be:
I'm finally getting older and growing up

Summer Update

What I have been up to the past few weeks:

The Henry Clay People at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, CA

Late Night Nature Trail Adventure.

Rademacher at DiPiazza's in Long Beach, CA

Risk!

This was on the front porch of my friend Robbie's house

Halos vs. the Twins

Street art in Los Angeles.

I saw this car and immediatly thought of my older sister. So I took a picture and sent it to her.

None of these pictures are in particular order. The reason I uploaded them here was because I'm too lazy to write about my summer adventure and I have a feeling that I am going to keep in contact with this blog a lot longer than with facebook.

No One Gets Remembered.

Music is..
It's the base code,its everything its the background. I'm always humming something. The thing I look out for in music is honesty. the moment when you feel like somebody has pushed themselves past this kinda barrier of keeping your guard up. you suddenly you break through and you got this perfect moment where you break through and you see something real. something underneath, you see the bone through the flesh, you feel the glimpse of the soul when the voice cracks and the guitar feeds back. and you just feel like you have heard something true and something that can't be taken back...that's the moment I love music.

Summer time.

There is only one band that reminds me of summer, for some reason it feels wrong to listen to them during other parts of the year.

This was the song, that started it all. The Bass riff that started it all.




"He goes to the desert, fires a rifle in the sky, and says 'God, if I have to die you will have to die."

I'm on my way back again.

I had these set of beliefs. I lived by them for the past three and half years and recently, I have come to the realization that I'm not sure if I still believe in them anymore. Part of me feels like an idiot for being so into them and allowing those beliefs to run my life for so long.

I believed that each person comes into the world alone, travels through life as a separate person and ultimately dies alone. I felt like it didn't matter what we did in between or who we surrounded ourselves with because at the end we are going to be alone. I was fine with this, I had accepted this and in a way, I wanted to accelerate this process.

I don't know anymore, it all feels wrong. I felt like things were becoming clearer early on but now It's like everything is gone. I feel like I struggle between what I know is right in my own mind.
My favorite phrase was 'We Are What We Believe' but now, I'm not sure what it all means.

Radio Nowhere

July 10, 2011

Today is my last day in San Jose, I leave tomorrow morning for Irvine. At the moment, I'm sitting on the couch listening to Bruce Springsteen and waiting for time to pass by so I can head to the San Jose Giants game already.

The past few weeks in San Jose have been different that what I had expected. Besides from going to class twice a week and once in a while going to the track, I tried couple new things. It's funny how simply saying 'Yes' can change your day. I went to Santa Cruz twice this past month, that's more than I have been during my previous three years in Northern California. I also went to the pet store few weeks ago for the very first time in my life. I think I'm finally getting a sense of what kind of people I want to be surrounded by, I can only hope that these people stay with me for the rest of my life. The other day my best friend told me "the key to life is surrounding yourself with people that make you happy." I am starting to believe this is true.

I'm not sure what to expect for the 30 days or so while I stay in Irvine. Part of me is excited to go back and hit the Jacuzzi every other night, play pick up Soccer and eat home cooked food but I know all these expectations can be killed really easily.

Tomorrow morning I hope on a bus for a 7hr long ride to Southern California. At the moment I playlist includes lots of Lucero and Bruce Springsteen. A friend of mine let me borrow 'Catcher in the Rye' few weeks back, I'm halfway through the book and hopefully I can finish it tomorrow.

I could really use some Ice Cream right now.

Trying new things.

Yesterday was full of positives. I think it's partially funny because when I woke up I was nervous about the what was ahead of me for that day. As I mentioned earlier, I am currently taking 'Intro to Forensic Anthropology' this summer session. This is the last week of class and we had a wonderful option of turning in a paper on Thursday or do a 10 to 15minute Presentation in front of everyone. I decided to go with the presentation because I was in no mood to write a paper. So instead of hanging out with friends during the day of fourth of July, I stayed in and worked on my powerpoint. I did walk to the San Jose Giants stadium during the night to catch the fireworks.














My presentation went a lot better than I expected. As I said I was pretty nervous going into class and part of the reasons was that I hadn't given a public presentation in a over a year. My topic was on 'Disposal of Human Corpses' I was the second one to present so I could get it out of the way. I know I did good because when I finished and started walking back to my seat, the girl sitting in front of me said I did a good job. Part me things that she was just being nice but I would like to think that she really meant it when she said I did good.

After class ended at four, I took a nice sweaty mile walk back to my house, ate some dinner and watched the Cardinals-Reds baseball game. I figured I would be spending the rest of the night on the couch watching baseball when about an hour later I got a phone from a friend asking if I wanted to hangout. Fifteen minutes later I was in a car with three other people driving around looking for food. The four of us ended up eating dinner at Chilies. I had a Black Bean Avocado Burger, it was alright, nothing fancy. After dinner, we played a  game called 'Spud' in the parking lot. It was really fun and I found it fascinating that just because four people were running around a part of the parking lot meant that we had reserved the spot. The game lasted around 40 minutes we had no problems with cars.
After the game, we went back to one of our friends house and I played Scrabble and Pictionary for the first time. I really enjoyed playing both games, I had trouble with Scrabble early one but I look forward to giving both games another shot.

Looking back, I have done lots of new things during the past five weeks in San Jose.  I will save that for another time.